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diff --git a/old/8cope10.txt b/old/8cope10.txt deleted file mode 100644 index ebf619c..0000000 --- a/old/8cope10.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,8989 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bertram Cope's Year, by Henry Blake Fuller - -Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the -copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing -this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. - -This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project -Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the -header without written permission. - -Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the -eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is -important information about your specific rights and restrictions in -how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a -donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. - - -**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** - -**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** - -*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** - - -Title: Bertram Cope's Year - -Author: Henry Blake Fuller - -Release Date: May, 2005 [EBook #8101] -[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] -[This file was first posted on June 14, 2003] - -Edition: 10 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-Latin-1 - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BERTRAM COPE'S YEAR *** - - - - -Produced by Eric Eldred, Jerry Fairbanks, Charles Franks -and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. - - - - - -BERTRAM COPE'S YEAR - -Henry Blake Fuller - - -CONTENTS - - -_1. Cope at a College Tea - -2. Cope Makes a Sunday Afternoon Call - -3. Cope Is "Entertained" - -4. Cope Is Considered - -5. Cope Is Considered Further - -6. Cope Dines--and Tells About It - -7. Cope Under Scrutiny - -8. Cope Undertakes an Excursion - -9. Cope on the Edge of Things - -10. Cope at His House Party - -11. Cope Enlivens the Country - -12. Cope Amidst Cross-Purposes - -13. Cope Dines Again--and Stays After - -14. Cope Makes an Evasion - -15. Cope Entertains Several Ladies - -16. Cope Goes A-Sailing - -17. Cope Among Cross-Currents - -18. Cope at the Call of Duty - -19. Cope Finds Himself Committed - -20. Cope Has a Distressful Christmas - -21. Cope, Safeguarded, Calls Again - -22. Cope Shall Be Rescued - -23. Cope Regains His Freedom - -24. Cope in Danger Anew - -25. Cope in Double Danger - -26. Cope as a Go-Between - -27. Cope Escapes a Snare - -28. Cope Absent From a Wedding - -29. Cope Again in the Country - -30. Cope as a Hero - -31. Cope Gets New Light on His Chum - -32. Cope Takes His Degree - -33. Cope in a Final View_ - -AFTERWORD - - - - -1 - -_COPE AT A COLLEGE TEA_ - - -What is a man's best age? Peter Ibbetson, entering dreamland with complete -freedom to choose, chose twenty-eight, and kept there. But twenty-eight, -for our present purpose, has a drawback: a man of that age, if endowed with -ordinary gifts and responsive to ordinary opportunities, is undeniably--a -man; whereas what we require here is something just a little short of that. -Wanted, in fact, a young male who shall seem fully adult to those who are -younger still, and who may even appear the accomplished flower of virility -to an idealizing maid or so, yet who shall elicit from the middle-aged the -kindly indulgence due a boy. Perhaps you will say that even a man of -twenty-eight may seem only a boy to a man of seventy. However, no -septuagenarian is to figure in these pages. Our elders will be but in the -middle forties and the earlier fifties; and we must find for them an age -which may evoke their friendly interest, and yet be likely to call forth, -besides that, their sympathy and their longing admiration, and later their -tolerance, their patience, and even their forgiveness. - -I think, then, that Bertram Cope, when he began to intrigue the little -group which dwelt among the quadruple avenues of elms that led to the -campus in Churchton, was but about twenty-four,--certainly not a day more -than twenty-five. If twenty-eight is the ideal age, the best is all the -better for being just a little ahead. - -Of course Cope was not an undergraduate--a species upon which many of the -Churchtonians languidly refused to bestow their regard. "They come, and -they go," said these prosperous and comfortable burghers; "and, after all, -they're more or less alike, and more or less unrewarding." Besides, the -Bigger Town, with all its rich resources and all its varied opportunities, -lay but an hour away. Churchton lived much of its real life beyond its own -limits, and the student who came to be entertained socially within them was -the exception indeed. - -No, Bertram Cope was not an undergraduate. He was an instructor; and he was -working along, in a leisurely way, to a degree. He expected to be an M.A., -or even a Ph.D. Possibly a Litt.D. might be within the gift of later years. -But, anyhow, nothing was finer than "writing"--except lecturing about it. - -"Why haven't we known you before?" Medora T. Phillips asked him at a small -reception. Mrs. Phillips spoke out loudly and boldly, and held his hand as -long as she liked. No, not as long as she liked, but longer than most women -would have felt at liberty to do. And besides speaking loudly and boldly, -she looked loudly and boldly; and she employed a determined smile which -seemed to say, "I'm old enough to do as I please." Her brusque informality -was expected to carry itself off--and much else besides. "Of course I -simply _can't_ be half so intrepid as I seem!" it said. "Everybody -about us understands that, and I must ask your recognition too for an -ascertained fact." - -"Known me?" returned Cope, promptly enough. "Why, you haven't known me -because I haven't been here to _be_ known." He spoke in a ringing, -resonant voice, returning her unabashed pressure with a hearty good will -and blazing down upon her through his clear blue eyes with a high degree of -self-possession, even of insouciance. And he explained, with a liberal -exhibition of perfect teeth, that for the two years following his -graduation he had been teaching literature at a small college in Wisconsin -and that he had lately come back to Alma Mater for another bout: "I'm after -that degree," he concluded. - -"Haven't been here?" she returned. "But you _have_ been here; you must -have been here for years--for four, anyhow. So why haven't we...?" she -began again. - -"Here as an undergraduate, yes," he acknowledged. "Unregarded dust. Dirt -beneath your feet. In rainy weather, mud." - -"Mud!" echoed Medora Phillips loudly, with an increased pressure on his -long, narrow hand. "Why, Babylon was built of mud--of mud bricks, anyway. -And the Hanging Gardens...!" She still clung, looking up his slopes terrace -by terrace. - -Cope kept his self-possession and smiled brilliantly. - -"Gracious!" he said, no less resonant than before. "Am I a landscape -garden? Am I a stage-setting? Am I a----?" - -Medora Phillips finally dropped his hand. "You're a wicked, unappreciative -boy," she declared. "I don't know whether to ask you to my house or not. -But you may make yourself useful in _this_ house, at least. Run along -over to that corner and see if you can't get me a cup of tea." - -Cope bowed and smiled and stepped toward the tea-table. His head once -turned, the smile took on a wry twist. He was no squire of dames, no -frequenter of afternoon receptions. Why the deuce had he come to this one? -Why had he yielded so readily to the urgings of the professor of -mathematics?--himself urged in turn, perhaps, by a wife for whose little -affair one extra man at the opening of the fall season counted, and counted -hugely. Why must he now expose himself to the boundless aplomb and momentum -of this woman of forty-odd who was finding amusement in treating him as a -"college boy"? "Boy" indeed she had actually called him: well, perhaps his -present position made all this possible. He was not yet out in the world on -his own. In the background of "down state" was a father with a purse in his -pocket and a hand to open the purse. Though the purse was small and the -hand reluctant, he must partly depend on both for another year. If he were -only in business--if he were only a broker or even a salesman--he should -not find himself treated with such blunt informality and condescension as a -youth. If, within the University itself, he were but a real member of the -faculty, with an assured position and an assured salary, he should not have -to lie open to the unceremonious hectorings of the socially confident, the -"placed." - -He regained his smile on the way across the room, and the young creature -behind the samovar, who had had a moment's fear that she must deal with -Severity, found that a beaming Affability--though personally unticketed in -her memory--was, after all, her happier allotment. In her reaction she took -it all as a personal compliment. She could not know, of course, that it was -but a piece of calculated expressiveness, fitted to a 'particular social -function and doubly overdone as the wearer's own reaction from the -sprouting indignation of the moment before. She hoped that her hair, under -his sweeping advance, was blowing across her forehead as lightly and -carelessly as it ought to, and that his taste in marquise rings might be -substantially the same as hers. She faced the Quite Unknown, and asked it -sweetly, "One lump or two?" - -"The dickens! How do _I_ know?" he thought. "An extra one on the -saucer, please," he said aloud, with his natural resonance but slightly -hushed. And his blue eyes, clear and rather cold and hard, blazed down, in -turn, on her. - -"Why, what a nice, friendly fellow!" exclaimed Mrs. Phillips, on receiving -her refreshment. "Both kinds of sandwiches," she continued, peering round -her cup. "Were there three?" she asked with sudden shrewdness. - -"There were macaroons," he replied; "and there was some sort of layer-cake. -It was too sticky. These are more sensible." - -"Never mind sense. If there is cake, I want it. Tell Amy to put it on a -plate." - -"Amy?" - -"Yes, Amy. _My_ Amy." - -"Your Amy?" - -"Off with you,--parrot! And bring a fork too." - -Cope lapsed back into his frown and recrossed the room. The girl behind the -samovar felt that her hair was unbecoming, after all, and that her ring, -borrowed for the occasion, was in bad taste. Cope turned back with his -plate of cake and his fork. Well, he had been promoted from a "boy" to a -"fellow"; but must he continue a kind of methodical dog-trot through a -sublimated butler's pantry? - -"That's right," declared Mrs. Phillips, on his return, as she looked -lingeringly at his shapely thumb above the edge of the plate. "Come, we -will sit down together on this sofa, and you shall tell me all about -yourself." She looked admiringly at his blue serge knees as he settled down -into place. They were slightly bony, perhaps; "but then," as she told -herself, "he is still quite young. Who would want him anything but -slender?--even spare, if need be." - -As they sat there together,--she plying him with questions and he, restored -to good humor, replying or parrying with an unembarrassed exuberance,--a -man who stood just within the curtained doorway and flicked a small graying -moustache with the point of his forefinger took in the scene with a -studious regard. Every small educational community has its scholar -_manqué_--its haunter of academic shades or its intermittent dabbler -in their charms; and Basil Randolph held that role in Churchton. No alumnus -himself, he viewed, year after year, the passing procession of -undergraduates who possessed in their young present so much that he had -left behind or had never had at all, and who were walking, potentially, -toward a promising future in which he could take no share. Most of these -had been commonplace young fellows enough--noisy, philistine, glaringly -cursory and inconsiderate toward their elders; but a few of them--one now -and then, at long intervals--he would have enjoyed knowing, and knowing -intimately. On these infrequent occasions would come a union of frankness, -comeliness and _élan_, and the rudiments of good manners. But no one -in all the long-drawn procession had stopped to look at him a second time. -And now he was turning gray; he was tragically threatened with what might -in time become a paunch. His kind heart, his forthreaching nature, went for -naught; and the young men let him, walk under the elms and the scrub-oaks -neglected. If they had any interest beyond their egos, their fraternities, -and (conceivably) their studies, that interest dribbled away on the -quadrangle that housed the girl students. "If they only realized how much a -friendly hand, extended to them from middle life, might do for their -futures...!" he would sometimes sigh. But the youthful egoists, ignoring -him still, faced their respective futures, however uncertain, with much -more confidence than he, backed by whatever assurances and accumulations he -enjoyed, could face his own. - -"To be young!" he said. "To be young!" - -Do you figure Basil Randolph, alongside his portière, as but the observer, -the _raisonneur_, in this narrative? If so, you err. What!--you may -ask,--a rival, a competitor? That more nearly. - -It was Medora Phillips herself who, within a moment or two, inducted him -into this role. - -A gap had come in her chat with Cope. He had told her all he had been asked -to tell--or all he meant to tell: at any rate he had been given abundant -opportunity to expatiate upon a young man's darling subject--himself. -Either she now had enough fixed points for securing the periphery of his -circle or else she preferred to leave some portion of his area (now -ascertained approximately) within a poetic penumbra. Or perhaps she wished -some other middle-aged connoisseur to share her admiration and confirm her -judgment. At all events---- - -"Oh, Mr. Randolph," she cried, "come here." - -Randolph left his doorway and stepped across. - -"Now you are going to be rewarded," said the lady, broadly generous. "You -are going to meet Mr. Cope. You are going to meet Mr.----" She paused. "Do -you know,"--turning to the young man,--"I haven't your first name?" - -"Why, is that necessary?" - -"You're not ashamed of it? Theodosius? Philander? Hieronymus?" - -"Stop!--please. My name is Bertram." - -"Never!" - -"Bertram. Why not?" - -"Because that would be too exactly right. I might have guessed and -guessed----!" - -"Right or wrong, Bertram's my name." - -"You hear, Mr. Randolph? You are to meet Mr. Bertram Cope." - -Cope, who had risen and had left any embarrassment consequent upon the -short delay to Basil Randolph himself, shot out a hand and summoned a ready -smile. Within his cuff was a hint for the construction of his fore-arm: it -was lean and sinewy, clear-skinned, and with strong power for emphasis on -the other's rather short, well-fleshed fingers. And as he gripped, he -beamed; beamed just as warmly, or just as coldly--at all events, just as -speciously--as he had beamed before: for on a social occasion one must -slightly heighten good will,--all the more so if one be somewhat -unaccustomed and even somewhat reluctant. - -Mrs. Phillips caught Cope's glance as it fell in all its glacial geniality. - -"He looks down on us!" she declared. - -"How down?" Cope asked. - -"Well, you're taller than either of us." - -"I don't consider myself tall," he replied. "Five foot nine and a half," he -proceeded ingenuously, "is hardly tall." - -"It is we who are short," said Randolph. - -"But really, sir," rejoined Cope kindly, "I shouldn't call you short. What -is an inch or two?" - -"But how about me?" demanded Mrs. Phillips. - -"Why, a woman may be anything--except too tall," responded Cope candidly. - -"But if she wants to be stately?" - -"Well, there was Queen Victoria." - -"You incorrigible! I hope I'm not so short as that! Sit down, again; we -must be more on a level. And you, Mr. Randolph, may stand and look down on -us both. I'm sure you have been doing so, anyway, for the past ten -minutes!" - -"By no means, I assure you," returned Randolph soberly. - -Soberly. For the young man had slipped in that "sir." And he had been so -kindly about Randolph's five foot seven and a bit over. And he had shown -himself so damnably tender toward a man fairly advanced within the shadow -of the fifties--a man who, if not an acknowledged outcast from the joys of -life, would soon be lagging superfluous on their rim. - -Randolph stood before them, looking, no doubt, a bit vacant and -inexpressive. "Please go and get Amy," Mrs. Phillips said to him. "I see -she's preparing to give way to some one else." - -Amy--who was a blonde girl of twenty or more--came back with him pleasantly -and amiably enough; and her aunt--or whatever she should turn out to be-- -was soon able to lay her tongue again to the syllables of the interesting -name of Bertram. - -Cope, thus finally introduced, repeated the facial expressions which he had -employed already beside the tea-table. But he added no new one; and he -found fewer words than the occasion prompted, and even required. He -continued talking with Mrs. Phillips, and he threw an occasional remark -toward Randolph; but now that all obstacles were removed from free converse -with the divinity of the samovar he had less to say to her than before. -Presently the elder woman, herself no whit offended, began to figure the -younger one as a bit nonplused. - -"Never mind, Amy," she said. "Don't pity him, and don't scorn him. He's -really quite self-possessed and quite chatty. Or"--suddenly to Cope -himself--"have you shown us already your whole box of tricks?" - -"That must be it," he returned. - -"Well, no matter. Mr. Randolph can be nice to a nice girl." - -"Oh, come now,----" - -"Well, shall I ask you to my house, after this?" - -"No. Don't. Forbid it. Banish me." - -"Give one more chance," suggested Randolph sedately. - -"Why, what's all this about?" said the questioning glance of Amy. If there -was any offense at all, on anybody's part, it lay in making too much of too -little. - -"Take back my plate, somebody," said Mrs. Phillips. - -Randolph put out his hand for it. - -"This sandwich," said Amy, reaching for an untouched square of wheat bread -and pimento. "I've been so busy with other people...." - -"I'll take it myself," declared Mrs. Phillips, reaching out in turn. "Mr. -Randolph, bring her a nibble of something." - -"_I_ might----" began Cope. - -"You don't deserve the privilege." - -"Oh, very well," he returned, lapsing into an easy passivity. - -"Never mind, anyway," said Amy, still without cognomen and connections; "I -can starve with perfect convenience. Or I can find a mouthful somewhere, -later." - -"Let us starve sitting," said Randolph, "Here are chairs." - -The hostess herself came bustling up brightly. - -"Has everybody...?" - -And she bustled away. - -"Yes; everybody--almost," said Mrs. Phillips to her associates, behind -their entertainer's back. "If you're hungry, Amy, it's your own fault. Sit -down." - -And there let us leave them--our little group, our cast of characters: -"everybody--almost," save one. Or two. Or three. - - - - -2 - -_COPE MAKES A SUNDAY AFTERNOON CALL_ - - -Medora Phillips was the widow of a picture-dealer, now three years dead. In -his younger days he had been something of a painter, and later in life as -much a collector as a merchandizer. Since his death he had been translated -gradually from the lower region proper to mere traffickers on toward the -loftier plane which harbored the more select company of art-patrons and -art-amateurs. Some of his choicer ventures were still held together as a -"gallery," with a few of his own canvases included; and his surviving -partner felt this collection gave her good reason for holding up her head -among the arts, and the sciences, and humane letters too. - -Mrs. Phillips occupied a huge, amorphous house some three-quarters of a -mile to the west of the campus. It was a construction in wood, with -manifold "features" suggestive of the villa, the bungalow, the chateau, the -palace; it united all tastes and contravened all conventions. In its upper -story was the commodious apartment which was known in quiet times as the -picture-gallery and in livelier times as the ball-room. It was the -mistress' ambition to have the lively times as numerous as possible--to -dance with great frequency among the pictures. Six or eight couples could -gyrate here at once. There was young blood under her roof, and there was -young blood to summon from outside; and to set this blood seething before -the eyes of visiting celebrities in the arts and letters was her dearest -wish. She had more than one spare bedroom, of course; and the Eminent and -the Queer were always welcome for a sojourn of a week or so, whether they -came to read papers and deliver lectures or not. She was quite as well -satisfied when they didn't. If they would but sit upon her wide veranda in -spring or autumn, or before her big open fireplace in winter and "just -talk," she would be as open-eyed and open-eared as you pleased. - -"This is much nicer," she would say. Nicer than what, she did not always -make clear. - -Yes, the house was nearly three-quarters of a mile to the west of the -campus, but it was twice as far as if it had been north or south. Trains -and trolleys, intent on serving the interests of the great majority, took -their own courses and gave her guests no aid. If the evening turned cold or -blustery or brought a driving rain she would say: - -"You can't go out in this. You must stay all night. We have room and to -spare." - -If she wanted anybody to stay very much, she would even add: "I can't think -of your walking toward the lake with such a gale in your face,"--regardless -of the fact that the lake wind was the rarest of them all and that in nine -cases out of ten the rain or snow would be not in people's faces but at -their backs. - -If she didn't want anybody to stay, she simply ordered out the car and -bundled him off. The delay in the offer of the car sometimes induced a -young man to remain. Tasteful pajamas and the promise of a suitably early -breakfast assured him that he had made no mistake. - -Cope's first call was made, not on a tempestuous evening in the winter -time, but on a quiet Sunday afternoon toward the end of September. The day -was sunny and the streets were full of strollers moving along decorously -beneath the elms, maples and catalpas. - -"Drop in some Sunday about five," Medora Phillips had said to him, "and -have tea. The girls will be glad to meet you." - -"The girls"? Who were they, and how many? He supposed he could account for -one of them, at least; but the others? - -"You find me alone, after all," was her greeting. "The girls are out -walking--with each other, or their beaux, or whatever. Come in here." - -She led him into a spacious room cluttered with lambrequins, stringy -portieres, grilles, scroll-work, bric-a-brac.... - -"The fine weather has been too much for them," she proceeded. "I was -relying on them to entertain you." - -"Dear me! Am I to be entertained?" - -"Of course you are." Her expression and inflection indicated to him that he -had been caught up in the cogs of a sizable machine, and that he was to be -put through it. Everybody who came was entertained--or helped entertain -others. Entertainment, in fact, was the one object of the establishment. - -"Well, can't you entertain me yourself?" - -"Perhaps I can." And it almost seemed as if he had been secured and -isolated for the express purpose of undergoing a particular course of -treatment. - -"----in the interval," she amended. "They'll be back by sunset. They're -clever girls and I know you'll enjoy them." - -She uttered this belief emphatically--so emphatically, in truth, that it -came to mean: "I wonder if you will indeed." And there was even an -overtone: "After all, it's not the least necessary that you should." - -"I suppose I have met one of them already." - -"You have met Amy. But there are Hortense and Carolyn." - -"What can they all be?" He wondered to himself: "daughters, nieces, -cousins, co-eds, boarders...?" - -"Amy plays. Hortense paints. Carolyn is a poet." - -"Amy plays? Pardon me for calling her Amy, but you have never given me the -rest of her name." - -"I certainly presented you." - -"To 'Amy'." - -"Well, that was careless, if true. Her name is Amy Leffingwell; and -Hortense's name is----" - -"Stop, please. Pay it out gradually. My poor head can hold only what it -can. Names without people to attach them to...." - -"The people will be here presently," Medora Phillips said, rather shortly. -Surely this young man was taking his own tone. It was not quite the tone -usually taken by college boys on their first call. Her position and her -imposing surroundings--yes, her kindliness in noticing him at all--might -surely save her from informalities that almost shaped into impertinences. -Yet, on the other hand, nothing bored one more than a young man who openly -showed himself intimidated. What was there behind this one? More than she -had thought? Well, if so, none the worse. Time might tell. - -"So Miss Leffingwell plays?" He flared out his blue-white smile. "Let me -learn my lesson page by page." - -"Yes, she plays," returned Medora Phillips briefly. "Guess what," she -continued presently, half placated. - -They were again side by side on a sofa, each with an elbow on its back and -the elbows near together. Nor was Medora Phillips, though plump, at all the -graceless, dumpy little body she sometimes taxed herself with being. - -"What? Oh, piano, I suppose." - -"Piano!" - -"What's wrong?" - -"The piano is common: it's assumed." - -"Oh, she performs on something unusual? Xylophone?" - -"Be serious." - -"Trombone? I've seen wonders done on that in a 'lady orchestra'." - -"Don't be grotesque." She drew her dark eyebrows into protest. "What a -sight!--a delicate young girl playing a trombone!" - -"Well, then,--a harp. That's sometimes a pleasant sight." - -"A harp needs an express wagon. Though of course it is pretty for the -arms." - -"Arms? Let me see. The violin?" - -"Of course. And that's probably the very first thing you thought of. Why -not have mentioned it?" - -"I suppose I've been taught the duty of making conversation." - -"The duty? Not the pleasure?" - -"That remains to be...." He paused. "So she has arms," he pretended to -muse. "I confess I hadn't quite noticed." - -"She passed you a cup of tea, didn't she?" - -"Oh, surely. And a sandwich. And another. And a slice of layer cake, with a -fork. And another cup of tea. And a macaroon or two----" - -"Am I a glutton?" - -"Am I? Some of all that provender was for me, as I recall." - -They were still side by side on the sofa. Both were cross--kneed, and the -tip of her russet boot almost grazed that of his Oxford tie. He did not -notice: he was already arranging the first paragraph of a letter to a -friend in Winnebago, Wisconsin. "Dear Arthur: I called,--as I said I was -going to. She is a scrapper. She goes at you hammer and tongs--pretending -to quarrel as a means of entertaining you..." - -Medora Phillips removed her elbow from the back of the sofa, and began to -prod up her cushions. "How about your work?" she asked. "What are you -doing?" - -He came back. "Oh, I'm boning. Some things still to make up. I'm digging in -the poetry of Gower--the 'moral Gower'." - -"Well, I see no reason why poetry shouldn't be moral. Has he been -publishing anything lately that I ought to see?" - -"Not--lately." - -"I presume I can look into some of his older things." - -"They are all old--five hundred years and more. He was a pal of Chaucer's." - - -She gave him an indignant glance. "So that's it? You're laying traps for -me? You don't like me! You don't respect me!" - -One of the recalcitrant cushions fell to the floor. They bumped heads in -trying to pick it up. - -"Traps!" he said. "Never in the world! Don't think it! Why, Gower is just a -necessary old bore. Nobody's supposed to know much about him--except -instructors and their hapless students." - -He added one more sentence to his letter to "Arthur": "She pushes you -pretty hard. A little of it goes a good way..." - -"Oh, if _that's_ the case..." she said. "How about your thesis?" she -went on swiftly. "What are you going to write about?" - -"I was thinking of Shakespeare." - -"Shakespeare! There you go again! Ridiculing me to my very face!" - -"Not at all. There's lots to say about him--or them." - -"Oh, you believe in Bacon!" - -"Not at all--once more. I should like to take a year and spend it among the -manor-houses of Warwickshire. But I suppose nobody would stake me to that." - - -"I don't know what you have in mind; some wild goose chase, probably. I -expect your friends would like it better if you spent your time right -here." - -"Probably. I presume I shall end by doing a thesis on the 'color-words' in -Keats and Shelley. A penniless devil was no luck." - -"Anybody has luck who can form the right circle. Stay where you are. A -circle formed here would do you much more good than a temporary one four -thousand miles away." - -Voices were heard in the front yard. "There they come, now," Mrs. Phillips -said. She rose, and one more of the wayward cushions went to the floor. It -lay there unregarded,--a sign that a promising tête-à-tête was, for the -time being, over. - - - - -3 - -_COPE IS "ENTERTAINED"_ - - -Mrs. Phillips stepped to the front door to meet the half dozen young people -who were cheerily coming up the walk. Cope, looking at the fallen cushions -with an unseeing eye, remained within the drawing-room door to compose a -further paragraph for the behoof of his correspondent in Wisconsin: - -"Several girls helped entertain me. They came on as thick as spatter. One -played a few things on the violin. Another set up her easel and painted a -picture for us. A third wrote a poem and read it to us. And a few -sophomores hung about in the background. It was all rather too much. I -found myself preferring those hours together in dear old Winnebago...." - -Only one of the sophomores--if the young men were really of that -objectionable tribe--came indoors with the young ladies. The others--either -engaged elsewhere or consciously unworthy--went away after a moment or two -on the front steps. Perhaps they did not feel "encouraged." And in fact -Mrs. Phillips looked back toward Cope with the effect of communicating the -idea that she had enough men for to-day. She even conveyed to him the -notion that he had made the others superfluous. But-- - -"Hum!" he thought; "if there's to be a lot of 'entertaining,' the more -there are to be entertained the better it might turn out." - -He met Hortense and Carolyn--with due stress laid on their respective -patronymics--and he made an early acquaintance with Amy's violin. - -And further on Mrs. Phillips said: - -"Now, Amy, before you really stop, do play that last little thing. The dear -child," she said to Cope in a lower tone, "composed it herself and -dedicated it to me." - -The last little thing was a kind of "meditation," written very simply and -performed quite seriously and unaffectedly. And it gave, of course, a good -chance for the arms. - -"There!" said Mrs. Phillips, at its close. "Isn't it too sweet? And it -inspired Carolyn too. She wrote a poem after hearing it." - -"A copy of verses," corrected Carolyn, with a modest catch in her breath. -She was a quiet, sedate girl, with brown eyes and hair. Her eyes were shy, -and her hair was plainly dressed. - -"Oh, you're so sweet, so old-fashioned!" protested Mrs. Phillips, slightly -rolling her eyes. "It's a poem,--of course it's a poem. I leave it to Mr. -Cope, if it isn't!" - -"Oh, I beg--" began Cope, in trepidation. - -"Well, listen, anyway," said Medora. - -The poem consisted of some six or seven brief stanzas. Its title was read, -formally, by the writer; and, quite as formally, the dedication which -intervened between title and first stanza,--a dedication to "Medora -Townsend Phillips." - -"Of course," said Cope to himself. And as the reading went on, he ran his -eyes over the dusky, darkening walls. He knew what he expected to find. - -Just as he found it the sophomore standing between the big padded chair and -the book-case spatted his hands three times. The poem was over, the -patroness duly celebrated. Cope spatted a little too, but kept his eye on -one of the walls. - -"You're looking at my portrait!" declared Mrs. Phillips, as the poetess -sank deeper into the big chair. "Hortense did it." - -"Of course she did," said Cope under his breath. He transferred an -obligatory glance from the canvas to the expectant artist. But-- - -"It's getting almost too dark to see it," said his hostess, and suddenly -pressed a button. This brought into play a row of electric bulbs near the -top edge of the frame and into full prominence the dark plumpness of the -subject. He looked back again from the painter (who also had black hair and -eyes) to her work. - -"I am on Parnassus!" Cope declared, in one general sweeping compliment, as -he looked toward the sofa where Medora Phillips sat with the three girls -now grouped behind her. But he made it a boreal Parnassus--one set in -relief by the cold flare and flicker of northern lights. - -"Isn't he the dear, comical chap!" exclaimed Mrs. Phillips, with unction, -glancing upward and backward at the girls. They smiled discreetly, as if -indulging in a silent evaluation of the sincerity of the compliment. Yet -one of them--Hortense--formed her black brows into a frown, and might have -spoken resentfully, save for a look from their general patroness. - -"Meanwhile, how about a drop of tea?" asked Mrs. Phillips suddenly. -"Roddy"--to the sophomore--"if you will help clear that table...." - -The youth hastened to get into action. Cope went on with his letter to -"Arthur": - -"It was an afternoon in Lesbos--with Sappho and her band of appreciative -maidens. Phaon, a poor lad of nineteen, swept some pamphlets and paper- -cutters off the center-table, and we all plunged into the ocean of Oolong-- -the best thing we do on this island...." - -He was lingering in a smiling abstractedness on his fancy, when-- - -"Bertram Cope!" a voice suddenly said, "do you do nothing--nothing?" - -He suddenly came to. Perhaps he had really deserved his hostess' rebuke. He -had not offered to help with the tea-service; he had preferred no -appropriate remark, of an individual nature, to any of the three -_ancillae_.... - -"I mean," proceeded Mrs. Phillips, "can you do nothing whatever to -entertain?" - -Cope gained another stage on the way to self-consciousness and self- -control. Entertainment was doubtless the basic curse of this household. - -"I sing," he said, with naïf suddenness and simplicity. - -"Then, sing--do. There's the open piano. Can you play your own -accompaniments?" - -"Some of the simpler ones." - -"Some of the simpler ones! Do you hear that, girls? He is quite prepared to -wipe us all out. Shall we let him?" - -"That's unfair," Cope protested. "Is it my fault if composers _will_ write -hard accompaniments to easy airs?" - -"Will you sing before your tea, or after it?" - -"I'm ready to sing this instant,--during it, or before it." - -"Very well." - -The room was now in dusk, save for the bulbs which made the portrait shine -forth like a wayside shrine. Roddy, the possible sophomore, helped a maid -find places for the cups and saucers; and the three girls, still formed in -a careful group about the sofa, silently waited. - -"Of course you realize that this is not such a very large room," said Mrs. -Phillips. - -"Meaning....?" - -"Well, your speaking voice _is_ resonant, you know." - -"Meaning, then, that I am not to raise the roof nor jar the china. I'll try -not to." - -Nor did he. He sang with care rather than with volume, with discretion -rather than with abandon. The "simple accompaniments" went off with but a -slight hitch or two, yet the "resonant voice" was somehow, somewhere lost. -Possibly Cope gave too great heed to his hostess' caution; but it seemed as -if a voice essentially promising had slipped through some teacher's none -too competent hands, or--what was quite as serious--as if some -temperamental brake were operating to prevent the complete expression of -the singer's nature. Lassen, Grieg, Rubinstein--all these were carried -through rather cautiously, perhaps a little mechanically; and there was a -silence. Hortense broke it. - -"Parnassus, yes. And finally comes Apollo." She reached over and murmured -to Mrs. Phillips: "None too skillful on the lyre, and none too strong in -the lungs...." - -Medora spoke up loudly and promptly. - -"Do you know, I think I've heard you sing before." - -"Possibly," Cope said, turning his back on the keyboard. "I sang in the -University choir for a year or two." - -"In gown and mortar-board? 'Come, Holy Spirit,' and all that?" - -"Yes; I sang solos now and then." - -"Of course," she said. "I remember now. But I never saw you before without -your mortar-board. That changes the forehead. Yes, you're yourself," she -went on, adding to her previous pleasure the further pleasure of -recognition. "You've earned your tea," she added. "Hortense," she said over -her shoulder to the dark girl behind the sofa, "will you--? No; I'll pour, -myself." - -She slid into her place at table and got things to going. There was an -interval which Cope might have employed in praising the artistic aptitudes -of this variously gifted household, but he found no appropriate word to -say,--or at least uttered none. And none of the three girls made any -further comment on his own performance. - -Mrs. Phillips accompanied him, on his way out, as far as the hall. She -looked up at him questioningly. - -"You don't like my poor girls," she said. "You don't find them clever; you -don't find them interesting." - -"On the contrary," he rejoined, "I have spent a delightful hour." Must he -go on and confess that he had developed no particular dexterity in dealing -with the younger members of the opposite sex? - -"No, you don't care for them one bit," she insisted. She tried to look -rebuking, reproachful; yet some shade of expression conveyed to him a hint -that her protest was by no means sincere: if he really didn't, it was no -loss--it was even a possible gain. - -"It's you who don't care for me," he returned. "I'm _vieux jeu_." - -"Nonsense," she rejoined. "If you have a slight past, that only makes you -the more atmospheric. Be sure you come again soon, and put in a little more -work on the foreground." - -Cope, on his way eastward, in the early evening, passed near the trolley -tracks, the Greek lunch-counter, without a thought; he was continuing his -letter to "Dear Arthur": - -"I think," he wrote, with his mind's finger, "that you might as well come -down. I miss you--even more than I thought I should. The term is young, and -you can enter for Spanish, or Psychology, or something. There's nothing for -you up there. The bishop can spare you. Your father will be reasonable. We -can easily arrange some suitable quarters..." - -And we await a reply from "Dear Arthur"--the fifth and last of our little -group. But no; there are two or three others--as you have just seen. - - - - -4 - -_COPE IS CONSIDERED_ - - -A few days after the mathematical tea, Basil Randolph was taking a sedate -walk among the exotic elms and the indigenous oaks of the campus; he was on -his way to the office of the University registrar. He felt interested in -Bertram Cope and meant to consult the authorities. That is to say, he -intended to consult the written and printed data provided by the -authorities,--not to make verbal inquiries of any of the college officials -themselves. He was, after all, sufficiently in the academic tradition to -prefer the consultation of records as against the employment of _viva voce_ -methods; and he saw no reason why his new interest should be widely -communicated to other individuals. There was an annual register; there was -an album of loose sheets kept up by the members of the faculty; and there -was a card-catalogue, he remembered, in half a dozen little drawers. All -this ought to remove any necessity of putting questions by word of mouth. - -The young clerk behind the broad counter annoyed him by no offer of aid, -but left him to browse for himself. First, the printed register. This was -crowded with professors--full, head, associate, assistant; there were even -two or three professors emeritus. And each department had its tale of -instructors. But no mention of a Bertram Cope. Of course not; this volume, -it occurred to him presently, represented the state of things during the -previous scholastic year. - -Next the card-catalogue. But this dealt with the students only-- -undergraduate, graduate, special. No Cope there. - -Remained the loose-leaf faculty-index, in which the members of the -professorial body told something about themselves in a great variety of -handwriting: among other things, their full names and addresses, and their -natures in so far as penmanship might reveal it. Ca; Ce; Cof; Collard, Th. -J., who was an instructor in French and lived on Rosemary Place; -Copperthwaite, Julian M., Cotton ... No Cope. He looked again, and further. -No slightest alphabetical misplacement. - -"You are not finding what you want?" asked the clerk at last. The search -was delaying other inquirers. - -"Bertram Cope," said Randolph. "Instructor, I think." - -"He has been slow. But his page will be in place by tomorrow. If you want -his address...." - -"Yes?" - -"--I think I can give it to you." The youth retired behind a screen. -"There," he said, returning with a bit of pencilling on a scrap of paper. - -Randolph thanked him, folded up the paper, and put it in his pocket. A mere -bit of ordinary clerkly writing; no character, no allure. Well, the actual -chirography of the absentee would be made manifest before long. What was it -like? Should he himself ever have a specimen of it in a letter or a note? - -That evening, with his after-dinner cigarette, he strolled casually through -Granville Avenue, the short street indicated by the address. It was a -loosely-built neighborhood of frame dwellings, with yards and a moderate -provision of trees and shrubs--a neighborhood of people who owned their -houses but did not spend much money on them. Number 48 was a good deal like -the others. "Decent enough, but commonplace," Randolph pronounced. "Yet -what could I have been expecting?" he added; and his whimsical smile told -him not to let himself become absurd. - -There were lighted windows in the front and at the side. Which of these was -Cope's, and what was the boy doing? Was he deep in black-letter, or was he -selecting a necktie preliminary to some evening diversion outside? Or had -he put out his light--several windows were dark--and already taken the -train into town for some concert or theatre? - -"Well," said Randolph to himself, with a last puff at his cigarette, -"they're not likely to move out and leave him up in the air. I hope," he -went on, "that he has more than a bedroom merely. But we know on what an -incredibly small scale some of them live." - -He threw away his cigarette and strolled on to his own quarters. These were -but ten minutes away. In his neighborhood, too, people owned their homes -and were unlikely to hurry you out on a month's notice. You could be sure -of being able to stay on; and Randolph, in fact, had stayed on, with a -suitable family, for three or four years. - -He had a good part of one floor: a bedroom, a sitting room, with a liberal -provision of bookshelves, and a kind of large closet which he had made into -a "cabinet." There are all sorts of cabinets, but this was a cabinet for -his "collection." His collection was not without some measure of local -fame; if not strictly valuable, it was at least comprehensive. After all, -he collected to please himself. He was a collector in Churchton and a -stockbroker in the city itself. The satirical said that he was the most -important collector in "the street," and the most important stockbroker in -the suburbs. He was a member of a somewhat large firm, and not the most -active one. His interest had been handed down, in a manner, from his -father; and the less he participated the better his partners liked it. He -had no one but himself, and a sister on the far side of the city, miles and -miles away. His principal concern was to please himself, to indulge his -nature and tastes, and to get, in a quiet way, "a good deal out of life." -But nobody ever spoke of him as rich. His collection represented his own -preferences, perseverance and individual predilections. Least of all had it -been brought together to be "realized on" after his death. - -"I may be something of a fool, in my own meek fashion," he acknowledged, -"but I'm no such fool as that." - -He had a few jades and lacquers--among the latter, the ordinary inkwells -and sword-guards; a few snuff-boxes; some puppets in costume from Mexico -and Italy; a few begrimed vellum-bound books in foreign languages (which he -could not always read); and now and then a friend who was "breaking up" -would give him a bit of Capo di Monte or an absurd enigmatic musical -instrument from the East Indies. And he had a small department of -Americana, dating from the days of the Civil War. - -"Miscellaneous enough," pronounced Medora Phillips, on once viewing his -cabinet, "but not altogether"--she proceeded charitably--"utter rubbish." - -And it was felt by others too that, in the lack of any wide opportunity, he -had done rather well. Churchton itself was no nest of antiquities; in 1840 -it had consisted merely of a log tavern on the Green Bay road, and the -first white child born within its limits had died but recently. Nor was the -Big Town just across the "Indian Boundary" much older. It had "antique -shops," true; but one's best chances were got through mousing among the -small scattered troups of foreigners (variegated they were) who had lately -been coming in pell-mell, bringing their household knick-knacks with them. -There was a Ghetto, there was a Little Italy, there were bits of Bulgaria, -Bohemia, Armenia, if one had tired of dubious Louis Quinze and Empire. In -an atmosphere of general newness a thing did not need to be very old to be -an antique. - -The least old of all things in Randolph's world were the students who -flooded Churchton. There were two or three thousand of them, and hundreds -of new ones came with every September. Sometimes he felt prompted to -"collect" them, as contrasts to his older curios. They were fully as -interesting, in their way, as brasswork and leatherwork, those products of -peasant natures and peasant hands. But these youths ran past one's eye, ran -through one's fingers. They were not static, not even stable. They were -restless birds of passage who fidgeted through their years, and even -through the days of which the years were made: intent on their own affairs -and their own companions; thankless for small favors and kind attentions-- -even unconscious of them; soaking up goodwill and friendly offices in a -fashion too damnably taken-for-granted ... You gave them an evening among -your books, with discreet things to drink, to smoke, to play at, or you -offered them a good dinner at some good hotel; and you never saw them after -... They said "Yes, sir," or "Yep;" but whether they pained you by being -too respectful or rasped you by being too rowdyish, it all came to the -same: they had little use for you; they readily forgot and quickly dropped -you. - -"I wonder whether instructors are a shade better," queried Basil Randolph. -"Or when do sense and gratitude and savoir-faire begin?" - -A few days later he had returned to the loose-leaf faculty. Cope's page was -now in place, with full particulars in his own hand: his interest was -"English Literature," it appeared. "H'm! nothing very special in that," -commented Randolph. But Cope's penmanship attracted him. It was open and -easy: "He never gave _his_ instructor any trouble in reading his -themes." Yet the hand was rather boyish. Was it formed or unformed? "I am -no expert," confessed Randolph. He put Cope's writing on a middle ground -and let it go at that. - -He recalled the lighted windows and wondered near which one of them the -same hand filled note-books and corrected students' papers. - -"Rather a dreary routine, I imagine, for a young fellow of his age. Still, -he may like it, possibly." - -He thought of his own early studies and of his own early self- -sufficiencies. He felt disposed to find his earlier self in this young man ---or at least an inclination to look for himself there. - -The next afternoon he walked over to Medora Phillips. Medora's upper floor -gave asylum to a half-brother of her husband's--an invalid who seldom saw -the outside world and who depended for solace and entertainment on -neighbors of his own age and interests. Randolph expected to contribute, -during the week, about so many hours of talk or of reading. But he would -have a few words with Medora before going up to Joe. - -Medora, among her grilles and lambrequins, was only too willing to talk -about young Cope. - -"A charming fellow--in a way," she said judicially. "Frank, but a little -too self-assured and self-centered. Exuberant, but possibly a bit cold. -Yet--charming." - -"Oh," thought Randolph, "one of the cool boys, and one of the self- -sufficing. Probably a bit of an ascetic at bottom, with good capacity for -self-control and self-direction. Not at all an uninteresting type," he -summed it up. "An ebullient Puritan?" he asked aloud. - -"That's it," she declared, "--according to my sense of it." - -"Yet hardly a New Englander, I suppose?" - -"Not directly, anyhow. From down state--from Freeford, I think he said. I -judge that there's quite a family of them." - -"Quite a family of them," he repeated inwardly. A drawback indeed. Why -could an interesting young organism so seldom be detached from its milieu -and enjoyed in isolation? Prosy parents; tiresome, detrimental brothers ... -He wondered if she had any idea what they were all like. It might be just -as well, however, not to know. - -"And, judging from the family name, and from their taste at christenings, I -should say there might be some slant toward England itself. A nomenclature -not without distinction. 