  Title: Bertram Cope's Year Author: Henry Blake Fuller Language: English Produced by Eric Eldred, Jerry Fairbanks, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. BERTRAM COPE'S YEARHenry 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_ AFTERWORD1 COPE AT A COLLEGE TEAWhat 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. "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. "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. "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 CALLMedora 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 "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. "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 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. The youth hastened to get into action. Cope went on with his letter to "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 "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 "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 CONSIDEREDA 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 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. 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. "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 "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 FURTHERRandolph 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! "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." |
|