Brentwood

“ By training to the town we just escape it, and the succeeding five miles along this old coaching highway [87] are chiefly on the down grade. Brentwood is well worth exploring. Its fine broad High Street still retains the decayed trunk of the old oak marking the spot where the Protestant martyr, William Hunter, was burnt in 1555. The trunk is carefully bricked up to preserve it. A monument also serves to keep the martyr’s memory green. The old galleried courtyard of that old-time coaching inn, the “White Hart,” should be seen ”

“ The men preserve their individual tastes, together with that comradeship and mutual considerateness which have their origin in the best traditions of college life. The same loyalty and chivalry are prominently reproduced in the characters of Ravenshoe and Silcote of Silcotes. But in Geoffry Hamlyn these qualities are perhaps more noticeable (at all events to a colonial reader) than in the later novels, because of the contrast they furnish to the essentially competitive life of modern Australia. Brentwood is ‘excessively attached to mathematics, and has leisure to gratify his hobby’ ”

“ Communications.—Railway communications are supplied principally by the Great Eastern railway, of which the main line runs by Stratford, Ilford, Romford, Brentwood, Chelmsford, Witham, Colchester, and Manningtree. The Cambridge and northern line of this company, following the Lea valley, does not touch the county until it diverges along the valley of the Stort. The chief branches are those to Southend and Burnham, Witham to Maldon, Colchester to Brightlingsea, to Clacton and to Walton, and Manningtree to Harwich, on the coast ”

“ Along the “Island” beach there is excellent surf-bathing. The township is served by two parallel branches of the Long Island railroad about 4 m. apart. On the main (northern) division are the villages of Brentwood (first settled as Modern Times, a quasi free-love community) , which now has the Convent and School of St Joseph and a large private sanitarium; Central Islip, the seat of the Central Islip State Hospital for the Insane ”

“ If a smash comes there will be a good deal of horse-swapping in the middle of the stream—buying up of depressed stocks by people who need the lines worse than the original owners do."
"I see," said Ormsby. "Then you would counsel delay?"
"I should; and I'll go a step farther. I am on the inside, in a way, and any hint I can give you for Miss—for Mrs. Brentwood's benefit shall be promptly forthcoming."
"By Jove! that's decent," said Ormsby, heartily. "You are a friend worth having, Mr. Kent. But which 'inside' do you mean—the railroad or the political?" ”

“ He nodded his head.
"You ought to be a man. If you were, I should never give you a moment's peace until you consented to take a partnership with me. It's as plain as day, now."
"Is it? Then I wish you would make it appear so to me. I am not half as subtile as you give me credit for being."
"Yet you worked this out."
"That was easy enough; after I had seen Mrs. Brentwood's letter, and yours from Mr. Hunnicott. The Plantagould people want your railroad, and the receivership is a part of a plan for acquiring it. But why is Major Guilford spending so much money for improvements?" ”

“ He did make it, with an hour to spare; an hour which he proceeded to turn into a time of sharp trial for the patient telegraph operator at the station, with his badgerings of the man for news of Number Three. The train reported—he took it as a special miracle wrought in his behalf that the Flyer was for this once abreast of her schedule—he fell to tramping up and down the long platform, deep in anticipative prefigurings. The mills of the years grind many grists besides the trickling stream of the hours: would he find Miss Brentwood as he had left her? ”

“ From the first morning of his reading service at Saint Peter's, Brenton had been aware that he was opening a fresh chapter of his life. In the old hillside parish, there had been things to do and souls to save. Here, it seemed to him that all the souls had been saved prenatally. As for the things to do, these people were too critical, too self-reliant to take kindly to the intimate sort of ministrations in which, of old, he had delighted. For the future, it would be the quality of his sermons that counted most, rather than his personal contact with his people. ”

“ The ghost of the smile grew a bit stronger, as Brenton sat down beside the crib and, after his custom of these later days, held out one brown forefinger. Instantly, the wan little claw closed around the finger, the baby nestled slightly, and then fell into a light doze. ”

