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Updated: June 27, 2025
Who'll you have for your escort: Olive Keltridge, or Brenton?" "Brenton?" "Scott Brenton. Surely, I wrote you he was here." Whittenden laughed. "If you did, it never got put in. Most likely Ramsdell balked at the spelling. You mean the Brenton that I married?" "Yes, worse luck!" The rector nodded. "It's come to that; has it? I'm not too much surprised. What is he doing here?"
"How do you figure out that I've been upsetting him?" he queried. Whittenden settled himself in his favourite position, low in his chair and with one hand flung upward to grasp the chair-top above his head. His eyes, fixed on Opdyke, were full of merriment. "Let's go back a little.
However, self-forgetfulness comes best by focussing all one's energy upon the victim next in line; and Reed Opdyke, just at the present crisis, needed nothing else one half so much as self-forgetfulness. Nevertheless, the pity of it all, the seeming heartlessness, surged in on Whittenden. It would have been far easier for him to have tried to lighten Opdyke's burden than to increase its heaviness.
Appearances and his own forebodings to the contrary, it might be but a passing phase of her experience. The label of it, though, once affixed, would be well-nigh impossible of removal. "Katharine has never come so very much inside my professional life," he paltered. Whittenden pricked up his ears, partly at the statement, partly at the unfamiliar name.
"Old man," Whittenden said, after a longish interval of smoking and watching the shielded face; "I know I'm not much use; but doesn't it help a little to know I'm here, and sick with the seeing for myself all that this thing means to you? Of course, I had the letters; but they didn't go far. One has to come and talk it out; and Well, I'm here."
"Moreover, I wrote to Whittenden about him, a week ago. If any one can be of use, it will be Whittenden; he always knows what tonic it is best to prescribe. Must you go?" He looked up at her appealingly. Then the same appeal came into his voice, set it to throbbing with an accent wholly new to Olive's ears.
Of course, this is the bare outline; you can fill in the details out of your own experience." "Praise heaven, I haven't any!" Whittenden responded piously. "So much the better for you, and so very much the worse for Brenton. I had counted on your being here to haul him out of his present mental Turkish bath, and hang him out on the line in the fresh air and sun. I can't."
We drive them at top speed and never think a thing about them, as long as they go on all right. It's when they snap, that we begin to realize all the things they've stood for." Again there came the silence, while the eyes of the two men rested on each other, more eloquent than many words. At last, Reed spoke again. "It's all hours, Whittenden.
Then he looked up, with the ghost of his accustomed smile. "Well, what do you make out of it all, Whittenden? You've heard and seen the worst of me. Now what next? Is this losing my grip the final stage of the whole bad matter?" Whittenden flung up one lean hand to grasp the chairback above his head. Then he smoked in silence for a time, his clear eyes fixed on Opdyke's face. At last, he spoke.
Even in the worst of his self-indulgence, he had ten times my mother's logic. If he had had one tenth of her will power, he'd have counted. As it was, though, utter annihilation. He died, and left no record. My mother helped it on, by never mentioning him, up to the very day she died." "Hm!" Whittenden said thoughtfully. "Perhaps she knows him better now." Brenton glanced at him curiously.
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