regard to a better regimen, as well as her more specific hints,
made in view of the near approach of rough weather, that he provide
himself with rubbers and an umbrella, even if he would not hear of a
rain-coat. "Am I made of money?" he asked. He gave a like treatment
to some intimations contributed by Medora Phillips during her call:
he met them with the smiling, polite, half-weary patience which a man
sometimes employs to inform a woman that she doesn't quite know what
she is talking about. He was presently in as active circulation, on
the campus and elsewhere, as ever. The few who looked after him at all
came to the view that he possessed more mettle than stamina. He had no
special fondness for athletics; he was doing little to keep--still less
to increase--a young man's natural endowment of strength and vigor.
Occasional tennis on the faculty courts, and not much else.
So the vast gymnasium went for little with him, and the wide football
field for less, and the great lake, close by, for nothing. This last,
however, counted for little more with any one else. Those who knew the
lake best were best content to leave it alone. As a source of pleasure
it had too many perils: "treacherous" was the common word. Its
treachery was reserved, of course, for the smiling period of summer;
especially did the great monster lie in wait on summer's Sunday
afternoons. Then the sun would shine on its vast placid bosom and the
breeze play gently, tempting the swimmer toward its borders and the
light pleasure craft toward its depths. And then, in mid-afternoon, a
sudden disastrous change; a quick gale from the north, with a wide
whipping-up of white caps; and the morrow's newspapers told of bathers
drowned in the undertow, of frail canoes dashed to pieces against piers
and breakwaters, and of gay, beflagged steam-launches swamped by the
newly-risen sea miles from shore: the toll of fickle, superheated
August. But in the late autumn the immense, savage creature was more
frankly itself: rude, blustery, tyrannical,--no more a smiling, cruel
hypocrite. It warned you, often and openly, if warning you would take.
It was on the last Sunday afternoon in October that Cope and Amy
Leffingwell were strolling along its edge. They had met casually, in
front of the chapel, after a lecture--or a service--by an eminent
ethical teacher from abroad,--a bird of passage who must pipe on this
Sunday afternoon if he were to pipe at all. Cope, who had lain abed
late, made this address a substitute for the forenoon service he had
missed. And Amy Leffingwell had gone out somewhat for the sake,
perhaps, of walking by the house where Cope lived.
They passed the Science building, with its tower crowned by an
ornamental open-work iron pyramid for wireless, and the segregated
group of theological dormitories through whose windows earnest ringing
young voices were sometimes heard at the practice of sermon-delivery,
and the men's club where the billiard tables were doubtless decorously
covered with their customary Sunday sheets of black oilcloth, and took
intuitively the path which led along the edge of the bluff. Beyond
them, further bluffs and a few low headlands; here a lighthouse, there
a water-tower; elsewhere (and not so far) the balconied roof of the
life-saving station, where the boats, light and heavy, were manned by
muscular students: their vigilance and activity, interspersed with long
periods of leisure or of absence, helped them to "pay their way." Out
toward the horizon a passenger steamer en route to some port farther
north, or a long ore-freighter, singularly uneventful between bow and
far-distant afterhouse, on its way down from the iron-ranges of
Superior.
The path was narrow, but Cope, unexpectedly to himself, had no
complaint to make. Really, the girl did better here, somehow, than lots
of other girls would have done on a wide sidewalk. Most of them walked
too close to you, or too far from you, altering the interval suddenly
and arbitrarily, and tending to bump against you when you didn't expect
it and didn't want it. They were uncertain at crossings; if it was
necessary for them to take your arm, as it sometimes became, in the
evening, on a crowded street, why, they were too gingerly or else
pressed too close; and if it happened to rain, you sometimes had to
take a cab, trafficking with a driver whose tariff and whose
disposition you did not know: in fact, a string of minor embarrassments
and expenses....
But the way, this afternoon, was clear and easy; and there were no
annoyances save from other walkers along the same path. The sun shone
brightly at intervals. A fresh breeze swept the wide expanse streaked
with purple and green and turned an occasional broken wave-crest toward
the western light. Some large cumuli were abroad--white, or less white,
or even darkling,--the first windy sky of autumn.