“ There was nothing in the world that he could do, except to be there and, now and then, to stave off a caller too insistent to be appeased by any bulletin issued by the maid. Among those callers was Prather, the novelist. Priest though he was, Brenton was conscious of a human and athletic wish to wring his neck, so palpably was his expression of fussy sympathy mingled with the professional sense of copy latent in the situation. ”

“ All summer long, his matrimonial incongruities, to use no stronger term for the domestic ecclesiastical situation, had furnished talk for half the tea tables in town. Moreover, it was only when a man was present that any woman lifted up her voice in Katharine's defence. Left to themselves, they knew perfectly well that all the scholarly stoops and resonant voices and luminous gray eyes in all creation were not responsible for their universal sympathy for Brenton. The woman was a toad, a selfish and ambitious toad, hopping, hopping, hopping up across the surface of the human pyramid before her. ”

“ Which was the greater reverence: to exploit one's own belief; or, open-minded, to be searching for a clearer outlook upon truth? And so, bit by bit, the lure of the laboratory beckoned to Scott Brenton, just as, bit by bit, his wife and his profession lost their hold upon him; lost it, to his regret, lost it by their own failure to supply his highest needs. As to the laboratory itself and all it offered, it was no mean achievement for it to make good to Brenton all the other lacks, whether in his professional career, or in his wife herself. ”

“ Brenton spoke with the curt elision of his country ancestry.
Opdyke watched him steadily for more than a minute. Then,—
"Brenton, don't make an ass of yourself," he besought his friend. "You have befuddled your brain with such big words as truth and proof; but don't go on your nerves about it. You are doing any amount of good, from all accounts, here in the town. If you keep steady and sane, you'll come to where you have an influence with a big, big I, and end by really counting for something in the place you've chosen. If your harness galls you, then pad it up. ”

“ Brenton is a mixture of genius, and prig, and ignorant young hermit; or, rather, he has the elements all inside him, ready to be mixed. You'll have to do the mixing."
"I?" Opdyke looked startled. "Professor, what a beast of a bore!"
"No matter if it is. I believe in the conservation of all latent energy. Brenton's is all latent, and I count on you to do the conserving. I've been asking questions lately. From all accounts, you are the only man in college but myself who has taken the pains to get inside the poor beggar's shell." ”

“ Up to the very hour of their talk, the callow little curate had gained no inkling of what his rector had been passing through. To his young mind, the experience was no less cruel to himself than it had been to Brenton. He had supposed that the belief of every man was cut out by a paper pattern outlined from directions in the Pentateuch, and washed in with dainty coloured borders taken from the Gospels and the Book of Revelation. It shocked him unspeakably to find that any man had dared to tear up that pattern and draft a fresh one for himself. ”

“ Yes, you have. She was just in front of us, the woman in the pinky-yellow feather and the pompadour. You must remember her; she was casting sheep's-eyes at Mr. Brenton, all the time he was preaching. That was the way I found out who she was. My curiosity led me to ask Dolph Dennison about her, and I was quite upset when Dolph tweaked my elbow and made signals of distress at poor Mr. Brenton who was standing near us. If he is as thin-skinned as he looks, poor man, it must be rather hard to go into a new parish and watch the people getting accustomed to his wife. ”

“ He saw it and, lacking knowledge of its source in Brenton's erratic father, he condemned it with the cocksure harshness of exceeding youth. Without it, Brenton would have been all man. With it, Dolph believed, he was predestined to futility. Indeed, what hope was there for a man who would get himself all waxy over such played-out doctrines as predestination, and then sit by, impotently calm, and watch his wife go off upon the Christian Science tangent, without a word to stop her and tie her down to reason? It was like finding cold, bare bones embedded in one's breakfast porridge. ”