'Bertram'; rather nice, eh? And there is a sister -who teaches in one of the schools, I understand; and her name is Rosalind, -or Rosalys. Think of that! I gather that the father is in some business," -she concluded. - -"Well, well," thought Randolph; "more than one touch of gentility, of fine -feeling." If the father was in "some business," most likely it was some one -else's business. - -"He sings," said Medora, further. "Entertained us the other Sunday -afternoon. Cool and correct, but pleasant. No warmth, no passion. No -special interest in any of my poor girls. I didn't feel that he was drawing -any of them too near the danger-line." - -"Mighty gratifying, that. Where does one learn to sing without provoking -danger?" - -"In a church choir, of course. He sang last year in the cathedral at -Winnebago." - -"Oh, in Wisconsin. And what took us to Winnebago, I wonder?" - -"We were teaching in a college there." - -"I see." - -The talk languished. Basil Randolph had learned most that he wanted to -know, and had learned it without asking too many direct questions. He began -to pick at the fussy fringe on the arm of his chair and to cast an empty -eye on the other fussy things that filled the room. The two had exhausted -long ago all the old subjects, and he did not care to show an eagerness-- -still less, a continuing eagerness--for this new one: much could be picked -up by indirection, even by waiting. - -Medora felt him as distrait. "Do you want to go up and see Joe for a little -while before you leave us?" - -"I believe I will. Not that I've brought anything to read." - -"I doubt if he cares to be read to this time--Carolyn gave him the -headlines this forenoon. He's a bit restless; I think he'd rather talk. If -you have nothing more to say to me, perhaps you can find something to say -to him." - -"Oh, come! I'm sure we've had a good enough little chat. Aren't you a bit -restless yourself?" - -"Well, run along. I've heard his chair rolling about up there for the last -half hour." - - - - -5 - -_COPE IS CONSIDERED FURTHER_ - - -Randolph took the stairs to the second floor, and presently his footfalls -were heard on the bare treads that led from the second to the third. At the -top landing he paused and looked in through the open door of the picture- -gallery. - -Over the varnished oak floor of this roomy apartment a middle-aged man who -wore a green shade above his eyes was propelling himself in a wheeled -chair. Thus did Joseph Foster cover the space where the younger and more -fortunate sometimes danced, and thus did he move among works of art which, -even on the brightest days, he could barely see. - -He knew the step. "Brought anything?" he asked. - -He depended on Randolph for the latest brief doings in current fiction; and -usually in the background--and often long in abeyance--was something in the -way of memoirs or biography, many-volumed, which could fill the empty hours -either through retrospect or anticipation. - -"Only myself," replied the other, stepping in. Foster dextrously manoeuvred -his chair toward the entrance and reached out his hand. - -"Well, yourself is enough. It's good to have a man about the place once in -a while. Once in a while, I said. It gets tiresome, hearing all those girls -slithering and chattering through the halls." He put his bony hands back on -the rims of his wheels. "Where have you been all this time?" - -"Oh, you know I come when I can." Randolph ran his eye over the walls of -the big empty room. The pictures were all in place--landscapes, figure- -pieces, what not; everything as familiar as the form of words he had just -employed to meet an oft repeated query implying indifference and neglect. - -"How is it outside? I haven't been down on the street for a month." - -"Oh, things are bright and pleasant enough." Through the wide window there -appeared, half a mile away, the square twin towers of the University -library, reminiscent of Oxford and Ely. Round them lesser towers and -gables, scholastic in their gray stone, rose above the trees of the campus. -Beyond all these a level line of watery blue ran for miles and provided an -eventless horizon. A bright and pleasant enough sight indeed, but nothing -for Joe Foster. - -"Well, let me by," he said, "and we'll get along to my own room." The -resonant bigness of the "gallery" was far removed from the intimate and the -sociable. - -To the side of this bare place, with its canvases which had become rather -démodé--or at least had long ceased to interest--lay two bed-chambers: -Foster's own, and one adjoining, which was classed as a spare room. It was -sometimes given over to visiting luminaries of lesser magnitudes. Real -celebrities--those of national or international fame--were entertained in a -sumptuous suite on the floor below. Casual young bachelors, who sometimes -happened along, were lodged above and were expected to adjust themselves, -as regarded the bathroom, to the use and wont of the occupant adjoining. - -Foster's own room was a cramped omnium gatherum, cluttered with the -paraphernalia of daily living. It was somewhat disordered and untidy--the -chamber of a man who could never see clearly how things were, or be -completely sure just what he was about. - -"There's Pepys up there," he said, pointing to his bookshelf, as he worked -out of his chair and tried to dispose himself comfortably on a couch. "I -hope we're going to get along a little farther with him, some time." - -"As to that, I _have_ been getting along a little farther;--I've been -to the Library, looking somewhat ahead in the completer edition. I find -that 'Will,' who flung his cloak over his shoulder, 'like a ruffian,' and -got his ears boxed for it, was no mere temporary serving-man, but lived on -with Pepys for years and became the most intimate and trusted of his -friends. And 'Gosnell,' who lasted three days, you remember, as Mrs. Pepys' -maid, turns up a year or two later as an actress at 'the Duke's house.' and -'Deb,' that other maid whose name we have noted farther along--well, -there's a deal more about her than exactly tends to edification...." - -"Good. I hope we shall have some more of it pretty soon." - -"To-day?" - -"Not exactly to-day. I've got some other things to think about." - -"Such as?" - -"Well, I expect you're going to be invited here to dinner pretty soon?" - -"So? I've been invited here to dinner before this." - -"But another day has come. A new light has risen. I haven't seen it, but -I've heard it. I've heard it sing." - -"A light singing? Aren't you getting mixed?" - -"Oh, I don't know. There was Viollet-le-Duc and the rose-window of Notre -Dame. They took him there as a child for a choral service, and he thought -it was the rose itself that sang. And there was Petrarch, and the young -Milton--both talking about 'melodious tears'--and something of the same -sort in 'The Blessed Damosel.' And----" - -"A psychological catch for which there ought to be a name. Perhaps there -_is_ a name." - -"Well, as I say, the light rose, shone, and sang. I didn't see it--I never -see anybody. But his voice came up here quite distinctly. It seemed good to -have a man in the house. Those everlasting girls--I hope he wasn't -bothering to sing for _them_." - -"He probably was. How did it go?" - -"Very well indeed." - -"What kind of voice?" - -"Oh, baritone, I suppose you'd call it." - -"And he sang sentimental rubbish?" - -"Not at all. Really good things." - -"With passion?" - -"Well, hardly. With cool correctness. An icicle on Diana's temple--that -would be my guess." - -"An icicle? No wonder the young ladies don't quite fancy him." - -"I understand he took them all in a lump--so far as he took them at all. -Treated them all exactly alike; Hortense was quite scornful when she -brought up my lunch-tray. Of course that's no way for a man to do." - -"On the contrary. For certain purposes it might be a very good way." - -"'On the contrary,' if you like; since frost may perform the effects of -fire. Medora herself is beginning to see him as a tall, white candle, -burning in some niche or at some shrine. Sir Galahad--or something of that -sort." - -Randolph grimaced at this. - -"Oh, misery! I hope she hasn't mentioned her impression to _him_! -Imagine whether a man would enjoy being told a thing like that. I hope, I'm -sure, that no 'Belle Dame sans Merci' will get on his tracks!" - -"If he goes in too much for 'palely loitering' he may be snatched." - -"Poor fellow! They'd better leave him to his studies and his students. He -has his own way to make, I presume, and will need all his energies to get -ahead. For, as some one has said, 'There are no tea-houses on the road to -Parnassus.' Neither do tea-fights boost a man toward the Porch or Academe." - -"He's going in for teas?" - -"I won't say that. But it was at a tea that I met him. A trigonometry tea -at little Mrs. Ryder's." - -"You've seen him then. You have the advantage of me. What's he like?" - -"Oh, he has points in his favor. He has looks; a trim figure, even if -spare; well-squared shoulders; and manners with a breezy, original tang. -The kind of young fellow that people are likely enough to like." - -"What kind of manners did he have for you?" - -"Well, there you rather get me. He called me 'sir,' with a touch of -deference; yet somehow I felt as if I were standing too close to an -electric fan." - -"Yes, even when they indulge a show of deference, they contrive to blow our -gray hairs about our wrinkled temples." - -"Don't talk about gray hairs. You have none; and mine are not always seen -at first glance." - -"Medora begins to tax me with a few. Don't you see any?" - -"Not one. I concentrate on my own. Tush, you're only forty-seven." - -"Or fifty-seven, or sixty-seven, or seventy-seven...." Foster adjusted his -green shade and attempted an easier disposition of his twisted limbs on the -couch. "Well, forty-seven, as you suggest,--as you insist. How old is this -young fellow?" - -"Twenty-four or twenty-five." - -"Well, they can make us seem either younger or older. That rests with -ourselves. It's all in how we take them, I expect." - -"Better take them so as to make ourselves younger." - -"Then the other question." - -"How they take us?" - -"Yes. We're lucky, in this day and generation, if they take us at all." - -"You may be right," assented Randolph ruefully. "Yet there are gleams of -hope. The more thoughtful among them have a kind of condescending pity to -bestow----" - -"And the thoughtless?" - -"They can find uses for us. One of the faculty was telling me how he tried -to give two or three of his juniors an outing at his cottage over in -Michigan. Everything he gave they took for granted. And if anything was -lacking they took--exceptions. Monopolized the boats; ignored the dinner- -hour.... Sometimes I think that even the thoughtless are thoughtful in -their own way and use us, if we happen to have lands and substance, purely -as practical conveniences. I've been almost glad to think that I possess -none myself." - -"Don't stay here and talk like that. This is one of my blue days." - -"I wish I had brought a novelette. Sure you don't want to hear a little -more about the Countess of Castlemaine and the rascalities of the Navy -Office?" - -"No; some other time, when I feel a bit more robust. It isn't every day -that the mind can digest such a period with comfort." - -"Are we two old fogies beginning to wear on each other?" - -"I hope not. But when you go down, stop for Medora a minute and see if she -hasn't got something to say." - -Medora--when he finally got down stairs--had. - -She laid some knitting on the drawing-room table and came out into the -hall. - -"No reading this afternoon, I judge. What I heard, or seemed to hear, was a -broken flow of talk." - -"No reading. Restless." - -"So I was afraid. I'd rather have one good steady voice purring along for -him, and then I know he's all right. Carolyn has been too busy lately. What -seems to have unsettled him?" - -"Oh, I don't know. Young life, possibly." - -"Well, I've asked and asked the girls not to be quite so gay and chattery -in the upper halls." - -"You can't keep girls quiet." - -"I don't want to--not everywhere and at all times." - -"I have an idea that a given number of girls make more noise in a house -than the same number of young fellows. I know that they do in boarding- -houses and rooming-houses, and I believe it's so as between sororities and -fraternities. Put a noise-gauge in the main hall of the Alpha-Alpha house -and another in the main hall of the Beta-Beta house, and the girls would -run the score above the boys every time. If ever I build a sorority house, -it will be for the Delta-Iota-Nus, and a statue of the great goddess DIN -herself shall stand just within the entrance." - -"You discourage me. I was going to give a dinner." - -"Go ahead. A few remarks from me won't stop the course of your hospitality. -Neither would a few orations. Neither would a few deliberative bodies -assembled for a month of sessions, with every member talking from nine till -six." - -"You think I indulge in too many?" - -"Too many what? Festivals? Puns?" - -Medora paused, a bit puzzled. - -"Puns? Why, I never, never----Oh, I see!" - -"Too many dinners? No. Who could?" - -"This one was to be a young people's dinner. I was going to invite you." - -"Thanks. Thanks. Thanks." - -"Still, if you think my girls are noisy...." - -"I was speaking of girls in numbers." - -"Well, Bertram Cope didn't find them so." - -"Why not?" - -"Why not, indeed? They collected in a silent little group behind my -sofa...." - -"Puzzled? Awed?" - -"Fudge! Well, save Thursday." - -"Is he coming?" - -"I trust so." - -"Then they do need a constabulary to keep them quiet?" - -"Oh, hush!" - -"How many are you expecting to have? You know I don't enjoy large parties." - - -"Could you stand ten?" - -"I think so." - -"Thursday, then," she said, with a definitive hand on the knob of the door. - -Randolph went down the front walk with a slight stir of elation--a feeling -that had come to be an infrequent visitor enough. He hoped that the company -would be not only predominantly youthful, but exclusively so--aside from -the hostess and himself. And even she often had her young days and her -young spots. It would doubtless be clamorous; yet clamor, understood and -prepared for, might be met with composure. - - - - -6 - -_COPE DINES--AND TELLS ABOUT IT_ - - -Cope pushed away the last of the themes and put the cork back in the red- -ink bottle. Here was a witless girl who seemed to think that Herrick and -Cowper were contemporaries. The last sense to develop in the Western void -was apparently the sense of chronology--unless, indeed, it were a sense for -the shades of difference which served to distinguish between one age and -another and provided the raw material that made chronology a matter of -consequence at all. - -"If there were only one more," muttered Cope, looking at the pile of sheets -under the gas-globe, "I should probably learn that Chaucer derived from -Beaumont and Fletcher." - -He reached up and jerked the gas-jet to a different angle. The flame lit, -through its nicked, pale-pink globe, a bedroom cramped in size and meagre -in furnishings: a narrow bed, dressed to look like a lounge; two stiff- -backed oak chairs, not lately varnished; a bookshelf overhead, with some -dozen of the more indispensable aids to our tongue's literature. The table -at which he sat was one of plain deal, covered with some Oriental-seeming -fabric which showed here and there inkspots that antedated his own pen. He -threw up this covering as it fell over the front edge of the table, pulled -out a drawer, laid a sheet of paper in the bettered light, and uncorked a -black-ink bottle. - -"Dear Arthur," he began. - -He looked across to the other chair, with its broken spindles and -obfuscated varnish. With things as he wanted them, his correspondent would -be sitting there and letter-writing would be unnecessary. - -"Dear Arthur," he repeated aloud, and set himself to a general sketch of -the new land and the "lay" of it. - -"Three-quarters of them are of course girls," he presently found himself -writing, "which is the common proportion almost everywhere, I presume, -except in engineering and dentistry. However, there are four or five men. -I've been pretty careful, and they still treat me with respect. I'm afraid -my course is regarded as a 'snap.' Everybody, it seems, can grasp English -literature (and produce it). And almost anybody, I begin to fear, can teach -it. Judging, that is, from the pay. I'm afraid the good folks at Freeford -will find themselves pinched for another year still." - -He glanced across toward the pile of corrected themes. He felt that not -everybody was "called," as a matter of course, to write English, and he -stubbornly nourished the belief that toiling over others' imperfections was -more of a job than boards of trustees always realized. - -"Of course," he presently resumed, "things are rather changed from what -they were before. I find more in the way of social opportunities and -greater interest shown by the middle-aged. It is no disadvantage to -cultivate people who have their own homes; the lunch-rooms round the -fountain-square are numerous enough, but not so good as they might be. And -I don't know but that an instructor may lose caste by eating among a -miscellany of undergraduates. Anyhow, it's no plan to pursue for long." - -He sat for a moment, lost in thought over recent social experiences. - -"One very good house has lately been opened to me," he continued. "I dined -there last Thursday evening. It's really quite a mansion--a great many -large rooms: picture-gallery, ballroom, and all that; and the dinner itself -was very handsomely done. You know my theory,--a theory rather forced upon -me, in truth, by circumstances,--that the best way to enjoy a good meal is -to have had a string of poor ones. Well, since coming back, and with no -permanent arrangements made, I have had plenty of chance for getting into -position to appreciate the really first-class. There was a color-scheme in -pale pink--ribbons of that color, pink icing on the cakes, and so on. The -same thing could be done, and done charmingly, in light green--with -pistache ice-cream. Of course the candle-shades were pink too." - -His eye wandered toward a small triangular closet, made off from the room -by a flimsy and faded calico-print curtain. - -"I had my dress-suit cleaned and pressed, but the lapels of the coat came -out rather shiny, and I thought it better to hire one for the occasion. -There was no trouble about a fit--I have standardized shoulders, as you -know. - -"Of course I miss you all the time, and I assuredly missed you just here. -If it is really true, as you write, that you are holding your summer gains -and weigh twelve pounds more than you did at the end of June, and if you -are thinking of getting a new suit, please bear in mind that my own won't -last much longer. I have the chance, now, to go out a good deal and to meet -influential, worth-while people. In the circumstances I ask you not to -bant. One rather spare man in a pair of men is enough. - -"My hostess, a Mrs. Phillips, I met at a tea during my first week. This tea -was given by a lady in the mathematical department, and she and her husband -were at the dinner. They are people in the early or middle thirties, I -judge, and were probably put in as a connecting link between the two -sections of the party. Mrs. Phillips herself is a rich widow of forty-odd-- -forty-five or six, possibly,--though I am not the very best judge in such -matters: no need to tell you that, on such a point, my eye and my general -sense are none too acute. The only other middle-aged (or elderly) person -present was a Mr. Randolph, who is perhaps fifty, or a little beyond, yet -who appears to have his younger moments. There were some girls, and there -were two young men in business in the city--neighbors and not connected -with the University at all. 'For which relief,' etc.,--since it _is_ a -bit benumbing to move in academic circles exclusively;--I should hate to -feel that a really professorial manner was stealing over me. Well, -everybody was lively and gay, except at first Ryder (he's the math. man); -but even he limbered up finally. Mrs. Phillips herself has a great deal of -action and vivacity--seemed hardly more than thirty. Well, I could be -pretty gay too with a lot of money behind me; and I think that, for another -year or so, I can contrive to be gay without it. But after that.... - -"I wish you had been there instead of Ryder. If you are really going to be -twenty-seven in November--as I figure it--you might yourself have served as -a connecting link between youth and age. No, no; I take it back; I didn't -mean it. I wouldn't have you seem older for anything, and you know it. - -"There were three girls. They all live in the house itself, forming a -little court: Mrs. P. seems to need young life and young attentions. So not -one of them had to be taken home--there's usually _that_ to do, you -know. Not that it would have mattered much, as the distances would have -been short and the night was clear starlight. But they could all stay where -they were, and I walked home in quite different company." - -Cope threw back his Oriental table-cover once more and drew out a few -additional sheets of paper. - -"One of them is an artist. She paints portraits, and possibly other things. -Oh, I was going to say there is an art-gallery at the top of the house. Her -husband--I mean Mrs. Phillips'--was a painter and collector himself; and -after dinner we went up there, and a curious man came in, propelling a -wheeled chair--a sort of death's-head at the feast.... But don't let me get -too far away from the matter in hand. She is dark and a bit tonguey--the -artist-girl; and I believe she would be sarcastic and witty if she weren't -held down pretty well. I think she's a niece: the relationship leaves her -free, as I suppose she feels, to express herself. If you like the type you -may have it; but wit in a woman, or even humor, always makes me -uncomfortable. The feminine idea of either is a little different from ours. - -"Another girl is a musician. She plays the violin--quite tolerably. Yes, -yes, I recall your views about violin-playing: it's either good or bad-- -nothing between. I'll say this, then: she played some simple and -unpretentious things and did them very deftly. Simple, unpretentious: -oddest thing in the world, for she is a recent graduate of our school of -music and began this fall as an instructor. Wouldn't you have expected to -find her demanding a chance to perform a sonata at the least, or pining -miserably for a concerto with full orchestra? Well, this young lady I put -down as a plain boarder--you can't maintain a big house on memories and a -collection of paintings. She's a nice child, and I dare say makes as good a -boarder as any nice child could. - -"The third girl--if you want to hear any more about them--seems to be a -secretary. Think of having the run of a house where a social secretary is -required! I'm sure she sends out the invitations and keeps the engagement- -book. Besides all that, she writes poetry--she is the minstrel of the -court. She does verses about her chatelaine--is quite the mistress of self- -respecting adulation. _She_ would know the difference between Herrick -and Cowper!"... - -Cope pulled out his watch. Then he resumed. - -"It's half past ten, but I think I'll run on for a few moments longer. If I -don't finish, I can wind up to-morrow.--Mr. Randolph sat opposite me. He -looked at me a lot and gave attention to whatever I said--whether said to -him, or to my neighbors right and left, or to the whole table. I didn't -feel him especially clever, but easy and pleasant--and friendly. Also a -little shy--even after we had gone up to the ball-room. I'm afraid that -made me more talkative than ever; you know how shyness in another man makes -me all the more confident and rackety. Be sure that voice of mine rang out! -But not in song. There was a piano up stairs, of course, and that led to a -little dancing. Different people took turns in playing. I danced--once-- -with each of the three girls, and twice with my hostess; then I let Ryder -and the two young business-men do the rest. Randolph danced once with Mrs. -Phillips, and that ended it for him. My own dancing, as you know, is -nothing to brag of: I think the young ladies were quite satisfied with the -little I did. I'm sure _I_ was. You also know my views on round -dances. Why dancing should be done exclusively by couples arranged strictly -on the basis of contrasted sexes...! I think of the good old days of the -Renaissance in Italy, when women, if they wanted to dance, just got up and -danced--alone, or, if they didn't want to dance alone, danced together. I -like to see soldiers or sailors dance in pairs, as a straightforward outlet -for superfluous physical energy. Also, peasants in a ring--about a Maypole -or something. Also, I very much like square dances and reels. There were -enough that night for a quadrille, with somebody for the piano and even -somebody to 'call off,'--but whoever sees a quadrille in these days? -However, I mustn't burn any more gas on this topic. - -"I sat out several dances between Mrs. Phillips and Mr. Randolph. He -thought he had done enough for her, and she thought I had done enough for -them all. And one of the young business-men did enough for that springy, -still-young Mrs. Ryder. Once, indeed, Mrs. Phillips asked me if I wouldn't -like to try a third dance with her (she goes at it with a good deal of old- -time vivacity and vim); but I told her she must know by this time that I -was something of a bungler. 'I wouldn't quite say that,' she returned, -smiling; but we continued to sit there side by side on a sort of bench -built against the wall, and she seemed as well pleased to have it that way -as the other. She did, however, speak about a little singing. I told her -that she must have found me something of a bungler there, too, and reminded -her that I couldn't play the accompaniments of my best songs at all. -Arthur, my dear boy, I depend on _you_ for that, and you must come -down here and do it. No singing, then. But Mrs. Phillips was not quite -satisfied. Wouldn't I recite something? Heavens! Well, of course I know -lots of poems--_c'est mon metier_. I repeated one. Then other -volunteers were called upon--it was entertaining with a vengeance! The -young ladies had to chip in also--though they, of course, were prepared to. -And one of the young business-men did some clever juggling; and Mrs. Ryder -sang a little French ballade; and Mr. Randolph--poor man!--was suddenly -routed out of his placidity, and responded as well as he could with one or -two little stories, not very pointed and not very well told. But I judge he -makes no great claim to being a _raconteur_--he was merely paying an -unexpected tax as gracefully as he could. - -"Well, as I was saying, the man in the wheeled chair came in. Of course he -hadn't been down to dinner--I think I saw a tray for him carried along the -hall. As he was working his way through the door, I suppose I must have -been talking and laughing at my loudest; and that big, bare room, done in -hard wood, made me seem noisier still. He sort of stopped and twitched, and -appeared to shrink back in his chair: I presume my tones went straight -through the poor twisted invalid's head. He must have fancied me (from the -racket I was making) as a sort of free-and-easy Hercules (which is not -quite the case), if not as the whole football squad rolled into one. -Whether he really saw me, then or thereafter, I don't know; he wore a sort -of green shade over his eyes. Of course I met him in due form. I tried not -to give his poor hand too much of a wring (another of my bad habits); but -he took all I gave and even seemed to hang on for a little more. He sat -quietly to one side for a while, and I tried not to act the bull of Bashan -again. Anyhow, he didn't start a second time. Presently he pulled out -rather unceremoniously: the two young business-men had begun a sort of -burlesque fandango, and their feet were pretty noisy on the bare floor. He -started off after looking toward the piano and then toward me; and Mrs. -Phillips glanced about as if to hint that any display of surprise or of -indulgence would be misplaced. Poor chap!--well, I'm glad he didn't see me -dancing. - -"We broke up about eleven, and Mr. Randolph suggested that, as we lived in -the same general direction, we might walk homeward together. Great heaven! -it's eleven--and five after--now! Enough, in all conscience, for to-night. -You shall have the rest to-morrow." - - - - -7 - -_COPE UNDER SCRUTINY_ - - -An evening or two later Cope again corked his red ink and uncorked his -black. - -"As I have said, Mr. Randolph and I walked home together. He stopped for a -moment in front of his place. Another large, handsome house. He told me he -had the use of his quarters as long as his landlord's lease ran, and asked -me to come round some time and see how he was fixed. Then he said suddenly -that the evening was fine and the night young and that he would walk on -with me to _my_ quarters, if I didn't mind. Of course I didn't--he -seemed so friendly and pleasant; but I let him learn for himself that I was -far from being lodged in any architectural monument. Well, we went on for -the necessary ten minutes, and he didn't seem at all put out by the -mediocre aspect of the house where I have put up. He sort of took it all -for granted--as if he knew about it already. In fact, on the way from his -place to mine, I no more led him (as I sense it now) than he led me. He -hesitated at no corner or crossing. 'I am an old Churchtonian,' he said -incidentally--as if he knew everything and everybody. He also mentioned, -just as incidentally, that he had a brother-in-law on our board of -trustees. Of course I promised to go round and see him. I presume that I -shall drop in on him some time or other. Come down here, and you shall have -one more house of call. - -"He stopped for a moment in front of my diggings, taking my hand to say -goodnight and taking his own time in dropping it. Enough is enough. 'You -have the small change needed for paying your way through society,' he said, -with a sort of smile. 'I must cultivate a few little arts myself,' he went -on; 'they seem necessary in some houses. But I'm glad, after all, that I -didn't remember to-night that a tribute was likely to be levied; it would -have taken away my appetite and have made the whole evening a misery in -advance. As things went, I had, on the whole, a pleasant time. Only, I -understood that you sang; and I was rather hoping to hear you.' 'I do best -with my regular accompanist,' I returned--meaning you, of course. I hope -you don't mind being degraded to that level. 'And your regular accompanist -is not--not----?' 'Is miles away,' I replied. 'A hundred and fifty of -them,' I might have added, if I had chosen to be specific. Now, if he had -wanted to hear me, why hadn't he asked? He would have needed only to second -Mrs. Phillips herself; and there he was, just on the other side of me. In -consequence of his reticence I was driven--or drove myself--to blank verse. -And that other man, the one in the chair; he may have had his expectations -too. Arthur, Arthur, try to grasp the situation! You must come down here, -and you must bring your hands with you. Tell the bishop and the precentor -that you are needed elsewhere. They will let you off. Of course I know that -a village choir needs every tenor it can get--and keep; but come. If they -insist, leave your voice behind; but do bring your hands and your reading -eye. Don't let me go along making my new circle think I'm an utter dub. -Tell your father plainly that he can never in the world make a wholesale- -hardware-man out of you. Force him to listen to reason. What is one year -spent in finding out just what you are fit for? Come along; I miss you like -the devil; nobody does my things as sympathetically as you do. Give up your -old anthems and your old tinware and tenpennies and come along. I can bolt -from this hole at a week's notice, and we can go into quarters together: a -real bed instead of an upholstered shelf, and a closet big enough for two -wardrobes (if mine really deserves the name). We could get our own -breakfast, and you could take a course in something or other till you found -out just what the Big Town could do for you. In any event you would be -bearing me company, and your company is what I need. So pack up and -appear." - -The delay in the posting of this appeal soon brought from Winnebago a -letter outside the usual course of correspondence. It was on a fresh sheet -and under a new date-line that Cope continued. After a page of generalities -and of attention to particular points in the letter from Wisconsin, Cope -took up his own line of thought. - -"I had meant, of course, to look in on him within a few days,--no great -hurry about it. But on Sunday evening he wrote and asked if he might not -call round on me instead. My name is not in the telephone-book; neither, as -I found out, was his. So I used up a sheet of paper, an envelope, and a -stamp--just such as I am now using on you--to tell him that he might -indeed. I put in the 'indeed' for cordiality, hoping he wouldn't think I -had slighted _his_ invitation. On Monday evening he came round--I must -have reached him by the late afternoon delivery. Need I say that he had to -take this poor place as he found it? But there was no sign of the once- -over--no tendency to inventory or appraise. He sat down beside me on the -couch just as if he had no notion that it was a bed (and a rather rocky -one, at that), and talked about my row of books, and about music and plays, -and about his own collection of curios--all in a quiet, contained way, yet -intent on me if not on my outfit. Well, it's pleasant to be considered for -what you are rather than for what you have (or for what few poor sticks -your landlady may have); and I rather liked his being here. Certainly he -was a change from my students, who sometimes seem to exclude better timber. - -"Needless to say, he repeated his invitation, and last evening I shunted -Middle English (in which I have a lot to catch up) and walked round to him. -Very adequately and handsomely lodged. Really good bachelor quarters (I -hadn't known for certain whether he was married or not). A stockbroker of a -sort, I hear,--but not enough to hurt, I should guess. He has a library and -a sitting-room. Like me, he sleeps three-quarters, but he doesn't have to -sit on his bed in the daytime. And he has a bathrobe of just the sort I -shall have, when I can afford it. He has got together a lot of knick-knacks -and curios, but takes them lightly. - -"'Sorry I've only one big arm-chair,' he said, handing me his cigarette- -case and settling me down in comfort; 'but I entertain very seldom. I -should like to be hospitable,' he went on; '--I really think it's in me; -but that's pretty much out of the question here. I have no chef, no -dining-room of my own, no ball-room, certainly.... Perhaps, before very -long, I shall have to make a change.' - -"He asked me about Freeford, and I didn't realize until I was on my way -back that he had assumed my home town just as he had assumed my lodging. -Well, all right; I never resent a friendly interest. He sat in a less-easy -chair and blew his smoke-rings and wondered if I had been a small-town boy. -'I'm one, too,' he said; '--at least Churchton, forty years--at least -Churchton, thirty years ago, was not all it is to-day. It has always had -its own special tone, of course; but in my young--in my younger days it was -just a large country village. Fewer of us went into town to make money, or -to spend it.'... - -"And then he asked me to go into town, one evening soon, and help him spend -some. He suggested it rather shyly; _à tâtons_, I will say--though -French is not my business. He offered a dinner at a restaurant, and the -theatre afterwards. Did I accept? Indeed I did. Think, Arthur! after all -the movies and restaurants round the elms and the fountain (tho' you don't -know them yet)! I will say, too, that his cigarettes were rather better -than my own.... - -"I suppose he is fully fifty; but he has his young days, I can see. -Certainly his age doesn't obtrude,--doesn't bother me at all, though he -sometimes seems conscious of it himself. He wears eye-glasses part of the -time,--for dignity, I presume. He had them on when I came in, but they -disappeared almost at once, and I saw them no more. - -"He asked me about my degree,--though I didn't remember having spoken of -it. I couldn't but mention 'Shakespeare'--as the word goes; and you know -that when I mention him, it always makes the other man mention Bacon. He -did mention Bacon, and smiled. 'I've studied the cipher,' he said. 'All you -need to make it go is a pair of texts--a long one and a short one--and two -fonts of type, or their equivalent in penmanship. Two colors of ink, for -example. You can put anything into anything. See here.' He reached up to a -shelf and brought down a thin brown square note-book. 'Here's the -alphabet,' he said; 'and here'--opening a little beyond--'is my use of it: -one of my earliest exercises. I have put the first stanza of "Annabel Lee" -into the second chapter of "Tom Jones."' He ignored the absent eye-glasses -and picked out the red letters from the black with perfect ease. 'Simplest -thing in the world,' he went on; 'anybody can do it. All it needs is time -and patience and care. And if you happen to be waggishly or fraudulently -inclined you can give yourself considerable entertainment--and can -entertain or puzzle other people later. You don't really believe that -"Bacon wrote Shakespeare"?' - -"Of course I don't, Arthur,--as you very well know. I picked out the first -line of 'Annabel Lee' by arranging the necessary groupings among the odd -mixture of black and red letters he exhibited, and told him I didn't -believe that Bacon wrote Shakespeare--nor that Shakespeare did either. 'Who -did, then?' he naturally asked. I told him that I would grant, at the start -and for a few seasons, a group of young noblemen and young gentlemen; but -that some one of them (supposing there to have been more than that one) -soon distanced all the rest and presently became the edifice before which -the manager from Stratford was only the facade. He--this 'someone'--was a -noble and a man of wide reach both in his natural endowments and in his -acquired culture. But he couldn't dip openly into the London cesspool; he -had his own quality to safeguard against the contamination of a new and -none too highly-regarded trade. 'I don't care for your shillings,' he said -to Shaxper, 'nor for the printed plays afterward; but I do value your front -and your footing and the services they can render me on my way to self- -expression.' He was an earl, or something such, with a country-seat in -Warwick, or on the borders of Gloucestershire; 'and if I only had a year -and the money to make a journey among the manor-houses of mid-England,' I -said, 'and to dig for a while in their muniment-rooms....' Well, you get -the idea, all right enough. - -"He came across and sat on the arm of the big easy-chair. 'If you went over -there and discovered all that, the English scholars would never forgive -you.' As of course they wouldn't: look at the recent Shaxper discoveries by -Americans in London! 'And wouldn't that be a rather sensational thesis,' he -went on, 'from a staid candidate for an M.A., or a Ph.D., or a Litt.D., or -whatever it is you're after?' It would, of a verity; and why shouldn't it -be? 'Don't go over there,' he ended with a smile, as he dropped his hand on -my shoulder; 'your friends would rather have you here.' 'Never fear!' I -returned; 'I can't possibly manage it. I shall just do something on "The -Disjunctive Conjunctions in 'Paradise Lost,'" and let it go at that!' - -"He got up to reach for the ash-receiver. 'They tell me,' he said, 'that a -degree isn't much in itself--just an _étape_ on the journey to a -better professional standing.' 'Yes,' said I, '--and to better professional -rewards. It means so many more hundreds of dollars a year in pay.' But you -know all about that, too. - -"I'm glad your dramatic club is getting forward so well with the rehearsals -for its first drive of the season; glad too that, this time at least, they -have given you a good part. Tell me all about it before the big stars in -town begin to dim your people in my eyes--and in your own; and don't let -them cast you for the next performance in January. You will be here by -then. - -"Yours, - -"B.L.C." - - - - -8 - -_COPE UNDERTAKES AN EXCURSION_ - - -Two or three days later, Randolph met Medora Phillips in front of the bank. -This was a neat and solemn little edifice opposite the elms and the -fountain; it was neighbored by dry-goods stores, the offices of renting -agencies, and the restaurants where the unfraternized undergraduates took -their daily chances. Through its door passed tradesmen's clerks with -deposits, and young housewives with babies in perambulators, and students -with their small financial problems, and members of the faculty about to -cash large or small checks. Mrs. Phillips had come across from the dry- -goods store to pick up her monthly sheaf of vouchers,--it was the third of -October. - -"Don't you want to come in for a minute?" she asked Randolph. "Then you can -walk on with me to the stationer's. Carolyn tells me that our last batch of -invitations reduced us to nothing. How did _your_ dinner go?" - -Randolph followed her into the cool marble interior. "Oh, in town, you -mean? Quite well, I think. I'm sure my young man took a good honest -appetite with him!" - -"I know. We don't do half enough for these poor boys." - -"Yes, he rose to the food. But not to the drinks. I took him, after all, to -my club. I innocently suggested cocktails; but, no. He declined--in a deft -but straightforward way. Country principles. Small-town morals. He made me -feel like a--well, like a corrupter of youth." - -"You didn't mind, though,--of course you didn't. You liked it. Wasn't it -noble! Wasn't it charming! So glad that _we_ had nothing but -Apollinaris and birch beer! Still, it would have been a pleasure to hear -him refuse." - -The receiving-teller gave her her vouchers. She put them in her handbag and -somehow got round a perambulator, and the two went out on the street. - -"And how did your 'show' go?" she continued. "That's about as much as we -can call the drama in these days." - -"That, possibly, didn't go quite so well. I took him to a 'comedy,'--as -they nowadays call their mixture of farce and funniment. 'Comedy'!--I wish -Meredith could have seen it! Well, he laughed a little, here and there,-- -obligingly, I might say. But there was no 'chew' in the thing for him,-- -nothing to fill his intellectual maw. He's a serious youngster, after all, ---exuberant as he seems. I felt him appraising me as a gay old -irresponsible...." - -"'Old'--you are not to use that word. Come, don't say that he--that he -venerated you!" - -"Oh, not at all. During the six hours we were together--train, club, -theatre, and train again--he never once called me 'sir'; he never once -employed our clumsy, repellent Anglo-Saxon mode of address, 'mister'; in -fact, he never employed any mode of address at all. He got round it quite -cleverly,--on system, as I soon began to perceive; and not for a moment did -he forget that the system was in operation. He used, straight through, a -sort of generalized manner--I might have been anywhere between twenty and -sixty-five." - -They were now in front of the stationer's show-window, and there were few -people in the quiet thoroughfare to jostle them. - -Medora smiled. - -"How clever; how charming!" she said. "Leaving you altogether free to pick -your own age. I hope you didn't go beyond thirty-five. You must have been -quite charming in your early thirties." - -"That's kind of you, I'm sure; but I don't believe that I was ever -'charming' at _any_ age. I think you've used that word once too often. -I was a quiet, studious lad, with nice notions, but possibly something of a -prig. I was less 'charming' than correct. The young ladies had the greatest -confidence in me,--not one of them was ever 'afraid'." - -"Why, how horrid! How utterly unsatisfactory! Nor their mothers?" - -"No. And I'm still single, as you're advised. And I'm not sure that the -young gentlemen cared much more for me. If I had had a little more 'gimp' -and _verve_, I might have equalled the particular young gentleman of -whom we have been discoursing. But...." - -His obviously artificial style of speech concealed, as she guessed, some -real feeling. - -"Oh, if you insist on disparaging yourself...!" - -"I was quite as coolly correct as I apprehend him to be; and if I could -only have contrived to compass the charming, as well, who knows what----?" - -"You don't like my word. Is there a better, a more suitable?" - -"No. You have the _mot juste_." - -He threw a finger through the wide pane of glass. "Is that the sort of -thing you are after? Those boxes of pale gray are rather good." - -"I never buy from the show-window. Come in, and help me choose." - -"I love to shop," he said, in a mock ecstasy. "With others," he added. "I -like to follow money in--and to contribute taste and experience." - -Over the stationer's counter she said: - -"Save Sunday. We are going out to the sand-hills." - -"Thank you. Very well. Most glad to." - -"And you are to bring him." - -"Him?" - -"Bertram Cope." - -"Why, I've given him six hours within two or three days. And now you're -asking me to give him sixteen." - -"Sixteen--or more. But you're not giving them to him. You're giving them to -all of us. You're giving them to me. The day is likely to be fine and -settled, and I'd recommend your catching the 8:30 train. I shall have my -full load in the car. And more, if I have to take along Helga. Try to reach -us by one, or a quarter past." - -Mrs. Phillips had lately taken on a house among the sand dunes beyond the -state line. This singular region had recently acquired so wide a reputation -for utter neglect and desolation that--despite its distance from town, -whether in miles or in hours--no one could quite afford to ignore it. -Picnics, pageants, encampments and excursions all united in proclaiming its -remoteness, its silence, its vacuity. Along the rim of ragged slopes which -put a term to the hundreds of miles of water that spread from the north, -people tramped, bathed, canoed, motored and week-ended. Within a few -seasons Duneland had acquired as great a reputation for "prahlerische -Dunkelheit"--for ostentatious obscurity--as ever was enjoyed even by -Schiller's Wallenstein. "Lovers of Nature" and "Friends of the Landscape" -moved through its distant and inaccessible purlieus in squads and cohorts. -Everybody had to spend there at least one Sunday in the summer season. -There were enthusiasts whose interest ran from March to November. There -were fanatics who insisted on trips thitherward in January. And there were -one or two super-fanatics--ranking ahead even of the fishermen and the -sand-diggers--who clung to that weird and changing region the whole year -through. - -Medora Phillips' house was several miles beyond the worst of the hurly- -burly. There were no tents in sight, even in August. Nor was the honk of -the motor-horn heard even during the most tumultuous Sundays. The spot was -harder to reach than most others along the twenty miles of nicked and -ragged brim which helped enclose the wide blue area of the Big Water, but -was better worth while when you got there. Her little tract lay beyond the -more prosaic reaches that were furnished chiefly in the light green of -deciduous trees; it was part of a long stretch thickly set for miles with -the dark and sombre green of pines. Our nature-lover had taken, the year -before, a neglected and dilapidated old farmhouse and had made it into what -her friends and habitues liked to call a bungalow. The house had been put -up--in the rustic spirit which ignores all considerations of landscape and -outlook--behind a well-treed dune which allowed but the merest glimpse of -the lake; however, a walk of six or eight minutes led down to the beach, -and in the late afternoon the sun came with grand effect across the gilded -water and through the tall pine-trunks which bordered the zig-zag path. -Medora had added a sleeping porch, a dining-porch and a lean-to for the -car; and she entertained there through the summer lavishly, even if -intermittently and casually. - -"No place in the world like it!" she would declare enthusiastically to the -yet inexperienced and therefore the still unconverted. "The spring arrives -weeks ahead of our spring in town, and the fall lingers on for weeks after. -Come to our shore, where the fauna and flora of the whole country meet in -one. All the wild birds pass in their migrations; and the flowers!" Then -she would expatiate on the trailing arbutus in April, and the vast sheets -of pale blue lupines in early June, and the yellow, sunlike blossoms of the -prickly-pear in July, and the red glories of painter's-brush and -bittersweet and sumach in September. "No wonder," she would say, "that they -have to distribute handbills on the excursion-trains asking people to leave -the flowers alone!" - -"How shocking!" Cope had cried, with his resonant laugh, when this phase of -the situation was brought to his attention. "Are the automobile people any -better?" - -Randolph had told him of some of the other drawbacks involved in the -excursion. "It's a long way to go, even when you pass up the trolley and -make a single big bolt by train. And it leads through an industrial region -that is mighty unprepossessing--little beauty until almost the end. And -even when you get there, it may all seem a slight and simple affair for the -time and trouble taken--unless you really like Nature. And lastly," he -said, with a sidelong glance at Cope, "you may find yourself, as the day -wears on, getting a little too much of my company." - -"Oh, I hope that doesn't mean," returned Cope, with another ingenuous -unchaining of his native resonance, "that you are afraid of getting a -little too much of mine! I'm fond of novelty, and nobody can frighten me." - -"If that's the case, let's get away as early in the day as we can. -Breakfasts, of course, are late in every household on Sunday. So let's meet -at the Maroon-and-Purple Tavern at seven-thirty, and make a flying start at -eight." - -Sunday morning came clear and calm and warm to the town,--a belated -September day, or possibly an early intimation of Indian summer,--and it -promised to be even more delightful in the favored region toward which our -friends were journeying. After they had cleared many miles of foundries and -railroad crossings, and had paralleled for a last half-hour a distant -succession of sandhills, wooded or glistening white, they were set down at -a small group of farmhouses, with a varied walk of five miles before them. -Half a mile through a shaded country lane; another half-mile along a path -that led across low, damp ground through thickets of hazel and brier; a -third half-mile over a light soil, increasingly sandy, beneath oaks and -lindens and pines which cloaked the outlines of the slopes ahead; and -finally a great mound of pure sand that slanted up into a blue sky and made -its own horizon. - -"We've taken things easy," said Randolph, who had been that way before, -"and I hope we have enough breath left for our job. There it lies, right in -front of us." - -"No favor asked here," declared Cope. He gave a sly, sidewise glance, as if -to ask how the other might stand as to leg-muscles and wind. - -"Up we go," said Randolph. - - - - -9 - -_COPE ON THE EDGE OF THINGS_ - - -The adventurer in Duneland hardly knows, as he works his way through one of -the infrequent "blow-outs," whether to thank Nature for her aid or to tax -her with her cruelty. She offers few other means of reaching the water save -for these nicks in the edges of the great cup; yet it is possible enough to -view her as a careless and reckless handmaiden busily devastating the -cosmical china-closet. The "blow-out" is a tragedy, and the cause of -further tragedy. The north winds, in the impetus gathered through a long, -unimpeded flight over three hundred miles of water, ceaselessly try and -test the sandy bulwarks for a slightest opening. The flaw once found, the -work of devastation and desolation begins; and, once begun, it continues -without cessation. Every hurricane cuts a wider and deeper gash, fills the -air with clouds of loose sand, and gives sinister addition to the white -shifting heaps and fields that steal slowly yet unrelentingly over the -green hinterland of forest which lies below the southern slopes. Trees yet -to die stand in passive bands at their feet; the stark, black trunks of -trees long dead rise here and there in spots where the sand-glacier has -done its work of ruin and passed on. - -After some moments of scrambling and panting our two travelers gained the -divide. Below them sloped a great amphitheatre of sand, falling in -irregular gradations; and at the foot of all lay the lake, calmly azure, -with its horizon, whether near or far for it was almost impossible to say-- -mystically vague. On either hand rose other hills of sand, set with sparse -pines and covered, in patches, with growths of wild grape, the fruit half -ripened. Within the amphitheatre, at various levels, rose grimly a few -stumps and shreds of cedars long dead and long indifferent to the future -ravages of the enemy. The whole scene was, to-day, plausibly gentle and -inert. It was indeed a bridal of earth and sky, with the self-contained -approval of the blue deep and no counter-assertion from any demon wind. - -"So far, so good," said Randolph, taking off his hat, wiping his forehead, -and breathing just a little