Cope and Amy passed the life-saving station, where a few people sat
about idly and where one or two visitors pressed noses against glass
panes to view the boats within; and they reached presently a sort of
little public park which lay along the water. Here a small pier ran out
past the shallows, and in front of a shack close by it a man sat
resignedly near a group of beached and upturned row-boats. One or two
others were still in the water, as was a small sloop. The fellow sat
there without expectations: the season was about over; the day was none
too promising for such as knew. His attitude expressed, in fact, the
accumulated disappointment and resignation of many months. Perhaps he
was a new-comer from the interior--some region of ponds and rivers--and
had kept through an uneventful summer the notion that so big a spread
of water would surely be put to use. The sail of the sloop,
half-lowered, flapped in the breeze, and little else stirred.
Our young people overlooked both man and boat.
"It's the same lake," said Amy Leffingwell, rather dreamily, after a
common silence of several minutes.
"The same," returned Cope promptly. "It's just what it was a year ago,
a century ago; and a millennium ago, I suppose,--if there was anyone
here to notice."
She turned on him a rueful, half-protesting smile. "I wasn't thinking
of a century ago. I was thinking of a month ago."
"A month ago?"
"Yes; when we were walking along the dunes."
"Oh, I see. Why, yes, it is the same old lake, though it seems hard to
realize it. Foreground makes so much difference; and so does--well,
population. I mean the human element, or the absence of it."
Amy pondered.
"The one drawback, there, was that we couldn't go out on the water."
"Go out? I should say not. No pier for miles, and the water so shallow
that hardly more than a canoe could land. Still, those fishermen out
there manage it. But plain summerites, especially if not dressed for
it, would have an unpleasant time imitating them."
Amy cast her eye about. Here was a shore, a pier, a boat, a man to let
it....
"Would you like to go out?" asked the man himself perfunctorily, as
from the depths of a settled despair. He pointed a thumb over his
shoulder toward the sloop.
The two young people looked at each other. Neither looked at the sky.
"Well, I don't know," replied Cope slowly. The sloop was on a pretty
small scale; still, it was more to manage than a cat-boat.
"You have the theory, you know," said Amy demurely, "and some practice."
Cope looked at her in doubt. "Can you swim?" he asked.
"Yes," she returned. "I have some practice, if not much theory."
"Could you handle a jib?"
"Under direction."
"Well, then, if you really wish ..."
The misanthrope, with a twisted smile, helped them get away. The
mainsail took a steady set; but the jib, from the first, possessed an
active life of its own.
"Not that rope," cried Cope; "the other."
"Very well," returned Amy, scrambling across the cockpit. And so it
went.
In six or eight minutes their small catastrophe overtook them. There
came a sudden flaw from out one of the racing gray cumuli, and a faint
cry or two from the distant shore. Theory had not put itself into
practice as quickly as the emergency required,--all the less so in that
it had to work through a crew encumbered with a longish skirt and a
close jacket. The sloop keeled over; Cope was instantly entangled with
the mainsail and some miscellaneous cordage; and Amy, with the water
soaking her closely-fitting garments, found herself clutching the
cockpit's edge.
She saw Cope's predicament and let go her hold to set him free. He
helped shake himself loose with a loud forced laugh and a toss of the
head to get his long hair out of his eyes. "We'll leave the wreck," he
spluttered, "and make for the shore." The shore, fortunately, was
scarcely more than a hundred yards away,--yet never had the great twin
towers of the library seemed so distant or the wireless cage on Science
hall so futile.
They swam, easily, side by side, he supporting her in her cramped
clothes at the start, and she, a bit concerned, somewhat supporting him
toward the end. Meanwhile, there was some stir at the life-saving
station, a quarter of a mile down the shore.
The last hundred feet meant mere wading, though there was some
variability among the sand ridges of the bottom; but the water, at its
deepest, never reached their shoulders. Their small accident now began
to take on the character of a ceremonial--an immersion incident to some
religious rite or observance; and the little Sunday crowd collecting on
the water's edge might have been members of some congregation
sympathetically welcoming a pair of converts to the faith.