“ Now, in the intimacy evoked by hour-long discussions of their sons' possible futures, the professor was coming to take a dominant place in Brenton's life. After preaching what he felt to be unprovable futilities, it was no small satisfaction to Brenton to come into contact with a man whose sane and practical working creed was supported by a perfect trestlework of interlocking equations based, in their turn, on fundamental and well-proved natural laws. ”

“ The voice was more than a trifle husky; and the professor's chair was carefully planted with its high back to the light. The professor was in the chair, and bent above the table which, Brenton's quick eye noted, was bare of anything that looked like work. As Brenton's face appeared in the doorway, Professor Opdyke looked up at him in a vague uncertainty which all at once changed to a guilty recognition.
"Brenton! I quite forgot. I'm very sorry," he said; but his voice lacked all resonance. "The fact is, I've had news from Reed."
"Bad?" The curt monosyllable was kinder than many words. ”

“ Of course, he had hours and moods when he felt that he must lift up his voice and shout aloud to all men—What? That he did not know exactly what he did believe? For, in reality, that was all the whole pother was amounting to. What was the use in starting the alarm, when the whole great crisis might be merely a matter of imagination, of indigestion, even, as Doctor Keltridge had diagnosed it? In that case, the best, the only remedy was work.
And work Scott Brenton did. The parish was growing, month by month. The mere detail of its executive alone was enough to tax the strength of most men. ”

“ Kirkwood, laughing with exasperation, retired at discretion, leaving Brentwick the master of the situation: a charming gentleman with a will of his own and a way that went with it.
He heard the young man's footsteps diminish on the stairway; and again he smiled the indulgent, melancholy smile of mellow years. "Youth!" he whispered softly. "Romance!... And now," with a brisk change of tone as he closed the study door, "now we are ready for this interesting Mr. Calendar." ”

“ And Brenton did stand by, all evening long and all the night. The nurse was with him, watching. Katharine, furious beneath her scientific calm, came and went at intervals; but the doctor's bottle and spoon were in the breast pocket of Brenton's clerical coat, the doctor's written schedule was set down in duplicate on Brenton's cuff. And Brenton, too tired to be really weary, never once left his chair beside the frilly crib.
Later on, he never could remember what were his thoughts, that night. Being human and very wide awake, he must have thought something ”

“ You'll never succeed in reducing the moral universe to a set of molecular equations, Brenton. Best give it up, and take what's left in the most thankful spirit that you can, not let the unprovable part of it get on your nerves like this."
Brenton chewed the end of his cigar, as if it had been the cud of his spiritual discontent.
"But, by my profession, I am here to preach the truth," he burst out at length.
"Preach it, then," Opdyke advised him calmly.
"According to my notion, truth can always be proved." ”

“ Moreover, outside interests were daily growing more insistent; of necessity they crowded out a little of his personal and domestic worry. There were innumerable conferences with Doctor Keltridge and Professor Opdyke; there was one discussion with the assembled trustees of the college; there was one hard hour of explanation before the assembled wardens of the church. Last of all came the talk with his curate whom, despite his bunny hood and his archaic theological tenets, Brenton had grown to love. ”

“ Dolph's lips curled into an irrepressible smile; "how do you know it would be for his advantage?"
For one instant, Olive struggled with her pique. Then she cast it off, and looked up at Dolph with her old smile.
"You hit hard, Dolph," she told him; "but I'm not sure you aren't in the right of it, after all. I like Mr. Brenton. I am sorry for him; perhaps it has muddled my values, as you call it, to be on the inside circle of his advisers. Still, there is something to be said upon the other side. You can't comprehend a man like Mr. Brenton, if you try." ”

“ To hear Reed speaking, one would have been sure that the world was all before him, waiting at his idle feet.
Brenton's answer echoed the selfsame note.
"Adulation, Opdyke! I'm a hard-worked clergyman, and target for more criticism than you engineers have ever dreamed of."
"Much you are! But do sit down. You make me want to get up, too, when you rage around like that. No; not that stuffed chair. It's too hot. Try that cane thing, and, while you're about it, there's a siphon in that ice chest over there. ”