harder than he liked. "The rest of our course -is plain: down those slopes, and then a couple of miles along the shore. -Easy walking, that; a mere promenade on a boulevard." - -Cope stood on the height, and tossed his bare head like a tireless young -colt. The sun fell bright on his mane of yellow hair. He took in a deep -breath. "It's good!" he declared. "It's great! And the water looks better -yet. Shall we make it in a rush?" - -He began to plunge down the long, broken sand-slope. Each step was worth -ten. Randolph followed--with judgment. He would not seem young enough to be -a competitor, nor yet old enough to be a drag. On the shore he wiped and -panted a little more--but not to the point of embarrassment, and still less -to the point of mortification. After all, he was keeping up pretty well. - -At the bottom Cope, with his shoes full of sand, turned round and looked up -the slope down which his companion was coming. He waved his arms. "It's -almost as fine from here!" he cried. - -The beach, once gained, was in sight both ways for miles. Not a human -habitation was visible, nor a human being. Two or three gulls flew a little -out from shore, and the tracks of a sandpiper led from the wet shingle to -the first fringe of sandgrass higher up. - -"Where are the crowds?" asked Cope, with a sonorous shout. - -"Miles behind," replied Randolph. "We haven't come this long distance to -meet them after all. Besides," he continued, looking at his watch, "this is -not the time of day for them. At twelve-fifteen people are not strolling or -tramping; they're thinking of their dinner. We have a full hour or more for -making less than two easy miles before we reach _ours_." - -"No need to hurry, then." - -The beach, at its edge, was firm, and they strolled on for half a mile and -cooled off as they went. The air was mild; the noonday sun was warm; both -of them had taken off their coats. - -They sat down under a clump of basswoods, the only trees beyond the foot of -the sand-slope, and looked at the water. - -"It's like a big, useless bathtub," observed Randolph. - -"Not so much useless as unused." - -"Yes, I suppose the season _is_ as good as over,--though this end of -the lake stays warm longer than most other parts." - -"It isn't so much the warmth of the water," remarked Cope sententiously. -"It's more the warmth of the air." - -"Well, the air seems warm enough. After all, the air and the sun are about -the best part of a swim. Do you want to go in?" - -Cope rose, walked to the edge of the water, and put in a finger or two. -"Well, it might be warmer; but, as I say...." - -"We could try a ten-minute dip. That would get us to our dinner in good -time and in good trim." - -"All right. Let's, then." - -"Only, you'll have to do most of the swimming," said Randolph. "My few -small feats are all accomplished pretty close to shore." - -"Never mind. Company's the thing. A fellow finds it rather slow, going in -alone." - -Cope whisked off his clothes with incredible rapidity and piled them--or -flung them--under the basswoods: the suddenly resuscitated technique of the -small-town lad who could take avail of any pond or any quiet stretch of -river on the spur of the moment. He waded in quickly up to his waist, and -then took an intrepid header. His lithe young legs and arms threw -themselves about hither and yon. After a moment or two he got on his feet -and made his way back across a yard of fine shingle to the sand itself. He -was sputtering and gasping, and the long yellow hair, which usually lay in -a flat clean sweep from forehead to occiput, now sprawled in a grotesque -pattern round his temples. - -"B-r-r! It _is_ cold, sure enough. But jump in. The air will be all -right. I'll be back with you in a moment." - -Randolph advanced to the edge, and felt in turn. It _was_ cold. But he -meant to manage it here, just as he had managed with the sand-slopes. - -Two heads bobbed on the water where but one had bobbed before. -Ceremonially, at least, the rite was complete. - -"It's never so cold the second time," declared Cope encouragingly. "One dip -doesn't make a swim, any more than one swallow--" - -He flashed his soles in the sunlight and was once again immersed, gulping, -in a maelstrom of his own making. - -"Twice, to oblige you," said Randolph. "But no more. I'll leave the rest to -the sun and the air." - -Cope, out again, ran up and down the sands for a hundred feet or so. "I -know something better than this," he declared presently. He threw himself -down and rolled himself in the abundance of fine, dry, clean sand. - -"An arenaceous ulster--speaking etymologically," he said. He came back to -the clump of basswoods near which Randolph was sitting on a short length of -drift wood, with his back to the sun, and sat down beside him. - -"You're welcome to it," said Randolph, laughing; "but how are you going to -get it off? By another dip? Certainly not by the slow process of time. We -have some moments to spare, but hardly enough for that. Meanwhile...." - -He picked up a handful of sand and applied it to a bare shoulder-blade -which somehow had failed to get its share of protection. - -"Thanks," said Cope: "the right thing done for Polynices. Yes, I shall take -one final dip and dry myself on my handkerchief." - -"I shall dry by the other process, and so shall be able to spare you mine." - - -"How much time have we yet?" - -Randolph reached for his trousers, as they hung on a lower branch of one of -the basswoods. "Oh, a good three-quarters of an hour." - -"That's time enough, and to spare. I wonder whom we're going to meet." - -"There's a 'usual crowd': the three young ladies, commonly; one or two -young men who understand how to tinker the oil-stove--which usually needs -it--and how to prime the pump. They once asked me to do these things; but -I've discovered that younger men enjoy it more than I do, so I let them do -it. Besides these, a number of miscellaneous people, perhaps, who come out -by trolley or in their own cars." - -"The young ladies always come?" asked Cope, brushing the sand from his -chest. - -"Usually. Together. The Graces. Otherwise, what becomes of the Group?" - -"Well, I hope there'll be enough fellows to look after the stove and the -pump--and them. I'm not much good at that last." - -"No?" - -"There's a knack about it--a technique--that I don't seem to possess. Nor -do I seem greatly prompted to learn it." - -"Of course, there is no more reason for assuming that every man will make a -good lover than that every woman will make a good mother or a good -housekeeper." - -"Or that every adult male will make a good citizen, desiring the general -welfare and bestirring himself to contribute his own share to it. I don't -feel that I'm an especially creditable one." - -"So it runs. We ground our general life on theories, and then the facts -come up and slap us in the face." Randolph rose and relieved the basswood -of the first garments. "Are you about ready for that final dip?" - -Cope made his last plunge and returned red and shivering to use the two -handkerchiefs. - -"Well, we have thirty minutes," said Randolph, as they resumed their march. -On the one hand the ragged line of dunes with their draping, dense or -slight, of pines, lindens and oaks; on the other the unruffled expanse of -blue, spreading toward a horizon even less determinate than before. - -"No, I'm not at all apt," said Cope, returning to his theme; "not even for -self-defense. I suppose I'm pretty sure to get caught some time or other." - -"Each woman according to her powers and gifts. Varying degrees of desire, -of determination, of dexterity. To be just, I might add a fourth _d_-- -devotion." - -"You've run the gauntlet," said Cope. "You seem to have come through all -right." - -"Well," Randolph returned deprecatingly, "I can't really claim ever to have -enlisted any woman's best endeavors." - -"I hope I shall have the same good luck. Of your four _d_'s, it's the -dexterity that gives me the most dread." - -"Yes, the appeal (not always honest) to chivalry,--though devotion is -sometimes a close second. You're manoeuvred into a position where you're -made to think you 'must.' I've known chaps to marry on that basis.... It's -weary waiting until Madame dies and Madonna steps into her place." - -"Meanwhile, safety in numbers." - -"Yes, even though you're in the very midst of wishing or of wondering--or -of a careful concern to cloak either." - -"Don't dwell on it! You fill me with apprehensions." - -Randolph put up his arm and pointed. A roof through a notch between two -sandhills beyond a long range of them, was seen, set high and half hidden -by the spreading limbs of pines. "There it is," he said. - -"So close, already?" Such, indeed, it appeared. - -"Not so close as it seems. We may just as well step lively." - -Cope, with an abundance of free action, was treading along on the very edge -of things, careless of the rough shingle and indifferent to the probability -of wet feet, and swinging his hat as he went. In some such spirit, perhaps, -advanced young Stoutheart to the ogre's castle. He even began to foot it a -little faster. - -"Well, I can keep up with you yet," thought Randolph. Aloud, he said: -"You've done very well with your hair. Quite an inspiration to have carried -a comb." - -Cope grimaced. - -"I trust I'm free to comb myself on Sunday. There are plenty of others to -do it for me through the week." - - - - -10 - -_COPE AT HIS HOUSE PARTY_ - - -"You look as fit as two fiddles," said Medora Phillips, at the top of her -sandhill. - -"We are," declared Randolph. "Have the rest of the orchestra arrived?" - -"Most of us are here, and the rest will arrive presently. Listen. I think I -hear a honk somewhere back in the woods." - -The big room of the house, made by knocking two small rooms together, -seemed fairly full already, and other guests were on the back porch. The -Graces were there, putting the finishing-touches to the table--Helga had -not come, after all, but had gone instead, with her young man, to spend a -few sunny afternoon hours among the films. And one of the young business- -men present at Mrs. Phillips' dinner was present here; he seemed to know -how to handle the oil-stove and the pump (with the cooperation of the -chauffeur), and how to aid the three handmaidens in putting on the knives, -forks, plates and napkins that Helga had decided to ignore. The people in -the distant motor-car became less distant; soon they stopped in a clearing -at the foot of the hill, and before long they appeared at the top with a -small hamper of provisions. - -"Oh, why didn't you ask _us_ to bring something!" cried Cope. Randolph -shrugged his shoulders: he saw himself lugging a basket of eatables through -five miles of sand and thicket. - -"You've brought yourself," declared Mrs. Phillips genially. "That's -enough." - -There was room for the whole dozen on the dining-porch. The favored few in -one corner of it could glimpse the blue plane of the lake, or at least -catch the horizon; the rest could look over the treetops toward the -changing colors of the wide marshes inland. And when the feast was over, -the chauffeur took his refreshment off to one side, and then amiably lent a -hand with the dishes. - -"Let me help wipe," cried Cope impulsively. - -"There are plenty of hands to help," returned his hostess. She seemed to be -putting him on a higher plane and saving him for better things. - -One of the better things was a stroll over her tumultuous domain: the five -miles he had already covered were not enough. - -"I'll stay where I am," declared Randolph, who had taken this regulation -jaunt before. He followed Cope to the hook from which he was taking down -his hat. "Admire everything," he counselled in a whisper. - -"Eh?" - -"Adjust yourself to our dominant mood without delay or reluctance. Praise -promptly and fully everything that is ours." - -The party consisted of four or five of the younger people and two or three -of the older. Most of them had taken the walk before; Cope, as a novice, -became the especial care of Mrs. Phillips herself. The way led sandily -along the crest of a wooded amphitheatre, with less stress on the prospect -waterward than might have been expected. Cope was not allowed, indeed, to -overlook the vague horizon where, through the pine groves, the blue of sky -and of sea blended into one; but, under Medora Phillips' guidance, his eyes -were mostly turned inland. - -"People think," she said, "that 'the Dunes' means nothing beyond a regular -row of sandhills following the edge of the water; yet half the interest and -three-quarters of the variety are to be found in behind them. See my wide -marsh, off to the southeast, with those islands of tamarack here and there, -and imagine how beautiful the shadows are toward sunset. Look at that thick -wood at the foot of the slope: do you think it is flat? No, it's as humpy -and hilly as anything ever traversed. Only this spring a fascinating -murderer hid there for weeks, and last January we could hear the howls of -timber-wolves driven down from Michigan by the cold. And see those tall -dead pines rising above it all. I call them the Three Witches. You'll get -them better just a few paces to the left. This way." She even placed her -hand on his elbow to make sure that her tragic group should appear to -highest advantage. Yes, he was an admirable young man, giving admirable -attention; thrusting out his hat toward prospects of exceptional account -and casting his frank blue eyes into her face between-times. Charmingly -perfect teeth and a wonderful sweep of yellow hair. A highly civilized faun -for her highly sylvan setting. Indifferent, perhaps, to her precious Trio; -but there were other young fellows to look after _them_. - -Cope praised loudly and readily. The region was unique and every view had -its charm--every view save one. Beyond the woods and the hills and the -distant marshes which spread behind all these, there rose on the bluish -horizon a sole tall chimney, with its long black streak of smoke. Below it -and about it spread a vast rectangular structure with watch-towers at its -corners. The chimney bespoke light and heat and power furnished in -quantities--power for many shops, manned by compulsory workers: a prison, -in short. - -"Why, what's that?" asked Cope tactlessly. - -Medora Phillips withheld her eyes and sent out a guiding finger in the -opposite direction. "Only see the red of those maples!" she said; "and that -other red just to the left--the tree with the small, fine leaves all -aflame. Do you know what it is?" - -"I'm afraid not." - -"It's a tupelo. And this shrub, right here?" She took between her fingers -one large, bland indented leaf on a small tree close to the path. - -Cope shook his head. - -"Why, it's a sassafras. And this?"--she thrust her toe into a thick, -lustrous bed of tiny leaves that hugged the ground. "No, again? That's -kinnikinnick. Oh, my poor boy, you have everything to learn. Brought up in -the country, too!" - -"But, really," said Cope in defense, "Freeford isn't so small as -_that_. And even in the country one may turn by preference to books. -Try me on primroses and date-palms and pomegranates!" - -Medora broke off a branch of sassafras and swished it to and fro as she -walked. "See," she said; "three kinds of leaves on the same tree: one -without lobes, one with a single lobe, and one with two." - -"Isn't Nature wonderful," replied Cope easily. - -Meanwhile the young ladies sauntered along--before or behind, as the case -might be--in the company of the young business-man and that of another -youth who had come out independently on the trolley. They appeared to be -suitably accompanied and entertained. But shiftings and readjustments -ensued, as they are sure to do with a walking-party. Cope presently found -himself scuffling through the thin grass and the briery thickets alongside -the young business-man. He was a clever, companionable chap, but he -declared himself all too soon, even in this remote Arcadia, as utterly true -to type. Cope was not long in feeling him as operating on the unconscious -assumption--unconscious, and therefore all the more damnable--that the -young man in business constituted, ipso facto, a kind of norm by which -other young men in other fields of endeavor were to be gauged: the farther -they deviated from the standard he automatically set up, the more -lamentable their deficiencies. A few condescending inquiries as to the -academic life, that strange aberration from the normality of the practical -and profitable course which made the ordinary life of the day, and the -separation came. "Enough of _him_!" muttered Cope to himself -presently, and began to cast about for other company. Amy Leffingwell was -strolling along alone: he caught a branch of haw from before her meditative -face and proffered a general remark about the beauty of the day and the -interest in the changing prospect. - -Amy's pretty pink face brightened. "It _is_ a lovely day," she said. -"And the more of this lovely weather we have in October--and especially in -November--the more trouble it makes." - -"Surely you don't want rain or frost?" - -"No; but it becomes harder to shut the house up for good and all. Last fall -we opened and closed two or three times. We even tried coming out in -December." - -"In mackintoshes and rubber boots?" - -"Almost. But the boots are better for February. At least, they would have -been last February." - -"It seems hard to imagine such a future for a place like this,--or such a -past." - -"Things can be pretty rough, I assure you. And the roads are not always as -good as they are to-day." And when the pump froze, she went on, they had to -depend upon the lake; and when the lake froze they had to fall back on -melted snow and ice. And even when the lake didn't freeze, the blowing -waters and the flying sands often heaped up big ridges that quite cut them -off from the open sea. Then they had to prospect along those tawny hummocks -for some small inlet that would yield a few buckets of frozen spray, -keeping on the right side of the deep fissures that held the threat of -icebergs to be cast loose at any moment; "and sometimes," she added, in -search of a little thrill, "we would get back toward shore to find deep -openings with clear water dashing beneath--we had been walking on a mere -snow-crust half the time." - -"Most interesting," said Cope accommodatingly. He saw no winter shore. - -"Yes, February was bad, but Mrs. Phillips wanted to make sure, toward the -end of the winter, that the house hadn't blown away,--nor the contents; for -we have housebreakers every so often. And Hortense wanted to make some -'color-notes.' I believe she's going to try for some more to-day." - -"To-day is a good day--unless the October tints are too obvious." - -"She says they are not subtle, but that she can use them." - -Well, here he was, talking along handily enough. But he had no notion of -talking for long about Hortense. He preferred returning to the weather. - -"And what does such a day do for you?" he asked. - -"Oh, I suppose it helps me in a general way. But _my_ notes, of -course, are on paper already." - -Yes, he was walking alongside her and holding his own--thus far. She seemed -a pretty enough, graceful enough little thing; not so tall by an inch or so -as she appeared when seated behind that samovar. On that day she had been -reasonably sprightly--toward others, even if not toward him. To-day she -seemed meditative, rather; even elegiac--unless there was a possible sub- -acid tang in her reference to Hortense's color-notes. Aside from that -possibility, there was little indication of the "dexterity" which Randolph -had asked him to beware. - -"On paper already?" he repeated. "But not all of them? I know you compose. -You are not saying that you are about to give composition up?" A forced and -awkward "slur," perhaps; but it served. - -She gave a little sigh. "Pupils don't want _my_ pieces," she said. -"Scales; exercises..." - -"I know," he returned. "Themes,--clearness, mass, unity.... It's the same." - - -They looked at each other and smiled. "We ought not to think of such things -to-day," she said. - -Mrs. Phillips came along, shepherding her little flock for the return. "But -before we _do_ turn back," she adjured them, "just look at those two -lovely spreading pines standing together alone on that far hill." The small -group gazed obediently--though to many of them the prospect was a familiar -one. Yes, there stood two pines, one just a little taller than the other, -and just a little inclined across the other's top. "A girl out here in -August called them Paolo and Francesca. Do you think," she asked Cope, -"that those names are suitable?" - -"Oh, I don't know," he replied, looking at the trees thoughtfully. "They -seem rather--static; and Dante's lovers, if I recollect, had considerable -drive. They were '_al vento_'--on the wind--weren't they? It might be -less violent and more modern to call your trees Pelleas and Melisande, -or--" - -"That's it. That's the very thing!" said Medora Phillips heartily. "Pelleas -and Melisande, of course. That girl had a very ordinary mind." - -"I've felt plenty of wind on the dunes, more than once," interjected -Hortense. - -"Or Darby and Joan," Cope continued. "Not that I'm defending that poor -creature, whoever she was. They seem to be a pretty staid, steady-going -couple." - -"Don't," said Medora. "Too many ideas are worse than too few. They confuse -one." - -And Amy Leffingwell, who had seemed willing to admire him, now looked at -him with an air of plaintive protest. - -"'Darby and Joan'!" muttered Hortense into a sumach bush. "You might as -well call them Jack and Jill!" - -"They're Pelleas and Melisande," declared Mrs. Phillips, in a tone of -finality. "Thank you so much," she said, with a smile that reinstated Cope -after a threatened lapse from favor. - - - - -11 - -_COPE ENLIVENS THE COUNTRY_ - - -As they drew near the house they heard the tones of a gramophone. This -instrument rested flatly on a small table and took the place of a piano, -which would have been a fearful thing to transport from town and back. It -was jigging away merrily enough, with a quick, regular rhythm which -suggested a dance-tune; and when the party re-entered the big room it was -seen that a large corner of the center rug was still turned back. -Impossible that anybody could have been dancing on the Sabbath; surely -everybody understood that the evangelical principles of Churchton were -projected on these occasions to the dunes. Besides, the only women left -behind had been two in their forties; the men in their company were even -older. Medora Phillips looked at Randolph, but he was staring -inexpressively at the opposite wall. She found herself wondering if there -were times when the mere absence of the young served automatically to make -the middle-aged more youthful. - -"Well, we've had a most lovely walk," she declared. She crossed to the far -corner of the room, contriving to turn down the rug as she went, and opened -up a new reservoir of records. She laid them on the table rather -emphatically, as if to say, "_These_ are suited to the day." - -"I hope you're all rested up," she continued, and put one of the new -records on the machine. The air was from a modern opera, true; but it was -slow-going and had even been fitted out with "sacred" words. Everybody knew -it, and presently everybody was humming it. - -"It ought not to be hummed," she declared; "it ought to be sung. You can -sing it, Mr. Cope?" - -"Oh yes, indeed," replied Cope, readily enough. "I have the breath left, I -think,--or I can very soon find it." - -"Take a few minutes. I'll fill in with something else." - -They listened to an inconclusive thing by a wobbling soprano, and then Mrs. -Phillips put the other record back. - -The accompaniment to the air was rather rich and dense, and the general -tone-quality was somewhat blatant. But Cope stood up to it all, and had the -inspiration to treat the new combination as a sort of half-joke. But he was -relieved from the bother of accompanying himself; his resonance overlaid in -some measure the cheap quality of the record's tone; he contrived to master -a degree of momentum to let himself go; and the general result was good,-- -much better than his attempt at that tea. Hortense and Carolyn looked at -him with a new respect; and Amy, who had been willing to admire, now -admired openly. Cope ended, gave a slight grimace, and sauntered away from -the table and the instrument. He knew that he had done rather well. - -"Bravo!" loudly cried one of the ladies, who felt that she was under -suspicion of having taken a step or two in the dance. And, "Oh, my dear," -said Mrs. Phillips to her, sotto voce, "isn't he utterly charming!" - -Cope wiped his brow. The walk had made him warm, and the singing had made -him warmer. One or two of the women were using chance pamphlets as fans -(despite Mrs. Phillips' ill-concealed doubts), and everybody showed a -willingness to keep in the draught from the open windows. - -"Is it close here?" asked the hostess anxiously. "The day is almost like -summer. If the water is anywhere nearly as warm as the air is.... Let me -see; it's a quarter to four. I have a closetful of bathing suits, all sizes -and shapes and several colors, if anybody cares to go in." - -"Don't!" cried Cope explosively. - -She looked at him with interest. "Have you been trying it?" - -"I have. On the way along the shore. I assure you, however warm the air may -be, the bathing season is over." - -"Well, I rather thought something had been happening to you. Mr. Randolph, -is it as bad as he says?" - -"I'll take his word," replied Randolph. "And I think all of us had better -do the same." - -"We might go down to the beach, anyway," she said. "Hortense wants to make -her color-notes, and the color will be good from now on." - -Several of the party threaded their way down over the sliding sandy path -which led through the pines and junipers. Cope was willing to go with the -others--on the present understanding. He objected to promiscuous bathing -even more strongly than he objected to promiscuous dancing. - -There were some new cumuli in the east, out above the water, and they began -to take the late afternoon sun. Hortense cast about for just the right -point of view, with Carolyn to help on "atmosphere" and two young men to be -superserviceable over campstool, sketch-block and box of colors. She -brought back a few dabs which may have served some future use;--at all -events they served as items in a social record. - -Cope and Amy, with some of the others, strolled off in the opposite -direction. The water remained smooth, and some of the men idly skipped -stones. One of them dipped in his hand. "Cold?" he exclaimed; "I should -say!" - -Amy looked admiringly at Cope, as one who had braved, beyond season, the -chill of the great deep, and he tried to reward her with a "thought" or -two. He had skipped stones himself between dips, and Randolph had made a -reflection which he could now revise and employ. - -"See!" he said, as a flat, waveworn piece of slate left the hand of the -young business-man and careered over the water; "one, two, three--six, -eight--ten, thirteen; and then down, down, after all,--down to the bottom. -And so we end--every one of us. The great thing is to crowd in all the -action we can before the final plunge comes--to go skipping and splashing -as hard and long and fast and far as we may!" - -A valuable thought, possibly, and elaborated beyond Randolph's sketchy and -casual utterance; but Amy looked uncomfortable and chilled and glanced with -little favor at a few other flat stones lying at her feet. "Please don't. -Please change the subject," she seemed to ask. - -She changed it herself. "You sang beautifully," she said, with some return -of warmth--even with some approach to fervor. - -"Oh, I can sing," he returned nonchalantly, "if I can only have my hands in -my pockets, or waving in the air, or anywhere but on a keyboard." - -"I wish you had let them persuade you to sing another." She was not only -willing to admire, but desirous: conscientious amends, perhaps, for an -earlier verdict. "One or two more skips, you know, after getting started." - -"Oh, once was enough. A happy coincidence. The next might have been an -unhappy one." - -"You have never learned to accompany yourself?" - -"As you've seen, I'm a rather poor hand at it; I've depended a good deal on -others. Or, better, on another." - -She looked at him earnestly. "Have you ever sung to an obbligato?" - -"None of my songs, thus far, has called for one. An obbligato? Never so -much honored. No, indeed. Why, to me it would seem almost like singing with -an orchestra. Imagine a 'cello. Imagine a flute--still I'm not a soprano -going mad. Or imagine a saxophone; that might be droll." - -He gave out a sort of dragging bleat. She did not smile; perhaps she felt -such an approach to waggery unworthy of him. Perhaps she was holding him up -to the dignity of the natural scene, and to the importance of the occasion -as she conceived it. - -Cope had no desire to figure as a comique, and at once regained sobriety. -"Of course," he admitted, "we are not at a _thé dansant_ or a cabaret. -Such things ought not to be thought of--here." - -She turned her eyes on him again, with a new look of sympathy and -understanding. Perhaps understanding between them had failed or lapsed but -a moment before. - -"How all of this shames the town!" she said. - -"And us--if we misbehave," he added. - -Mrs. Phillips came scurrying along, collecting her scattered guests, as -before. "Tea!" she said. "Tea for one or two who must make an early start -back to town. Also a sip and a bite for those who stay." - -She moved along toward Hortense and her little group. Hortense's "color- -notes" did not appear to amount to much. Hortense seemed to have been -"fussed"--either by an excess of company and of help, or by some private -source of discontent and disequilibrium. - -"Come," Mrs. Phillips cried to her, "I need every Martha to lend a hand." -Hortense rose, and one of her young men picked up her campstool. - -"So glad you haven't got to go early," said Mrs. Phillips to Randolph and -Cope. "In fact, you might stay all night. It will be warm, and there are -cots and blankets for the porch." - -"Thanks, indeed," said Cope. "But I have a class at eight-fifteen to-morrow -morning, and they'll be waiting to hear about the English Novel in the -Eighteenth Century, worse luck! Fielding and Richardson and--" - -"Are you going to explain Pamela and Clarissa to them?" asked Hortense. She -was abrupt and possibly a bit scornful. - -Cope seemed to scent a challenge and accepted it. "I am. The women may -figure on the covers, but the men play their own strong part through the -pages." - -"I seem to recall," contributed Mrs. Phillips, "that Sir Charles Grandison -figured both ways." - -"That prig!" said Hortense. - -"Well, if you can't stay overnight," Mrs. Phillips proceeded, "at least -stay a few hours for the moonlight. The moon will be almost full to-night, -and the walk across the marshes to the trolley-line ought to be beautiful. -Or Peter could run you across in eight or ten minutes." - -She did not urge Randolph to remain in the absence of Cope, though -Randolph's appearance at his office at ten in the morning would have -surprised no one, and have embarrassed no one. - -Tea was served before the big fireplace in which a small flame to heat the -kettle was rising. Randolph set his empty cup on the shelf above. - -"Notice," said Mrs. Phillips to him, "that poem of Carolyn's just behind -your cup: 'Summer Day in Duneland'." It was a bit of verse in a narrow -black frame, and the mat was embellished with pen-and-ink drawings of the -dunes, to the effect of an etching. An etcher, in fact, a man famous in his -field, had made them, Mrs. Phillips explained. - -"And at the other end of the shelf," she advised him, "is a poem in free -verse, done by a real journalist who was here in June. See: 'Homage to -Dunecrest'--written with a blue pencil on a bit of driftwood." - -"Sorry _we_ can't leave any souvenir behind," said Cope, who had -stolen up and was looking at the "poem" over Randolph's shoulder. "But one -must (first) be clever; and one must (second) know how to put his -cleverness on record." - -"I shall remember _your_ record," she returned with emphasis. Cope -smiled deprecatingly; but he felt sure that he had sung well. - -The moonlight, when it came, was all that Medora Phillips had promised. -There was another stroll on the beach, with Cope between Medora and -Carolyn. Then he and Randolph took the causeway across the marsh, stopped -the trolley by burning a newspaper on the track, and started on the long -trip home. - -As the car ran along jerkily from station to station, the earlier void of -Duneland became peopled indeed. The extraordinarily mild day had drawn out -hundreds--had given the moribund summer-excursion season a new lease of -life. Every stoppage brought so many more young men in soiled khaki, with -shapeless packs on their backs, and so many more wan maidens, no longer -young, who were trying, in little bands, to capture from Nature the joys -thus far denied by domestic life; and at one station a belated squad of the -"Lovers of Landscape"--some forty or fifty in all--came flooding in with -the day's spoils: masses of asters and goldenrod, with the roots as often -as not; festoons of bittersweet, and sheaves of sumach and golden glow; and -one ardent spirit staggered in under the weight of an immense brown paper -bag stuffed with prickly pear. As the tight-packed company slid along, -children drowsed or whimpered, short-tempered young men quarreled with the -conductor, elderly folk sat in squeezed, plaintive resignation.... Soon the -lights of foundry fires began to show on the sky; then people started -dropping off in the streets of towns enlivened by the glitter of many -saloons and an occasional loud glare from the front of a moving-picture -theater.... - -Through these many miles Randolph and Cope sat silent: there seemed to be a -tacit agreement that they need no longer exert themselves to entertain each -other. Cope reached home shortly before midnight. By next morning many of -the doings of the previous day had quite passed from his mind. Yet a few -firm impressions remained. He had had a good swim, if but a brief one, with -a companion who had been willing, even if not bold; he had imposed an -acceptable nomenclature upon a somewhat anonymous landscape; and, in -circumstances slightly absurd, or at least unfavorable, he had done his -voice and his method high credit in song. All else went for next to -nothing. - - - - -12 - -_COPE AMIDST CROSS-PURPOSES_ - - -Next morning's mail brought Cope a letter from Arthur Lemoyne. The letter -was short--at least when compared with Cope's own plentiful pennings; but -it gave our young instructor a few points to think about while he was -illuminating Clarissa Harlowe and making some careful comments on Joseph -Andrews. Released toward noon, he read the letter over again; and he ran -over it again during lunch. Lemoyne possessed a variety of gifts, but the -gift of letter-writing, in an extended form, was not among them. He said -all he had to say in four moderate pages. - -"Yours received," he wrote. "Am glad the year has opened up so -interestingly for you. Of course I want to come down as soon as I can, -_if_ I can, and be with you." - -Well, the "if," as the latter part of the letter indicated, was not likely -to prove insurmountable. The assurance that he wanted to come was grateful, -though superfluous: who had supposed for a moment that he didn't? Still, -the thing, put down in plain black and white, had its look of comfort. - -"Of course the business is not gaining much through my connection with it. -I expect father begins to see _that_, pretty plainly. As for the -cathedral choir and the dramatic club and all the rest, I am willing to -throw them over--expecting that larger interests can be opened to me by -you."... - -Cope paused on these points. He had suggested that Lemoyne enroll as a -student in some slight course or other, with the hope that his voice might -lead to his wearing cap and gown at chapel services and that his dramatic -experience might give him some role in the annual operetta. In either of -these quarters a good tenor voice was usually to seek. And as for the -business.... Well, he had once overheard the elder Lemoyne's partner -audibly wonder whether Arthur would ever learn how to ship a keg of nails -out of their back door, even. - -Cope pushed away his coffee-cup and asked the young Greek for a cut of pie. - - -"I sort of sounded father the other day, but he was pretty huffy. I'll try -again, soon; but I doubt if I can manage to come down until after the -holidays. You begin a new term, then, I suppose. The fact is, I took a week -off in the middle of September, and father hasn't forgiven it. One of our -fellows in the choir had just bought a little roadster, and he invited me -for a trip to Green Bay and beyond. We dipped along through Fish Creek, -Ephraim, and so on. Good weather, good roads, good scenery, good hotels; -and a pleasant time was had by all--or, rather, by both."... - -Cope dwelt darkly on this passage. Arthur was flighty; Arthur was volatile; -Arthur was even fickle, when the mood took him. Some arrangement that -partook more of the hard-and-fast was needed. But there was comfort--of a -kind--in the next passage. - -"Though father, at best, will do very little, and though I have just now -little enough of my own, there may be somebody or other among your faculty -or trustees who could find me a niche in the college library or in the -registrar's office. Or have all such posts been snapped up by Johnnys-on- -the-spot? A small weekly stipend would rather help our _ménage,-- -hein_?" - -This definite inquiry (which carried its own answer) seemed to drive one or -two brass tacks with some definiteness. Cope himself was eking out his -small salary with a small allowance from home; next year, with the thesis -accomplished, better pay in some better place. A present partner and pal -ought to be a prop rather than a drag: however welcome his company, he must -bear his share. - -"Look about a bit for quarters," Lemoyne went on, drawing toward his -conclusion. "I presume room-rent is little more for two than for one. -Possibly," he put down in an afterthought, "I might get a job in the city;" -and then, "with warm regards," he came to a close as "Art." - -Cope finished his lunch and walked out. If Arthur could do one thing better -than another, it was to make coffee; his product was assuredly better than -the Greek's. The two had camped out more than once on the shores of Lake -Winnebago, and Arthur had deftly managed the commissariat. They had had -good times together and had needed no other company. How had it been on -Green Bay--at Eagle Cliff and Apron Bluff and all the other places lately -celebrated in lithographed "folders" and lately popularized by motorists? -And who was the particular "fellow" who ran the roadster? - -Late that afternoon Cope chanced upon Randolph among the fantastic basins -and floral parterres of the court in front of the Botany building: Randolph -had had a small matter for one of the deans. Together they sauntered over -to the lake. From the edge of the bluff they walked out upon the concrete -terrace above the general boiler-room and its dynamos. Alongside this, the -vast tonnage of coal required for the coming winter was beginning to pile -up. The weather was still mild and sunny and the lake was as valiantly blue -as ever. - -"It doesn't look like the same body of water, does it?" said Cope. - -"It might be just as beautiful in its own way, here, as we found it -yesterday, out there," returned Randolph. "I've asked my brother-in-law, I -don't know how many times, why they can't do better by this unfortunate -campus and bring it all up to a reasonable level of seemliness. But----" - -"You have a relative among the----?" - -"Yes, my sister's husband is one of the University trustees. But he lives -miles from this spot and hardly ever sees it. Besides, his aesthetic -endowments are not beyond those of the average university trustee. -Sometimes they're as hard on Beauty as they are on Free Speech." - -"I see they're hard on beauty; and I may live to find free speech mauled, -too." - -"Well, you're not in Sociology or Economics. Still, don't trifle with a -long-established aesthetic idol either. Trustees--and department heads--are -conservative." - -"Oh, you mean about----?" - -"About your immortal William. He wrote them. Don't try to rob him. Don't -try to knock him off his pedestal." - -"Oh, you're thinking about my thesis. What I said about Warwickshire was -just a little flight of fancy, I guess,--a bit of doorstep travel. I'm -likely enough to stay where I am." - -"Well, how about the thesis, really?" - -"I think I shall end by digging something out of Here and Now. 'Our Middle- -West School of Fiction,'--what would you think of that?" - -"H'm! If you can make it seem worth while...." - -"Well, can't I?" - -"Your work, from the very nature of it, must be critical. Now the critic, -nine times out of ten, takes down a volume from its established shelf, -dusts it off, ruffles the leaves a bit, and then puts it back where it was. -The ruffling is sometimes very nice and interesting and often gives the -ruffler a good position in the glorious company of earlier rufflers----" - -"I shouldn't be satisfied with anything like that. Things have got to move. -I want to take some recent, less-known men and put _them_ on the -shelves." - -"Yet you don't want to waste work on material which time may show as of -transient value, or of none." - -"A fellow must chance it. Who gives quickly gives twice;--I suppose that -applies to praise as well as to money. It irks me to find more praise -bestowed on the praised-enough,--even on groups of secondary importance, -sometimes just because they are remote (in England, perhaps), and so can be -treated with an easy objectivity. To dig in your own day and your own -community is harder, but I should feel it more rewarding." - -"But aren't the English books really better? Haven't they more depth, -substance and background?" - -"Possibly,--according to the conventions they themselves have established-- -and according to the society they depict." - -"Well, Academe hasn't nailed you yet!" - -"No; and I hope it won't. I should like to write a whole book about our new -men." - -"But don't write a thesis and then expect to publish it with profit -_as_ a book. That's a common enough expectation--or temptation." - -They turned away from the lake terrace and the imposing coal-pile. Cope, -Randolph saw, was in quite a glow; a generous interest had touched him, -putting fresh light into his eyes and a new vigor into his step. He had -displayed a charming enthusiasm, and a pure, disinterested one. Randolph, -under a quiet exterior, was delighted. He liked the boy better than ever, -and felt more than ever prompted to attach him to himself. - -"How are you pleased with your present quarters?" he asked, as they -returned through the Botany court. He thought of the narrow couch, the ink- -spotted cover on the deal table, the few coats and shoes (they -_couldn't_ be many) behind that calico curtain. - -"None too well," replied Cope. "I shall soon begin to look for another -room. I rather expect to change about holiday time." - -"I am thinking of making a change too," declared Randolph. - -"Why, could you better yourself?" asked Cope, in a tone of surprise. "I -never knew a bachelor to be better fixed." - -"I need a little wider margin of room. I can afford it, and ought to have -had it long ago. And I learn that the lease of the people I'm with expires -in the spring. My collection is growing; and I ought to have another -bedroom. Think of not being able to put a man up, on occasion! I shall take -a small apartment on my own account, catch some Oriental who is studying -frogs' legs or Occidental theology; and then--open house. In a moderate -measure, of course." - -"That listens good--as the young fellows say," replied Cope. "A not -uncommon ideal, possibly; but I'm glad that some man, now and then, is able -to realize it." - -"I should hope to see you there," said Randolph intently. - -"Thank you, indeed. Yes, while my time lasts. But my own lease is like your -landlord's--short. Next year,--who knows where?" - -"Why not here?" - -"Oh!" Cope shrugged, as if conscious of the need of something better, and -of presently deserving it. "Some big university in the East?" wondered -Randolph to himself. Well, the transfer, if it came, was still a long way -ahead. - -As he walked home to dinner he entertained himself by imagining his new -regime. There would be an alert, intelligent Jap, who, in some miraculous -way, could "do for him" between his studies. There would be a cozy dining- -room where three or four fellows could have a snug little dinner, with -plenty of good talk during it and after it. There would be, finally, a -convenient little spare room, wherein a young knight, escaped from some -"Belle Dame sans Merci," might lean his sword against the wardrobe, prop -his greaves along the baseboard, lay his steel gauntlets neatly on the top -of the dresser, fold his hands over the turned-down sheet of a neat three- -quarter-width brass bedstead, and with a satisfied sigh of utter well-being -pass away into sleep. Such facilities, even if they scarcely equaled a -chateau on the Ridge or a villa among the Dunes, might serve. - -Cope, on his own way to dinner, indulged in parallel imaginings. He saw a -larger room than his present, with more furniture and better; a bookcase -instead of a shelf; a closet, and hot and cold water in some convenient -alcove; a second table, with a percolator on it, at which Arthur, who was a -light sleeper and willingly an early riser, might indulge his knack for -coffee-making to the advantage of them both. And Arthur had the same -blessed facility with toast. - -Then his thoughts made an excursion toward Randolph. Here was a man who was -in business in the city, and who was related, by marriage, to the board of -trustees. How soon might one feel sufficiently well acquainted with him to -ask his friendly offices in behalf of the new-comer,--the man who might -reasonably be expected the first week in January? - - - - -13 - -_COPE DINES AGAIN--AND STAYS AFTER_ - - -Medora Phillips' social activities ran through several social strata and -her entertainments varied to correspond. Sometimes she contented herself -with mere boy-and-girl affairs, which were thrown together from material -gathered within her own household and from the humbler walks of -undergraduate life. Sometimes she entertained literary celebrities, and -invited the head professors and their wives to meet them. And two or three -times a season she gave real dinners to "society," summoning to Ashburn -avenue, from homes even more architectural than her own, the banking and -wholesale families whose incomes were derived from the city, but who -pillared both the university and the many houses of worship in Churchton -itself. And sometimes, when she passed over the older generation of these -families in favor of the younger, her courses were more "liberal" than -Churchton's earlier standards quite approved. - -On such formal occasions her three young ladies were dispensed with. They -were encouraged to go to some sorority gathering or to some fudge-party. On -the occasion now meditated she had another young person in mind. This was -the granddaughter of one of the banking families; the girl might come along -with her father and mother. She was not very pretty, not very entertaining; -however, Mrs. Phillips needed one girl, and if she were not very -attractive, none the worse. The one girl was for the one young man. The one -young man was to be Bertram Cope. Our fond lady meant to have him and to -show him off, sure that her choicest circle could not but find him as -charming as she herself did. Most of us, at one time or another, have -thrust forward our preferences in the same confident way. - -Cope made less of an impression than his patroness had hoped for. Somehow -his lithe youthfulness, his fine hair and teeth and eyes, the rich -resonance of his voice counted for little--except, perhaps, with the -granddaughter. The middle-aged people about him were used to young college -men and indifferent to them. Cope himself felt that he was in a new -environment, and a loftier one. Several of these were important people, -with names familiar through the town and beyond. He employed a caution that -almost became inexpressiveness. He also found Mrs. Phillips a shade more -formal and stately than her wont. She herself, in her furtive survey of the -board, was disappointed to find that he was not telling. "Perhaps it's that -girl," she thought; "she may be even duller than I supposed." But never -mind; all would be made right later. Some music had been arranged and there -would be an accompanist who would help him do himself full justice. - -"They'll enjoy him," she thought confidently. - -She had provided an immensity of flowers. There was an excess of light, -both from electric bulbs and from candles. And there was wine. - -"I think I can have just one kind, for once," she had said to herself. "I -know several houses where they have two,--Churchton or not,--and at least -one where they sometimes have three. If this simple town thinks I can put -grape-juice and Apollinaris before such people as these...." Besides, the -interesting Cope might interestingly refuse! - -As the many courses moved on, Cope smelt the flowers, which were too many, -and some of them too odoriferous; he blinked at the lights and breathed the -heavy thickening air; and he took--interestingly--a few sips of burgundy,-- -for he was now in Rome, and no longer a successful Protestant in some -lesser town of the empire. He had had a hard, close day of it, busy indoors -with themes and with general reading; and he recalled being glad that the -dinner had begun with reasonable promptitude,--for he had bothered with no -lunch beyond a glass of milk and a roll. To-night there had been -everything,--even to an unnecessary entree. He laid down a spoon on his -plate, glad that the frozen pudding--of whatever sort--was disposed of. Too -much of everything after too little. The people opposite were far away; -their murmuring had become a mumbling, and he wished it was all over. The -granddaughter at his elbow was less rewarding than ever, less justificatory -of the effortful small-talk which he had put forth with more and more -labor, and which he could scarcely put forth now at all. What was it he was -meaning to do later? To sing? Absurd! Impossible! His head ached; he felt -faint and dizzy.... - -"We will leave you gentlemen to your cigars," he heard a distant voice -saying; and he was conscious for an instant that his hostess was looking -down the table at him with a face of startled concern.... - -"Don't try to lead him out," a deep voice said. "Lay him on the floor." - -He felt himself lowered; some small rug was doubled and redoubled and -placed under his head; a large, firm hand was laid to his wrist; and -something--a napkin dipped in a glass of water and then folded?