"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.