"Let's hold our heads high and walk straight," said Cope, his arm in
hers; "heaven knows whom we are likely to meet. And throw your hat
away--you'll look better without it. Lord knows where mine is," he
added, as he ran a smoothing hand over his long locks.
"Very well," she said, casting away her ruined, ridiculous headgear
with her free arm. The other, in his, was giving more support to him,
she felt, than he was giving to her.
Just as they were about to reach dry land, amidst the congratulations
and the amused smiles of the little group at the foot of the bluff, the
belated crew of life-savers swept up in their smallest boat and
insisted on capturing them.
"Oh, Mr. Cope," said a familiar voice, "please let us save you. We
haven't saved a soul for months."
Cope recognized one of his own students and surrendered, though a
kindly house-owner on the bluff had been quick to cry across the
intervening yards of water his offer of hospitality. "All right," he
said; "take us back to your place, where we can dry and telephone." He
hoped, too, that they might have to encounter fewer people at the other
spot than at this.
Meanwhile, another boat belonging to the station had set out to aid the
owner of the sloop in its recovery. It was soon righted and was brought
in. There was no damage done, and there was no charge that Cope could
not meet, as he learned next day to his great relief.
The station gave him a dry outfit of clothes, assembled from here and
there, and telephoned to Mrs. Phillips to bring fresh garments for Amy.
Neither had time to get a chill. A pair of kindly servant-maids, who
were loitering on the shore with their young men, insisted on carrying
the heroine of the afternoon into retirement, where they expeditiously
undressed her, rubbed her, and wrapped her in a quilt snatched from a
life-saving bed. Amy was cold indeed, and inclined to shiver. She
understood, now, why Cope had not encouraged that bathing party at the
dunes.
In a few minutes Medora Phillips tore up in her car, with Helga and a
mountain of clothing and wraps. She was inclined to make the most of
the occasion, and she did so. With Helga she quickly superseded the
pair of sympathetic and ready maids, whom she allowed to fade into the
background with too scant recognition of their services; and when she
had got Amy thoroughly warmed and rehabilitated she turned her thought
toward Cope. Here, certainly, was a young scholastic recluse who had an
admirable faculty for getting into the public eye. If one section of
Churchton society had talked about his performance at her dinner, all
sections of it would now be discussing his new performance on the high
seas. Suddenly she was struck with the notion that possibly his first
lapse had not left him in condition to stand this second one.
"How are you feeling?" she asked anxiously. "No chill? No shock?"
"I'm all right," he declared. "One of the boys has just given me a
drink of--of----" But it was a beverage the use of which was not
generally approved in Churchton.
Mrs. Phillips turned round suddenly. "Amy, did you have a drink, too,
of--of--of--if 'Of' is what you call it?"
"I did," said Amy firmly; "and I feel the better for it."
"Well, get in, then, and I'll take you home."
Peter grinned from the front seat of the car; Mrs. Phillips placed
herself between the two victims on the back one; the life-savers, who
had kept the discarded garments to dry, gave them all a few smiles and
hand wavings; the two young women and their two young men looked on
with some deference; the general crowd gave a little mock-cheer before
turning its Sunday leisure to other forms of interest; and the small
party whirled away.
Amy leaned a tired, moist head, but a happy one, on Mrs. Phillips'
shoulder. "He was so quick," she breathed, "and so brave, and so
strong." She professed to believe that he had saved her life. Cope,
silent as he looked straight ahead between Peter and Helga, was almost
afraid that she had saved his.
17
_COPE AMONG CROSS-CURRENTS_
Next morning, at breakfast, Amy Leffingwell kept, for the most part, a
rapt and meditative eye on her plate. Hortense gave her now and then an
impatient, half-angry glare, and had to be cut short in some stinging
observations on Cope. "But it _was_ foolish," Medora Phillips felt
obliged to concede. "What in the world made you do it?"