--was put to -his forehead. - -"His pulse will come up in a minute," he heard the same deep voice say. "If -he had taken a step he would have fainted altogether." - -"My poor, dear boy! Whatever in the world...!" Thus Medora Phillips. - -"Better not be moved for a little," was the next pronouncement. - -Cope lay there inert, but reasonably conscious of what was going on. His -eyes gave him no aid, but his ears were open. He heard the alarmed voice of -Medora Phillips directing the disconcerted maids, and the rustle and -flutter of the garments of other daughters of Eve, who had found him -interesting at last. They remarked appreciatively on his pallor; and one of -them said, next day, before forgetting him altogether, that, with his -handsome profile (she mentioned especially his nose and chin) and with his -colorlessness, he looked for a moment like an ancient cameo. - -He knew, now, that he was not going to faint, and that he was in better -case than he seemed. In the circumstances he found nothing more original to -say than: "I shall be all right in no time; just a touch of dizziness...." -He was glad his dress-coat could stand inspection, and hoped nobody would -notice that his shoes had been half-soled.... - -After a little while he was led away to a couch in the library. The deep- -voiced doctor was on one side of him and Medora Phillips on the other. Soon -he was left alone to recuperate in the dark,--alone, save for one or two -brief, fluttery appearances by Mrs. Phillips herself, who allowed the -coffee to be passed without any supervision on her own part. - -On the second of these visitations he found voice to say: - -"I'm so sorry for this--and so ashamed. I can't think how it could have -happened." - -He _was_ ashamed, of course. He had broken up an entertainment pretty -completely! Servants running about for him when they had enough to do for -the company at large! All the smooth conventions of dinner-giving violently -brushed the wrong way! He had fallen by the roadside, a young fellow who -had rather prided himself on his health and vigor. Pitiful! He was glad to -lie in the dark with his eyes shut tight, tight. - -If he had been fifteen or twenty years older he might have taken it all -rather more lightly. Basil Randolph, now----But Randolph had not been -invited, though his sister and her husband were of the company. Yet had it -been Randolph, he would have smiled a wan smile and tried for a mild joke, -conscious that he had made an original and picturesque contribution to the -affair,--had broken the bland banality of routined dinner-giving and had -provided woman with a mighty fine chance to "minister" and fuss: a thing -she rather enjoyed doing, especially if a hapless, helpless man had been -delivered into her hands as a subject. - -But there was no such consolation for poor abashed Cope. He had disclosed -himself, for some reason or other, a weakling; and he had weakened at a -conspicuously wrong time and in a conspicuously mistaken place. He had -hoped, over the cigars and coffee, to lay the foundation of an acquaintance -with the brother-in-law who was a trustee,--to set up an identity in this -influential person's mind as a possible help to the future of Arthur -Lemoyne. But the man now in the dining-room, or the drawing-room, or -wherever, might as well be in the next state. - -There came a slight patter of rain on the bay-window near his head. He -began to wonder how he was to get home. - -Meanwhile, in the drawing-room, among the ladies, Mrs. Phillips was -anxiously asking: "Was the room too warm? Could the wine have been too much -for him?" And out in the dining-room itself, one man said, "Heaven knows -just how they live;" and another, "Or what they eat, or don't eat;" and a -third, "Or just how hard these young beginners are driven." - -"Ought he to go out to-night, Doctor?" asked Mrs. Phillips in a whisper, -appearing in the dining-room door. - -"He might better stay if he can," replied the authority, who happened to be -at the nearer end of the table. - -"Of course he can," she returned. Of course there was a room for him. - -When the party finally reassembled in the drawing-room Cope had -disappeared. Mrs. Phillips could now enlarge on his attractiveness as a -singer, and could safely assure them--what she herself believed--that they -had lost a really charming experience. "If you could only have heard him -that Sunday!" she concluded. - -Cope had said, of course, "I can get home perfectly well," and, "It's a -shame for me to be putting you out this way," and so on and on,--the things -you yourself would have said in the circumstances; but he said them with no -particular spirit, and was glad, as he walked uncertainly up stairs, that -he had not far to go. - -Mrs. Phillips indeed "had a room for him." She had rooms a-plenty. There -was the chintz chamber on the third floor, where the Irish poet (who seemed -not to expect very much for himself) had been put; and there was the -larger, handsomer chamber on the second floor, where the Hindoo philosopher -(who had loomed up big and important through a vague Oriental atmosphere) -had been installed in state. It was a Louis Quinze room, and the bed had a -kind of silken canopy and a great deal too much in the way of bolsters and -lace coverings. It was thought that the Hindoo, judging from the report of -the maid next morning, had been moved by some ascetic impulse to sleep not -in the bed but on the floor beside it. This was the room now destined for -Cope; surely one flight of stairs was enough. But there must be no further -practice of asceticism,--least of all by a man who was really ill; so Mrs. -Phillips, snatching a moment from her guests, herself saw the maid remove -the lace pillow-shams and coverlet, and turn down the sheets, and set the -thermos-bottle on the stand beside the reading lamp.... - -"Don't get up a moment earlier than you feel like doing," she said, at the -door. "Breakfast----" - -"To-morrow is one of my busy days," replied Cope wanly. "Goldsmith, -Sheridan...." - -"Well, we have other wage-workers in the house, you know. At seven-thirty, -then, if you must." - -"Seven-thirty, if you please. Thank you." - -By the time Mrs. Phillips had returned to her guests, the first of the -limousines was standing before the house; its wet top shone under an -electric globe. Her own car, meanwhile, obdurately reposed in its garage. -Presently a second limousine joined the first, and a third the second; and -in another quarter of an hour her guests were well on their way to -dispersal. She bade them all goodnight in the best of good humor. - -"You've never before had quite such an evening as this, I'm sure!" she -said, with great gaiety. - -"Isn't it wonderful how she took it all!" said one lady to another, on the -back seat of her car. "Anything like that would have thrown me off -completely." - -The other lady laughed amusedly. She often found our Medora "great fun." - -Meanwhile, Cope, up stairs, was sinking deeper and deeper into his big, -wide, overupholstered bed. And as his body sank, his spirit sank with it. -He felt poor, unimportant, ill at ease. In especial, he felt greatly -subordinated; he wished that he might have capitulated to a man. Then the -mystery of handsome houses and of handsome furnishings came to harass him. -Such things were everywhere: how were they got, how were they kept? Should -he himself ever----? But no; nothing ahead for years, even in the most -favorable of circumstances, save an assistant professorship, with its -inconceivably modest emoluments.... - -And Medora Phillips, in the stir of getting her guests out of the house, -had her first vision of him as sinking off to sleep. Somehow or other his -fine, straight yellow hair retained its backward sweep with no impairment -by reason of turnings and tossings; his clear profile continued to keep -itself disengaged from any depression in the pillows; his slender hands -were laid in quiet symmetry over the wide edge of the down-turned coverlet. -A decorous, unperturbed young old-master ... Van Eyck ... Carpaccio.... - -Cope came down to breakfast a little pale, a little shamefaced; but he felt -pretty well revived and he made up in excess of speech and action what he -essentially lacked in spirit. Mrs. Phillips descended as early as the three -girls,--earlier, in fact, than Hortense, who entered informally through the -butler's pantry and apparently in full possession of last night's facts. -Carolyn inquired civilly after his condition; Amy Leffingwell, with her -blue eyes intent upon him, expressed concern and sympathy; Hortense, with -her lips closely shut in a satirical smile, said nothing at all: a possible -exhibition of self-control which gave her aunt some measure of solicitude. -It was not always well when she talked, and it was not always well when she -kept silent. Mrs. Phillips pressed the toast upon him and recommended the -grape-fruit. He took both with satisfaction, and a second cup of coffee. -With that he felt he could easily walk to his class-room; and the walk -itself, in the fresh morning air, would brace him further for his hours of -routine with his students. - -"What a regular nuisance I've made of myself!" he said, on leaving the -house. - -"Oh, haven't you, just!" exclaimed Mrs. Phillips joyously. - -"Your name as an entertainer will be all over town! I'm sure you gave some -of those poky people a real touch of novelty!" - -Amy Leffingwell was in the front hall at the same time, with her music- -roll. They were going the same way, to substantially the same place, to -meet about the same hour in the day's schedule. They went along the street -together. - -The morning air was brisk and cool after last night's shower. Like the -trees under which they passed, it gave the first decided intimation of -autumn. They set off at a lively pace toward the college towers and the -lake. - -Cope was soon sailing along with his head high, his trim square shoulders -much in action, and his feet throwing themselves spiritedly here and there. -Amy, who was not very tall, kept up as well as she could. - -"This isn't too fast for you...?" she asked presently. - -"No; but it may be a little too fast for you. Excuse me; I've never learned -to keep pace with a woman. But as for myself, I never felt better in my -life. Every yard toward the good old lake"--the wind was coming down from -the north in a great sweep--"makes me feel finer." - -He slowed up appreciably. - -"Oh, not for me!" she said in deprecation. "I like a brisk morning walk as -well as anybody. Did you sing at all?" she asked. - -"Not a note. They put the soft pedal on me. They 'muted' me," he amended, -in deference to her own branch of the profession. - -"We came in by the side door about half past nine. It was a dull meeting. I -listened for you. Somebody was playing." - -Cope gave a sly smile. - -"It must have been the poor disappointed woman who was to have accompanied -me. She had had a list of three or four of my things--to run them over in -her own album, I suppose. Think just how disappointed she must have been to -find that she had the whole field to herself!" - -"Oh, musicians--even we poor, despised professionals--are not all like -that. If it had been arranged for me to accompany you with an obbligato, I -shouldn't have been pleased if opportunity had failed me." - -"Your contribution would have been more important than hers. And your -substitution for my failure would have given added interest." - -The talk, having reached the zone of arid compliment, tended to languish. -They had now reached Learning's side of the trolley-tracks, and rills in -the great morning flood of the scholastic life were beginning to gather -about them and to unite in a rolling stream which flowed toward the campus. - - -Two or three streets on, the pair separated, she to her work, he to his. -For him the walk had been a nothing in particular--he would a little have -preferred taking it alone. For her it had been--despite the low level of -expressiveness reached on either side--a privilege which had been curtailed -much too soon. - -Meanwhile, back in the house, Hortense was detailing the events of the -previous evening to Joe Foster; the general access of activity on the -morning after had made it desirable that she help with his breakfast. - -She went at it with a will. - -"Why," she said, as Foster sat at his coffee, boiled egg and toast, "he -keeled over like a baby." - -"Hum!" said Foster darkly. It was as if a shaping ideal had dissipated. Or -as if a trace of weakness in one seemingly so young and strong was not -altogether unacceptable as a source of consolation. - -However, Cope, at half past four that afternoon, was on the faculty tennis- -courts, with a racquet in his hand. But one set was enough. "I seem to be a -day ahead of my schedule," he said, pulling out and strolling along -homeward. - - - - -14 - -_COPE MAKES AN EVASION_ - - -Two or three days later, Randolph put a book of essays in his pocket and -went round to spend an hour with Joseph Foster. Foster sat in his wheeled -chair in his own room. He was knitting. The past year or two had brought -knitting-needles into countenance for men, and he saw no reason why he -should not put a few hanks of yarn into shape useful for himself. He might -not have full command of his limbs nor of his eyes, but he did have full -command of his fingers. He had begun to knit socks for his own use; and -even a muffler, in the hope that on some occasion, during the coming -months, he might get outside. - -As Randolph entered, Foster looked up from under his green shade with an -expression of perplexity. "Have I dropped a stitch here or not?" he asked. -"I wish you knew something about knitting; I don't like to call Medora or -one of the girls away up here to straighten me out. Look; what do you -think?" - -"They count all right," said Randolph; and he sat down on the couch -opposite. "I've brought a book." - -"I hope it's poetry!" said Foster, with a fierce promptness. "I hope it's -about Adonis, or Thammuz, whose mishap 'in Lebanon' set all the Syrian -females a-going. I could stand a lot more of that,--or perhaps I couldn't!" - - -"Why, Joe, what's gone wrong?" - -"I suppose you know that your young friend got up a great to-do for us the -other evening?" - -"Yes; I've heard something about it." He looked at Foster's drawn face, and -heard with surprise the rasping note in his voice. "Was it as bad as that?" - - -Foster drew his shade down farther over his eyes and clashed his needles -together. - -"I remember how, when I was in Florence, we went out to a religious -festival one evening at some small hill-town near by. This was twenty years -ago, when I _could_ travel. There was a kind of grotto in the church, -under the high altar; and in the grotto was a full-sized figure of a dead -man, carved and painted--and covered with wounds; and round that figure -half the women and girls of the town were collected, stroking, kissing ... -Adonis all over again!" - -"Oh, come, Joe; don't get morbid." - -Foster lifted one shoulder. - -"Well, the young fellow began by roaring through the house like a bull of -Bashan, and he ended by toppling over like a little wobbly calf." - -He spoke like a man who had imagined a full measure of physical powers and -had envied them ... had been exasperated by the exuberant presentation of -them... had felt a series of contradictory emotions when they had seemed to -fail.... - -"It was only a moment of dizziness," said Randolph. "I imagine he was -fairly himself next day." - -"Well, I've heard too much about it. Medora came up here and----" - -"Need we go into that?" - -"There were plenty more to help," Foster went on doggedly. "One dear -creature, who was old enough to be more cautious, spilt water down the -whole front of her dress----" - -"I expect," said Randolph, "that the poor chap has been overworked; or -careless about his meals; or worried in his classes--for he may not be -fully settled in his new place; or some emotional strain may have set -itself up----" - -"I vote for the emotional strain," said Foster bluntly. - -"A guess in the dark," commented Randolph, and paused. He himself knew -little enough of Cope as a complex. He had met him but a few times, and -could not associate him with his unknown background. He knew next to -nothing of Cope's family, his connections, his intimates, his early -associations and experiences. Nor had he greatly bestirred himself to -learn. He had done little more than go to a library in the city and turn -over the leaves of the Freeford directory. This publication, like most of -those dealing with the smaller cities, gave separately the names of all the -members of a family; and repetitions of the same address helped toward the -arrangement of these individuals (disposed alphabetically) into family -groups. Freeford had no great number of Copes, and several of them lived at -1636 Cedar Street. "Elm, Pine, Locust, Cedar," had thought Randolph; "the -regular set." And, "One of the good streets," he surmised, "but rather far -out. Cedar!" he repeated, and thought of Lebanon and the Miltonic Adonis. -Of these various Copes, "Cope, David L., bookpr," might be the father,-- -unless "Cope, Leverett C., mgr" were the right man. If the former, he was -employed by the Martin & Graves Furniture Company, and the Martins were -probably important people who lived far out--and handsomely, one might -guess--on a Prospect Avenue.... Then there was "Cope, Miss Rosalys M., -schooltchr," same address as "David": she was likely his daughter. "H'm!" -Randolph had thought, "these pickings are scanty,--enough anatomical -reconstruction for to-day...." And now he was thinking, as he sat opposite -Foster, "If I had only picked up another bone or two, I might really have -put together the domestic organism. Yet why should I trouble? It would all -be plain, humdrum prose, no doubt. Glamour doesn't spread indefinitely. And -then--men's brothers...." - -"Well," asked Foster sharply, "are you mooning? Medora sat in the same -place yesterday, and she talked for awhile too and then fell into a -moonstruck silence. What's it all about?" - -Randolph came out of his reverie. "Oh, I was just hoping the poor boy was -back on his pins all right again." - -Then he dropped back into thought. He was devising an outing designed to -restore Cope to condition. If Cope could arrange for a free Saturday, they -might contrive a week-end from Friday afternoon to Monday morning. It was -too late for the north and too late for the opposite Michigan shore; but -there was "down state" itself, where the days grew warmer and the autumn -younger the farther south one went. There was a trip down a certain -historic river,--historic, as our rivers went, and admirably scenic always. -He recalled an exceptional hotel on one of its best reaches; one overrun in -midsummer, but doubtless quiet at this season. It stood in the midst of -some striking cliffs and gorges; and possibly one of the little river- -steamers was in commission, or could be induced to run.... - -Foster dropped his muffler pettishly. "Read,--if you won't talk!" - -"I can talk all right," returned Randolph. "In fact, I have a bit of news -for you." - -"What is it?" - -"I'm going to move." - -Foster peered out from under his shade. - -"Move? What for? I thought you were all right where you are. - -"All right enough; except that I want more room--and a house of my own." - -"Have you found one?" - -"I've about decided on an apartment. And I expect to move into it early -next month." - -"Top floor, of course?" - -"No; first floor, not six feet above the street level." - -"Good. If they'll lend me a hand here, to get down and out, I'll come and -see you, now and then." - -"Do so." - -"That will give me a chance to wear this muffler, after all." - -"So it will." - -"Well, be a little more cordial. You expect to see your friends, don't -you?" - -"Of course. That's what it's for. Have I got to exert myself," he added, -"to be cordial with _you_?" - -"What's the neighborhood?" - -"Oh, this one, substantially. The next street from where I am now." - -"Housekeeper?" - -"I think I'll have a Jap alone, at first." - -"Dinners?" - -"A few small try-outs, perhaps." - -"Mixed parties?" - -"Not at the beginning, anyhow." - -"Oh; bachelor's hall." - -"About that." - -Foster readjusted his shade, and drove his needles into his ball of yarn. - -"Complete new outfit?" - -"Well, I have some things in storage." - -"How about the people you're with now?" - -"Their lease is up in the spring. They may go on; they may not. Fall's the -time to change." - -Foster drew out his needles again and fell to work. - -"You ought to have seen Hortense the next morning. She put my tray on the -table, and then went down in a heap on the floor--or it sounded like that. -She was fainting away at dinner, she said." - -"She found it amusing?" - -"I don't know _how_ she found it," returned Foster shortly. "If ever -_I_ do anything like that at your house, run me home." - -"Not if it's raining. I shall be able to tuck you away somewhere." - -"Don't. I never asked to be a centre of interest." - -"Well," returned Randolph merely, and fell silent. - -Foster resumed work with some excess of vigor, and presently got into a -snarl. "Dammit!" he exclaimed, "have I dropped another?" - -Randolph leaned over to examine the work. "Something's wrong." - -"Well, let it go. Enough for now. Read." - -There followed a half hour of historical essay, during which Foster a few -times surreptitiously fingered his needles and yarn. - -"Shall you have a reading-circle at your new diggings?" he asked after a -while. - -"If two can be said to make a circle,--and if you will really come." - -"I'm coming. But I never understood that only two points could establish a -circle. Three, anyway." - -"Circle!" exclaimed Randolph. "Don't worry the word to death." - -He went away presently, and as he walked his thoughts returned to Indian -Rock. The excursion seemed a valid undertaking at an advantageous time; and -he could easily spare a couple of days from the formation of his new -establishment. He called on Cope that evening. Cope felt sure he could -clear things for Saturday, and expressed pleasure at the general prospect. -He happened to be writing to Lemoyne that evening and passed along his -pleasure at the prospect to his friend. A few jaunts, outings or interludes -of that kind, together with his week at his home in Freeford, over -Christmas, would agreeably help fill in the time before Arthur's own -arrival in January. - -Randolph received Cope's response with gratification; it was pleasant to -feel oneself acceptable to a younger man. In the intervals between his -early looking at rugs and napery he collected timetables and folders, made -inquiries, and had some correspondence with the manager of the admirable -hotel. He had a fondness for well-kept hostelries just before or just after -the active season. It was a pleasure to breakfast or dine in some far -corner of a large and almost empty dining-room. It would be a pleasure to -stroll through those gorges, which would be reasonably certain to be free -from litter, and to perch on the crags, which would be reasonably certain -to be free from picnic parties. It would be agreeable also to sleep in a -chamber far from town noises and grimes, with few honks from late -excursionists and but little early morning clatter from a diminished staff. -And the river boats were still running on Sunday. - -"It will brace him for the rest of his fall term," thought Randolph, "and -me for my confounded shopping. And during some one of our boat-rides or -rambles, I shall tell him of my plans for the winter." - -The departure, it was agreed upon, should take place late on Friday -afternoon. On Friday, at half past eleven, Randolph at his office in the -city, received a long-distance call from Churchton. Cope announced, with a -breathless particularity not altogether disassociated from self-conscious -gaucherie, that he should be unable to go. Some unexpected work had been -suddenly thrown upon him.... He rather thought that one or two of his -family might be coming to town for over Sunday.... - -The telephone, as a conveyor of unwelcome message, strikes a medium between -the letter by mail and the face-to-face interview. If it does not quite -give chance for the studied guardedness and calculated plausibility of the -one, it at least obviates some of the risk involved in personal presence -and in the introduction of contradictory evidence often contributed by -manner and by facial expression. And a long distance interview must be -brief,--at least there can be no surprise, no indignation, if it is made -so. - -"Very well," said Randolph, in reply to Cope's hurried and indistinct -words. "I'm sorry," he added, and the brief talk was over. "You are feeling -all right, I hope," he would have added, as the result of an afterthought; -but the connection was broken. - -Randolph left the instrument. He felt dashed, a good deal disappointed, and -a little hurt. He took two or three folders from a pigeon-hole and dropped -them into a waste-basket. Well, the boy doubtless had his reasons. But a -single good one, frankly put forth, would have been better than duplicate -or multiple reasons. He hoped that, on Sunday, a cold drizzle rather than a -flood of sunlight might fall upon the autumn foliage of Indian Rock. And he -would turn to-morrow to good account by looking, for an hour or two, at -china. - -Sunday afternoon was gorgeously bright and autumnal in Churchton, whatever -it may have been along the middle reaches of the Illinois river; and at -about four o'clock Randolph found himself in front of Medora Phillips' -house. Medora and her young ladies were out strolling, as was inevitable on -such a day; but in her library he found Foster lying on a couch--the same -piece of furniture which, at a critical juncture, had comforted Cope. - -"Peter brought me down," said the cripple. "I thought I'd rather look at -the backs of books than at the fronts of all those tedious pictures. -Besides, I'm beginning to practice for my call at your new quarters." Then, -with a sudden afterthought: "Why, I understood you were going somewhere out -of town. What prevented?" - -"Well, I changed my plans. I needed a little more time for my house- -furnishing. I was looking yesterday at some table-ware for your use; am -wondering, in fact, if Mrs. Phillips couldn't arrange to give me the -benefit of her taste to-morrow or Tuesday...." - -"She likes to shop," replied Foster, "and taste is her strong suit. I'll -speak to her,--she's gone off to some meeting or other. Isn't this just the -afternoon to be spending indoors?" he commented brusquely. "What a day it -would be for the country," he added, sending his ineffectual glance in the -direction of Randolph's face. - -"We Churchtonians must take what we can get," Randolph replied, with an -attempt at indifference. "Our _rus in urbs_ isn't everything, but -there are times when it must be made to serve." - -Foster said nothing. Silent conjecture, seemingly, was offered him as his -part. - - - - -15 - -_COPE ENTERTAINS SEVERAL LADIES_ - - -Cope's excuse, involving the expected visit of a relative, may not have -been altogether sincere, but it received, within a week or so, the -substantial backing of actuality: a relative came. She was an aunt,--his -father's sister,--and she came at the suggestion of a concerned landlady. -This person, made anxious by a languid young man who had begged off from -his classes and who was likely to need more attention than her scanty -margin of leisure could grant, had even suggested a hospital while yet it -was easy for him to reach one. Though Cope meant to leave her soon, it did -not suit him to leave her quite as soon as this; and so Aunt Harriet came -in from Freeford to look the situation over and to lend a hand if need be. -She spent two nights in a vacant chamber at transient rates; was grudgingly -allowed to prepare his "slops," as he called them, in the kitchen; and had -time to satisfy herself that, after all, nothing very serious was the -matter. - -Randolph did not meet this relative, but he heard about her; and her -coming, as a sort of family representative, helped him still further in his -picture of the _res angusta_ of a small-town household: a father held -closely to office or warehouse--his own or some one else's; a sister -confined to her school-room; a mother who found the demands of the domestic -routine too exacting even to allow a three-hour trip to town; and a -brother--Randolph added this figure quite gratuitously out of an active -imagination and a determined desire not to put any of the circle to the -test of a personal encounter--and a brother who was perhaps off somewhere -"on the road." - -The one who met Aunt Harriet was Medora Phillips, and the meeting was -brief. Medora had heard from Amy Leffingwell of Cope's absence from his -class-room. She herself became concerned; she felt more or less responsible -and possibly a bit conscience-stricken. "Next time," she said, "I shall try -to have the ventilation right; and I think that, after this, I shall keep -to birch beer." - -Medora called up Amy at the music-school, one afternoon, at about four. She -assumed that the day's work was over, told Amy she was "going around" to -see Bertram Cope, and asked her to go with her. "You may act as my -chaperon," she said; "for who knows where or how I shall find him?" - -As they neared the house a colored man came out, carrying a small trunk to -a mud-bespattered surrey. "What! is he going?" said Medora, with a start. -"Well, anyway, we're in time to say good-bye." Then, "What's the matter, -Jasper?" she asked, having now recognized the driver and his conveyance. - -"Got a lady who's gettin' away on the four forty-three." - -"Oh!" said Medora, with a gasp of reassurance. - -Cope's aunt said good-bye to him up stairs and was now putting on her -gloves in the lower hall, in the company of the landlady. Medora appraised -the visitor as a semi-rustic person--one of some substance and standing in -her own community; marriage, perhaps, had provided her with means and -leisure. She had been willing to subordinate herself to a university town -apprehended as a social organism, and she now seemed inclined to accept -with docility any observations made by a confident urbanite with a fair -degree of verve. - -"These young men," said Medora dashingly, "are too careless and proud." - -"Proud?" asked the other. She felt clearly enough that her nephew had been -careless; but pride is not often acknowledged among the members of an -ordinary domestic circle. - -"They're all mind," Medora went on, with no lapse of momentum. She knew she -must work in brief, broad effects: the surrey was waiting and the train -would not delay. "They sometimes forget that their intellectual efforts -must rest, after all, on a good sensible physical basis. They mustn't scorn -the body." - -The departing visitor gave a quick little sigh of relief. The views of this -fashionable and forthputting woman were in accord with her own, after all. - -"Well, I've told Bert," she said, buttoning her second glove, "that he had -better take all his meals in one place and at regular hours. I've told him -his health is of just as much account as his students and their studies." -She seemed gratified that, on an important point, she had reached unanimity -with an influential person who was to remain behind; and she got away -without too long delaying the muddy surrey and the ungroomed sorrel. - -Medora Phillips looked after her with a grimace. "Think of calling him -'Bert'!" - -Cope, when advised, came down in a sort of bathrobe which he made do duty -as a dressing-gown. He took the stairs in a rapid run, produced an emphatic -smile for the parlor threshold, and put a good measure of energy into his -handshakes. "Mighty good of you to call," he said to Mrs. Phillips. "Mighty -good of you to call," he said to Amy Leffingwell. - -Well, he was on his feet, then. No chance to feel anxiously the brow of a -poor boy in bed, or to ask if the window was right or if he wouldn't like a -sip of water. Life's little disappointments...! - -To Amy Leffingwell he seemed pale, and she felt him as glad to sit down at -once in the third and last chair the little room offered. She noticed, too, -an inkstain on his right forefinger and judged that the daily grind of -theme-correction was going on in spite of everything. - -"Did you meet my aunt before she got away?" he asked. - -"We did," said Medora, "and we are going to add our advice to hers." - -"That's very nice of you," he rejoined, flattered. "But within a couple of -months," he went on, with a lowered voice and an eye on the parlor door, "I -shall be living in a different place and in quite a different way. Until -then...." He shrugged. His shrug was meant to include the scanty, -unpretending furnishings of the room, and also the rough casual fare -provided by many houses of entertainment out of present sight. - -"I almost feel like taking you in myself," declared Medora boldly. - -"That's still nicer of you," he said very promptly and with a reinforcement -of his smile. "But I'm on the up-grade, and pretty soon everything will -come out as smooth as silk. I shall have ten days at home, for the -holidays; then, after that, the new dispensation." - -Amy Leffingwell tempered her look of general commiseration with a slight -lapse into relief. There was no compelling reason why she should have -commiserated; perhaps it all came from a desire to indulge in an -abandonment to gentleness and pity. - -"Do you know," said Cope, with a sort of embarrassed laugh, "I feel as if I -were letting myself become the focus of interest. Oughtn't I to do -something to make the talk less personal?" - -He glanced about the meagre little room. It gave no cue. - -"I'm sure Amy and I are satisfied with the present subject," returned -Medora. - -But Cope rose, and gathered his bathrobe--or dressing-gown--about him. -"Wait a moment. I have some photographs I can show you--several of them -came only yesterday. I'll bring them down." - -As soon as he had disappeared into the hall, Mrs. Phillips gave a slight -smile and said quickly: - -"For heaven's sake, Amy, don't look so concerned, and mournful, and -sympathetic! Anybody might think that, instead of your being my chaperon, I -was yours!" - -"He doesn't look at all well," said Amy defensively. - -"He might look better; but we can't pity a young man too openly. Pity is -akin to embarrassment, for the pitied." - -Cope came down stairs the second time at a lesser pace. He carried a sheaf -of photographs. Some were large and were regularly mounted; others were but -the informal products of snap-shottery. - -He drew up his chair nearer to theirs and began to spread his pictures over -the gray and brown pattern on his lap. - -"You know I was teaching, last year, at Winnebago," he said. "Here are some -pictures of the place. Science Hall," he began, passing them. "Those -fellows on the front steps must be a graduating class. - -"The Cathedral," he continued. "And I think that, somewhere or other, I -have a group-picture of the choir. - -"Sisterhood house," he went on. "Two or three of them standing out in -front." - -"Sisterhood?" asked Mrs. Phillips, with interest. "What do they do?" - -Cope paused. "What do they do, indeed? Well, for one thing, they decorate -the altar--Easter, Harvest home, and so on." - -"That isn't much. That doesn't take a house." - -"Well, I suppose they visit, and teach. Sort of neighborhood centre. -Headquarters. Most of them, I believe, live at home." - -"Dear me! Is Winnebago large enough to require settlement-work?" - -"Don't drive me so! I suppose they want to tone in with the cathedral as a -special institution. 'Atmosphere,' you know. Some tracts of our great land -are rather drab and vacant, remember. Color, stir,--and distinction, you -understand." - -"Is Winnebago ritualistic?" - -"Not very. While I was there a young 'priest,' an offshoot from the -cathedral, started up a new parish in one of the industrial outskirts. He -was quite earnest and eloquent and put up a fine service; but nobody except -his own father and mother went to hear him preach." - -Mrs. Phillips returned to the Sisterhood house. - -"Are they nice girls?" she asked acutely. - -"Oh, I guess so. I met two or three of them. Nice girls, yes; just trying -to be a little different. Here's the boat-house, and some of the fellows in -their rowing-clothes. Some sail-boats too." - -"Can you sail?" asked Amy. She had the cathedral-choir in one hand and now -took the boat-club in the other. She studied both pictures intently, for -both were small and crowded. - -"Why, I have all the theory and some of the practice. Those small inland -lakes are tricky, though." - -"Probably no worse than ours," said Mrs. Phillips. "Do help poor Amy," she -went on. "_Are_ you in either of these groups?" - -"No. Didn't I tell you I was trying to get away from the personal? I'm not -in any of these pictures." Amy unconsciously let both half-drop, as if they -held no particular interest, after all. And the hand into which the next -photograph was put gave it but lukewarm welcome. - -Mixed in with these general subjects were several of a more personal -nature: groups of twos and threes, and a number of single figures. One face -and figure, as Mrs. Phillips presently came to notice, occurred again and -again, in various attitudes and costumes. It was a young man of Cope's own -age--or perhaps two or three years older. He was of Cope's own height, but -slightly heavier, with a possible tendency to plumpness. The best of the -photographs made him dark, with black, wavy hair; and in some cases (where -sunlight did not distort his expression) he indulged a determined sort of -smile. He figured once, all by himself, in choir vestments; again, all by -himself, in rowing toggery; a third time, still by himself, in a costume -whose vague inaccuracy suggested a character in amateur theatricals. - -"Who is this?" inquired Mrs. Phillips, with the last of these in hand. - -Cope was prompt, but vague. - -"Oh, that's a chum of mine, up there. He belongs to a dramatic club. They -give 'The School for Scandal' and 'Caste,' and--well, more modern things. -They have to wear all sorts of togs." - -"And here he is again? And here? And here?"--shuffling still another -picture into view. - -"Yes." - -"He's fond of costume, isn't he?" - -"Very versatile," returned Cope, lightly and briefly. "Clothes to -correspond." - -Mrs. Phillips began to peer again at the picture of the choir-group. "Isn't -he here too?" - -"Yes. With the first tenors. There you have him,--third from the left, just -behind that row of little devils in surplices." - -"You and he sing together?" - -"Sometimes--when we _are_ together." - -"'Larboard Watch' and 'Suona la Tromba' and----?" - -"Oh, heavens!" said Cope. He threw up his head quite spiritedly. There was -now more color in his cheeks, more sparkle in his eyes, more vibration in -his voice. Amy looked at him with a vanishing pity and a growing -admiration. - -"Let us fellows be of our own day and generation," he added. - -"Willingly," said Mrs. Phillips. "But my husband was fond of 'Larboard -Watch'; I heard him sing in it before we were married. Shall I ever hear -you sing together?" she asked. - -"Possibly. He is coming down here early in January. To look after me." - -"After you?" Mrs. Phillips reviewed the photographs once more. "I imagine -you may sometimes have to look after him." - -Cope sobered a little. "Sometimes," he acknowledged. "We shall look after -each other," he amended. "We are going to live together." - -"Oh, then, he is coming to _stay_? You've been a long time in reaching -the point. And why do you say 'possibly' when I ask about your singing -together? Aren't you coming to my house 'together'?" - -"I withdraw the 'possibly.' Probably." - -"And now withdraw the 'probably.' Make it 'certainly.'" - -"Certainly." - -"'Certainly,'--of course." - -"That's better," murmured her companion. - -Then Mrs. Phillips must know the new-comer's name, and must have an outline -of the proposed plan. And Amy Leffingwell began to look with renewed -interest on the counterfeit form and features of the young man who enjoyed -Bertram Cope's friendly regard. And so the moments of "entertainment"-- -Cope's in turn--went on. - -"I'm glad he really appears to like _somebody_," declared Mrs. -Phillips, on the way home; "it makes him seem quite human." Inwardly, she -was resolving to have both the young men to dine at the earliest possible -date. It was not always practicable to invite a single young man as often -as you wished. Having two to ask simplified the problem considerably. - -Cope, flushed and now rather tired, walked up stairs with his photographs, -took a perfunctory sip from a medicine-glass, looked at the inkstain on his -finger, and sat down at his table. Two or three sheets of a letter were -lying on it, and he re-read a paragraph or so before dipping his pen. - -"You were rather exacting about that week-end excursion. Mr. R. was all -right, and a few days of new air and new scenes would have done me a lot of -good. Still, I acknowledge your first claim. But remember that I gave up -Indian Rock for you, even if you didn't give up Green Bay for me. I hope -the fellow who took you hasn't got anything further to propose. If he has, -I ask for a tip in turn. - -"Naturally it wasn't the easiest thing in the world to explain to him, and -I haven't seen him since. But I can truly say that a relative _did_ -come, and that she was needed--or thought she was." - -He picked up his pen for a fresh paragraph. - -"The new photos--added to those I had--have come in quite nicely. They have -just helped me entertain a couple of callers. Women have abounded in these -parts to-day: Mrs. Peck, scurrying about more than usual; an aunt from -home, getting away with her baggage--more than she needed to bring; and -then the two who have just gone. It all makes me feel like wanting to take -part in a track-meet or a ball-game--though, as I am now, I might not last -two minutes at either. The lady who called was Mrs. Phillips. I thought she -might as well know that you were coming. Of course you are already invited, -good and plenty, to her house. Look in old music-books and see if you can't -find 'Larboard Watch.' If it turns out you can get away _before_ the -holidays, come down and go out with me to Freeford for Christmas. I have -had some rather glum hours and miss you more than ever. I have been within -arm's length of one of the University trustees (who can probably place me -_now_!)--but I don't know just how much that can be counted upon for, -if for anything. Show yourself,--that will help. - -"B." - - - - -16 - -_COPE GOES A-SAILING_ - - -Cope was himself in a few days. He set aside his aunt's counsel in regard -to a better regimen, as well as her more specific hints, made in view of -the near approach of rough weather, that he provide himself with rubbers -and an umbrella, even if he would not hear of a rain-coat. "Am I made of -money?" he asked. He gave a like treatment to some intimations contributed -by Medora Phillips during her call: he met them with the smiling, polite, -half-weary patience which a man sometimes employs to inform a woman that -she doesn't quite know what she is talking about. He presently in as active -circulation, on the campus and elsewhere, as ever. The few who looked after -him at all came to the view that he possessed more mettle than stamina. He -had no special fondness for athletics; he was doing little to keep--still -less to increase--a young man's natural endowment of strength and vigor. -Occasional tennis on the faculty courts, and not much else. - -So the vast gymnasium went for little with him, and the wide football field -for less, and the great lake, close by, for nothing. This last, however, -counted for little more with any one else. Those who knew the lake best -were best content to leave it alone. As a source of pleasure it had too -many perils: "treacherous" was the common word. Its treachery was reserved, -of course, for the smiling period of summer; especially did the great -monster lie in wait on summer's Sunday afternoons. Then the sun would shine -on its vast placid bosom and the breeze play gently, tempting the swimmer -toward its borders and the light pleasure craft toward its depths. And -then, in mid-afternoon, a sudden disastrous change; a quick gale from the -north, with a wide whipping-up of white caps; and the morrow's newspapers -told of bathers drowned in the undertow, of frail canoes dashed to pieces -against piers and breakwaters, and of gay, beflagged steam-launches swamped -by the newly-risen sea miles from shore: the toll of fickle, superheated -August. But in the late autumn the immense, savage creature was more -frankly itself: rude, blustery, tyrannical,--no more a smiling, cruel -hypocrite. It warned you, often and openly, if warning you would take. - -It was on the last Sunday afternoon in October that Cope and Amy -Leffingwell were strolling along its edge. They had met casually, in front -of the chapel, after a lecture--or a service--by an eminent ethical teacher -from abroad,--a bird of passage who must pipe on this Sunday afternoon if -he were to pipe at all. Cope, who had lain abed late, made this address a -substitute for the forenoon service he had missed. And Amy Leffingwell had -gone out somewhat for the sake, perhaps, of walking by the house where Cope -lived. - -They passed the Science building, with its tower crowned by an ornamental -open-work iron pyramid for wireless, and the segregated group of -theological dormitories through whose windows earnest ringing young voices -were sometimes heard at the practice of sermon-delivery, and the men's club -where the billiard tables were doubtless decorously covered with their -customary Sunday sheets of black oilcloth, and took intuitively the path -which led along the edge of the bluff. Beyond them, further bluffs and a -few low headlands; here a lighthouse, there a water-tower; elsewhere (and -not so far) the balconied roof of the life-saving station, where the boats, -light and heavy, were manned by muscular students: their vigilance and -activity, interspersed with long periods of leisure or of absence, helped -them to "pay their way." Out toward the horizon a passenger steamer en -route to some port farther north, or a long ore-freighter, singularly -uneventful between bow and far-distant afterhouse, on its way down from the -iron-ranges of Superior. - -The path was narrow, but Cope, unexpectedly to himself, had no complaint to -make. Really, the girl did better here, somehow, than lots of other girls -would have done on a wide sidewalk. Most of them walked too close to you, -or too far from you, altering the interval suddenly and arbitrarily, and -tending to bump against you when you didn't expect it and didn't want it. -They were uncertain at crossings; if it was necessary for them to take your -arm, as it sometimes became, in the evening, on a crowded street, why, they -were too gingerly or else pressed too close; and if it happened to rain, -you sometimes had to take a cab, trafficking with a driver whose tariff and -whose disposition you did not know: in fact, a string of minor -embarrassments and expenses.... - -But the way, this afternoon, was clear and easy; and there were no -annoyances save from other walkers along the same path. The sun shone -brightly at intervals. A fresh breeze swept the wide expanse streaked with -purple and green and turned an occasional broken wave-crest toward the -western light. Some large cumuli were abroad--white, or less white, or even -darkling,--the first windy sky of autumn. - -Cope and Amy passed the life-saving station, where a few people sat about -idly and where one or two visitors pressed noses against glass panes to -view the boats within; and they reached presently a sort of little public -park which lay along the water. Here a small pier ran out past the -shallows, and in front of a shack close by it a man sat resignedly near a -group of beached and upturned row-boats. One or two others were still in -the water, as was a small sloop. The fellow sat there without expectations: -the season was about over; the day was none too promising for such as knew. -His attitude expressed, in fact, the accumulated disappointment and -resignation of many months. Perhaps he was a new-comer from the interior-- -some region of ponds and rivers--and had kept through an uneventful summer -the notion that so big a spread of water would surely be put to use. The -sail of the sloop, half-lowered, flapped in the breeze, and little else -stirred. - -Our young people overlooked both man and boat. - -"It's the same lake," said Amy Leffingwell, rather dreamily, after a common -silence of several minutes. - -"The same," returned Cope promptly. "It's just what it was a year ago, a -century ago; and a millennium ago, I suppose,--if there was anyone here to -notice." - -She turned on him a rueful, half-protesting smile. "I wasn't thinking of a -century ago. I was thinking of a month ago." - -"A month ago?" - -"Yes; when we were walking along the dunes." - -"Oh, I see. Why, yes, it is the same old lake, though it seems hard to -realize it. Foreground makes so much difference; and so does--well, -population. I mean the human element, or the absence of it." - -Amy pondered. - -"The one drawback, there, was that we couldn't go out on the water." - -"Go out? I should say not. No pier for miles, and the water so shallow that -hardly more than a canoe could land. Still, those fishermen out there -manage it. But plain summerites, especially if not dressed for it, would -have an unpleasant time imitating them." - -Amy cast her eye about. Here was a shore, a pier, a boat, a man to let -it.... - -"Would you like to go out?" asked the man himself perfunctorily, as from -the depths of a settled despair. He pointed a thumb over his shoulder -toward the sloop. - -The two young people looked at each other. Neither looked at the sky. -"Well, I don't know," replied Cope slowly. The sloop was on a pretty small -scale; still, it was more to manage than a cat-boat. - -"You have the theory, you know," said Amy demurely, "and some practice." - -Cope looked at her in doubt. "Can you swim?" he asked. - -"Yes," she returned. "I have some practice, if not much theory." - -"Could you handle a jib?" - -"Under direction." - -"Well, then, if you really wish ..." - -The misanthrope, with a twisted smile, helped them get away. The mainsail -took a steady set; but the jib, from the first, possessed an active life of -its own. - -"Not that rope," cried Cope; "the other." - -"Very well," returned Amy, scrambling across the cockpit. And so it went. - -In six or eight minutes their small catastrophe overtook them. There came a -sudden flaw from out one of the racing gray cumuli, and a faint cry or two -from the distant shore. Theory had not put itself into practice as quickly -as the emergency required,--all the less so in that it had to work through -a crew encumbered with a longish skirt and a close jacket. The sloop keeled -over; Cope was instantly entangled with the mainsail and some miscellaneous -cordage; and Amy, with the water soaking her closely-fitting garments, -found herself clutching the cockpit's edge. - -She saw Cope's predicament and let go her hold to set him free. He helped -shake himself loose with a loud forced laugh and a toss of the head to get -his long hair out of his eyes. "We'll leave the wreck," he spluttered, "and -make for the shore." The shore, fortunately, was scarcely more than a -hundred yards away,--yet never had the great twin towers of the library -seemed so distant or the wireless cage on Science hall so futile. - -They swam, easily, side by side, he supporting her in her cramped clothes -at the start, and she, a bit concerned, somewhat supporting him toward the -end. Meanwhile, there was some stir at the life-saving station, a quarter -of a mile down the shore. - -The last hundred feet meant mere wading, though there was some variability -among the sand ridges of the bottom; but the water, at its deepest, never -reached their shoulders. Their small accident now began to take on the -character of a ceremonial--an immersion incident to some religious rite or -observance; and the little Sunday crowd collecting on the water's edge -might have been members of some congregation sympathetically welcoming a -pair of converts to the faith. - -"Let's hold our heads high and walk straight," said Cope, his arm in hers; -"heaven knows whom we are likely to meet. And throw your hat away--you'll -look better without it. Lord knows where mine is," he added, as he ran a -smoothing hand over his long locks. - -"Very well," she said, casting away her ruined, ridiculous headgear with -her free arm. The other, in his, was giving more support to him, she felt, -than he was giving to her. - -Just as they were about to reach dry land, amidst the