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_