congratulations and -the amused smiles of the little group at the foot of the bluff, the belated -crew of life-savers swept up in their smallest boat and insisted on -capturing them. - -"Oh, Mr. Cope," said a familiar voice, "please let us save you. We haven't -saved a soul for months." - -Cope recognized one of his own students and surrendered, though a kindly -house-owner on the bluff had been quick to cry across the intervening yards -of water his offer of hospitality. "All right," he said; "take us back to -your place, where we can dry and telephone." He hoped, too, that they might -have to encounter fewer people at the other spot than at this. - -Meanwhile, another boat belonging to the station had set out to aid the -owner of the sloop in its recovery. It was soon righted and was brought in. -There was no damage done, and there was no charge that Cope could not meet, -as he learned next day to his great relief. - -The station gave him a dry outfit of clothes, assembled from here and -there, and telephoned to Mrs. Phillips to bring fresh garments for Amy. -Neither had time to get a chill. A pair of kindly servant-maids, who were -loitering on the shore with their young men, insisted on carrying the -heroine of the afternoon into retirement, where they expeditiously -undressed her, rubbed her, and wrapped her in a quilt snatched from a life- -saving bed. Amy was cold indeed, and inclined to shiver. She understood, -now, why Cope had not encouraged that bathing party at the dunes. - -In a few minutes Medora Phillips tore up in her car, with Helga and a -mountain of clothing and wraps. She was inclined to make the most of the -occasion, and she did so. With Helga she quickly superseded the pair of -sympathetic and ready maids, whom she allowed to fade into the background -with too scant recognition of their services; and when she had got Amy -thoroughly warmed and rehabilitated she turned her thought toward Cope. -Here, certainly, was a young scholastic recluse who had an admirable -faculty for getting into the public eye. If one section of Churchton -society had talked about his performance at her dinner, all sections of it -would now be discussing his new performance on the high seas. Suddenly she -was struck with the notion that possibly his first lapse had not left him -in condition to stand this second one. - -"How are you feeling?" she asked anxiously. "No chill? No shock?" - -"I'm all right," he declared. "One of the boys has just given me a drink -of--of----" But it was a beverage the use of which was not generally -approved in Churchton. - -Mrs. Phillips turned round suddenly. "Amy, did you have a drink, too, of-- -of--of--if 'Of' is what you call it?" - -"I did," said Amy firmly; "and I feel the better for it." - -"Well, get in, then, and I'll take you home." - -Peter grinned from the front seat of the car; Mrs. Phillips placed herself -between the two victims on the back one; the life-savers, who had kept the -discarded garments to dry, gave them all a few smiles and hand wavings; the -two young women and their two young men looked on with some deference; the -general crowd gave a little mock-cheer before turning its Sunday leisure to -other forms of interest; and the small party whirled away. - -Amy leaned a tired, moist head, but a happy one, on Mrs. Phillips' -shoulder. "He was so quick," she breathed, "and so brave, and so strong." -She professed to believe that he had saved her life. Cope, silent as he -looked straight ahead between Peter and Helga, was almost afraid that she -had saved his. - - - - -17 - -_COPE AMONG CROSS-CURRENTS_ - - -Next morning, at breakfast, Amy Leffingwell kept, for the most part, a rapt -and meditative eye on her plate. Hortense gave her now and then an -impatient, half-angry glare, and had to be cut short in some stinging -observations on Cope. "But it _was_ foolish," Medora Phillips felt -obliged to concede. "What in the world made you do it?" - -But Amy continued to smile at the table-cloth. She seemed to be intimating -that there was a special folly which transcended mere general folly and -approximated wisdom. - -After breakfast she spoke a few words to Carolyn. She had had all night to -think the matter over; she now saw it from a new angle and in a new light. - -"You should have seen how he shook himself free from that sail, and all," -she said. "And while we were swimming in he held his hand under my chin--at -least part of the time. And when we reached the sandbars he put his arm -through mine and helped me over every one." And in this state of mind she -went off to her class. - -Cope was received by his own class with a subdued hilarity. His young -people felt that he had shown poor judgment in going out on the water at -all,--for the University, by tacit consent, left the lake pretty well -alone. They thought that, once out, he had shown remarkably inept -seamanship. And they thought that he had chosen a too near and too well- -lighted stage for the exhibition of both. This forenoon the "Eighteenth -Century Novelists" involved Smollett, and with every reference to the water -looks of understanding traveled from student to student: that the class was -of both sexes made the situation no better. Cope was in good enough -physical condition,--the unspeakable draught from the unspeakable flask had -ensured that,--but he felt what was in the air of the classroom and was -correspondingly ill at ease. - -He had had, for several days, an understanding with Basil Randolph that -they were to go together to the next weekly reception of the president's -wife. Randolph wished to push Cope's fortunes wherever he might, and to -make him stand out from the general ranks of the young instructors. He had -the entrée to the Thursdays at the president's house, and he wanted Cope to -meet personally and intimately, under the guidance he could provide, a few -of the academic dignitaries and some of the wealthier and more prominent -townspeople. Notwithstanding Mrs. Phillips' confident impression, Cope's -exploit at her own table had gained no wide currency. The people she had -entertained were people who expected and commanded a succession of daily -impressions from one quarter or another. With them, a few light words on -Cope's achievement were sufficient; they walked straight on toward the -sensation the next day was sure to bring. But of course the whole -University knew about his second performance. Some of its members had -witnessed it, and all of them had read about it, next day, in Churchton's -four-page "Index." - -The president's wife was a sprightly lady, who believed in keeping up the -social end of things. Her Thursdays offered coffee and chocolate at a -handsomely appointed table, and a little dancing, now and then, for the -livelier of the young professors and the daughters of the town's best-known -families; above all, she insisted on "receiving"--even on having a -"receiving line." She would summon, for example, the wife of one of the -most eminent members of the faculty and the obliging spouse of some -educationally-minded banker or manufacturer; and she herself always stood, -of course, at the head of her line. When Cope came along with Randolph, she -intercepted the flow of material for her several assistants farther on, and -carried congestion and impatience into the waiting queue behind by -detaining him and "having it out." - -She caught his hand with a good, firm, nervous grasp, and flashed on him a -broad, meaningful smile. - -"Which saved which?" she asked heartily. - -Mrs. Ryder, who was farther along in the line, but not too far, beamed -delightedly, yet without the slightest trace of malice. An eminent visiting -educator, five or six steps behind our hero, frowned in question and had to -have the situation explained by the lady in his company. - -Cope, a trifle embarrassed, and half-inclined to wish he had not come, did -what he could to deprive the episode of both hero and heroine. It was about -an even thing, he guessed,--a matter of cooperation. - -"Isn't that delightful!" exclaimed the president's wife to the wife of the -banker, before passing Cope on. "And so modern! Equality of the sexes.... -Woman doing her share, et cetera! For this," she presently said to the -impatient educator from outside, "are we co-educational!" And, "Good -teamwork!" she contrived to call after Cope, who was now disappearing in -the crowd. - -Cope lost himself from Randolph, and presently got away without seeing who -was pouring coffee or who was the lightest on foot among the younger -professors. The president's wife had asked him, besides, how the young lady -had got through it, and had even inquired after her present condition. -Well, Amy Leffingwell was enrolled among the University instructors, and -doubtless the wife of the institution's head had been well within her -rights,--even duly mindful of the proprieties. But "The Index"! That sheet, -staid and proper enough on most occasions, had seemed, on this one, to -couple their names quite unwarrantably. "Couple!" Cope repeated the word, -and felt an injury. If he had known that Amy had carefully cut out and -preserved the offending paragraph, his thought would have taken on a new -and more disquieting tone. - -In the inquiry of the president's wife about the condition of his copartner -in adventure he found a second source of dissatisfaction. He had not called -up to ask after Amy; but Mrs. Phillips, with a great show of solicitude, -had called up early on Monday morning to ask after him. He had then, in -turn, made a counter-inquiry, of course; but he could take no credit for -initiative. Neither had he yet called at the house; nor did he feel greatly -prompted to do so. That must doubtless be done; but he might wait until the -first fresh impact of the event should somewhat have lost its force. - -Mrs. Phillips' voice had kept, over the telephone, all its vibratory -quality; its tones expressed the most palpitating interest. It was already -clear--and it became even clearer when he finally called at the house--that -she was poetizing him into a hero, and that she regarded Amy herself as but -a means, an instrument. At this, Cope felt a little more mortified than -before. He knew that he had done poorly in the boat, and he was not sure -that, in the first moment of the upset, he should have freed himself -unaided; and he confessed that he had not been quite in condition to do -very well on the way landward. However, all passed.... Within a fortnight -or less the incident would have dropped back into its proper perspective, -and his students would have found some other matter for entertainment. In -the circumstances he grasped at the first source of consolation that came. -Randolph was now installed in his new apartment and felt that, though not -fully settled, he might risk asking Cope to dinner. "You are the first," -Randolph had said. Cope could not escape the flattery; it was almost -comfort. - -His prompt acceptance was most welcome to Randolph. Cope had dwelt, for a -moment, on the actual presence of Aunt Harriet and on his need of her. -Randolph had made no precise study of recent chronology, taking the reason -given over the wire as a valid one and feeling glad that there was no hitch -this time. - -Randolph gave Cope a rapid view of the apartment before they sat down to -dinner. There were fewer pictures on the newly-papered walls than there -were to be, and fewer rugs on the freshly-varnished floors. "My standing -lamp will be in that corner," said Randolph, in the living-room, "--when it -comes." He drew attention to a second bedroom where a man could be put up -on occasion: "you, for example, if you ever find yourself shut out late." -He saw Sir Galahad's gauntlets on the dresser. He even gave Cope a glimpse -of his kitchen, where a self-contained Oriental, slightly smiling but -otherwise inexpressive, seemed to be dealing competently with the gas- -range. But Cope was impressed, most of all, by the dining-room table and -its paraphernalia. At Mrs. Phillips' he had accepted the china, silver and -napery as a matter of course--an elaborate entity quite outside his own -thoughts and calculations: it was all so immensely far beyond his reach and -his needs. Randolph, however, had dealt as a bachelor with a problem which -he himself as a bachelor must soon take up, on however different a scale -and plane. For everything here was rich and handsome; he should not know -how to select such things--still less how to pay for them. He felt dashed; -he felt depressed; once more the wonder of people's "having things." He -sipped his soup in the spirit of humility, and did not quite recover with -the chops. - -Randolph made little talk; he was glad merely to have Cope there. He -indulged no slightest reference to the accident; he assumed, willingly -enough, that Cope had done well in a sudden emergency, but did not care to -dwell on his judgment at the beginning. Still, a young man was properly -enough experimental, venturesome... - -Cope had recovered himself by the time dessert was reached. He accomplished -an adjustment to his environment, and Randolph was glad to feel his -unaffected response to good food properly cooked and served. "He sha'n't -gipsy _all_ the time," Randolph said to himself. "I shall try to have -him here at least twice a week." Once in a while the evening might be -stormy, and then the gauntlets would be laid on the dresser--perhaps after -an informal smoke in pajamas among the curios ranged round the small den. - -Cope set down his demi-tasse with a slight sigh. "Well," he said, "I -suppose that, before long, I shall have to buy a few sticks of furniture -myself and a trifle of 'crockery.' And a percolator." Randolph looked -across at him in surprise. - -"You are moving, then,--you too?" Not to greatly better quarters, he almost -hoped. - -"Yes; and we shall need a few small things by way of outfit." "We." -Randolph looked more intently. Housekeeping _à deux_? A roommate? -Matrimony? Here was the intrusion of another piece on the board--a piece -new and unexpected. Would it turn out to be an added interest for himself, -or a plain source of disconcertment? Cope, having unconsciously set the -ball rolling, gave it further impetus. He sketched his absent friend and -told of their plans for the winter and spring terms. "I shall try for a -large easy chair," he concluded, "unless Arthur can be induced to bring one -with him." - -Randolph, by this time, had led Cope into the den, established him between -padded arms, and given him a cigar. He drew Cope's attention to the jades -and swordguards, to the odd assortment of primitive musical instruments -(which would doubtless, in time, find a place at the Art Museum in the -city), and to his latest acquisition--a volume of Bembo's "Le Prose." It -had reached him but a week before from Venice,--"_in Venetia, al segno -del Pozzo_, MDLVII," said the title-page, in fact. It was bound in -vellum, pierced by bookworms, and was decorated, in quaint seventeenth- -century penmanship, with marginal annotations, and also, on the fly leaves, -with repeated honorifics due to a study of the forms of address by some -young aspirant for favor. Randolph had rather depended on it to take Cope's -interest; but now the little _envoi_ from the Lagoons seemed lesser in -its lustre. Cope indeed took the volume with docility and looked at its -classical title-page and at its quaint Biblical colophon; but, "Just who -_was_ 'Pietro Bembo'?" he asked; and Randolph realized, with a slight -shock, that young instructors teach only what they themselves lately have -learned, and that, in many cases, they have not learned much. - -But in truth neither paid much heed to the tabulated vocables of the -Venetian cardinal--nor to any of the other rarities near by. Basil Randolph -was wondering how he was to take Arthur Lemoyne, and was asking himself if -his trouble in setting up a new ménage was likely to go for nothing; and -Bertram Cope, while he pursued the course of the bookworm through the -parchment covers and the yellowed sheets within, was wondering in what -definite way his host might aid the fortunes of Arthur Lemoyne and thus -make matters a little easier for them both. "_All' ill.'mo Sig.'r paron -ossevnd.'mo.... All' ill.'mo et ecc.'mo Sig.'r paron... All' ill'mo et -R.R.d.'mo Sig.'r, Sig.'r Pio. Francesco Bembo, Vesco et Conte di -Belluno_"--thus ran the faded brown lines on the flyleaf, in their -solicitous currying of favor; but these reiterated forms of address -conveyed no meaning to Cope, and offered no opening: now, as once before, -he let the matter wait. - -Randolph thought over Cope's statement of his plans, and his slight touch -of pique did not pass away. Toward the end of the evening, he spoke of the -wreck and the rescue, after all. - -"Well," he said, "you are not so completely committed as I feared." - -"Committed?" - -"By your new household arrangements." - -"Well, I shall have back my chum." - -Randolph put forward the alternative. - -"I was afraid, for a moment, that you might be taking a wife." - -"A wife?" - -"Yes. Such a rescue often leads straight to matrimony--in the story-books, -anyhow." - -Cope laughed, but with a slight disrelish. "We're in actual life still, I'm -glad to think. What I said on one stretch of the shore goes on the other," -he declared. "I don't feel any more inclination to wedded life than ever, -nor any likelihood"--here he spoke with effort, as if conscious of a -possible danger on some remote horizon--"of entering it." - -"It _would_ have been sudden, wouldn't it?" commented Randolph, with a -short laugh. "Well," he went on, "one who inclines to hospitality must work -with the material at his disposal. I shall be glad, on some occasion or -other," he proceeded, with a slight trace of formality creeping into his -tone, "to entertain your friend." - -"I shall be more than glad," replied Cope, "to have you meet." - - - -18 - - -_COPE AT THE CALL OF DUTY_ - -Cope took his own time in calling upon the Ashburn Avenue circle; but he -finally made, in person, the inquiries for which those made by telephone -were an inadequate substitute. Yet he waited so long that, only a few hours -before the time he had set, he received a sweet but somewhat urgent little -note from Amy Leffingwell suggesting his early appearance. He felt obliged -to employ the first moments of his call in explaining that he had been upon -the point of coming, anyway, and that he had set aside the present hour two -or three days before for this particular purpose: an explanation, he -acknowledged inwardly, which held no great advantage for him. - -"Why am I spinning such stuff?" he asked himself impatiently. - -Amy's note of course minimized her aid to him and magnified his aid to her. -All this was in accord with established form, but it was in still stronger -accord with her determination to idealize his share in the incident. His -arm _had_ grasped hers firmly--and she felt it yet. But when she went -on to say--not for the first time, nor for the second--how kind and -sympathetic he had been in supporting her chin against those slapping waves -when the shore had seemed so far away, he wondered whether he had really -done so. For a moment or two, possibly; but surely not as part of a -conscious, reasoned scheme to save. - -"She was doing all right enough," he muttered in frowning protest. - -Neither did he welcome Mrs. Phillips' tendency to make him a hero. She was -as willing as the girl herself to believe that he had kept Amy's chin above -water--not for a moment merely, but through most of the transit to shore. -He sat there uneasily, pressing his thumbs between his palms and his closed -fingers and drawing up his feet crampingly within their shoes; yet it -somewhat eased his tension to find that Medora Phillips was disposed to put -Amy into a subordinate place: Amy had been but a means to an end--her prime -merit consisted in having given him a chance to function. Any other girl -would have done as well. A slight relief, but a welcome. - -Another mitigation: the house, the room, was full of people. The other -young women of the household were present; even the young business-man who -had understood the stove and the pump had looked in: no chance for an -intense, segregated appreciation. There had been another weekend at the -dunes, when this youth had nimbly ranged the forest and the beach to find -wood for the great open fireplace; and he had come, now, at the end of the -season, to make due acknowledgments for privileges enjoyed. He, for his -part, was willing enough to regard Amy as a heroine; but he considered her -as a heroine linked with the wrong man and operative in the wrong place. He -cared nothing in the world for Cope, and disparaged him as before--when he -did not ignore him altogether. If Amy had but been rescued by him, George -F. Pearson, instead of by this Bertram Cope, and if she had been snatched -from a disorderly set of breakers at the foot of those disheveled sandhills -instead of from the prim, prosy, domestic edge of Churchton--well, wouldn't -the affair have been better set and better carried off? In such case it -might have been picturesque and heroic, instead of slightly silly. - -Yes, the room was full. Even Joseph Foster had contrived to get himself -brought down by Peter: further practice for the day when he should make a -still more ambitious flight and dine at Randolph's new table. He sat in a -dark corner of the room and tried to get, as best he might, the essential -hang of the situation: the soft, insidious insistence of Amy; the momentum -and bravado of his sister-in-law; the veiled disparagement of Cope in which -George F. Pearson, seated on a sofa between Carolyn and Hortense, indulged -for their benefit, or for his own relief; above all, he listened for tones -and undertones from Cope himself. He had never seen Cope before (if indeed -it could be said that he really saw him now), and he had never heard his -speaking voice save at a remove of two floors. Cope had taken his hand -vigorously, as that of the only man (among many women) from whom he had -much to expect, and had given him a dozen words in a loud tone which seemed -to correspond with his pressure. But Cope's voice, in his hearing, had -lapsed from resonance to non-resonance, and from that to tonelessness, and -from that to quietude.... Was the fellow in process of making a long -diminuendo--a possible matter of weeks or of months? As before, when -confronted by what had once seemed a paragon of dash and vigor, he scarcely -knew whether to be exasperated or appeased. - -Through this variety of spoken words and unspoken thoughts Hortense sat -silent and watchful. Presently the talk lapsed: with the best will in the -world a small knot of people cannot go on elaborately embroidering upon a -trivial incident forever. There was a shifting of groups, a change in -subjects. Yet Hortense continued to glower and to meditate. What had the -incident really amounted to? What did the man himself really amount to? She -soon found herself at his side, behind the library-table and its spreading -lamp-shade. He was silently handling a paper-cutter, with his eyes cast -down. - -"See me!" she said, in a tense, vibratory tone. "Speak to me!"--and she -glowered upon him. "I am no kitten, like Amy. I am no tame tabby, like -Carolyn, sending out written invitations. Throw a few poor words my way." - -Cope dropped the paper-cutter. Her address was like a dash of brine in the -face, and he welcomed it. - -"Tell me; did you look absurd--then?" she dashed ahead. - -A return to fresh water, after all! "Why," he rejoined reluctantly, "no -man, dressed in all his clothes, looks any the better for being soaked -through." - -"And Amy,--she must have looked absolutely ridiculous! That wide, flapping -hat, and all! I had been telling her for weeks that it was out of style." - -"She threw it away," said Cope shortly. "And I suppose her hair looked as -well as a woman's ever does, when she's in the water." - -"Well," she observed, "it's one thing to be ridiculous and another to go on -being ridiculous. I hope you don't mean to do that?" - -The pronoun "you" has its equivocal aspects. Her expression, while marked -enough, threw no clear light. Cope took the entire onus on himself. - -"Of course no man would choose to be ridiculous--still less to stay so. Do, -please, let me keep on dry land; I'm beginning to feel water-logged." He -shifted his ground. "Why do you try to make it seem that I don't care to -talk with you?" - -"Because you don't. Haven't I noticed it?" - -"I haven't. It seems to me that I----" - -"Of course you haven't. Does that make it any better?" - -"I'm sure the last thing in the world I should want to do would be to----" - -"I know. Would be to show partiality. To fail in treating all alike. Even -that small programme isn't much--nor likely to please any girl; but you -have failed to carry it out, small as it is. Here in this house, there on -the dunes, what have I been--and where? Put into any obscure corner, lost -in the woods, left off somewhere on the edge of things...." - -Cope stared and tried to stem her protests. She was of the blood,--her -aunt's own niece. But whereas Medora Phillips sometimes "scrapped," as he -called it, merely to promote social diversion and to keep the -conversational ball a-rolling, this young person, a more vigorous organism, -and with decided, even exaggerated ideas as to her dues... Well, the room -was still full, and he was glad enough of it. - -"I don't know whether I like you or not," she went on, in a low, rapid -tone; "and I don't suppose you very much like me; but I won't go on being -ignored.... - -"Ignored? Why," stammered Cope, "my sense of obligation to this house----" - -She shrugged scornfully. His sense of obligation had been made none too -apparent. Certainly it had not been brought into line with her deserts and -demands. - -Cope took up the paper-cutter again and looked out across the room. Amy -Leffingwell, questioningly, was looking across at him. He could change -feet--if that made the general discomfort of his position any less. He did -so. - -Amy was standing near the piano and held a sheet or two of new music in her -hands. And Medora Phillips, with a word of general explication and -direction, made the girl's intention clear. Amy had a new song for -baritone, with a violin obbligato and the usual piano accompaniment, and -Cope was to sing it. 'Twas an extremely simple thing, quite within his -compass; and Carolyn, who could read easy music at sight ("It's awfully -easy," declared Amy), would play the piano part; and Amy herself would -perform the obbligato (with no statement as to whether it was simple or -not). - -Carolyn approached the task and the piano in the passive spirit of -accommodation. Cope came forward with reluctance: this was not an evening -when he felt like singing; besides, he preferred to choose his own songs. -Also, he would have preferred to warm up on something familiar. Amy took -her instrument from its case with a suppressed sense of ecstasy; and it is -the ecstatic who generally sets the pace. - -The thing went none too well. Amy was the only one who had seen the music -before, and she was the only one who particularly wanted to make music now. -However, the immediate need was not that the song should go well, but that -it should go: that it should go on, that it should go on and on, -repetitiously, until it should come (or even not come) to go better. She -slid her bow across the strings with tasteful passion. She enjoyed still -more than her own tones the tones of Cope's voice,--tones which, whether in -happy unison with hers or not, were, after all, seldom misplaced, whatever -they may have lacked in heartiness and confidence. It was a short piece, -and on the third time it went rather well. - -"How perfectly lovely!" exclaimed Mrs. Phillips, at the right moment. - -Cope smiled deprecatingly. "It might be made to go very nicely," he said. - -"It _has_ gone very nicely," insisted Amy; "it did, this last time." -She waved her bow with some vivacity. She had heaved the whole of her young -self into the work; she had been buoyed up by Cope's tones, which, with -repetition, had gathered assurance if not expressiveness; and she based her -estimate of the general effect on the impression which her own inner nature -had experienced. And her impression was heightened when Pearson, forging -forward, and ignoring both Cope and Carolyn, thanked her richly and -emphatically for her part--a part which, to him, seemed the whole. - -Hortense, who had kept her place behind the large lampshade, twisted her -interlocked fingers and said no word. Foster, who had disposed himself on -an inconspicuous couch, kept his own counsel. After all, _omne -ignotum_: Cope's singing had sounded better from upstairs. At close -range a ringing assertiveness had somehow failed. - -Cope had come with no desire to extend his stay beyond the limits of an -evening call. He declined to sing on his own account, and soon rose as if -to make his general adieux. - -"You won't give us one of your own songs, then?" asked Medora Phillips, in -a disappointed tone. "And at my dinner----" - -No, she could not quite say that, at her dinner, Cope, whatever he had -failed to do, had contributed no measure of entertainment for her guests. - -"Give us a recitation, then," persisted Medora; "or tell us a story. Or -make up"--here she indulged herself in an airily imperious flight--"a story -of your own on the spot." - -A trifling request, truly. But---- - -"Heavens!" said Cope. "I am not an author--still less an -_improvvisatore_." - -"I am sure you could be," returned Medora fondly. "Just try." - -Cope sat down again and began to run his eye uncomfortably about the room, -as if dredging the air for an idea. Behind one corner of a mirror was a -large bunch of drying leaves. They had been brought in from the sand dunes -as a decorative souvenir of the autumn, and had kept their place through -mere inertia: an oak bough, once crimson and russet; a convoluted length of -bittersweet, to which a few split berries still clung; and a branch of -sassafras, with its intriguing variety of leaves--a branch selected, in -fact, because it gave, within narrow compass, the plant's entire scope and -repertoire as to foliage. - -Cope caught at the sassafras as a falling balloonist catches at his -parachute. - -"Well," he said, still reluctant and fumbling, "perhaps I can devise a -legend: the Legend, let us say, of the Sassafras Bush." - -"Good!" cried Medora heartily. - -Pearson, whispering to Amy Leffingwell, gave little heed to Cope and his -strained endeavor to please Mrs. Phillips. Foster, quite passive, listened -with curiosity for what might come. - -"Or perhaps you would prefer folk-lore," Cope went on. "Why the Sassafras -has Three Kinds of Leaves, or something like that." - -"Better yet!" exclaimed Medora. "Listen, everybody. Why the Sassafras has -Three Kinds of Leaves." - -Pearson stopped his buzzings, and Cope began. "The Wood-nymphs," he said -slowly, "were a nice enough lot of girls, but they labored under one great -disadvantage: they had no thumbs." - -Hortense pricked up her ears. Did he mean to be personal? If so, he should -find that one of the nymphs had a whole hand as surely as he himself had a -cheek. - -Cope paused. "Of course you've got to postulate _something_," he -submitted apologetically. - -"Of course," Medora agreed. - -"So when they bought their gloves, or mittens, or whatever their handgear -might be called, they usually patronized the hickory or the beech or some -other tree with leaves that were----" - -"Ovate!" cried Medora delightedly. - -"Ovate, yes; or whatever just the right word may be. But a good many of -them traded at the Sign of the Sassafras, where they found leaves that were -similar, but rather more delicate." - -"I believe he's going to do it," thought Foster. - -"Yet the nymphs knew that they lacked thumbs and kept on wanting them. So, -during the long, dull winter, they put their minds to it, and finally -thumbs came." - -"Will-power!" said Medora. - -"And early in April they went to the Sassafras and said: 'We have thumbs! -We have thumbs! So we need a different sort of mitten.' - -"The Sassafras was only half awake. 'Thumbs?' he repeated. 'How many?' - -"'Two!' cried the nymphs. 'Two!' - -"A passing breeze roused the Sassafras. He became at least three-quarters -awake." - -"I doubt it," muttered Hortense. - -"'That's interesting,' he said. 'I aim to supply all new needs. Come back -in a month or so, and meanwhile I'll see what I can do for you.' - -"In May the nymphs returned with their thumbs and asked, 'How about our new -mittens?'" - -The story was really under way now, and Cope went on with more confidence -and with greater animation. - -"'Look and see,' said the Sassafras. - -"They looked and saw. Among its simple ordinary leaves were several with -two lobes--one on each side. 'Will these do?' - -"'Do?' said the nymphs. 'We said we had two thumbs, but we meant one on -each hand, stupid. Do? We should say not!' - -"The Sassafras was mortified. 'Well,' he said, 'that's all I can manage -this season. I'm sorry not to have understood you young ladies and your -needs. Come back again next spring.' - -"It was a long time to wait, but they waited. Next May----" - -Amy, now unworried by George Pearson, began to get the thread of the thing. -Foster was sure the thread would run through. Hortense was still alert for -ulterior meanings. Poor Cope, however, had no ambition to spin a double -thread,--a single one was all he was equal to. - -"Next May the nymphs, after nursing their thumbs for a year----" - -Hortense frowned. - -"----came back again; and there, among the plain leaves and the double- -lobed leaves, were several fresh bright, smooth ones with a single lobe -well to one side,--the very thing for mittens. And------" - -"Yes, he has done it," Foster acknowledged. - -"And that," ended Cope rather stridently, as he rose to go on the flood of -a sudden yet unexpected success, "is Why the Sassafras----" - -"Why the Sassafras has Three Kinds of Leaves!" cried Medora in triumph. -Mittens for midsummer made no difficulty. - -Cope gave Carolyn careful thanks for her support at the piano, and did not -see that she felt he too could be a poet if he only would. He went out of -his way to shake hands with Hortense, and did not realize how nearly a new -quarrel had opened. He stepped over to do the like with Amy; but she went -out with him into the hall,--the only one of the party who did,--and even -accompanied him to the front door. - -"Thank you so much," she said, looking up into his face smilingly and -holding his hand with a long, clinging touch. "It went beautifully; and -there are others that will go even better." - -"Others?" He thought, for an instant, that she was thanking him for his -Legend and was even threatening to regard him as a flowing fount of -invention; but he soon realized that her mind was fixed exclusively on -their duet--if such it was to be called. - -"The deuce!" he thought. "Enough is enough." - -Despite his success with the Sassafras, he went home discomforted and even -flustered. That hand was too much like the hand of possession. The girl was -stealing over him like a light, intangible vapor. He struck ahead with a -quicker gait, as if trying to outwalk a creeping fog. One consolation, -however: Hortense had come like a puff of wind. Even a second squall from -the same quarter would not be altogether amiss. - -And had there not been one further fleeting source of reassurance? Had he -not, on leaving, caught through the open door of the drawing room an -elevation of Medora Phillips' eyebrows which seemed to say fondly, -indulgently, yet a bit ironically, "Oh, you foolish girl!"? Yet if a girl -is foolish, and is going to persist in her folly, a lightly lifted pair of -eyebrows will not always stay her course. Her gathering momentum is hardly -to be checked by such slender means. - - - - -19 - -_COPE FINDS HIMSELF COMMITTED_ - - -Amy Leffingwell, having written once, found it easier to write again. And -having strolled along the edge of the bluff with Cope on that fateful -Sunday, she found it natural to intercept him on other parts of the campus -(where their paths might easily cross), or to stroll with him, after casual -encounters carefully planned, through sheets of fallen leaves under the -wide avenues of elms just outside. Her third note almost summoned him to a -rendezvous. It annoyed him; but he might have been more than annoyed had he -known of her writing, rather simply, to a rather simple mother in Fort -Lodge, Iowa, about her hopes and her expectations. Her mother had, of -course, heard in detail of the rescue; and afterward had heard in still -greater detail, as the roseate lime-light of idealization had come to focus -more exactly on the scene. She had had also an unaffected appreciation--or -several--of Cope's personal graces and accomplishments. She had heard, -lastly, of Cope's song to her daughter's obbligato: a duet _in vacuo_, -since Carolyn had been suppressed and the surrounding company had been -banished to a remote circumference. What wonder that she began to see her -daughter and Bertram Cope in an admirable isolation and to intimate that -she hoped, very soon, for definite news? - -Well, not a few of us have met an Amy Leffingwell: some plump-faced, pink- -cheeked child, with a delicate little concave nose not at all "strong," and -a fine little chin none too vigorously moulded, and a pair of timid candid -blue eyes shadowed by a wisp or so of fluffy hair--and have not always -taken her for what she was. She "wouldn't hurt a kitten," we say; and we -assume that her "striking out a line for herself" is the last thing she -would try to do. Yet such an unimpressive and disarming façade may mask -large chambers of stubbornness and tenacity. - -Amy knew how long and hard she had thought of Cope, and she asked for some -evidence that he had been thinking long and hard of her. She desired a -"response." But, in fact, he had been thinking of her only when he must. He -thought of her whenever he saw himself caught in that flapping sail, and he -thought of her whenever he recalled that she had taken it on herself to -select his songs. But he did not want her to make out-and-out demands on -his time and attention. Still less did he want her to talk about -"happiness." This had come to be her favorite topic, and she discoursed on -it profusely: he was almost ungracious enough to say that she did so -glibly. "Happiness"--that conventional bliss toward which she was turning -her mind as they strolled together on these late November afternoons--was -for him a long way ahead. How furnish a house, how clothe and feed a wife? ---at least until his thesis should be written and a place, with a real -salary, found in the academic world. How, even, buy an engagement ring-- -that costly superfluity? How even contrive to pay for all the small gifts -and attentions which an engagement involved? Yet why ask himself such -questions? For he was conscious of a fundamental repugnance to any such -scheme of life and was acutely aware that--for awhile, at least, and -perhaps for always--he wanted to live in quite a different mode. - -Amy's confident assumptions began to fill the house, to alter its -atmosphere. Medora Phillips, who had begun by raising her eyebrows in light -criticism, now lowered them in frowning protest. She had found Cope -"charming"; but this charm of his was to add to the attractiveness of her -house and to give her a high degree of personal gratification. It was not -to be frittered away; still less was it to be absorbed elsewhere. Hortense, -who had been secretly at work on a portrait-sketch of Cope in oil, and -rather despising herself for it, now began to make another bold picture in -her own mind. She saw herself handing out the sketch to Cope in person, -with an air of high bravado; she might say, if bad came to worse, that she -had found some professional interest in his color or in his "planes." On -one occasion Medora hardily requisitioned Cope for an evening at the -theatre, in the city; miles in and miles back she had him in her car all to -herself; and if Amy, next day, appeared to feel that wealth and -organization had taken an unfair advantage of simple, honest love, Medora -herself was troubled by no stirrings of conscience. - -The new atmosphere reached even Foster on the top floor; and when, one -evening in mid-December, he finally carried out his long-meditated plan to -dine with Randolph, the household situation was uppermost in his mind. That -he had not the clearest understanding of the situation did not diminish his -interest in it. Though he sat in the dark, and far apart, some sense all -his own, cultivated through years of deprivation, came to his aid. Peter -brought him down the street and round the corner; and Randolph's Chinaman, -fascinated by his green shade and his tortuous method of locomotion (once -out of his wheeled-chair), did the rest. "You had better stay all night," -Randolph had suggested; and he was glad to avoid a second awkward trip on -the same evening. - -Foster had wondered whether Cope would be present. He had not asked to meet -him--for he hardly knew whether he wished to or not. Though this was an -"occasion,"--and his,--he had left Randolph to act quite as he might -choose. There was a third chair at table and Randolph delayed dinner ten -minutes while waiting for it to be filled. - -"Well, let's go in and sit down," he said presently, with a slight twist of -the mouth. He spoke lightly, as if it were as easy for Foster to sit down -as for himself. But Foster got into his place after a moment and contrived -to spread his napkin over his legs. - -"I expected Bertram Cope," Randolph went on; "but he isn't here, and I have -no word from him and do not know whether----" - -He paused, obviously at a loss. - -"Not here?" repeated Foster. "Is there, then, one place where he is not?" - -"Why, Joe----!" - -"Our house is full of him!" Foster burst out raucously. He had removed the -green _abat-jour_, for the candle-shades (as they sometimes will) were -performing their office. In the low but clear light his face seemed -distorted. - -"He rises to my floor like incense. The very halls and stairways reek with -his charms and perfections." - -"Well, you escape him here," said Randolph ruefully. - -"The whole miserable place is steaming with expectation,--with the deadly -aroma of a courtship going stale. I can't stand it! I can't stand it!" - -"Courtship?" - -"You may think it takes two, but it doesn't. That foolish girl has thrown -the whole place into discomfort and confusion; and I don't know who's for -or who's against----" - -"What foolish girl?" asked Randolph quickly. Sing-Lo was at his elbow, -changing plates: it was assumed, justly enough, that he would not be able -to follow the intricacies of a situation purely occidental. - -"Our Amy," replied Foster, with a dash of bitterness. - -"Amy Leffingwell?" asked Randolph, still more quickly. - -Foster had blind eyes, but alert ears. He felt that Randolph was surprised -and displeased. And indeed his host was both. That boy fallen maladroitly -in love? thought Randolph. It was a second check. He had exerted himself to -show a friendliness for Cope, had expected to enjoy him while he stayed on -for his months in town, and had hoped to help push his fortunes in whatever -other field he might enter. He had even taken his present quarters--no -light task, all the details considered--to make Cope's winter agreeable, no -less than his own. And now? First the uncounted-upon friend from Wisconsin -with whom Cope was arranging to live; next, this sudden, unexpected affair -with that girl at Medora's. Did the fellow not know his own mind? Could he -formulate no hard-and-fast plan? Here Randolph, in his disappointment, -inconsistently forgot that a hard-and-fast plan was largely his real -annoyance and grievance. Then he remembered. He looked at the vacant place, -and tried for composure and justice. - -"I shall probably hear some good reason, in due time," he said. - -"I hope so," rejoined Foster; "but it takes these young fellows to be -careless--and ungrateful." He made no pretense of ignoring the fact that -Randolph had moved into this apartment more on account of Cope than for any -other reason. - -"H'm, yes," responded Randolph thoughtfully. "I suppose it is the tendency -of a young fellow who has never quite stood on his own legs financially to -accept about everything that comes his way, and to accept it as a matter of -course." - -"It is," said Foster. - -"I know that _I_ was that way," continued Randolph, looking studiously -at the nearest candle-shade. "I was beyond the middle twenties before I -quite launched out for myself, and any kindness received was taken without -much question and without much thanks. I presume that he still has some -assistance from home...." - -He dropped youthful insouciance over favors received to consider the change -that marriage makes in a young man's status. "I wouldn't go so far as to -assert that a young man married is a man that's marred----" - -"This _is_ stiff doctrine," Foster acknowledged. - -"But somehow he does seem done for. He is placed; he is cut off from wide -ranges of interesting possibilities; he offers himself less invitingly to -the roving imagination...." - -Meanwhile Cope, with Randolph's invitation driven altogether from his mind -by more urgent matters, was pacing the streets, through the first snow- -flurries of the winter, and was wondering, rather distractedly, just where -he stood. Precisely what words, at a very brief yet critical juncture, had -he said, or not said? Exactly how had he phrased--or failed to phrase--the -syllables which constituted, perhaps, a turning-point in his life? - -Amy Leffingwell had demanded his attendance for one more walk, that -afternoon, and he had not been dextrous enough, face to face with her, to -refuse. She had expressed herself still more insistently on "happiness"-- -(on hers, his, theirs; the two were one, in her view)--and on a future -shared together. In just what inadequate way had he tried to fend her off? -Had he said, "I shall have to wait?" Or had his blundering tongue said, -instead, "We should have to wait?"--or even worse, "We shall have to wait?" -In any event, he had used that cowardly, temporizing word "wait"--for she -had instantly seized upon it. Why, yes, indeed; she was willing to wait; -she had expected to wait.... - -He turned out from an avenue lighted with electric globes, past which the -snowflakes were drifting, and entered a quieter and darker side-street. In -the dusk she had put up her face, expecting to be kissed; and he, partly -out of pity for the expression that came when he hesitated, and partly out -of pure embarrassment and inexpertness, had lightly touched her lips. That -had sealed it, possibly. He saw her sitting in rapt fancy in her bedroom-- -if not more vocal in the rooms below. He saw her writing to an unseen -mother in a tone of joyful complacency, and looking at her finger for a -ring which he could not place there. He saw the distaste of his own home -circle, to which this event had come at least a year too soon. He saw the -amazement, and worse, of Arthur Lemoyne, whose plans for coming to town -were now all made and to whom this turn would prove a psychological shock -which might deter him from coming at all. But, most of all, he saw--and -felt to the depths of his being--his own essential repugnance to the life -toward which he now seemed headed. What an outlook for Christmas! What an -unpleasant surprise for his parents! What opportunity in Amy Leffingwell's -holiday vacation at Fort Lodge to reinforce the written page by the spoken -word! Still forgetful of his engagement with Randolph, he continued to walk -the streets. He turned in at midnight, hoping he might sleep, and trusting -that morning would throw a less sinister light on his misadventure. - -Long before this, Joseph Foster had been put to bed, by Sing-Lo, in this -spare room. It was Foster's crutch, rather than a knightly sword, which -leaned against the door-jamb; and it was Foster's crooked members, rather -than the straight young limbs of Cope, which first found place among the -sheets and blankets of that shining new brass bedstead. - - - - -20 - -_COPE HAS A DISTRESSFUL CHRISTMAS_ - - -Cope awakened at seven. After an early interval of happy lightness, there -came suddenly and heavily the crushing sense of his predicament. How -monstrous it was that one instant of time, one ill-considered action, one -poorly-chosen word could clamp a repellent burden on a man for the rest of -his life! - -Well, he must expect telephone messages and letters. They came. That -afternoon Mrs. Peck had "a lady's voice" to report: "It sounded like a -_young_ lady's voice," she added. And she looked at Cope with some -curiosity: a "young lady" asking for him over the wire was the rarest thing -in the world. - -Next day came the first note. The handwriting was utterly new to him; but -his intuition, applied instantly to the envelope, told him of the source. -The nail, driven, was now to be clinched. She had the right to ask him to -come; and she did ask him to come--"soon." - -Cope's troubled eyes sought the calendar above his table. How many days to -Christmas? How much time might he spend in Freeford? How long before -Christmas might he arrange to leave Churchton? The holidays at home loomed -as a harbor of refuge. By shortening as far as possible the interval here -and by lengthening as far as possible the stay with his family, he might -cut down, in some measure, the imminent threatenings of awkwardness and -constraint; then, beyond the range of anything but letters, he might study -the unpleasant situation at his leisure and determine a future course. - -He set himself to answer Amy's note. He hoped, he said, to see her in a few -days, but he was immensely busy in closing the term-work before the -holidays; he also suggested that their affair--"their" affair!--be kept -quiet for the present. Yet he had all too facile a vision of beatific -meditations that were like enough to give the situation away to all the -household; and he was nervously aware of Amy Leffingwell as continually on -the verge of bubbling confidences. - -He also wrote to Lemoyne. His letter was less an announcement than a -confession. - -"I like this!" began Lemoyne's reply, with abrupt, impetuous sarcasm. "You -have claimed, more than once," he went on, "to have steadied me and kept me -out of harm's way; but I've never yet made any such demands on you as you -are making on me. This thing can't go on, and you know it as well as I do. -Nip it. Nip it now. Don't think that our intimacy is to end in any such -fashion as this, for it isn't--especially at this particular time."... - -Lemoyne proceeded to practical matters. "If that room is still free, engage -it from the first of January. I will have a few things sent down. Father is -weakening a little. Anyhow, I've got enough money for a couple of months. I -will join you in Freeford between Christmas and New Year's (nearer the -latter, probably), and we will go back together."... - -Cope rather took heart from these rough, outspoken lines. Lemoyne was -commonly neither rough nor outspoken; but here was an emergency, involving -his own interests, which must be dealt with decisively. Cope seemed to feel -salvation on the way. Perhaps that was why he still did so little to save -himself. He took the new room; he had one meeting with Amy; and he left for -home at least two days before he was strictly entitled to do so. - -The meeting took place in Mrs. Phillips' drawing-room; he would trust -himself to no more strolls on the campus, to no more confabs in college -halls. There was protection in numbers, and numbers seldom failed beneath -Medora Phillips' roof. They failed this time, however. Mrs. Phillips and -Hortense were away at a reading; only Amy and Carolyn were at home. Cope -seized on Carolyn as at a straw. He thanked her warmly again for her -halting offices in the matter of that last song, and he begged that he -might hear some of her recent verse. His appeal was vehement, almost -boisterous: Carolyn, surprised, felt that he was ready at last to grant her -a definite personality. - -Amy tried in vain to remove Carolyn from the board. But Carolyn, like -Hortense, had finally joined the ranks of the "recognized"; she was -determined (being still ignorant, Cope was glad to see, regarding Amy's -claims) to make this recognition so marked as to last beyond the moment. -She played a little--not well. She read. She even accompanied Amy to the -door at the close of Cope's short stay. He shook hands with them both. He -had decided that he would do no more than this with Amy, in any event, and -Carolyn's presence made his predetermined course easy, even obligatory. Yet -he went out into the night feeling, somehow, that he had acted solely on -his resolution and that he might consider himself a man of some -decisiveness, after all. Amy had looked disappointed, but had contrived to -whisper that she would write from Iowa. That, of course, was to be looked -for, and would represent the combined efforts of herself and her home -circle; yet he had a fortnight for consideration and counsel. - -Cope, during his first few days at home, was moody and abstracted: his -parents found him adding little to the Christmas cheer. His mother, always -busy over domestic cares and now busier than ever, thought that he must -have been working too hard. She would stand in the kitchen door with a -half-trimmed pie on one hand and ponder him as he sat in the dining-room, -staring absorbedly at the Franklin stove. His father, who saw him chiefly -in the evening, by the gas-light of the old-fashioned house, found his face -slightly pinched: was his pocket pinched too, and would he be likely, -before leaving, to ask help toward making up a deficit? His sister Rosalys, -who lived a life of dry routine, figured him as deep in love. He let -several days pass without hinting what the real situation was. - -There was interest all round when, the day before Christmas, the postman -came along the bleak and flimsy street and left a letter for him. Cope was -away from the house, and Rosalys, studying the envelope's penmanship and -even its postmark, found vague confirmation of her theory: some college -girl--one of his own students, probably--was home on vacation just as he -was. If so, a "small town" person of caste and character like themselves; -not brilliant, but safe. She set up the letter edgewise on the back parlor -mantelpiece. - -When Cope came in at noon and saw the letter, his face fell. He put it in -his pocket, sat silent at table, and disappeared as soon as the meal was -over. Rosalys, whose pupils were off her mind for a few days and who had -thought to spare, began to shade her theory. - -Cope read the letter in the low-ceiled back bedroom (the ceiling sloped -away on one side) which had been his for so many years. Those years of -happy boyhood--how far away they seemed now, and how completely past! -Surely he had never thought to come back to these familiar walls to such -effect as this.... Well, what did it say? - -It said, in its four pages (yes, Amy had really limited herself thus), how -joyous she was that the dear Christmas season had brought her such a -beautiful love-gift; it said that mother was so pleased and happy--and even -mentioned a sudden aunt; it said how willingly she would wait on until.... - -That evening Cope made his announcement. They were all seated round the -reading-lamp in the back parlor, where the old Brussels carpet looked dim -and where only venerated age kept the ornate French clock from seeming -tawdry. Cope looked down at the carpet and up at the clock, and spoke. - -Yes, they must have it. - -His mother took the shock first and absorbed most of it. She led a humdrum -life and she was ready to welcome romance. To help adjust herself she laid -her hands, with a soft, sweeping motion, on the two brown waves that drew -smoothly across her temples, and then she transferred them to his, held his -head, and gave him a kiss. Rosalys took his two hands warmly and smiled, -and he tried to smile back. His father twisted the tip of his short gray -beard, watched his son's mien, and said little. Day after to-morrow, with -the major part of their small Christmas festivities over, he would ask how -this unexpected and unwarranted situation had come about, and how, in -heaven's name, the thing was to be carried through: by what means, with -whose help?... In his complex of thought the word "thesis" came to his -tongue, but he kept from speaking it. He had been advised that his son had -at last struck out definitely into some bookish bypath--just what bypath -mattered little, he gathered, if it were but followed to the end. Yet the -end was still far--and the boy evidently realized this. He was glad that -Bertram was sober over the prospect and over his present plan--which was a -serious undertaking, just now, in truth. - -Cope had to adjust himself to all this, and to endure, besides, the -congratulations--or the comments--of a number of tiresome relatives; and it -was a relief when, on the twenty-ninth, Arthur Lemoyne finally arrived. - -Lemoyne had been heralded as a young man of parts, and as the son of a -family which enjoyed, in Winnebago, some significant share of worldly -prosperity, and, therefore, of social consideration. The simpler Copes, -putting him in the other back bedroom, the ceiling of which sloped the -opposite way, wondered if they were quite giving him his just dues. When -Rosalys came to set away his handbag and to rearrange, next morning, his -brushes on the top of the dresser, she gathered from various indications -supplied by his outfit that the front chamber, at whatever inconvenience to -whomever, would have been more suitable. But, "Never mind," said her -mother; "they'll do very well as they are--side by side, with the door -conveniently between. Then Bert can look after him a little more and we a -little less." - -Lemoyne presented himself to the combined family gaze as a young man of -twenty-seven or so, with dark, limpid eyes, a good deal of dark, wavy hair, -and limbs almost too plumply well-turned. In his hands the flesh minimized -the prominence of joints and knuckles, and the fingers (especially the -little fingers) displayed certain graceful, slightly affected movements of -the kind which may cause a person to be credited--or taxed--with possessing -the "artistic temperament." To end with, he carried two inches of short -black stubble under his nose. He was a type which one may admire--or not. -Rosalys Cope found in him a sort of picturesque allure. Rather liking him -herself, she found a different reason for her brother's liking. "If Bert -cares for him," she remarked, "I suppose it's largely by contrast--he's so -spare and light-colored himself." - -It was evident that, on this first meeting, Lemoyne meant to ingratiate -himself--to make himself attractive and entertaining. He had determined to -say a thing or two before he went away, and it would be advantageous to -consolidate his position. - -He had had five or six hours of cross-country travel, with some tedious -waits at junctions, and at about ten o'clock, after some showy converse, he -acknowledged himself tired enough for bed. Cope saw him up, and did not -come down again. The two talked till past eleven; and even much later, when -light sleepers in other parts of the house were awake for a few minutes, -muffled sounds from the same two voices reached their ears. - -But Cope's words, many as they were, told Lemoyne nothing that he did not -know, little that he had not divined. The sum of all was this: Cope did not -quite know how he had got into it; but he knew that he was miserable and -wanted to get out of it. - -Lemoyne had asked, first of all, to see the letter from Iowa. "Oh, come," -Cope had replied, half-bashful, half-chivalrous, "you know it wasn't -written for anybody but me." - -"The substance of it, then," Lemoyne had demanded; and Cope, reluctant and -shame-faced, had given it. "You've never been in anything of this sort, you -know," he submitted. - -"I should say not!" Lemoyne retorted. "Nor you, either. You're not in it -now,--or, if you are, you're soon going to be out of it. You would help me -through a thing like this, and I'm going to help you." - -The talk went on. Lemoyne presented the case for a broken engagement. -Engagements, as it was well known to human experience, might, if quickly -made, be as quickly unmade: no novelty in that. "I had never expected to -double up with an engaged man," Lemoyne declared further. "Nothing -especially jolly about that--least of all when the poor wretch is held dead -against his will." As he went on, he made Cope feel that he had violated an -_entente_ of long standing, and had almost brought a trusting friend -down from home under false pretenses. - -But phrases from Amy's letter continued to plague Cope. There was a -confiding trust, a tender who-could-say-just-what?... - -"Well," said Lemoyne, at about two o'clock, "let's put it off till morning. -Turn over and go to sleep." - -But before he fell asleep himself he resolved that he would make the true -situation clear next day. He would address that sympathetic mother and that -romantic sister in suitably cogent terms; the father, he felt sure, would -require no effort and would even welcome his aid with a strong sense of -relief. - -So next day, Lemoyne, deploying his natural graces and his dramatic -dexterities, drew away the curtain. He did not go so far as to say that -Bertram had been tricked; he did not even go so far as to say that he had -been inexpert: he contented himself with saying that his friend had been -over-chivalrous and that his fine nature had rather been played upon. The -mother took it all with a silent, inexpressive thoughtfulness, though it -was felt that she did not want her boy to be unhappy. Rosalys, if she -admired Lemoyne a little more, now liked him rather less. Her father, when -the declaration reached him by secondary impact, did feel the sense of -relief which Lemoyne had anticipated, and came to look upon him as an able, -if somewhat fantastic, young fellow. - -Cope himself, when his father questioned him, said with frank -disconsolateness, "I'm miserable!" And, "I wish to heaven I were out of -it!" he added. - -"_Get_ out of it," his father counselled; and when Cope's own feelings -were clearly known through the household there was no voice of dissent. -"And then buckle down for your degree," the elder added, to finish. - -"If I only could!" exclaimed Cope, with a wan face,--convinced, youthfully, -that the trouble through which he was now striving must last indefinitely. -"I should be glad enough to get my mind on it, I'm sure." - -He walked away to reconstruct a devastated privacy. "Arthur, I'm not quite -sure that I thank you," he said, later. - -"H'm!" replied Lemoyne non-committally. "I hope," he added, more definitely -articulate, "that we're going to have a pleasanter life in our new -quarters. I'm getting mighty little pleasure--if you'll just understand me ---here!" - - - - -21 - -_COPE, SAFEGUARDED, CALLS AGAIN_ - - -If Cope came back from Freeford with the moral support of one family, Amy -Leffingwell came back from Fort Lodge with the moral support of another. -Hers was a fragmental family, true; but its sentiment was unanimous; she -had the combined support of a pleased mother and of an enthusiastic maiden -aunt. - -Amy reached Churchton first, and it soon transpired through the house in -which she lived that she was engaged to Bertram Cope. Cope, returning two -days later, with Lemoyne, found his new status an open book to the world-- -or to such a small corner of the world as cared to read. - -Cope had written from Freeford, explaining to Randolph the broken dinner- -engagement: at least he had said that immediate concerns of importance had -driven the date from his mind, and that he was sorry. Randolph, only too -willing to accept any fair excuse, good-naturedly made this one serve: the -boy was not so negligent and ungrateful, after all. He got the rest of the -story a few days later, in a message from Foster. What _was_ the boy, -then? he asked himself. He recalled their talk as they had walked past the -sand-hills on that October Sunday. Cope had disclaimed all inclination for -matrimony. He had confessed a certain inability to safeguard himself. Was -he a victim, after all? A victim to his own ineptitude? A victim to his own -highmindedness? Well, whatever the alternative, a field for the work of the -salvage-corps had opened. - -At the big house on Ashburn Avenue a like feeling had come to prevail. -Medora Phillips herself had passed from the indulgently satirical to the -impatient, and almost to the indignant. Her niece thought the new relation -clearly superfluous. She put away the portrait in oil, but she rather hoped -to resume work on it, some time. Meanwhile, she was far from kind to Amy. - -Cope soon made an obligatory appearance at the house. He was glad enough to -have the presence and the support of Arthur Lemoyne. The call came on a -rigorous evening at the beginning of the second week in January. The two -young men had about brought their new quarters to shape and subjection. -They had spent two or three evenings in shifting and rearranging things-- -trifling purchases in person and larger things sent by express. They had -reached a good degree of snugness and comfort; but---- - -"We've got to go tonight!" said Cope firmly. - -"Tonight?" repeated Lemoyne. "Unless I'm mistaken, we're in for a deuce of -a time." He snuggled again into the big easy chair that had just arrived -from Winnebago. - -"We are!" returned Cope, with unhappy mien. "But it's got to be gone -through with." - -"I'm talking about the weather," rejoined Lemoyne plumply. He was versed in -the reading of signs as they presented themselves a hundred and fifty miles -to the north, and he thought he could accurately apply his experience to a -locale somewhat beyond his earlier ken. The vast open welter of water to -the east would but give the roaring north wind a greater impetus. "We're -going to have tonight, the storm of the season." - -"Storm or no storm, I can't put it off any longer. I've got to go." - -As they started out the wind was keen, and a few fine flakes, driven from -the north, flew athwart their faces. When they reached Mrs. Phillips' -house, Peter, wrapped in furs, was sitting in the limousine by the curb, -and two or three people were seen in the open door of the vestibule. - -"Well, the best of luck, _cher Professeur_," Cope heard the voice of -Mrs. Phillips saying, in a quick expulsion of syllables. "This is going to -be a bad night, I'm afraid; but I hope your audience will get to the hall -to hear you, and that our Pierre will be able to get you back to us." - -"Oh, Madame," returned the plump little man, "what a climate!" And he ran -down the walk to the car. - -Yes, Mrs. Phillips had another celebrity on her hands. It was an eminent -French historian who was going across to the campus to deliver the second -lecture of his course. "How lucky," she had said to Hortense, just after -dinner, "that we went to hear him _last_ night!" Their visitor was -handsomely accommodated--and suitably, too, she felt--in the Louis Quinze -chamber, and he was expected back in it a little after ten. - -"Why, Bertram Cope!" she exclaimed, as the two young men came up the walk -while the great historian ran down; "come in, come in; don't let me stand -here freezing!" - -It turned out to be a young man's night. Mrs. Phillips had invited a few -"types" to entertain and instruct her Frenchman. They had come to dinner, -and they had stayed on afterward. - -Among them was the autumn undergraduate whom Cope, at an earlier day, had -disdainfully called "Phaon," a youth of twenty. "You know," said Medora -Phillips to Randolph, a few days later, when reviewing the stay of her -newest guest, "Those sophisticated, world-worn people so appreciate our -fresh, innocent, ingenuous boys. M. Pelouse told me, on leaving, that Roddy -quite met his ideal of the young American. So open-faced, so inexperienced, -so out of the great world...." - -"Good heavens!" said Randolph impatiently. "Do they constitute the world? -You might think so,--going about giving us awards, and hanging medals on -us, and certifying how well we speak French! Fudge! The world is changing. -It would be better," he added, "if more of us--college students included-- -learned how to speak a decenter English. I went to their dramatic club the -other evening. Such pronunciation! Such delivery! I almost longed for the -films." - -A second "young American" was present--George F. Pearson. Pearson lived -with his parents in another big house a block down the street. Mrs. -Phillips had summoned him as a type that was purely indigenous--the "young -American business man." Pearson had just made a "kill," as he called it--a -coup executed quite without the aid of his father, and he was too full of -his success to keep still; he was more typical than ever. The Professor had -looked at him in staring wonder. So had Amy Leffingwell--in the absence of -another target for her large, intent eyes. - -But Medora Phillips knew all about George and Roddy. The novelty was -Lemoyne, and she must learn about him. She readily seized the points that -composed his personal aspect, which she found good: his general darkness -and richness made him a fine foil for Cope. She quickly credited him with a -pretty complete battery of artistic aptitudes and apprehensions. She felt -certain that he would appreciate her ballroom and picture-gallery, and -would figure well within it. The company was young, the night was wild, and -cheer was the word. She presently led the way upstairs. Foster, as soon as -he heard the first voices in the hall and the first footfalls on the bare -treads of the upper stairs, shut his door. - -Lemoyne felt the big bare room--bare save for a piano and a fringe of -chairs and settles, large and small--as a stage; and he surmised that he, -the new-comer, was expected to exhibit himself on it. He became consciously -the actor. He tried now the assertive note, and now the quiet note; somehow -the quiet was the louder of the two. Pearson, who was in a conquering mood -tonight, scented a rival in the general attention, and one not wholly -unworthy. Pearson was the only one of the four in evening dress, and he -felt that to be an advantage. He, at least, had been properly attired to -meet the elegant visitor from abroad. As for poor Roddy, he had come in an -ordinary sack: perhaps it was partly this which had prompted M. Pelouse -(who was of course dressed for the platform) to find the boy such a paragon -of simple innocence. - -All costumes were alike to Lemoyne; he had appeared in dozens. If he lacked -costume now, he made it up in manner. He had bestowed an immensity of -manner on Amy Leffingwell, downstairs: his cue had been a high, delicate, -remote gravity. "I know, I know," he seemed to say; "and I make no -comment." Upstairs he kept close by Cope: he was proprietary; he was -protective. If Cope settled down in a large chair, Lemoyne would drape -himself over the arm of it; and his hand would fall, as like as not, on the -back of the chair, or even on Cope's shoulder. And when he came to occupy -the piano-stool, Cope, standing alongside, would lay a hand on his. Mrs. -Phillips noticed these minor familiarities and remarked on them to Foster, -who had lately wheeled his chair in. Foster, a few days later, passed the -comment on to Randolph, with an astringent comment of his own.--At all -events, Amy Leffingwell remained in the distance, and George Pearson shared -the distance with her. - -Foster had broken from his retirement on hearing the voices of Cope and -Lemoyne combined in song. The song was "Larboard Watch," and he remembered -how his half-brother had sung in it during courtship, with the young fellow -who had acted, later, as his best man. Lemoyne, at the first word of -invitation, had seated himself at the instrument--a lesser than the "grand" -downstairs, but not unworthy; then, with but a measure or so of prelude, -the two voices had begun to ring out in the old nautical ballad. Lemoyne -felt the composition to be primitive, antiquated and of slight value; but -he had received his cue, and both his throat and his hands wrought with an -elaborate expressiveness. He sang and played, if not with sincerity, at -least with effect. His voice was a high, ringing tenor; not too ringing for -Cope's resonant baritone, but almost too sweet: a voice which might cloy -(if used alone) within a few moments. Cope was a perfect second, and the -two went at it with a complete unity of understanding and of sentiment. -Together they viewed--in thirds--"the gath'ring clouds"; together--still in -thirds--they roused themselves "at the welcome call" of "Larboard watch, -ahoy!" Disregarding the mere words, they attained, at the finish, to -something like feeling--or even like a touch of passion. Medora Phillips -had never heard Cope sing like that before; had never seen so much -animation in his singing face. By the fourth bar there had been tears in -her eyes, and there was a catch in her breath when she exclaimed softly, -"You dear boys!" It was too soon, of course, to make Lemoyne "dear"--the -one boy was Cope. It was really his voice which she had heard through the -soaring, insinuating tones of the other. Foster, sitting beside her, -suddenly raised his shade and peered out questioningly, both at the singers -and at his sister-in-law. He seemed surprised--and more. - -Pearson was surprised too, but kept his applause within limits. However, he -praised Lemoyne for his accompaniment. Then he begged Amy for an air on the -violin; and while they were determining who should play her accompaniment, -the wind raged more wildly round the gables and the thickening snow drove -with a fiercer impetus against the windows. - -Lemoyne (who was a perfectly good sight-reader) begged that he might not be -condemned to spoil another's performance. This was the result of an -understanding between Cope and himself that neither was to contribute -further. Presently a simple piece was selected through which the unskilled -Carolyn might be trusted to pick her way. Cope listened with a decorous -attention which was designed to indicate the highest degree of sympathetic -interest; but his attitude, so finely composed within, yet so ineffectively -displayed without, was as nothing to the loud promptness of Pearson's -praise. Amy glanced at Cope with questioning surprise; but she met -Pearson's excesses of commendation with a gratified smile. - -Shortly before ten o'clock there was a stir at the front door. Mrs. -Phillips rose hastily. "It is M. Pelouse; let me go down and pet him." - -Yes, it was M. Pelouse. "Oh, Madame!" he said, as before, but with an -expressiveness doubly charged, "what a climate!" He was panting and was -covered with fine snow. Behind him was Peter, looking very grave and dour. - -"Shall I be wanted further?" asked Peter in a tense tone, and with no trace -of his usual good-natured smile. - -"What! Again?" cried Mrs. Phillips, while Helga, farther up the hall, was -undoing the Professor; "three times on a night like this? No, indeed! Get -back into the garage as fast as you can." - -"Oh, Madame!" said the Professor, now out of his wrappings and in better -control of his voice. "They were so faithful to our beautiful France! The -_salle_ was almost full!" - -"Well," said Mrs. Phillips to herself, "they got there all right, then. I -hope most of them will get back home alive!" - -"What a climate!" M. Pelouse was still saying, as he entered the ball-room. -He had not been there before. He ran an appraising eye over the pictures -and said little. But as soon as he learned that some of them were the work -of the late M. Phillips he found words. He led the company through a -tasteful jungle of verbosity, and left the ultimate impression that -Monsieur had been a remarkable man, whether as artist or as collector. - -Yet he did not forget to say once more, "What a climate!" - -"Is it really bad outside?" asked Pearson. M. Pelouse shrugged his -shoulders. It was _affreux_. - -"It is indeed," corroborated Mrs. Phillips: she had spent her moment at the -front door. "Nobody that I can find room for leaves my house tonight." This -meant that Cope and Lemoyne were to occupy the chintz chamber. - -M. Pelouse gradually regained himself. Cope interested him. Cope was, in -type, the more "American" of the two new arrivals. He was also, as M. -Pelouse had heard, the _pretendant_,--yes, the _fiance_. Well, he -was calm and inexpressive enough: no close and eager attendance; cool, -cool. "How interesting," said the observer to himself. "And Mademoiselle, -quite across the room, and quite taken up"--happily, too, it seemed--"with -another man: with the other man, perhaps?..." - -At half past ten Pearson rose to leave; Cope and Lemoyne rose at the same -time. "No," said Mrs. Phillips, stopping them both; "you mustn't think of -trying to go. I can't ask Peter to take you, and you could never get across -on foot in the world. I can find a place for you." - -"And about poor Roddy?" asked Hortense. - -"Roddy may stay with me," declared Pearson. "I can put him up. Come on, -Aldridge," he said; "you're good for a hundred yard dash." And down they -started. - -"I don't want to stay," muttered Cope to Lemoyne, under cover of the -others' departure. "Devil take it; it's the last thing in the world I want -to do!" - -"It's awkward," returned Lemoyne, "but we're in for it. After all, it isn't -_her_ house, nor her family's. Besides, you've got me." - -Mrs. Phillips summoned Helga and another maid, who were just on the point -of going to bed, and directed their efforts toward the chintz chamber. "Ah, -well," thought M. Pelouse, "the _fiance_, then, is going to remain -over night in the house of his _fiancee_!" It was droll; yet there -were extenuating circumstances. But--such a singular climate, such curious -temperaments, such a general chill! And M. Pelouse was presently lost to -view among the welcome trappings of Louis Quinze. - - - - -22 - -_COPE SHALL BE RESCUED_ - - -Next morning Cope left the house before breakfast. He had had the -forethought to plead an exceptionally early engagement, and thus he avoided -meeting, after the strain of the evening before, any of the various units -of the household. He and Lemoyne, draping their parti-colored pajamas over -the foot of the bedstead, left the chintz chamber at seven and walked out -into the new day. The air was cold and tingling; the ground was white as a -sheet; the sky was a strident, implacable blue. The glitter and the glare -assaulted their sleepy eyes. They turned up their collars, thrust their -hands deep into their pockets, and took briskly the half mile which led to -their own percolator and electric toaster. - -Cope threw himself down on the bed and let Lemoyne get the breakfast. Well, -he had called; he had done the just and expected thing; he had held his -face through it all; but he was tired after a night of much thought and -little sleep. Possibly he might not have to call again for a full week. If -'phone messages or letters came, he would take them as best he could. - -Nor was Lemoyne very alert. He was less prompt than usual in gaining his -early morning loquacity. His coffee was lacking in spirit, and much of his -toast was burnt. But the two revived, in fair measure, after their taxing -walk. - -They had talked through much of the dead middle of the night. Foster, -wakeful and restless, had become exasperated beyond all power of a return -to sleep. Concerns of youth and love kept them murmuring, murmuring in the -acute if distant ears of one whom youth had left and for whom love was -impossible. Beyond his foolish, figured wall were two contrasted types of -young vigor, and they babbled, babbled on, in the sensitized hearing of one -from whom vigor was gone and for whom hope was set. - -"What do you think of her?" Cope had asked. Then he had thrown his face -into his pillow and left one ear for the reply. - -"She is a clinger," returned Lemoyne. "She will cling until she is loosened -by something or somebody. Then she will cling to the second somebody as -hard as she did to the first. I'm not so sure that it's you as an -individual especially." - -Cope had now no self-love to consider, no self-esteem to guard. He did not -raise his face from out the pillow to reply. But he found Lemoyne rather -drastic. Arthur had shown himself much in earnest, of course; he had the -right, doubtless, to be reproachful; and he was fertile in suggestions -looking toward his friend's freedom. Yet his expedients were not always -delicate or fair: Cope would have welcomed a lighter hand on his -exacerbated spirit, a more disinterested, more impartial touch. He was glad -when, one afternoon at five, a few days later, he met Randolph on the steps -of the library. Randolph, by his estimate, was disinterested and impartial. - - -The weather still held cold: it was no day for spending time, -conversationally, outside; and they stepped back for a little into a recess -of the vestibule. Cope found an opening by bolstering up his previous -written excuses. He was still very general. - -"That's all right," replied Randolph, in friendly fashion. "Some time, -soon, we must try again. And this time we must have your friend." His -glance was kind, yet keen; nor was it brief. - -Randolph had already the outlines of the situation as Foster understood -them. He sometimes slipped in, on Sunday forenoon, to read the newspapers -to Foster, instead of going to church. Hortense and Carolyn came up now and -then: indeed, this reading was, theoretically, a part of Carolyn's duties, -but she was coming less and less frequently, and often never got beyond the -headlines. So that, every other Sunday at least, Randolph set aside prayer- -book and hymnal for dramatic criticisms, editorials, sports and "society." - -This time Foster was full of the events of Friday night. "As I make it out, -he kept away from her the whole evening, and that new man helped him do it. -Our friend down the street, Hortense says, showed every disposition to cut -in, and the girl showed at least some disposition to let him. I don't -wonder: when you come right down to it, he's twice the man the other is." - -"Young Pearson?" - -"Yes." - -"Clever lad. Confident. But brash. Just what his father used to be." - -"He praised her playing. Cope sat dumb. And next morning he hurried away -before breakfast. You know what kind of a morning it was. Anything very -pressing at the University on a Saturday morning at eight?" - -"I hardly know." - -"How about this sudden new friend?" Foster twitched in his chair. "Medora," -he went on, "seems to have no special fancy for him. She even objects to -his calling Cope 'Bert.' Of course he sings. And he seems to be self- -possessed and clever. But 'self-possessed'--that doesn't express it. He was -so awfully, so publicly, at home; at least that's as I gather it. Always -hanging over the other man's chair; always finding a reason to put his hand -on his shoulder...." - -"Body-guard? No wonder Pearson came to the fore." - -"I don't know. What I've heard makes me think of----" - -And here, Foster, speaking with a keen and complicated acerbity, recalled -how, during earlier years of travel, he had had opportunity to observe a -young married couple at a Saratoga hotel. They had made their partiality -too public, and an elderly lady not far away in the vast "parlor" had -audibly complained that they brought the manners of the bed-chamber into -the drawing-room. - -"They talked half through the night, too," Foster added bitterly. - -"Young men's problems," said Randolph. "Possibly they were considering -Pearson." - -"Possibly," repeated Foster; and neither followed further, for a moment, -the pathway of surmise. - -Presently Randolph rose and scuffled through the ruck of newspapers, with -which no great progress had been made. "Is Medora at home?" he asked. - -"I think she's off at church," said Foster discontentedly. "And Hortense -went with her." - -"I'll call her up later. If I can get her for Wednesday--and Pearson -too...." - -Foster, accustomed to piecing loose ends as well as he could, did not ask -him to finish. Randolph picked up a crumpled sheet from the floor, reseated -himself, and read out the account of yesterday's double performance at the -opera. - -When Randolph, then, met Cope in the vestibule of the library, on Monday, -he felt that he had ground under his feet. Just how solid, just how -extensive, he was not quite sure; but he could safely take a few steps -experimentally. Cope was a picture of uncertainty and woe; his face was an -open bid for sympathy and aid. - -"You are unhappy," said Randolph; "and I think I know why." He meant to -advance toward the problem as if it were a case of jealousy--a matter of -Pearson's intrusion and of Amy's seemingly willing acceptance of it. - -Cope soon caught Randolph's idea, and he stared. He did not at all resent -Randolph's advances; misapprehension, in fact, might serve as fairly, in -the end, as the clearest understanding. - -Randolph placed his hand on Cope's shoulder. "You have only to assert -yourself," he said. "The other man is an intruder; it would be easy to warn -him off before he starts in to win her." - -"George Pearson?" said Cope. "Win her? In heaven's name," he blurted out, -"let him!" - -It was a cry of distaste and despair, in which no rival was concerned. -Randolph now had the situation in its real lines. - -"Well, this is no place for a talk," he said. "If you should care to happen -in on me some evening before long...." - -"I have Wednesday," returned Cope, with eagerness. - -"Not Wednesday. I have an engagement for that evening. But any evening a -little later." - -"Friday? The worst of my week's work is over by then." - -"Friday will do." And they parted. - -Randolph had secured for his Wednesday evening Medora Phillips and -Hortense. Hortense was the young person to pair with Pearson, who had -thrown over an evening at his club for the dinner with Randolph. The talk -was to be--in sections and installments--of Amy Leffingwell, and of Cope in -so far as he might enter. Medora would speak; Hortense would speak; -Randolph himself should speak. To complete the party he had asked his -relations from the far side of the big city. His sister would preside for -him; and his brother-in-law might justify his expenditure of time and -trouble by stopping off in advance for a brief confab, as trustee, at the -administration building, with the president. A compatriot had been secured -by Sing-Lo to help in dining-room and kitchen. - -Randolph had planned a short dinner. His sister, facing the long return- -drive, would doubtless be willing to leave by nine-thirty. Then, with two -extraneous pieces removed from the board, the real matter in hand might be -got under way. - -Mrs. Phillips was most lively from the start. She praised the house, which -she was seeing for the first time. She extolled Sing-Lo's department, and -Sing-Lo, who delighted in entertainments, was one broad smile. She had a -word of encouragement for his less smiling helper, whom she informally -christened Sing-Hi; and she chatted endlessly with Mrs. Brackett--perhaps -even helped tire her out. Yes, George Pearson was to be urged forward for -the rescue of Bertram Cope. - -Pearson spoke up loud and clear among the males. He was a business-man -among business-men, and during the very few moments formally allowed for -the cigars he made himself, as he felt, tell. And after the Bracketts left ---at nine twenty-five--he was easily content to stay on for three-quarters -of an hour longer. - -At nine-forty Pearson was saying, amidst the cigarette-smoke of the den: - -"Does she expect to teach the violin all her life?" - -He was both ironical and impatient. Clearly a charming, delicate creature -like Amy Leffingwell might better decorate the domestic scene of some -gentleman who enjoyed position and prosperity. - -"I hope not, indeed," said Hortense, in a deep contralto. - -Pearson cast on Hortense a look which rewarded such discernment. - -"Of course he has nothing, now," said Randolph, with deliberation. "And he -may be nothing but a poor, underpaid professor all his life." - -"No ring--yet," said Hortense, further. Her "yet" meant "not even yet." Her -deep tone was plausibly indignant. - -"I'm rather glad of that," remarked Mrs. Phillips, with an eye pretendedly -fixed on the Mexican dolls. "I can't feel that they are altogether suited -to each other." - -"He doesn't care for her," pursued Hortense. - -"Does she really care for him?" asked Pearson. - -No answer. One pair of eyes sought the floor; another searched the ceiling; -a third became altogether subordinate to questioning, high-held brows. - -Pearson glanced from one face to another. The doubt as to her "caring" -seemed universal. The doubt that she cared deeply, essentially, was one -that he had brought away from the ball-room. And he went home, at ten -twenty-three, pretty well determined that he would very soon try to change -doubt to certainty. - -"Thank you so much," said Mrs. Phillips to Randolph, as he went out with -her and Hortense to put them in the car. "I'm sure we don't want him to be -burdened and miserable; and I'm sure we all do want her to be happy. George -is a lovely, capable chap,--and, really, he has quite a way." - - - - -23 - -_COPE REGAINS HIS FREEDOM_ - - - -On Friday evening Randolph, at home, was glancing now and then at the clock -(as on a previous occasion), while waiting for Cope. At eight-fifteen the -telephone rang; it was Cope, with excuses, as before. He was afraid he -should be unable to come; some unexpected work... It was that autumn -excursion all over again. - -Randolph hung up the receiver, with some impatience. Still, never mind; if -Cope would make no effort to save himself, others were making the effort -for him. He had considerable confidence in George Pearson's state of mind, -as well as in George's egoism and drive. - -Foster heard of Cope's new delinquency, through Randolph's own reluctant -admission. "He is an ingrate, after all," said Foster savagely, and gave -his wheels an exceptionally violent jerk. And Randolph made little effort, -this time, toward Cope's defense. - -"You've done so much for him," Foster went on; "and you're willing to do so -much more." - -"I _could_ do a great deal, of course. There may be a good reason this -time, too," said Randolph soberly. - -"Humph!" returned Foster. - -Cope had hung up the receiver to turn toward Lemoyne and to say: "I really -ought to have gone." - -"Wait until I can go with you," Lemoyne insisted, as he had been insisting -just before. The still unseen man of Indian Rock was again the subject of -his calculations. - -"You've been asked," Cope submitted. "He has been very friendly to me, and -I am sure he would be the same to you." - -"I think that, personally, I can get along without him," the other muttered -ungraciously to himself. - -Aloud he said: "As I've told you, I've got the president of the dramatic -club to see tonight, and it's high time that I was leaving." He looked with -intention at the desk which had superseded that old table, with ink-stained -cover, at which Cope had once worked. "You can use a little time to -advantage over those themes. I'll be back within an hour." - -Lemoyne had entered for Psychology, and was hoping that he now enjoyed the -status necessary for participation in the college theatricals. But he was -relying still more on a sudden defection or lapse which had left the -dramatic club without a necessary actor at a critical time. "It's me, or -postponement," he said; "and I think it's me." The new opportunity--or bare -chance--loomed before him with immensity. Cope's affair might wait. He -would even risk Cope's running over to Randolph's place alone. - -Cope seated himself at his desk with loyalty, or at least with docility; -and Lemoyne, putting on his hat and coat, started out for the fraternity -house where the president of the club was in residence. - -Five minutes after Lemoyne's departure Cope heard the telephone ringing -downstairs, and presently a patient, middle-aged man knocked at the door -and told him the call was for him. - -Cope sighed apprehensively and went down. Of course it was Amy. Would he -not come over for an hour? Everybody was away, and they could have a quiet -talk together. - -Cope, conscious of others in the house, replied cautiously. Lemoyne, he -said, had gone out and left him with a deskful of themes: tiresome routine -work, but necessary, and immensely absorptive of time. He was afraid that -he could scarcely come this evening.... - -Amy's voice took on a new tone. Why, she seemed to be feeling, must Arthur -Lemoyne be mentioned, and mentioned so early? Yet Bertram had put him-- -instinctively, unconsciously--at the head of the little verbal procession -just begun. - -Cope's response was dry and meagre; free speech was impossible over a -lodging-house telephone set in the public hall. Amy, who knew little of -Cope's immediate surroundings at the moment, went on in accents of protest -and of grievance, and Cope went on replying in a half-hushed voice as non- -committally as he was able. He dwelt more and more on the trying details of -his work in words which conveyed no additional information to any fellow- -dwellers who might overhear. - -"You haven't been to see me for a week," came Amy's voice petulantly, -indignantly. - -"I'm very sorry, I'm sure," returned Cope in a carefully generalized tone -of suavity. It was successful with the spinster in the side room above, but -it was no tone to use with a protesting _fiancee_. - -"Why do you neglect me so?" Amy's voice proceeded, with no shade of -appeasement. - -"There is no intention of that," replied Cope; "--so far as I know," he -added, for ears about or above. - -Again Amy's tone changed. It took on a tang of anger, and also a curious -ring of finality--as if, suddenly, a last resolution had been reached. -"Good night," she said abruptly, and the interview was over. - -Cope forgot Randolph, and Lemoyne, and his themes. Lemoyne, returning -within the hour, found him seated at his desk in self-absorbed depression, -his work untouched. - -"Well, they've taken me," he began; "and I shall have a fairly good part." -Cope made no effort to respond to the other's glowing self-satisfaction, -but sat with thoughtful, downcast eyes at his desk before the untouched -themes. "What's the matter?" asked Lemoyne. "Has she been calling up -again?" - -Cope raised his head and gave him a look. Lemoyne saw that his very first -guess had been correct. - -"This is a gay life!" he broke out; "just the life I have come down here to -lead. You're making yourself miserable, and you're making me miserable. -It's got to end." - -Cope gave him a second woeful glance. - -"Write to her, breaking it off," prompted Lemoyne. "Draft a letter -tonight." - -His mind was full of _cliches_ from his reading and his "scripts." He -had heard all the necessary things said: in fact, had said them himself-- -now in evening dress, now in hunting costume, now in the loose habiliments -of Pierrot--time and time again. The dissatisfied _fiance_ need but -say that he could not feel, after all, that they were as well suited to -each other as they ought to be, that he could not bring himself to believe -that his feeling for her was what love really should be, and that---- - -Thus, with a multiplicity of "that's," they accomplished a rough draft -which might be restudied and used on the morrow. "There!" said Lemoyne to -the weary Cope at eleven o'clock; "it ought to have been written a month -ago." - -Cope languidly slipped the oft-amended sheet under his pile of themes and -in a spent voice suggested bed. - -Over night and through the following forenoon the draft lay on his desk. -When he returned to his room at three o'clock a note, which had been -delivered by hand, awaited him. It was from Amy Leffingwell. - -Cope read it, folded his arms on his desk, bowed his head on his arms, and, -being alone, gave a half-sob. Then he lifted his head, with face illumined -and soul refreshed. Amy had asked for an end to their engagement. - -"What does she say?" asked Lemoyne, an hour later. - -"She says what you say!" exclaimed Cope with shining eyes and a trace of -half-hysteric bravado. "She does not feel that we are quite so well suited -to each other as we ought to be, nor that her feeling toward me is what -love really... Can she have been in dramatics too!" - -"Your letter," returned Lemoyne, with dignity, "would have been -understood." - -"Quite so," Cope acknowledged, in a kind of exultant excitation. He caught -the rough draft from his desk--it was all seared with new emendations--tore -it up, and threw the fragments into the waste-basket. "Thank Heaven, I -haven't had to send it!" In a moment, "What am I to write now?" he asked -with irony. - -"The next will be easier," returned Lemoyne, still with dignity. - -"It will," replied Cope. - -It was,--so much easier that it became but an elegant literary exercise. A -few touches of nobility, a few more of elegiac regret, and it was ready at -nine that night for the letter-box. Cope dropped it in with an iron clang -and walked back to his quarters a free man. - -A few days later Lemoyne, working for his new play, met Amy Leffingwell in -the music-alcove of the University library. She had removed her gloves with -their furry wristlets, and he saw that she had a ring on the third finger -of her left hand. Its scintillations made a stirring address to his eye. - -Cope heard about the ring that evening, and about Amy Leffingwell's -engagement to George Pearson the next day. - -He had no desire to dramatize the scene of Pearson's advance, assault and -victory, nor to visualize the setting up of the monument by which that -victory was commemorated. Lemoyne did it for him. - -Pearson had probably indulged in some disparagement of Cope--a phase on -which Lemoyne, as a faithful friend, did not dwell. But he clearly saw -George taking Amy's hand, on which there was still no ring, and declaring -that she should be wearing one before tomorrow night. He figured both -George and Amy as rather glad that Cope had not given one, and as more and -more inclining, with the passage of the days, to the comfortable feeling -that there had never been any real engagement at all. - -Lemoyne attempted to put some of his visualizings before Cope, but Cope cut -him short. "Now I will settle down to work on my thesis," he said, "and get -my degree at the June convocation." - -"Good," said Lemoyne; "and now I can get my mind on the club." He went to -the window and looked out on the night. The stars were a-glitter. "Let's -take a turn round the block before we turn in." - -They spent ten minutes in the clear winter air. As Cope, on their return, -stooped to put his latch-key to use, Lemoyne impulsively threw an arm -across his shoulder. "Everything is all right, now," he said, in a tone of -high gratification; and Urania, through the whole width of her starry -firmament, looked down kindly upon a happier household. - - - - -24 - -_COPE IN DANGER ANEW_ - - -A similar satisfaction came to prevail in University circles, and in the -lesser circle which Cope had formed outside. His own classroom, after a -week, became a different place. There had been some disposition to take a -facetious view of Cope's adventure. His class had felt him as cool and -rather stiff, and comment would not be stayed. One bright girl thought he -had spoiled a good suit of clothes for nothing. The boys, who knew how much -clothes cost, and how much every suit counted, put their comment on a -different basis. The more serious among them went no further, indeed, than -to say that if a man had found himself making a mistake, the sooner he got -out of it the better. For weeks this affair of Cope's had hung over the -blackboard like a dim tapestry. Now it was gone; and when he tabulated in -chalk the Elizabethan dramatists or the Victorian novelists there was -nothing to prevent his students from seeing them. - -Medora Phillips became sympathetic and tender. She let him understand that -she thought he had been unfairly treated. This did not prevent her from -being much kinder to Amy Leffingwell. Amy, earlier, had been so affected by -the general change of tone that, more than once, she had felt prompted to -take herself and her belongings out of the house. But she still lingered -on, as she was likely to do, during a short engagement; and Mrs. Phillips -was now amiability itself to George and Amy both. - -Her method of soothing Cope was to take him to the theatre and the opera in -town: he could scarcely come to the house. It was now late in January and -the opera season was near its end. People were tiring of their boxes, or -had started South: it had become almost a work of merit to fill a friend's -box for her. During the last week of the season, Mrs. Phillips was put in -position to do this. She invited Cope, and took along Hortense, and found -in the city itself a married pair who could get to the place and home again -without her help. Lemoyne would have made six, and the third man; but he -was not bidden. Why pack the box? A better effect was made by presenting, -negligently, one empty seat. Lemoyne dressed Cope, however. He had brought -to Churchton the outgrown evening clothes; and Cope, in his exuberance, -bought a new pair of light shoes and white gloves. He looked well as he sat -on the back seat of the limousine with Medora Phillips, during the long -drive in; and he looked well--strikingly, handsomely well--in the box -itself. Indeed, thought Medora, he made other young men in nearby boxes-- -young men of "means" and "position"--look almost plebian. "He is charming," -she said to herself, over and over again. - -What about him "took" her? Was it his slenderness, his grace? Was it his -youthfulness, intact to this moment and promising an extension of agreeable -possibilities into an entertaining future? Or was it more largely his -fundamental coolness of tone? Again he was an icicle on the temple--this -time the temple of song. "He is glittering." said Medora, intent on his -blazing blue eyes, his beautiful teeth ever ready for a public smile, and -the luminous backward sweep of his hair; "and he is not soft." She thought -suddenly of Arthur Lemoyne; he, by comparison, seemed like a dark, yielding -plum-pudding. - -On the way into town Medora had had Hortense sit in front with Peter. This -arrangement had enabled her to lay her hand more than once on Cope's, and -to tell him again that he had been rather badly treated, and that Amy, when -you came to it, was a poor slight child who scarcely knew her own mind. "I -hope she had not made a mistake, after all," breathed Medora. - -All this soothed Cope. The easy motion of the luxurious car half-hypnotized -him; a scene of unaccustomed splendor and brilliancy lay just ahead... What -wonder that Medora found him scenically gratifying in her box (the dear -creature's titillation made it seem "hers" indeed), and gave his name with -great gusto to the young woman of the notebook and pencil? And the box was -not at the back, but well along to one side, where people could better see -him. Its number, too, was lower; so that, next morning, he was well up in -the list, instead of at the extreme bottom, where two or three of the young -men of means and position found themselves. Some of the girls in his class -read his name, and had no more to say about wet clothes. - -Hortense, on the front seat of the car, had had the good sense to say -little and the acumen to listen much. She knew that Cope must "call" soon, -and she knew it would be on some evening when he had been advised that Amy -was not at home. There came, before long, an evening when Amy and George -Pearson went into town for a musical comedy, and Cope walked across once -more to the familiar house. - -Hortense was in the drawing-room. She was brilliantly dressed, and her dark -aggressive face wore a look of bravado. In her rich contralto she welcomed -Cope with an initiative which all but crowded her aunt into second place. -Under the very nose of Medora Phillips, whom she breezily seemed to regard -as a chaperon, she brought forward the sketch of Cope in oils, which she -had done partly from observation and partly from memory. She may have had, -too, some slight aid from a photograph,--one which her aunt had wheedled -out of Cope and had missed, on one occasion at least, from her desk in the -library. Hortense now boldly asked his cooperation for finishing her small -canvas. - -Though the "wood-nymphs" of last autumn's legend might indeed be, as he had -broadly said, "a nice enough lot of girls," they really were not all alike -and indistinguishable: one of them at least, as he should learn, had -thumbs. - -Hortense wheeled into action. - -"The composition is good," she observed, looking at the canvas as it stood -propped against the back of a Chippendale chair; "and, in general, the -values are all right. But----" She glanced from the sketch back to the -subject of it. - -Cope started. He recognized himself readily enough. However, he had had no -idea that self-recognition was to be one of the pleasures of his evening. - -"----but I shall need you yourself for the final touches--the ones that -will make all the difference." - -"It's pretty good as it is," declared Mrs. Phillips, who, privately, was -almost as much surprised as Cope. "When did you get to do it?" - -This inquiry, simple as it was, put the canvas in a new light--that of an -icon long cherished as the object of private devotion. Hortense stepped -forward to the chair and made an adjustment of the picture's position: she -had a flush and a frown to conceal. "But never mind," she thought, as she -turned the canvas toward a slightly different light; "if Aunt Medora wants -to help, let her." - -She did not reply to her aunt's question. "Retouched from life, and then -framed--who knows?" she asked. Of course it would look immensely better; -would look, in fact, as it was meant to look, as she could make it look. - -She told Cope that she had set up a studio near the town square, not far -from the fountain-basin and the elms---- - -"Which won't count for much at this time of year," interjected her aunt. - -"Well, the light is good," returned Hortense, "and the place is quiet; and -if Mr. Cope will drop in two or three times, I think he will end by feeling -that I have done him justice." - -"This is a most kind attention," said Cope, slightly at sea. "I ought to be -able to find time some afternoon...." - -"Not too late in the afternoon," Hortense cautioned. "The light in February -goes early." - -When Lemoyne heard of this new project he gave Cope a _look_. He had -no concern as to Mrs. Phillips, who was, for him, but a rather dumpy, over- -brisk, little woman of forty-five. If she must run off with Bert every so -often in a motor-car, he could manage to stand it. Besides, he had no -desire to shut Cope--and himself--out of a good house. But the niece, -scarcely twenty-three, was a more serious matter. - -"Lookout!" he said to Cope. "Lookout!" - -"I can take care of myself," the other replied, rather tartly. - -"I wish you could!" retorted Lemoyne, with poignant brevity. "I'll go with -you." - -"You won't!" - -"I'd rather save you near the start, than have to try at the very end." - -Cope flung himself out; and he looked in at Hortense's studio--which she -had taken (or borrowed) for a month--before the week was half over. - -Hortense had stepped into the shoes of a young gentlewoman who had been -trying photography, and who had rather tired of it. At any rate, she had -had a chance to go to Florida for a month and had seized it. Hortense had -succeeded to her little north skylight, and had rearranged the rest to her -own taste; it was a mingling of order and disorder, of calculation and of -careless chance. She had a Victory of Samothrace and a green-and-gold -dalmatic from some Tuscan town----But why go on? - -Cope had not been in this new milieu fifteen minutes before Randolph -happened along. - -Randolph, as a friend of the family, could scarcely be other than persona -grata. Hortense, however, gave him no great welcome. She stopped in the -work that had but been begun. The winter day was none too bright, and the -best of the light would soon be past, she said. The engagement could stand -over. In any event, he was there ("he," of course, meaning Cope), and a -present delay would only add to the total number of his calls. Hortense -began to wipe her brushes and to talk of tea. - -"I'll go, I'll go," said Randolph obligingly. "I heard about the new shop -only yesterday, and I wanted to see it. I don't exact that I shall witness -the mysteries in active operation." - -Cope's glance asked Randolph to remain. - -"There are no mysteries," returned Hortense. "It's just putting on a few -dabs of paint in the right places." - -She continued to take a few dabs from her brushes and to talk tea. "Stay -for a sip," she said. - -"Very well; thank you," replied Randolph, and wondered how long "a sip" -might mean. - -In the end it meant no longer for him than for Cope; they came away -together. Hortense held Cope for a moment to make a second engagement at an -earlier hour. - -Randolph had not met Cope for several days, except at the opera, where he -had left his regular Monday evening seat in the parquet to spend a few -moments in Mrs. Phillips' friend's box. He had never seen Cope in evening -dress before; but he found him handsome and distinguished, and some of the -glamour of that high occasion still lingered about the young man as he now -walked through High Street, in his rather shabby tweeds, at Randolph's -side. - -Randolph looked back upon his dinner as a complete success: Pearson was -engaged, and Cope was free. He now said to Cope: - -"Of course you must know I feel you were none too handsomely treated. -George is a pleasant, enterprising fellow, but somewhat sudden and -rapacious. If he is happy, I hope you are no less happy yourself...." Thus -he resumed the subject which had been dropped at the Library door. - -Cope shrank a little, and Randolph felt him shrinking. He fell silent; he -understood. Pain sometimes took its own time to travel, and reached its -goal by a slow, circuitous route. He thought suddenly of his bullfight in -Seville, twenty-five years before. He had sat out his six bulls with entire -composure; yet, back in America, some time later, he had encountered a -bullfight in an early film and had not been able to follow it through. -Cope, perhaps, was beginning to feel the edge of the sword and the drag at -his vitals. The thing was over, and his, the elder man's, own part in it -successfully accomplished; so why had he, conventional commentator, felt -the need of further words? - -He let the unhappy matter drop. When he spoke again he reminded Cope that -the invitation for himself and Lemoyne still held good. Amy had been swept -from the stage; but Lemoyne, a figure of doubt, was yet in its background. -"I must have a 'close-up'," Randolph declared to himself, "and find out -what he comes to." Cope had shown some reluctance to meet his advances--a -reluctance which, he felt, was not altogether Cope's own. - -"I know we shall be glad to come sometime," replied Cope, with seeming -heartiness. This heartiness may have had its element of the genuine; at any -rate, here was another "good house," from which no one need shut himself -out without good cause. If Lemoyne developed too extreme a reluctance, he -would be reminded that he was cherishing the hope of a position in the -registrar's office, for at least half of the day; also, that Randolph -enjoyed some standing in University circles, and that his brother-in-law -was one of the trustees. - -"Yes, indeed," continued Cope, in a further corroboration which might -better have been dispensed with. - -"You will be welcome," replied Randolph quietly. He would have preferred a -single assurance to a double one. - - - - -25 - -_COPE IN DOUBLE DANGER_ - - -Meanwhile Cope and Lemoyne refined daily on the details of their new menage -and applied themselves with new single-mindedness to their respective -interests. Cope had found a subject for his thesis in the great field of -English literature,--or, rather, in a narrow bypath which traversed one of -its corners. The important thing, as he frequently reminded Lemoyne, was -not the thesis itself, but the aid which it might give his future. "It will -make a difference, in salary, of three or four hundred dollars," he -declared. - -Lemoyne himself gave a few hours a week to Psychology in its humbler -ranges. There were ways to hold the attention of children, and there were -forms of advertising calculated to affect favorably the man who had money -to spend. In addition, the University had found out that he could sing as -well as act, and something had been said about a place for him in a musical -play. - -Between-times they brought their quarters into better order; and this -despite numerous minor disputes. The last new picture did not always find -at once its proper place on the wall; and sometimes there were discussions -as to whether it should be toast or rolls, and whether there should be eggs -or not. Occasionally sharp tones and quivering nostrils, but commonly amity -and peace. - -They were seen, or heard of, as going about a great deal together: to -lectures, to restaurants, to entertainments in the city. But they went no -longer, for the present, to Ashburn Avenue; they took their time to -remember Randolph's repeated invitation; and there was, as yet, no further -attendance at the studio in the Square,--for any reference to the -unfinished portrait was likely to produce sharp tones and quivering -nostrils indeed. - -Other invitations began to come to Cope,--some of them from people he knew -but slightly. He wondered whether his swoon and his shipwreck really could -have done so much to make him known. Sometimes when these cards seemed to -imply but a simple form of entertainment, at a convenient hour of the late -afternoon, he would attend. It did not occur to him to note that commonly -Medora Phillips was present: she was always in "active circulation," as he -put it; and there he let things lie. - -One of these entertainments was an afternoon reception of ordinary type, -and the woman giving it had thrown a smallish library into closer -communication with her drawing-room without troubling to reduce the library -to order: books, pamphlets, magazines lay about in profuse carelessness. -And it was in this library that Cope and Medora Phillips met. - -"You've been neglecting me," she said. - -"But how can I----?" he began. - -"Yes, I know," she returned generously. "But after the first of May--Well, -he is a young man of decisiveness and believes in quick action." She made a -whiff, accompanied by an outward and forward motion of the hands. She was -wafting Amy Leffingwell out of her own house into the new home which George -Pearson was preparing for her. "After that----" - -"Yes, after that, of course." - -Mrs. Phillips was handling unconsciously a small pamphlet which lay on the -library table. It was a magazine of verse--a monthly which did not scorn -poets because they happened to live in the county in which it was -published. The table of contents was printed on the cover, and the names of -contributors were arranged in order down the right-hand side. Mrs. -Phillips, carelessly running her eye over it while thinking of other -things, was suddenly aware of the name of Carolyn Thorpe. - -"What's this?" she asked. She ran her eye across to the other edge of the -cover, and read, "Two Sonnets." - -"Well, well," she observed, and turned to the indicated page. And, "When in -the world----?" she asked, and turned back to the cover. It was the latest -issue of the magazine, and but a day or two old. - -"Carolyn in print, at last!" she exclaimed. "Why, isn't this splendid!" - -Then she returned to the text of the two sonnets and read the first of -them--part of it aloud. - -"Well," she gasped; "this is ardent, this is outspoken!" - -"That's the fashion among woman poets today," returned Cope, in a matter- -of-fact tone. "They've gone farther and farther, until they hardly realize -how far they _have_ gone. Don't let them disturb you." - -Mrs. Phillips reread the closing lines of the first sonnet, and then ran -over the second. "Good heavens!" she exclaimed; "when _I_ was a -girl----!" - -"Times change." - -"I should say so." She looked from the magazine to Cope. "I wonder who 'the -only begetter' may be." - -"Is that quite fair? So many writers think it unjust--and even obtuse and -offensive--if the thing is put on too personal a basis. It's all just an -imagined situation, manipulated artistically...." - -Mrs. Phillips looked straight at him. "Bertram Cope, it's _you_!" She -spoke with elation. These sonnets constituted a tribute. Cope, she knew, -had never looked three times, all told, at Carolyn Thorpe; yet here was -Carolyn saying that she... - -Cope dropped his eyes and slightly flushed. - -"I wonder if she knows it's out?" Mrs. Phillips went on swiftly. "Did you?" - - -"I?" cried Cope, in dismay. - -"You were taking it all so calmly." - -"'Calmly'? I don't take it at all! Why should I? And why should you think -there is any ref----?" - -"Because I'm so 'obtuse' and 'offensive,' I suppose. Oh, if _I_ could -only write, or paint, or play, or something!" - -Cope put his hand wearily to his forehead. The arts were a curse. So were -gifted girls. So were over-appreciative women. He wished he were back home, -smoking a quiet cigarette with Arthur Lemoyne. - -Mrs. Ryder came bustling up--Mrs. Ryder, the mathematical lady who had -given the first tea of all. - -"I have just heard about Carolyn's poems. What it must be to live in the -midst of talents! And I hear that Hortense has finally taken a studio for -her portraits." - -"Yes," replied Mrs. Phillips. "And she"--with a slight emphasis--"is doing -Mr. Cope's picture,"--with another slight emphasis at the end. - -Cope felt a half-angry tremor run through him. He was none the less -perturbed because Medora Phillips meant obviously no offense. Hortense and -Carolyn were viewed as but her delegates; they were doing for her what she -would have been glad to be able to do for herself. Clearly, in her mind, -there was not to be another Amy. - -Well, that was something, he thought. He laughed uneasily, and gave the -enthusiastic Mrs. Ryder a few details of the art-world (as she called it), ---details which she would not be denied. - -"I must call on dear Hortense, some afternoon," she said. - -"Do," returned Hortense's aunt. "And mention the place. Let's keep the dear -girl as busy as possible." - -"If it were only photographs...." submitted Mrs. Ryder. - -"That's a career too," Mrs. Phillips acknowledged. - -They all drifted out into the larger room. Mrs. Ryder left them,--perhaps -to distribute her small change of art and literature through the crowd. - -"You're not forgetting Hortense?" Mrs. Phillips herself said, before -leaving him. - -"By no means," Cope replied. - -"I hear you didn't make much of a start." - -"We had tea," returned Cope, with satirical intention. - -This left Medora Phillips unscathed. "Tea puts on no paint," she observed, -and was lost in the press. - -It need not be assumed that knowledge of Carolyn Thorpe's verse gained wide -currency through University circles, but there was a copy of the magazine -in the University library. Lemoyne saw it there. He scarcely knew whether -to be pleased or vexed. Finally he decided that there was safety in -numbers. If Cope really intended to go to that studio, it was just as well -that there should be an impassioned poetess in the background. And it was -just as well that Cope should know she was there. Lemoyne took a line not -unlike Mrs. Phillips' own. - -"I only wish there were more of them," he declared, looking up from his -desk. "I'd like a lady barber for your head, a lady shoemaker for your -feet, a lady psychologist for your soul----" - -"Stop it!" cried Cope. "I've had about all I can stand. If you want to live -in peace, as you sometimes say, do your share to keep the peace." - -"You _are_ going to have another sitting?" - -"I am. How can I get out of it?" - -"You don't want to get out of it." - -"Well, after all the attentions they've shown us----" - -"Us? You." - -"Me, then. Shall I be so uncivil as to hold back?" - -"It might not displease her if you did." - -"Her?" - -"Your Mrs. Phillips. If I may risk a guess------" - -"You may not. Your precious 'psychology' can wait. Don't be in such a -damned hurry to use it." - -"It had better be used in time." - -"It had better not be used at all. Drop it. Think about your new play, or -something." - -"Oh, the devil!" sighed Lemoyne. "Winnebago seems mighty far off. We got on -there, at least." He bent again over his desk. - -Cope put down his book and came across. There were tears, perhaps, in his -eyes--the moisture of vexation, or of contrition, or of both. "We can get -along here, too," he said, with an arm around Lemoyne's shoulder. - -"Let's hope so," returned Lemoyne, softening, with his hand pressed on -Cope's own. - - - - -26 - -_COPE AS A GO-BETWEEN_ - - -This brief exchange might have passed for a quarrel and a reconciliation; -and the reconciliation seemed to call for a seal. That was soon set by -another of Randolph's patient invitations to dinner. - -"Let's go," said Cope; "I've got to go again--sometime." - -"I don't care about it, very much," replied Lemoyne. - -"If you want any help of his toward a position.... Time's passing. And a -man can't be expected to bestir himself much for another man he's never -even seen." - -"All right. I'll go with you." - -Randolph was glad to see Cope again, whom he had not met since the half -hour in Hortense Dunton's studio. He was also glad to secure, finally, a -close and leisurely look at Lemoyne. Lemoyne took the same occasion for a -close and leisurely look at Randolph. Each viewed the other with dislike -and distrust. Each spoke, so far as might be, to Cope--or through him. -Sing-Lo, who was prepared to smile, saw few smiles elsewhere, and became -sedate, even glum. - -Randolph felt a physical distaste for Lemoyne. His dark eyes were too -liquid; his person was too plump; the bit of black bristle beneath his nose -was an offense; his aura----Yet who can say anything definite about so -indefinite a thing as an aura, save that one feels it and is attracted or -repelled by it? Lemoyne, on his side, developed an equal distaste (or -repugnance) for the "little gray man"--as he called Randolph to himself -and, later, even to Cope; though Randolph, speaking justly, was exactly -neither gray nor little. Lemoyne noted, too, the early banishment of -Randolph's eyeglasses, which disappeared as they had disappeared once or -twice before. He felt that Randolph was trying to stay young rather late, -and was showing himself inclined to "go" with younger men longer than they -would welcome him. Why didn't he consort with people of his own age and -kind? He was old; so why couldn't he _be_ old? - -The talk led--through Cope--to reminiscences of life in Winnebago. Randolph -presently began to feel Lemoyne as a variously yet equivocally gifted young -fellow--one so curiously endowed as to be of no use to his own people, and -of no avail for any career they were able to offer him. A bundle of minor -talents; a possible delight to casual acquaintances, but an exasperation to -his own household; an ornamental skimmer over life's surfaces, when not a -false fire for other young voyagers along life's coasts. Yet Bertram Cope -admired him and had become absorbed in him. Their life in that northern -town, with its fringe of interests--educational, ecclesiastical, artistic -and aquatic--had been intimate, fused to a degree. Randolph began to -realize, for the first time, the difficulties in the way of "cultivating" -Cope. Cope was a field already occupied, a niche already filled. - -While Randolph was gathering (through Cope) details of the life in -Winnebago, Lemoyne was gathering (through Cope) details of the life in -Churchton during the past autumn. He began to reconstruct that season: the -long range of social entertainments, the proposed fall excursions, the -sudden shifting of domicile. Randolph, it was clear, had tried to -appropriate Cope and to supplant (knowingly or unknowingly) Cope's closest -friend. Lemoyne became impatient over the fact that he was now sitting at -Randolph's table. However, if Randolph could help him to a place and a -salary, that would make some amends. - -Presently Cope, having served as an intermediary, became the open centre of -interest. His thesis was brought forward as a suitable subject of inquiry -and comment. It was a relief to have come to a final decision; but no -relief was in sight for a long time from the slavery of close reading. -Every moment that could be spared from his classroom was given up to books ---authors in whom he might be interested or not interested, but who must be -gone through. - -"A sort of academic convention," said Cope, rather wanly; "but a necessary -one." - -His eyes had begun to show excessive application; at least they looked -tired and dim. His color, too, was paler. He had come to suggest again the -young man who had been picked up from Medora Phillips' dining-room floor -and laid out on the couch in her library, and who had shown a good deal of -pallor during the few days that followed. "Take a little more air and -exercise," Randolph counselled. - -"A good rule always, for everybody," said Lemoyne, with a withholding of -all tone and expression. - -"I believe," Randolph continued, "that you are losing in both weight and -color. That would be no advantage to yourself--and it might complicate Miss -Dunton's problem. It's perplexing to an artist when one's subject changes -under one's very eye." - -"There won't be much time for sitting, from now on," observed Lemoyne -concisely. - -"I might try to go round once more," said Cope, "--in fairness. If there -are to be higher lights on my cheekbones and lower lights for my eyes, an -hour or so should serve to settle it." - -"I wouldn't introduce many changes into my eyes and cheekbones, if I were -you," said Randolph. Lemoyne was displeased; he thought that Randolph was -taking advantage of his position as host to make an observation of -unwarranted saliency, and he frowned at his plate. - -Cope flushed, and looked at his. - -The talk drifted toward dramatics, with Winnebago once more the background; -but the foreground was occupied by a new musical comedy which one of the -clubs might try in another month, and the tone became more cheery. Sing-Lo, -who had come in with a maple mousse of his own making, smiled at last; and -he smiled still more widely when, at the end of the course, his chief -occidental masterpiece was praised. Sing-Lo also provided coffee and cigars -in the den; and it was here that Cope felt the atmosphere right for -venturing a word in behalf of Lemoyne. There had been few signs of -relenting in Winnebago; and some modest source of income would be welcome-- -in fact, was almost necessary. - -"Of course work _is_ increasing in the offices," said Randolph, -looking from one young man to the other; "and of course I have, directly or -indirectly, some slight 'influence.'" - -He felt no promptings to lend Lemoyne a hand; yet Cope himself, even if out -of reach, might at least remain an object of continuing kindness. - -"But if you are to interest yourself in some new undertaking by 'The -Grayfriars,'" he said to Lemoyne, "will you have much time and attention to -give to office-work?" - -"Oh, I have time," replied Lemoyne jauntily, "and not many studies. Half a -day of routine work, I thought.... Of course I'm not a manager, or -director, or anything like that. I should just have a part of moderate -importance, and should have only to give good heed to rehearsals...." - -"Well," said Randolph thoughtfully. - -"I hope you can do something," put in Cope, with fervor. - -"Well," said Randolph again. - -This uncomfortable and unsatisfactory dinner of three presently drew to its -end. "I'd have made it four," said Randolph to Foster, a day or two later, -"if I'd only thought of it in time." - -"_I_ don't want to meet them again," returned Foster quickly. - -"Well," said Randolph, "I've no fondness for the new fellow, myself; -but----" - -"And I don't care about the other, either." - -Randolph sighed. This was plainly one of Foster's off days. The only wonder -was he had not more of them. He sat in darkness, with few diversions, -occupations, ameliorations. His mind churned mightily on the scanty -materials that came his way. He founded big guesses on nothings; he raised -vast speculative edifices on the slightest of premises. To dislike a man he -could not even see! Well, the blind--and the half-blind--had their own -intuitions and followed their own procedures. - -"Then you wouldn't advise me to speak a word for him?--for them?" - -"Certainly not!" rejoined Foster, with all promptness. "They've treated you -badly. They've put you off; and they came, finally, only because they -counted on getting something out of you. - -"Oh, I wouldn't say that of Cope." - -"I would. And I do. They're completely wrapped up in their own interests, -and in each other; and they're coupled to get anything they can out of -Number Three. Or out of Number Four. Or Five. Or out of X,--the world, that -is to say." - -Randolph shrugged. This was one of Foster's bad days indeed. - -"And what's this I hear about Hortense?" asked Foster, with bitterness. - -"That won't amount to much." - -"It won't? She's out in the open, finally. She took that place for a month -with one express object--to get him there, paint or no paint. She's fretful -and cantankerous over every day of delay, and soon she'll be in an -undisguised rage." - -"What does her aunt say to it?" - -"She's beginning to be vexed. She's losing patience. She thinks it's a -mistake--and an immodest one. She wants to send her away for a visit. To -think of it!--as soon as one girl lets go another takes hold,--and a third -person holds on through all!" - -"Joe! Joe!" - -But Foster was not to be stayed. - -"And that poetry of Carolyn's! Medora herself came up and read it to me. It -was a 'tribute,' she thought!" - -"That won't amount to anything at all." - -"It won't? With Hortense scornfully ridiculing it, and Carolyn bursting -into tears before she can make her bolt from the room, and Amy wondering -whether, after all...! If things are as bad as they are for me up here, how -much worse must they be for the rest of them below! And that confounded -engagement has made it still worse all round!" - -Randolph ran his palms over his perplexed temples. "Whose?" - -"Whose? No wonder you ask! Engagements, then." - -"When are they going to be married?" - -"The first week in May, I hear. But Pearson is trying for the middle of -April. His flat is taken." Foster writhed in his chair. - -"Why do they care for him?" he burst out. "He's nothing in himself. And he -cares nothing for them. And he cares nothing for you," Foster added boldly. -"All he has thought for is that fellow from up north." - -"Don't ask me why they care," replied Randolph, with studied sobriety. "Why -does anybody care? And for what? For the thing that is just out of reach. -He's cool; he's selfish; he's indifferent. Yet, somehow, frost and fire -join end to end and make the circle complete." He fell into reflection. -"It's all like children straining upward for an icicle, and presently -slipping, with cracked pates, on the ice below." - -"Well, _my_ pate isn't cracked." - -"Unless it's the worst cracked of all." - -Foster tore off his shade and threw it on the floor. "Mine?" he cried. -"Look to your own!" - -"Joe!" said Randolph, rising. "That won't quite do!" - -"Be a fool along with the others, if you will!" retorted Foster. "Oh!" he -went on, "Haven't I seen it all? Haven't I felt it all? You, Basil -Randolph, mind your own ways too!" - -Randolph thought of words, but held his tongue. Words led to other words, -and he might soon find himself involved in what would seem like a defense-- -an attitude which he did not relish, a course of which he did not -acknowledge the need. "Poor Joe!" he thought; "sitting too much by himself -and following over-closely the art of putting things together--anyhow!" Joe -Foster must have more company and different things to consider. What large -standard work--what history, biography, or bulky mass of memoirs in from -four to eight volumes--would be the best to begin on before the winter -should be too far spent? - -Four or five days later, Randolph wrote to Cope that there was a good -prospect for a small position in the administration offices of the -University, and a week later Lemoyne was in that position. Cope, who -recognized Randolph's handling of the matter as a personal favor, replied -in a tone of some warmth. "He's really a very decent fellow, after all,--of -course he is," pronounced Randolph. Lemoyne himself wrote more tardily and -more coolly. He was taking time from his Psychology and from "The Antics of -Annabella," it appeared, to acquaint himself with the routine of his new -position. Randolph shrugged: he must wait to see which of the three -interests would be held the most important. - - - - -27 - -_COPE ESCAPES A SNARE_ - - -Lemoyne's first week in his new berth held him rather close, and Cope was -able to move about with less need of accounting for his every hour. One of -his first concerns was to get over his sitting with Hortense Dunton. His -"sitting," he said: it was to be the first, the only and the last. - -He came into her place with a show of confidence, a kind of blustery -bonhomie. "I give you an hour from my treadmill," he declared brightly. "So -many books, and such dry ones!" - -Hortense, who had been moping, brightened too. "I thought you had forgotten -me," she said chidingly. Yet her tone had less acerbity than that which she -had employed, but a few moments before, to address him in his absence. For -she often had in mind, at intervals longer or shorter, Cope's improvisation -about the Sassafras--too truly that dense-minded shrub had failed to -understand the "young ladies" and their "needs." - -"My thesis," he said. "From now on, it must take a lot of my thought and -every moment of my spare time." He looked at the waiting canvas. "Clinch it -to-day. Hurry it through." - -He spoke with a factitious vivacity which almost gave a sense of chill. She -looked at him with a shade of dissatisfaction and discomfort. - -"What! must it all be done in a drive?" she asked. - -"By no means. Watch me relax. Is that my chair? See me drop into complete -physical and mental passivity--the _kef_ of the Arabs." - -He mounted the model-throne, sank into the wide chair, and placed his hands -luxuriously on its arms. His general pose mattered little: she had not gone -beyond his head and shoulders. - -Hortense stared. Would he push her on the moment into the right mood? Would -he have her call into instant readiness her colors and brushes? Why, even a -modest amateur must be allowed her minutes of preparation and approach. - -"Passivity?" she repeated, beginning to get under way. "Shall I find you -very entertaining in that condition?" - -"Entertaining? Me, the sitter? Why, I've always heard it was an important -part of a portrait-painter's work to keep the subject interested and -amused." - -He smiled in his cold, distant way. The north light cut across the -forehead, nose and chin which made his priceless profile. The canvas -itself, done on theory in a lesser light, looked dull and lifeless. - -Hortense felt this herself. She did not see how she was going to key it up -in a single hour. As she considered among her brushes and tubes, she began -to feel nervous, and her temper stirred. - -"You have a great capacity for being interested and amused," she said. -"Most men are like you. Especially young ones. They are amused, diverted, -entertained--and there it ends." - -Cope felt the prick. "Well, we are bidden," he said; "and we come. Too many -of us have little to offer in return, except appreciation and goodwill. How -better appreciate such kindness as Mrs. Phillips' than by gratefully -accepting more of it?" (Stilted copy-book talk; and he knew it.) - -"You haven't been accepting much of it lately," she returned, feeling the -point of a new brush. She spoke with the consciousness of empty evenings -that might have been full. - -"Hardly," he replied. And he felt that this one word sufficed. - -"Well, the coast will be clear after the twentieth of April." - -"That is the date, then, is it?" The more he thought of the impending -ceremony, the more grateful he was for his escape. Thankfulness had salved -the earlier wound; no pain now came from his touching it. - -"Yes; on that day the house will see the last of them." - -"The wedding, then, will----?" - -"Yes. Aunt Medora says, 'Why go to Iowa?--you're at home here.' Why, -indeed, drag George away out to Fort Lodge? Let her own people, who are not -many, come to us. Aunt will do everything, and do it handsomely." - -She slanted her palette and looked toward the skylight. Cope's own glance -swept non-committally the green burlap walls. Both of them were seeing -pictures of the wedding preparations. Hortense saw delivery-boys at the -front door, with things that must be held to the light or draped over -chairs. She saw George haling Amy to the furniture-shops and to the dealers -in wall-paper. She saw them in cosy shaded confab evening after evening, in -her aunt's library. It was a period of joy, of self-absorption, of -unsettlement, of longing, of irritation, of exasperation--oh, would it -never end! Cope saw a long string of gifts and entertainments, a diamond -engagement-ring, a lavishly-furnished apartment ... How in the world could -he himself have compassed all this? And how blessed was he among men that -he had not been obliged to try! - -Hortense went through some motions with her brush, yet seemed to be looking -beyond him rather than at him. - -"There will be a bridal-trip of a week or so," she concluded; "and they -will be in their new home on the first of May." - -"Very good," said Cope. He thought he was thinking to himself, but he spoke -aloud. "And that ends it." This last he really did say to himself. - -He sank more comfortably into his chair, kept his face properly immobile, -and spoke no further word. Hortense brought back her gaze to focus and -worked on for a little time in silence. The light was good, her palette was -full, her brushes were well-chosen, her eyes were intent on his face. It -was a handsome face, displayed to the best advantage. She might look as -long as she liked, and a long look preceded every stroke. - -Presently she paused, opening her eyes wider and holding aloft her brush. -"There will be a bride's-maid," she said. - -"The deuce!" he thought. "That didn't end it!" But he said no thing aloud. - -"Guess who!" - -"Why, how should _I_----?" - -"Guess!" she cried peremptorily, in a tone of bitter derision. "You won't? -Well, it's Carolyn--our poor, silly Carolyn! And what do you suppose she -has started in to do? She is writing an epitha--an epithal----" - -"----amium," contributed Cope. "An epithala-mium." - -"Yes, an epithala-mium!" repeated Hortense, with an outburst of jarring -laughter. "Isn't she absurd! Isn't she ridiculous!" - -"Is she? Why, it seems to me a delicate attention, a very sweet thought." -If Carolyn could make anything out of Amy--and of George--why, let her do -it. - -"You _like_ her poetry!" cried Hortense in a high, strained voice. -"You enjoy her epithalamiums, and her--sonnets...." - -Cope flushed and began to grow impatient. "She is a sweet girl," he said; -"and if she wishes to write verse she is quite within her rights." - -"'Sweet'! There you go again! 'Sweet'--twice. She ought to know!" - -"Perhaps she does know. Everybody else knows." - -"And perhaps she doesn't!" cried Hortense. "Tell her! Tell her!" - -Cope stared. "She is a sweet girl," he repeated; "and she has been filling -very discreetly a somewhat difficult position----" - -He knew something of the suppressed bitterness which, in subordinate -places, was often the lot of the pen. He found himself preferring, just -here, "pen" to "typewriter": he would give Carolyn a touch of idealization ---though she had afflicted him with a heavy stroke of embarrassment. - -"'Difficult position'?" shrilled Hortense. "With Aunt Medora the very soul -of kindness? I like that! Well, if you want to rescue her from her -difficult position, do it. If you admire her--and love her--tell her so! -_She'll_ be grateful--just read those sonnets over again!" - -Hortense dropped her palette and brushes and burst into outrageous tears. - -Cope sat bolt upright in that spacious chair. "Tell her? I have nothing to -tell her. I have nothing to tell anyone!" - -His resonant words cut the air. They uttered decision. He did not mean to -make the same mistake twice. - -Hortense drew across her eyes an apron redolent of turpentine and stepped -toward the throne. - -"Nothing? Why this sudden refuge in silence?" she asked, almost -truculently, even if tremulously. "You usually find enough words--even -though they mean little." - -"I'm afraid I do," he admitted cautiously. - -"You have nothing to tell anyone? Nothing to tell--me?" - -Cope rose. "Nothing to tell anyone," he repeated. "Noth-ing." - -"Then let me tell you something." There was an angry thrill in her voice. -"For I am not so selfish and cold-hearted as you are. I have seen nobody -but you all these months. I have never tried harder to please anybody. You -have scarcely noticed me--you have never given me a glance or a thought. -You could interest yourself in that silly Amy and in our foolish Carolyn; -but for me--me--Nothing!" - -Cope came down from the throne. If she had lavished her maiden thoughts on -him, by day or evening or at night, he had not known and could hardly be -supposed to know. Indeed, she had begun by treating him with a cursory -roughness; nor had he noticed any great softening later on. - -"Listen," he said. Under the stress of embarrassment and alarm his cold -blue eyes grew colder and his delicate nostrils quivered with an effect a -little too like disdain. "I like you as well as another; no more, no less. -I am in no position to think of love and marriage, and I have no -inclination that way. I am willing to be friends with everybody, and -nothing more with anybody." The sentences came with the cruel detachment of -bullets; but, "Not again, not twice," was his uppermost thought. Any -bluntness, any ruggedness, rather than another month like that of the past -holiday season. - -He took a step away and looked to one side, toward the couch where his hat -and coat were lying. - -"Go, if you will," she said. "And go as soon as you like. You are a -contemptible, cold-hearted ingrate. You have grudged me every minute of -your company, everywhere--and every second you have given me here. If I -have been foolish it is over now, and there shall be nothing to record my -folly." She stepped to the easel and hurled the canvas to the floor, where -it lay with palette and brushes. - -Cope stood with his hat in his hand and his coat over his arm. He seemed to -see the open volume of some "printed play." After all, there was a type -which, even under emotional stress, gave a measure of instinctive heed to -structure and cadence. Well, if there was relief for her in words, he could -stand to hear her speak for a moment or two more, not longer. - -"One word yet," she said in a panting voice. "Your Arthur Lemoyne. That -preposterous friendship cannot go on for long. You will tire of him; or -more likely he will tire of you. Something different, something better will -be needed,--and you will live to learn so. I should be glad if I never saw -either one of you again!" - -She turned her stormy face away, and Cope slipped out with a blended sense -of mortification, pain and relief. - - - - -28 - -_COPE ABSENT FROM A WEDDING_ - - -Cope went out on the square with his being a-tingle. If Hortense, on -another occasion, had thrown a dash of brine, on this occasion she had -rubbed in the salt itself. And he had struck a harsh blow in turn; the flat -of his mind was still stinging, as if half the shock of the blow had -remained behind. "But it was no time for half-measures," he muttered to -himself. "Not again; not twice!" he repeated. - -Hortense remained for several days in a condition of sullen anger--she was -a cloud lit up by occasional unaccountable flashes of temper. "Whatever in -the world is the matter with her?" asked her aunt in more directions than -one. And Amy Leffingwell, blissfully busy over her little trousseau and her -selection of china-patterns, protested and opened wide, inquiring blue eyes -against the intrusion of such a spirit at such a joyous time. - -But Hortense, though better days intervened now and then, did not improve -essentially; and she contrived at the climacteric moment of Amy's career to -make herself felt--unduly felt--after all. - -The wedding took place during the latter half of April, as demanded by the -enterprising wooer. Then there would be a rapid ten-day wedding-journey, -followed by a prompt, business-like occupancy of the new apartment on the -first of May exactly. - -Pearson's parents prepared to welcome Amy handsomely; and her own people-- -some of them--came on from Iowa to attend the ceremony. There was her -mother, who had been rather disconcerted by the sudden shift, but who was -satisfied with George Pearson the moment she saw him, and who found him -even more vivid and agreeable than Amy's photograph of him had led her to -expect. There was the aunt, who had lived a bare, starved life, and who -luxuriated, along with her sister, in the splendor of the Louis Quinze -chamber. And there was a friendly, wide-awake brother of fourteen who was -tucked away in the chintz room up stairs, whence he issued to fraternize in -the ball-room with Joe Foster, whose exacerbated spirit he did much to -soothe. - -This young brother was alert, cheery, chatty. He was not at all put out by -Foster's wheeled chair and eyeshade, nor by the strange contortions which -Foster went through when, on occasion, he left the chair for a couch or for -some chair of ordinary type. He got behind the wheels, and together they -made the tour of the landscapes, marines, and genre-pieces which covered -the walls. The boy was sympathetic, without being obtrusively so, and his -comments on the paintings were confident and unconventional. "So different -from _ce cher_ Pelouse," said Foster, with a grimace. He enjoyed -immensely the fragmental half-hours given him through those two days. His -young companion was lavish in his reports on life's vast vicissitudes at -Fort Lodge, and was always ready with comparisons between things as -observed in his home town and in Churchton itself. He came as a tonic -breeze; and the evening after he departed, Foster, left moping alone in the -let-down which followed the festivities, said to himself more than once, -"If I had had a boy, I should have wanted him just like Dick." - -Dick's mother and aunt stood up as well as they could against the bustling, -emphatic geniality of Medora Phillips; and they were able, after a little, -to adjust themselves to the prosperity of the Pearsons. These, they came to -feel, were essentially of the same origin and traditions as themselves: -just plain people who, however, had settled on the edge of the Big Town to -make money and had made it. Pearson the elder was hardly more prepotent -than Mr. Lusk, the banker at home. George himself was a dashing go-ahead: -if he turned into a tired business-man his wife would know how to divert -him. - -Medora Phillips provided rice. Also she satisfied herself as to where, if -the newer taste were not too delicate, she could put her hand on an old -shoe. She was happy to have married off Amy; she would be still happier -once Amy got away. More room would be left for other young people. By -"other young people" she meant, of course, certain young men. By "certain -young men" she thought she meant Cope and Lemoyne. Of course she meant Cope -only. - -"If Carolyn keeps amiable and if Hortense contrives to regain her good- -nature, we may have some pleasant days yet," she mused. - -But Hortense did not regain her good-nature; she did not even maintain her -self-control. In the end, the ceremony was too much for her. George and Amy -had plighted their troth in a floral bower, which ordinarily was a bay -window, before a minister of a denomination which did not countenance robes -nor a ritual lifted beyond the chances of wayward improvisation; and after -a brief reception the new couple prepared for the motor-car dash which was -to take them to a late train. In the big wide hallway, after Amy had kissed -Carolyn and thanked her for her poem and was preparing for the shower of -rice which she had every reason to think she must face, there was a burst -of hysterical laughter from somewhere behind, and Hortense Dunton, to the -sufficing words, "O Bertram, Bertram!" emitted with sufficing clearness, -fainted away. - -Her words, if not heard by all the company, were heard by a few to whom -they mattered; and while Hortense, immediately after the departure of the -happy pair, was being revived and led away, they left occasion for thought. -Carolyn Thorpe cast a startled glance. The aunt from Iowa, who knew that -Bertrams did not grow on every bush, and whose senses the function had -preternaturally sharpened for any address from Romance, seized and shook -her sister's arm; and, later on, in a Louis Quinze _causeuse_, up -stairs, they agreed that if young Cope really had had another claimant on -his attention, it was all the better that their Amy had ended by taking -George. And Medora Phillips, in the front hall itself---- - -Well, to Medora Phillips, in the front hall, much was revealed as in a -lightning-flash, and the revelation was far from agreeable. What advantage -in Amy's departure if Hortense continued to cumber the ground? Hortense -must go off somewhere, for a sojourn of a month or more, to recover her -health and spirits and to let the house recover its accustomed tone of -cheer. - -Medora forced these considerations to the back of her mind and saw most of -her guests out of the house. Toward the end of it all she found herself -relaxing in the library, with Basil Randolph in the opposite chair. -Randolph himself had figured in the ceremony. This had been a crude -imitation of a time-hallowed form and had allowed for an extemporaneous -prayer and for a brief address to the young couple; but it had retained the -familiar inquiry, "Who giveth--?" "Who _can_ give?" asked Medora of -Amy. Poor Joe was rather out of the question, and Brother Dick was four or -five years too young. Was there, then, anyone really available except that -kind Mr. Randolph? So Basil Randolph, after remembering Amy with a rich and -handsome present, had taken on a paternal air, had stepped forward at the -right moment, and was now recovering from his novel experience. - -The two, as they sat there, said little, though they looked at each other -with half-veiled, questioning glances. Medora, indeed, improvised a little -stretch of silent dialogue, and it made him take his share. She felt -dislocated, almost defeated. Hortense's performance had set her to thinking -of Bertram Cope, and she figured the same topic as uppermost in the mind of -Basil Randolph. - -"Well, you have about beaten me," she said. - -"How so?" she made him ask, with an affectation of simplicity. - -"You know well enough," she returned. "You have played off the whole -University against my poor house, and you have won. Your influence with the -president, your brother on the board of trustees ... If Bertram Cope has -any gratitude in his composition...." - -"Oh, well," she let him say, "I don't feel that I did much; and I'm not -sure I'm glad for what I did do." - -"You may regret it, of course. That other man is an uncertain quantity." - -"Oh, come," he said; "you've had the inside track from the very start: this -house and everything in it...." - -"You have a house of your own, now." - -"Your dinners and entertainments...." - -"You have your own dinner-table." - -"Your limousine, your chauffeur,--running to the opera and heaven knows -where else...." - -"Taxis can always be had. Yes," she went on, "you have held the advantage -over a poor woman cooped up in her own house. While I have had to stick -here, attending to my housekeeping, you have been careering about -everywhere,--you with a lot of partners and clerks in your office, and no -compulsion to look in more than two or three times a week. Of _course_ -you can run to theatres and clubs. I wonder they don't dispense with you -altogether!" - -"There's the advantage of a business arranged to run itself--so far as -_I_ am concerned." - -"Yes, you have had the world to range through: shows and restaurants; the -whole big city; strolls and excursions, and who knows what beside...." - -Thus Medora Phillips continued silently, and with no exact sense of -justice, to work up her grievance. Presently she surprised Randolph with a -positive frown. She had made a quick, darting return to Hortense. - -"I shall send her away," she said aloud. The girl might join her studio -friend, who had stopped at Asheville on her way North, and stay with her -for a few weeks. Yes, Hortense might go and meet the spring--or even the -summer, if that must be. The spring here in town she herself would take as -it came. "I shall welcome a few free, easy breaths after this past -fortnight," she finished audibly. - -Randolph squared himself with her mood as best he could. "You are tired and -nervous," he said with banality. "Get the last of us out and go to bed. -I'll lead the way, and will give these loiterers as marked an example as -possible." - -Medora Phillips hushed down her house finally and went thoughtfully up -stairs to her room. Amy had gone off, and Hortense was sentenced to go. -There remained only Carolyn. Was there any threat in her and her sonnets? - - -29 - -_COPE AGAIN IN THE COUNTRY_ - - -Medora treated Hortense to a few cautious soundings, decided -that another locale was the thing to do her good, and sent -her South forthwith. - -"It's a low latitude," she said to herself; "but it's a high altitude. -The season is late, but she won't suffer." - -Hortense, who had been sullen and fractious, met her aunt -half-way, and agreed passively when Medora said: - -"It will benefit you to see the spring come on in a new scene -and in a new fashion. You will find the mountains more interesting -than the dunes." So Hortense packed her things and joined -her friend for a brief sojourn in sight of the Great Smokies. - -Thus, when Medora herself went forth to meet the spring -among the sand-hills, she had only Carolyn and the other members -of her domestic staff. Yet no simplest week-end without a -guest or so, and she asked Cope to accompany them. - -"You need it," she told him bluntly; "--you need a change, -however slight and brief. You are positively thin. You make me -wish that thesises----" - -"Theses," Cope corrected her, rather spiritlessly. - -"----that theses, then, had never been invented. To speak -familiarly, you are almost 'peakèd.'" - -Cope, with the first warm days, had gone back to the blue -serge suit of the past autumn, and he filled it even less well than -before. And his face was thin to correspond. - -"Besides," she went on, "we need you. It will be a kind of -camping-out for a day or two--merely that. We must have your -help to pitch the tent, so to speak, and to pick up firewood, and -to fry the bacon.... And this time," she added, "you shall not -have that long tiresome trip by train. There will be room in the -car." - -She did not attempt to make room for Lemoyne. She was glad -to have no need to do so; Lemoyne was deeply engrossed -otherwise--"Annabella" and her "antics" were almost ready for the -public eye. The first of May would see the performance, and the -numerous rehearsals were exacting, whether as regarded the -effort demanded or the time. Every spare hour was going into -them, as well as many an hour that could hardly be spared. Lemoyne, -who had been cast originally for a minor female part, -now found himself transferred, through the failure of a principal, -to a more important one. For him, then, rehearsals were -more exigent than ever. He cut his Psychology once or twice, -nor could he succeed, during office hours, in keeping his mind -on office-routine. His superiors became impatient and then -protestant. The annual spring dislocation of ordered student life -was indeed a regular feature of the year's last term; yet to push -indulgence as far as Arthur Lemoyne was pushing it----! - -Cope was concerned; then worried. "Arthur," he said, "be -reasonable about this. You've got real work to do, remember." - -But Lemoyne's real work was in the musical comedy. "This is -the biggest chance I've ever had in my life," he declared, "and I -don't want to lose out on it." - -So Cope rolled away to the dunes and left Lemoyne behind -for one Saturday night rehearsal the more. - -Duneland gave him a tonic welcome. Under a breezy sky the -far edge of the lake stood out clear. Along its nearer edge the -vivacious waves tumbled noisily. The steady pines were welcoming -the fresh early foliage of such companions as dressed and undressed -in accord with the calendar; the wrecked trunks which -had given up life and its leafy pomps seemed somehow less sombre -and stark; and in the threatened woodlands behind the hills -a multiplicity of small new greeneries stirred the autumn's dead -leaves and brightened up the thickets of shrubbery. The arbutus -had companioned the hepatica, and the squads of the lupines -were busily preparing their panoply of lavender-blue racemes. -Nature was breaking bounds. On the inland horizon rose the -vast bulk of the prison. As on other excursions, nobody tried too -hard to see it. - -"It's all too lovely," exclaimed Medora Phillips. "And what is -quite as good," she was able to declare, "the house itself is all -right." Winter had not weakened its roof nor wrenched away -its storm-windows; no irresponsible wayfarer had used it for a -lodging, nor had any casual marauder entered to despoil. Medora -directed the disposition of the hamper of food with a relieved -air and sent Cope down with Peter for an armful or two of -driftwood from the assertive shore. - -"And you, Carolyn," she said, "see if the oil-stove will really -go." - -Down on the beach itself, where the past winter's waste was -still profusely spread, Cope rose to the greening hills, to the -fresh sweep of the wind, and to the sun-shot green and purple -streakings over the water. The wind, in particular, took its own -way: dry light sand, blown from higher shelvings, striped the -dark wet edges of the shore; and every bending blade of sandgrass -drew a circle about itself with its own revolving tip. - -Cope let the robust and willing Peter pick up most of the -firewood and himself luxuriated in the spacious world round -about him. Yes, a winter had flown--or, at any rate, had passed--and -here he was again. There had been annoyances, but now -he felt a wide and liberal relief. Here, for example, was the special -stretch of shore on which Amy Leffingwell had praised his -singing and had hinted her desire to accompany him,--but -never mind that. Farther on was the particular tract where Hortense -Dunton had pottered with her water-colors and had harried -him with the heroines of eighteenth century fiction,--but -never mind that, either. All those things were past, and he was -free. Nobody remained save Carolyn Thorpe, an unaggressive -girl with whom one could really trust oneself and with whom -one could walk, if required, in comfort and content. Cope -threw up his head to the hills and threw out his chest to the -winds, and laid quick hands on a short length of weather-beaten -hemlock plank. "Afraid I'm not holding up my end," he said to -Peter. - -At the house again, he found that Carolyn had brought the oil-stove -back into service, and, with Helga, had cast the cloth over -the table and had set some necessary dishes on it. He fetched a -pail or two of water from the pump, and each time placed a fresh -young half-grown sassafras leaf on the surface. "The trade-mark -of our bottling-works," he said facetiously; "to show that our -products are pure." And Carolyn, despite his facetiousness, felt -more than ever that he might easily become a poet. Medora -viewed the floating leaves with indulgent appreciation. "But -don't let's cumber ourselves with many cares," she suggested; -"we are here to make the best of the afternoon. Let's out and -away,--the sooner the better." - -The three soon set forth for a stroll through spring's reviving -domain. Cope walked between Medora and Carolyn, or -ahead of them, impartially sweeping away twigs and flowering -branches from before their faces. The young junipers were putting -forth tender new tips; the bright leaves of the sassafras -shone forth against the pines. Above the newly-rounded tops of -the oaks and maples in the valley below them the Three Witches -rose gauntly; and off on their far hill the two companion pines--(how -had he named them? Romeo and Juliet? Pelleas and Melisande?)--still -lay their dark heads together in mysterious confidences -under the heightening glow of the late afternoon sun. -Carolyn looked from them back to Cope and gave him a shy -smile. - -He did not quite smile back. Carolyn was well enough, however. -She was suitably dressed for a walk. Her shoes were sensible, -and so was her hair. Amy had run to fluffiness. Hortense had -often favored heavy waves and emphatic bandeaux. But Carolyn's -hair was drawn back plainly from her forehead, and was -gathered in a small, low-set knot. "Still, it's no concern of -mine," he reminded himself, and walked on ahead. - -Carolyn's sensible shoes brought her back, with the others, at -twilight. The three took up rather ornamentally (with aid from -Peter and Helga) the lighter details of housekeeping. Toward the -end of the stroll, Cope and Carolyn,--perhaps upon the mere -unconscious basis of youth,--had rather fallen in together, and -Medora Phillips, once or twice, had had to safeguard for herself -her face and eyesight from the young trees that bordered their -path. But that evening, as they sat on a settle before the driftwood -fire, Medora took pains to place herself in the middle. -Carolyn was a sweet young flower, doubtless--humbler, possibly, -than Amy or Hortense; yet she too perhaps must be extirpated, -gently but firmly, from the garden of desire. - -"You look better already," Medora said to Cope. "You'll go -back to-morrow a new man." - -Her elbow was on the back of the settle and close to his shoulder. -His face caught the glow from the fire. - -"Oh, I'm all right, I assure you," he said. - -"You _do_ look better," observed Carolyn on her own account. -"This air is everything. Only a few hours of it----" - -"Another bit of wood on the fire, if you please, Carolyn," said -her patroness. - -"Let me do it," said Cope. He rose quickly and laid on a stick -or two. He remained standing on the edge of the glow. He hoped -nobody would say again that he was looking rather thin and -pale. - -"And what is Mr. Lemoyne doing this evening?" presently -asked Mrs. Phillips in a dreamy undertone. Her manner was casual -and negligent; her voice was low and leisurely. She seemed -to place Lemoyne at a distance of many, many leagues. "Rehearsing, -I suppose?" - -"Yes," replied Cope. "This new play has absorbed him completely." - -"He will do well?" - -"He always does. He always has." - -"Men in girls' parts are so amusing," said Carolyn. "Their -walk is so heavy and clumsy, even if their dancing isn't. And -when they speak up in those big deep bass and baritone -voices...!" - -"Arthur will speak in a light tenor." - -"Will his walk be heavy and clumsy?" asked Mrs. Phillips. - -"He is an artist," replied Cope. - -"Not too much of one, I trust," she returned. "I confess I like -boys best in such parts when they frankly and honestly seem to -be boys. That's half the fun--and nine-tenths of the taste." - -"Taste?" - -"Yes, taste. Short for good taste. There's a great deal of room -for bad. A thing may be done too thoroughly. Once or twice I've -seen it done that way, by--artists." - -Cope, in the half-light, seemed rather unhappy. - -"He finds time for--for all this--this technique?" Mrs. Phillips -asked. - -"He's very clever," replied Cope, rather unhappy still. "It -does take time, of course. I'm concerned," he added. - -"About his other work?" - -"Yes." He stepped aside a little into the shadow. - -"Come back to your place," said Medora Phillips. "You look -quite spectral." - -Cope, with a light sigh, returned to his post on the settle and -to his share in the firelight. Silence fell. From far below were -heard the active waves, moaning themselves to rest. And a featureless -evening moved on slowly. - - - - -30 - -_COPE AS A HERO_ - - -At ten o'clock Cope found himself tucked away in a small room on the ground -floor. It had been left quite as planned and constructed by the original -builder of the house. It was cramped and narrow, with low ceiling and one -small window. It gave on a short side-porch which was almost too narrow to -sit on and which was apropos of no special prospect. Doubtless more than -one stalwart youth had slept there before him,--a succession of farmers' -sons who fed all day on the airs and spaces of the great out-of-doors, and -who needed little of either through a short night's rest. It was more -comfortable at the end of April than other guests had found it in mid- -August. - -A little before eleven he awoke the house with a loud, ringing cry. Some -one outside had passed his narrow window; feet were heard on the back porch -and hands at the kitchen door. Peter was out as quickly as Cope himself; -and the women, in differing stages of dress and half-dress, followed at -once. - -While Mrs. Phillips and Carolyn were clinging to Cope, who had rushed out -in undershirt and trousers, Peter had a short tussle on the porch with the -intruder. He came in showing a scratch or two on his face, and he reported -the pantry window broken open. - -"Some tramp along the beach saw our lights," suggested Carolyn. - -"What was he like, Peter?" asked Mrs. Phillips. - -"I couldn't make out in the dark," Peter replied. "But he fought hard for -what he took, and he got away with it." He felt the marks on his face. -"Must have been a pretty hungry man." - -"It was some refugee hiding in my woods," said Medora Phillips. She made -her real thought no plainer. She never liked to see, in her walks, that -distant prison, and she never spoke of it to her guests; but the fancy of -some escaped convict lurking below among her thickets was often present in -her mind. - -Her fancy was now busy with some burglar, or even some murderer, who had -made his bolt for liberty; and she clung informally to the clarion-voiced -Cope as to a savior. She saw, with displeasure, that Carolyn was disposed -to cling too. She asked Carolyn to control herself and told her the danger -was over; she even requested her to return to her room. But Carolyn -lingered. - -Medora herself stood with Cope in the light of the dying fire. She was -dressed almost as inadequately as he, but she felt that she must cling -tremblingly to him and thank him for something or other. - -"I don't know what you've saved us from," she panted. "We may owe our very -lives to you!" - -Peter, in the background, again thoughtfully felt his face and became -conscious of a growing ache in the muscles of his arms. He retired, with a -smile, to a still more distant plane. The regular did the work and the -volunteer got the praise. - -Mrs. Phillips presently gave up her drooping hold on the reluctant Cope and -called Peter forward. "Is anything missing?" she asked. - -"Only part of the breakfast, I expect," said Peter, with a grin. "And maybe -some of the lunch. He surely was a hungry man!" - -"Well, we sha'n't starve. See to all the doors and windows before you go -back to bed." - -But going back to bed was the one thing that she herself felt unable to do. -She asked Carolyn to bring her a wrap of some kind or other, and sat down -on the settle to talk it over. Cope had modestly slipped on a coat. The -fire was dying--that was the only difference between twelve o'clock and -ten. - -"If I had known what was going to happen," declared Medora volubly, "I -never could have gone to bed at all! And to think"--here she left Carolyn's -end of the settle and drew nearer to Cope's--"that I should ever have even -thought of coming out here without a man!" - -She now rated her midnight intruder as a murderer, and believed more -devoutly than ever that Cope had saved all their lives. Cope, who knew that -he had contributed nothing but a loud pair of lungs, began to feel rather -foolish. - -Nor did the anomalous situation commend itself in any degree to his taste. -But it hit Medora Phillips' taste precisely, and she continued to sit -there, pressing an emotional enjoyment from it. An hour passed before her -excitement--an excitement kept up, perhaps, rather factitiously--was -calmed, and she trusted herself back in her own room. - -Breakfast was a scanty affair,--it must be that if anything was to be left -over for lunch. While they were busy with toast and coffee voices were -heard in the woods--loud cries in call and answer. - -"There!" said Medora, setting down her cup; "I knew it!" - -Presently two men came climbing up to the house, while the voices of others -were still audible in the humpy thickets below. - -The men were part of a search-party, of course,--a posse; and they wanted -to know whether.... - -"He tried to break in," said Medora Phillips eagerly; "but this -gentleman...." - -She turned appreciatively to Cope. Carolyn, really impressed by her well- -sustained seriousness and ardor, almost began to believe that they owed -their lives to Bertram Cope alone. - -"Was he a--murderer?" asked Medora. - -The men looked serious, but made no categorical reply. They glanced at the -wrecked pantry window, and they looked with more intentness at the long -sliding footprints which led away, down the half-bare sand-slope. Then they -slid down themselves. - -Medora asked Carolyn to do what she could toward constructing a lunch and -then walked down to the shore with Cope to compose her nerves. No stroll -today along the ridged amphitheatre of the hills, whence the long, low -range of buildings, under that tall chimney, was so plainly in view. Still -less relishing the idea of a tramp through the woods themselves, the -certain haunt--somewhere--of some skulking desperado. No, they would take -the shore itself--open to the wide firmament, clear of all snares, and free -from every disconcerting sight. - -"Poor Carolyn!" said Medora presently. "How fluttered and inefficient she -was! A good secretary--in a routine way--but so lacking in initiative and -self-possession!" - -Cope's look tended to become a stare. He thought that Carolyn had been in -pretty fair control of herself,--had been less fluttery and excited, -indeed, than her employer. - -But Medora had been piqued, the night before, by Carolyn's tendency to -linger on the scene and to help skim the emotional cream from the -situation. - -"And in such dishabille, too! I hope you don't think she seemed immodest?" - -But Cope had given small heed to their dress, or to their lack of it. In -fact, he had noticed little if any difference between them. He only knew -that he had felt a degree more comfortable after getting his own coat on. - -"Carolyn understands her place pretty well," mused Medora. "Yet..." - -"Anybody might be excused for looking anyhow, at such a time," observed -Cope, fending off the intrusion of a new set of considerations; "and in -such a sudden stir. I hope nobody noticed how I looked!" - -"Well, you were noticeable," declared Medora, with some archness. She had -been conscious enough of his spare waist, his sinewy arms, his swelling -chest. "It was easy enough to see where the noise came from," she said, -looking him over. - -"Yes, I supplied the noise--and that only. It was Peter, please remember, -who supplied the muscle." - -She declined to let her mind dwell on Peter. Peter possessed no charm. -Besides, he was prosaically on the payroll. - -They continued to saunter along the sand. Yesterday's sparse clouds had -vanished, along with much of yesterday's wind. The waters that had tumbled -and vociferated now merely murmured. The lake stood calmly blue, and the -new green was thickening on the hills. Confident birds flitted busily among -the trees and shrubs. Spring was disclosed in its most alluring mood. - -Suddenly three or four figures appeared on the beach, a quarter of a mile -away. They had descended through one of the sandy and ravaged channelings -which broke at intervals the regulated rim of the hills, and they came on -toward our two strollers. Medora closed her eyes to peer at them. "Are they -marching a prisoner?" she asked. - -"They all appear to be walking free." - -"Are they carrying knapsacks?" - -"Khaki, puttees,--and knapsacks, I think." - -"Some university men said they might happen along to-day. If they really -have knapsacks, and anything to eat in them, they're welcome. Otherwise, we -had better hide quick--and hope they'll lose the place and pass us by." - -One of the advancing figures lifted a semaphoric arm. "Too late," said -Cope; "They recognize you." - -"Then we'll walk on and meet them," declared Medora. - -The new-comers were young professors and graduate students. They were soon -in possession of the thrilling facts of the past night, and one of them -offered to be a prisoner, if a prisoner was desired. When they heard how -Bertram Cope had saved the lives of defenseless women in a lonely land, -they inclined to smile. Two of them had been present on another shore when -Cope had "saved" Amy Leffingwell from a watery death, and they knew how far -heroics might be pushed by women who were willing to idealize. Cope saw -their smiles and felt that he had fumbled an opportunity: when he might -have been a truncheon, he had been only a megaphone. - -The new arrivals, after climbing the sandy rise to the house, were shown -the devastated kitchen and were asked to declare what provisions they -carried. They had enough food for their own needs and a trifle to spare. -Lunch might be managed, but any thought of a later meal was out of the -question. "We'll start back at four-thirty," said Medora to Peter. -"Meanwhile"--to the college men--"the world is ours." - -After lunch the enlarged party walked forth again. Mrs. Phillips had old -things to show to fresh eyes: she formed the new visitors into a compact -little group and let them see how good a guide she could be. Cope and -Carolyn strolled negligently--even unsystematically--behind. Once or twice -the personally conducted looked back. - -"I hope she won't tell them again how I came to the rescue," said Cope. "It -makes a man feel too flat for words. Anybody might think, to hear her go -on, that I had saved you all from robbery and murder...." - -"Why, but didn't you?" inquired Carolyn seriously. - - - - -31 - -_COPE GETS NEW LIGHT ON HIS CHUM_ - - -Cope had the luck to get back to Churchton with little further in the way -of homage. He was careful with Carolyn; she had perhaps addressed him in a -sonnet, and she might go on and address him in an ode. He thought he had -done nothing to deserve the one, and he would do almost anything to escape -the other. She was a nice pleasant quiet girl; but nice pleasant quiet -girls were beginning to do such equivocal things in poetical print! - -Having returned to town by a method that put the minimum tax on his powers, -Cope was in shape, next day, for an hour on the faculty tennis-courts. He -played with no special skill or vigor, but he made a pleasing picture in -his flannels; and Carolyn, who happened to pass--who passed by at about -five in the afternoon, lingered for the spectacle and thought of two or -three lines to start a poem with. - -Cope, unconscious of this, presently turned his attention to Lemoyne, who -was on the eve of his first dress rehearsal and who was a good deal -occupied with wigs and lingerie. Here one detail leads to another, and -anyone who goes in wholeheartedly may go in dreadfully deep. Their room -came to be strown with all the disconcerting items of a theatrical -wardrobe. Cope soon reached the point where he was not quite sure that he -liked it all, and he began to develop a distaste for Lemoyne's -preoccupation with it. He came home one afternoon to find on the corner of -his desk a long pair of silk stockings and a too dainty pair of ladies' -shoes. "Oh, Art!" he protested. And then,--not speaking his essential -thought,--"Aren't these pretty expensive?" - -"The thing has got to be done right," returned Lemoyne. "Feet are about the -first thing they notice." - -At the actual performance Lemoyne's feet were noticed, certainly; though -perhaps not more than his head. His wig, as is usually the case with dark -people, was of a sunny blond hue. Its curls, as palpably artificial as they -were voluminous, made his eyes look darker and somehow more liquid than -ever. The contrast was piquant, almost sensational. Of course he had -sacrificed, for the time, his small moustache. Lemoyne was not "Annabella" -herself, but only her chief chum; yet shorter skirts and shorter sleeves -and a deliberately assumed feminine air helped distinguish him from the -hearty young lads who manoeuvred in the chorus. - -Just who are those who enjoy the epicene on the stage? Not many women, one -prefers to think; and surely it arouses the impatience, if not worse, of -many men. Most amateur drama is based, perhaps, on the attempted "escape": -one likes to bolt from his own day, his own usual costume, his own range of -ideas, and even from his own sex. Endeavors toward this last are most -enjoyable--or least offensive--when they show frank and patent inadequacy. -It was Arthur Lemoyne's fortune--or misfortune--to do his work all too -well. - -Mrs. Phillips found his performance as little to her taste as she had -anticipated. Carolyn Thorpe got as much enjoyment out of the gauche -carriage and rough voices of the "chorus girls" as she had expected, but -was not observed to warm toward "Annabella's" closest friend. The Pearsons, -back from their wedding trip, had seats near the big crimson velvet -curtain. Pearson himself openly luxuriated in the amusing ineptitude of two -or three beskirted acquaintances among the upper classmen, but frowned at -Lemoyne's light tenor tones and mincing ways. Of course the right sort of -fellow, even if he had to sing his solo in the lightest of light tenors, -would still, on lapsing into dialogue, reinstate himself apologetically by -using as rough and gruff a voice as he could summon. Not so Lemoyne: he was -doing a consistent piece of "characterization," and he was feminine, even -overfeminine, throughout. - -"I never liked him, anyway," said George to Amy. - -Amy gave a nod of agreement. Yet why this critical zeal? There was but one -man to like, after all. - -"That make-up! That low-cut gown!" said George, in further condemnation. -"There's such a thing as going too far." - -Basil Randolph met Cope in the back lobby at the close of the performance. -The dramatic season in the city itself had begun to languish; besides that, -Randolph, in order to maintain his place on the edge of the life -academical, always made it a point to remember the Grayfriars each spring. - -"A very thorough, consistent piece of work--your friend's," said Randolph. -He spoke in a firm, net, withholding tone, looking Cope full in the face, -meanwhile. What he said was little, perhaps, of what was in his mind; yet -Cope caught a note of criticism and of condemnation. - -"Yes," he almost felt constrained to say in reply, "yes, I know what you -did for him--for me, rather; and possibly this is not the outcome foreseen. -I hope you won't regret your aid." - -Randolph went past him placidly. He seemed to have little to regret. On the -contrary, he almost appeared to be pleased. He may have felt that Lemoyne -had shown himself in a tolerably clear light, and that it was for Cope, -should he choose, to take heed. - -Two days later, Randolph gave his impression of the performance to Foster. -"It's just what I should have expected," declared the cripple -acrimoniously. "I'm glad you never had any taste for the fellow; and I -should have been quite as well pleased if I hadn't found you caring for the -other." - -Randolph took refuge in a bland inexpressiveness. There was no need to -school his face: he had only to discipline his voice. - -"Oh, well," he said smoothly, "it's only a passing _amitié_--something -soon to be over, perhaps." He used an alien word because he could not -select, on the instant, from his stock of English, the word he needed, and -because he was not quite sure what idea he wanted to express. "I only -wish," he went on, in the same even tone, "that this chap had been doing -better by his work. At one early stage of the rehearsals there was a lot of -registration and fee-paying for the new term. Well, if he hasn't been -satisfactory, they needn't blame me. Let them blame the system that diverts -so much time and attention to interests quite outside the regular -curriculum." - -"You talk like a book!" said Foster, with blunt disdain. - -"Language----" began Randolph. - -"----was made to conceal thought," completed the other. "Stop talking. Stop -thinking. Or, if you must think, just get your thoughts back on your -business." - -Foster might have expressed himself still more pungently if he had been -aware, as Cope was, of an episode which took place, behind the scenes, at -the close of the performance. Lemoyne's singing and dancing in the last act -had had a marked success: after all, people had come to enjoy and to -applaud. Following two or three recalls, a large sheaf of roses had been -passed over the footlights; for a close imitation of professional procedure -was held to give the advantage of strict vraisemblance. This "tribute" -Lemoyne took in character, with certain graces, pirouettes and smiles. His -success so mounted to his head (for he was the one person in the case who -approximated a professional effect) that after he had retired he could not -quiet down and leave his part. He continued to act off-stage; and in his -general state of ebulliency he endeavored to bestow a measure of upwelling -femininity upon another performer who was in the dress of his own sex. This -downright fellow, in cutaway and silk hat, did not understand,--or at least -had no patience with a rôle carried too far. He brusquely cleared himself -of Lemoyne's arm with a good vigorous push. This effort not only propelled -Lemoyne against some scenery and left him, despite the voluminous blond -wig, with a bruise on his forehead; it immediately pushed him out of his -part, and it ended by pushing him out of the organization and even out of -the University. - -"Keep off, will you!" said the young _élégant_ crudely. - -Lemoyne's "atmosphere" dissipated suddenly. His art-structure collapsed. As -he looked about he saw plainly that the other man's act was approved. He -had carried things too far. Well, such are the risks run by the sincere, -self-revealing artist. - -When all this reached Cope, he felt a personal chagrin. Truly, the art of -human intercourse was an art that called for some care. Lemoyne's slight -wound left no trace after forty-eight hours--perhaps his "notices" in "The -Index" and "The Campus" had acted as a salve; but certain sections of -opinion remained unfriendly, and there was arising a new atmosphere of -distaste and disapproval. - -The college authorities had not been satisfied, for some time, with his -clerical labors, and some of them thought that his stage performance--an -"exhibition" one of them termed it--called for reproof, or more. They laid -their heads together and Lemoyne and Cope were not long in learning their -decision. Lemoyne was pronounced a useless element in one field, a -discrepant element in another, a detriment in both. His essentially slight -connection with the real life of the University came to be more fully -recognized. Alma Mater, in fine, could do without him, and meant to. -Censure was the lot of the indignant boys who officered the society, and -who asked Lemoyne to withdraw; and complete scission from the nourishing -vine of Knowledge was his final fate. - -No occupation; no source of income. Winnebago was cold; nor was it to be -warmed into ardor by press-notices. It had seen too many already and was -tired of them. - -The two young men conferred. Again Basil Randolph was their hope. - -"He ought to be able to do something for me in the city," said Lemoyne. -"He's acquainted in business circles, isn't he?" - -Cope bent over him--paler, thinner, more solicitous. "I'll try it," he -said. - -Cope once more approached Randolph, but Randolph shook his head. He had no -faith in Lemoyne, and he had done enough already against his own interests -and desires. - -Lemoyne fluttered about to little effect for a few weeks, while Cope was -finishing up his thesis. Beyond an accustomed and desired companionship, -Lemoyne contributed nothing--was a drag, in truth. He returned to Winnebago -a fortnight before the convocation and the conferring of degrees; and it -was the understanding that, somehow, he and Cope should share together a -summer divided between Winnebago and Freeford. Randolph was left to claim -Cope's interest, if he could. - - - - -32 - -_COPE TAKES HIS DEGREE_ - - -Lemoyne's departure but a fortnight before Cope's small share in the -convocation seemed to hint at mutual dissatisfaction; it might even stand -for a disagreement, or possibly a quarrel. "It's just as well that he -went," said Randolph to himself. "His presence here was no advantage to -Bertram--nor to anybody else." And with another fortnight Cope himself -would be gone; and who knew in what distant quarter he might take up his -autumn work? His ambitions, as Randolph knew, pointed to some important -university in the East. Meanwhile, make the most of the flying days. - -Medora Phillips took the same view. She let Carolyn Thorpe loose for a -week's spring vacation, and sent Cope word that she was alone in a -darkened, depopulated home. Amy married. Hortense banished. Carolyn waved -aside. With all such varying devotions removed, why should he not look in -on her loneliness, during these final days, for dinner or tea? He was still -"charming"--however difficult, however recalcitrant. And he was soon to -depart. And who could believe that the fall term would bring his equal or -his like? - -Randolph, still taking his business easily, had suggestions for walks and -lunches; he had also free time to make his suggestions operative. But Cope, -though frequently seen in active movement on the campus and through the -town, gave little heed to either of his elderly friends. He met them both, -in High Street, on different occasions, and thanked and smiled and -promised--and kept away. He was doubtless absorbed in his special work, in -the details of the closing year. He may have thought (as young men have -been known to think) that, in accepting their invitations, he had done -enough for them already. He had shown his good will on several occasions; -let that suffice. Or he may have thought (as young men have been found -capable of thinking) not at all: other concerns, more pressing and more -contemporaneous, may have crowded them out of his mind altogether. - -"I wonder if it's sensitiveness?" asked Randolph of Foster. "His chum -didn't go away in the best of good odor...." - -"Settle it for yourself," returned Foster brusquely. "And recall that you -have an office--and might have office-hours. Still, if you insist on asking -me----" - -"I don't. But you may speak, if you like." - -"And if you will consent to be fobbed off with a short-measure answer----" - -"That's right. Don't say all you think." - -"Then I would put it somewhere between indifference and ingratitude. Nearer -the latter. We know the young." - -"I don't feel that I've done so very much for him," said Randolph, rather -colorlessly. - -"You were inclined to." - -"H'm, yes. I could have opened up avenues that would have made his year -here a very different thing. Perhaps he didn't realize what I could do. And -perhaps he found me too old." - -"Shall you attend the convocation?" - -"I go usually. I'll push him off from shore and waft him good-bye." - -"Good-bye? Good riddance!" - -"You never liked him." - -"I never did. If he leaves town without showing up here, no loss." - -"Medora expects him here?" - -"I think so." - -Randolph descended to the lower floor. Mrs. Phillips was alone, seated -behind a tea-service that steamed with expectation. - -"Going?" she asked. - -"Going. Joe is grouchy and violent today. And he keeps on reminding me that -I have an office." - -Medora glanced at the clock. Expectation seemed to be simmering down. - -"Stay a few moments if you like. Forget the office a little longer. I'll -make some fresh." - -"Not all these preparations for me?" - -"Well, they're here. Take advantage." - -"You're all alone?" - -"Alone. The house is empty." - -Medora tried to look as if at the heart of a tremendous vacuum. - -"I can't fill it." - -"You can fill fifteen minutes." - -"Oh, if you're going to confound time and space...!" - -He sat down receptively. - -Medora rang a bell and harried Helga a little. - -She glanced at Randolph. He sat there as if less to fill than to be filled. - -"Say something," she said. - -"Are you going to the convocation?" - -"No." - -He sat silent. - -"Does that exhaust the subjects of interest?" she asked. - -"Pretty nearly. Doesn't it?" - -Medora fell silent in turn,--let the light clatter of the tea things speak -for her. - -"Are you going to the convocation?" he presently asked again. - -"Such variety!" she mocked. - -"Are you?" - -She hesitated. - -"Yes," she said. - -"That's better. Let's go together--as friends." - -"Who would imagine us going as enemies?" - -"Who, indeed?" Yet if they went together they went as reconciled -competitors,--they went as the result of a truce. - -"I should like to see Bertram Cope in cap and gown," he said. - -"He has worn them before, he tells me." - -"As a----?" - -"As a member of the choir, during his undergraduate days." - -"I see." - -"I never noticed him especially, then," she acknowledged. - -"We can notice him now." - -Medora made a slight grimace. "Yes, we can notice." He the actor; they the -audience. "A farewell performance." - -"A final view." - -Convocation day came clear, fair, mild. The professors walked in colorful -solemnity beneath the elms and up the middle aisle of the chapel, lending -both to outdoors and indoors the enlivenment of hoods red, yellow, purple. -The marshals led strings of candidates--long strings and short--to the -platform where the president sat, and the deans presented in due order -their bachelors, masters and doctors. The rapid handing out of the diplomas -brought frequent applause--bits, spatters, volleys, as the case might be. -There was recognition for a Chinaman, for a negro law-student, for a pair -of Filipinos; there was a marked outburst for a husky young man who was -assumed by the uninformed to have been a star in the university's athletic -life; there was a respectful but emphatic acknowledgment for a determined- -looking middle-aged woman with gray hair, who was led on with four men as a -little string of five; there was a salvo for a thoughtful, dignified man of -thirty-odd, who went up as a group in himself, attended by marshals before -and behind; and there was a slight spatter of applause for Bertram Cope -(one of a small procession of six), yet rather more for a smiling young man -who followed him.... - -Cope looked somewhat spare, despite his voluminous gown. The trying lights -added little color to his face, and brought his cheek-bones into undue -prominence. But he took his sheepskin with a bow and a gesture that -extinguished several of his companions; and he faced the audience, on -descending from the stage, with a composed effect gained by experience in -the choir. The lustre in the ceiling lit up his yellow hair and his blue -eyes: "He is as charming as ever!" thought Medora Phillips. - -"He's had a hard pull of it," commented Randolph. - -"I hope his own people will feed him up this summer," said Medora. Her -emphasis was wayward; "He wouldn't let we do it," she seemed to mean. - -"Nor me," she almost made Randolph say. - -There was a recessional, and then the crowds of students flooded the -corridors and circulated under the fresh foliage of the campus. Randolph -and Medora Phillips passed out with the rest of the assemblage. In the -midst of one of the avenues of elms they noticed Cope as the center of a -little group: two plain, elderly people (his parents, doubtless) -and--and---- - -Medora Phillips looked twice. Yes, the other figure was Carolyn Thorpe, -offering congratulations. Carolyn had returned to her post and her work the -day before. "H'm," thought Medora, disposed to be miffed. Still, Carolyn -had, after all, the same right to attend as anyone else. - -Medora and Basil Randolph added their congratulations to Carolyn's. Cope, -still in academic garb, performed the necessary introductions. His air was -eager, but cursory; smiling and ready, yet impersonal and cool; above all, -expeditious. If his parents passed on with the impression that Medora -Phillips and Basil Randolph were but casual acquaintances, worthy of -nothing beyond brief formalities, the blame was his own. - -"I'm showing father and mother over the campus," he said, with an open -smile and a wave with his diploma, as he edged away. - -The elders docilely took their cue, and moved away with him. - -"Well," said Randolph, "there _are_ buildings, of course; and -fountains, and sun-dials, and memorial benches; but..." - -"They add nothing to him," pronounced Medora, as she looked back on the -retiring party. - -"Did you expect them to?" he asked. "Charm, like guilt, is personal. -Anyhow, there seems to be no brother," he added. - -"Well, come, Carolyn," said Medora, to her returned secretary, who was -looking after the party too; "let's start for home. Good afternoon, Basil." - - -"What nice, good, pleasant, friendly people they are!" breathed Carolyn. - -Randolph had strolled away, and Medora Phillips turned a studious glance on -her companion. Carolyn was conceivably in a state of mind--keyed up to an -all-inclusive appreciation. Did that foreshadow further verse?--a rustic -rhapsody, a provincial pantoum? But Medora withheld question. Much as she -would have enjoyed a well-consolidated impression of the visitors, she did -not intend to secure it by interrogating Carolyn Thorpe. - - - - -33 - -_COPE IN A FINAL VIEW_ - - -Cope, after a few days, followed his parents back to Freeford. He may have -said good-bye to his landlady and to some of his associates in his -department; but he contrived no set adieux for the friends who had done so -much for him--or had tried to--through the past year. Basil Randolph and -Medora Phillips had their last view of him when, diploma in hand, he led -his parents away, over the campus. - -"Oh, well," said Randolph resignedly, "we were less important to him than -we thought. Only a couple of negligible items among many. Entered in his -ledger--if we _were_ entered--and now faded away to a dim, rusty, illegible -scrawl...." - -"Stop it, Basil! You make me feel old, antique, antediluvian. I don't want -to. I shan't let myself be pushed back and ignored. I'm going to give Amy -and George a rousing big dinner before long; and when the fall term opens I -shall entertain as never before. And if that young man from the South turns -up here during the summer to see Hortense, I shall do a lot for them." - -Hortense Dunton had long since returned, of course, from the Tennessee and -North Carolina mountains; but she ignored the convocation. One drop of -bitterness, if tasted again--even reminiscently--would have turned -everything to gall. Instead, she found a measure of sweetness in the -letters which followed on her return from that region. They were addressed -in a bold, dashing young hand, and bore the postmark "Nashville." Hortense -was inclined to let them lie conspicuously on the front-hall table, for -half an hour or so, before she took them up. Little might be absolutely -known about her passage with Cope; but there the letters lay, for her -aunt's eye and for Carolyn Thorpe's. - -Carolyn prattled a little, not indiscreetly, about her meeting with the -Freeford family on the campus. As Basil Randolph himself had done months -before, she endeavored to construct a general environment for them and to -determine their place in the general social fabric. She had, however, the -advantage of having seen them; she was not called to make an exiguous -evocation from the void. She still held that they were nice, good, -pleasant, friendly people: if they had subordinated themselves, docilely -and automatically, to the prepotent social and academic figures of the -society about them, that in no wise detracted from the favorable impression -they had made on her. - -"Just the right parents for Bertram," she said fondly, to herself. She -made, almost unconsciously, the allowance that is still generally made, -among Americans, for the difference between two generations: the elder, of -course, continues to provide a staid, sober, and somewhat primitive -background for the brilliancy of the younger. Her own people, if they -appeared in Churchton, might seem a bit simple and provincial too. - -Hortense took Carolyn's slight and fond observations with a silent scorn. -When she spoke at all, she was likely to say something about "family"; and -it was gathered that the dashing correspondent at Nashville was -conspicuously "well-connected." Also, that he belonged to the stirring New -South and had put money in his purse. Hortense's contempt for the semi- -rustic and impecunious Cope became boundless. - -About the middle of July a letter lay on the front-hall table for Carolyn. -It was from Cope. - -"Only think!" said Carolyn to herself, in a small private ecstasy within -her locked bedchamber; "he wrote on his own account and of his own accord. -Not a line from me; not a suggestion!" - -The letter was an affair of two small pages. "Yours very sincerely, Bertram -L. Cope" simply told "My dear Miss Thorpe" that he had been spending three -or four days in Winnebago, Wisconsin, and that he had now returned home for -a month of further study, having obtained a post in an important university -in the East, at a satisfactory stipend. A supplementary line conveyed -regards to Mrs. Phillips. And that was all. - -Was it a handful of husks, or was it a banquet? Carolyn took it for the -latter and lived on it for days. Little it mattered what or how much he had -written: he had written, and of his own accord--as Carolyn made a point of -from the first. There is an algebraic formula expressive of the truth that -"1" is an infinitely greater number of times than "0." And a single small -taper is infinitely greater in point of light and cheer than none at all. -Carolyn's little world underwent illumination, and she with it. She -promptly soared to a shining infinity. - -Medora Phillips could not overlook Carolyn's general glow, nor the sense of -elevation she conveyed. Things became clearer still when Carolyn passed on -the scanty message which Cope had added at the end. "Best regards to Mrs. -Phillips"--there it was, so far as it went. And Medora felt, along with -Carolyn, that a slight mention was an immensity of times greater than no -mention at all. "Very kind, very thoughtful of him, I'm sure," she said -without irony. - -Carolyn let her read the letter for herself. It was a brief, cool, succinct -thing, and not at all unsuited for general circulation. "Best regards to -Mrs. Phillips. Yours very sincerely, Bertram L. Cope," she read again; -then, like Carolyn, she retired for meditation. - -Well, from its dozen or fifteen lines several things might fairly be -inferred. "Three or four days in Winnebago"--a scanty pattern for a visit. -Had three or four been enough? Had Lemoyne been found glum and unpleasant? -Had those months of close companionship brought about a mutually diminished -interest? Not a word as to Lemoyne's accompanying him to Freeford, or -joining him there later. On the contrary, a strong implication that there -would be sufficient to occupy him without the company of Lemoyne or anybody -else: evidences of an eye set solely on the new opportunity in the East. - -"Well, if he is going to get along without him," said Medora to herself, -"it will be all the better for him. He was never any advantage to him," she -added, with an informal and irresponsible use of her pronouns. But she knew -what she meant and had no auditor to satisfy. - -When, however, she touched on the matter with Basil Randolph she showed -more exactitude. Randolph had lingered late upstairs with Foster, and he -had been intercepted, on his way out, with an invitation to remain to -dinner. "Very well," he said. "Sing-Lo is not invariably inspired on Monday -evening. I shall be glad to stay." - -He felt, in fact, the need of a little soothing. Foster had been taking a -farewell shot at Cope and had been rough and vindictive. He had heard -something of the antics of "Annabella's" partner and had magnified -characteristically the seriousness of the offense. "What hope for him"-- -meaning Cope--"so long as he goes on liking and admiring that fellow?" - -"Well," returned Randolph, in an effortless platitude, "liking is the great -mystery--whether you take its coming or its going." - -"The sooner this one goes, the better," snapped Foster. "Have you heard -from that fellow at all?" he inquired. - -"'That fellow'? What fellow--this time?" - -"The other one, of course. Cope." - -"No." - -Foster wiped out Cope with one question. - -"Likely to 'cultivate' some other young chap, next year?" - -Randolph had a moment of sober thoughtfulness. - -"No." - -"Good! Get back into harness; have 'hours' and all the rest of it. Best -thing in the world for you. The young care so much for us--the devil they -do!" - -Foster gave a savage, dragging clutch at his shade and twisted rebelliously -in his chair. - -Randolph left him to himself and went below. - -Downstairs dinner proceeded cautiously. There was no chance for an -interchange of thought until the two young women should have been got out -of the way. Hortense had her own affair at the back of her head, and -Carolyn hers. Neither could sympathize with the other. Hortense's manner to -Carolyn was one of half-suppressed insolence. Carolyn, buoyed up -interiorly, seemed able to endure it,--perhaps was not fully conscious of -it. There was relief when, after dessert, each arose and went her -respective way. - -Medora and Randolph settled down on a causeuse in the drawing-room. The -place was half-lighted, but Randolph made out that his companion was taking -on a conscious air of pseudo-melancholy. - -Her eyes roved the dim, cluttered room with studied mournfulness, and she -said, presently: - -"Dear old house! Undergoing depopulation, and soon to be a waste." - -"Depopulation?" - -"Yes; they're leaving it one by one. First, Amy. You remember Amy?" - -"I believe so." - -"She married George and went away. You recall the occasion?" - -"I think I was present." - -"And now it's Hortense." - -"Is it, indeed?" - -She told him about the gallant young Southerner in Tennessee, and gave a -forecast of a probable pairing. - -"And next it will be Carolyn." - -"Carolyn? Who has cast his eye on her?" - -Medora shot it out. - -"Bertram Cope!" - -"Cope!" Randolph gave himself another twist in that well-twisted sofa. - -"Cope," she repeated. If the boy were indeed beyond her own reach, she -would report his imminent capture by another with as much effect as she -could command. - -And she told of Carolyn's fateful letter. - -"So that's how it stands?" he said thoughtfully. - -"I don't say 'how' it stands. I don't say that it 'stands' at all. But he -has prospects and she has hopes." - -"Prospects and hopes,--a strong working combination." - -Medora took the leap. "She will marry him, of course," she said decidedly. -"After his having jilted Amy----" - -"'Jilted' her? Do you understand it that way?" - -"And trampled on Hortense----" - -"'Trampled'? Surely you exaggerate." - -"And ignored me----You will let me use that mild word, 'ignored'?" - -"Its use is granted. He has ignored others too." - -"After all that, who is there left in the house but Carolyn? Listen; I'll -tell you how it will be. She has answered his letter, of course,--imagine -whether or not she was prompt about it!--and he will answer hers----" - -"_Will_ answer it?" - -"Not at once, perhaps; but soon: in the course of two or three weeks. Then -she will reply,--and there you have a correspondence in full swing. Then, -in the fall he will write her from his new post in the East, and say: 'Dear -Girl,--At last I can----,' and so on." - -"You mean that you destine poor Carolyn for a man who is so apt at jilting -and trampling and ignoring?" - -"Who else is there?" Medora continued to demand sturdily. "In October they -will be married----" - -"Heaven forbid!" ejaculated Randolph. - -"You have something better to suggest?" - -"Nothing better. Something different. Listen, as you yourself say. Next -October I shall call on you, put my hand in my inside pocket, bring out a -letter and read it to you. It will run like this: 'My dear Mr. Randolph,-- -You will be pleased, I am sure, to hear that I now have a good position at -the university in this pleasant town. Arthur Lemoyne, whom you recall, is -studying psychology here, and we are keeping house together. He wishes to -be remembered. I thank you for your many kindnesses,'--that is put in as a -mere possibility,--'and also send best regards to Mrs. Phillips and the -members of her household. Sincerely yours, Bertram L. Cope.'" - -"I won't accept that!" cried Medora. "He will marry Carolyn, and I shall do -as much for her as I did for Amy, and as much as I expect to do for -Hortense." - -"I see. The three matches made and the desolation of the house complete." - -"Complete, yes; leaving me alone among the ruins." - -"And nothing would rescue you from them but a fourth?" - -"Basil, you are not proposing?" - -"I scarcely think so," he returned, with slow candor. "I shouldn't care to -live in this house; and you----" - -"I knew you never liked my furnishings!" - -"----and you, I am sure, would never care to live in any other." - -"I shall stay where I am," she declared. "Shall you stay where you are?" -she asked keenly. - -"Perhaps not." - -"Confess that housekeeping on your own account is less attractive than it -once was." - -"I do. Confess that you, with all your outfit and all your goings-on, never -quite--never quite--succeeded in..." - -Medora shrugged. "The young, at best, only tolerate us. We are but the -platform they dance on,--the ladder they climb by." - -"After all, he was a 'charming' chap. Your own word, you know." - -"Yet scarcely worth the to-do we made over him," said Medora, willing to -save her face. - -Randolph shrugged in turn, and threw out his hands in a gesture which she -had never known him to employ before. - -"Worth the to-do? Who is?" - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's Bertram Cope's Year, by Henry Blake Fuller - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BERTRAM COPE'S YEAR *** - -This file should be named 8cope10.txt or 8cope10.zip -Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 8cope11.txt -VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 8cope10a.txt - -Produced by Eric Eldred, Jerry Fairbanks, Charles Franks -and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. - -Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US -unless a copyright notice is included. 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