But Amy continued to smile at the table-cloth. She seemed to be
intimating that there was a special folly which transcended mere
general folly and approximated wisdom.
After breakfast she spoke a few words to Carolyn. She had had all night
to think the matter over; she now saw it from a new angle and in a new
light.
"You should have seen how he shook himself free from that sail, and
all," she said. "And while we were swimming in he held his hand under
my chin--at least part of the time. And when we reached the sandbars he
put his arm through mine and helped me over every one." And in this
state of mind she went off to her class.
Cope was received by his own class with a subdued hilarity. His young
people felt that he had shown poor judgment in going out on the water
at all,--for the University, by tacit consent, left the lake pretty
well alone. They thought that, once out, he had shown remarkably inept
seamanship. And they thought that he had chosen a too near and too
well-lighted stage for the exhibition of both. This forenoon the
"Eighteenth Century Novelists" involved Smollett, and with every
reference to the water looks of understanding traveled from student to
student: that the class was of both sexes made the situation no better.
Cope was in good enough physical condition,--the unspeakable draught
from the unspeakable flask had ensured that,--but he felt what was in
the air of the classroom and was correspondingly ill at ease.
He had had, for several days, an understanding with Basil Randolph that
they were to go together to the next weekly reception of the
president's wife. Randolph wished to push Cope's fortunes wherever he
might, and to make him stand out from the general ranks of the young
instructors. He had the entrée to the Thursdays at the president's
house, and he wanted Cope to meet personally and intimately, under the
guidance he could provide, a few of the academic dignitaries and some
of the wealthier and more prominent townspeople. Notwithstanding Mrs.
Phillips' confident impression, Cope's exploit at her own table had
gained no wide currency. The people she had entertained were people who
expected and commanded a succession of daily impressions from one
quarter or another. With them, a few light words on Cope's achievement
were sufficient; they walked straight on toward the sensation the next
day was sure to bring. But of course the whole University knew about
his second performance. Some of its members had witnessed it, and all
of them had read about it, next day, in Churchton's four-page "Index."
The president's wife was a sprightly lady, who believed in keeping up
the social end of things. Her Thursdays offered coffee and chocolate at
a handsomely appointed table, and a little dancing, now and then, for
the livelier of the young professors and the daughters of the town's
best-known families; above all, she insisted on "receiving"--even on
having a "receiving line." She would summon, for example, the wife of
one of the most eminent members of the faculty and the obliging spouse
of some educationally-minded banker or manufacturer; and she herself
always stood, of course, at the head of her line. When Cope came along
with Randolph, she intercepted the flow of material for her several
assistants farther on, and carried congestion and impatience into the
waiting queue behind by detaining him and "having it out."
She caught his hand with a good, firm, nervous grasp, and flashed on
him a broad, meaningful smile.
"Which saved which?" she asked heartily.
Mrs. Ryder, who was farther along in the line, but not too far, beamed
delightedly, yet without the slightest trace of malice. An eminent
visiting educator, five or six steps behind our hero, frowned in
question and had to have the situation explained by the lady in his
company.
Cope, a trifle embarrassed, and half-inclined to wish he had not come,
did what he could to deprive the episode of both hero and heroine. It
was about an even thing, he guessed,--a matter of cooperation.
"Isn't that delightful!" exclaimed the president's wife to the wife of
the banker, before passing Cope on. "And so modern! Equality of the
sexes.... Woman doing her share, et cetera! For this," she presently
said to the impatient educator from outside, "are we co-educational!"
And, "Good teamwork!" she contrived to call after Cope, who was now
disappearing in the crowd.
Cope lost himself from Randolph, and presently got away without seeing
who was pouring coffee or who was the lightest on foot among the
younger professors. The president's wife had asked him, besides, how
the young lady had got through it, and had even inquired after her
present condition. Well, Amy Leffingwell was enrolled among the
University instructors, and doubtless the wife of the institution's
head had been well within her rights,--even duly mindful of the
proprieties. But "The Index"! That sheet, staid and proper enough on
most occasions, had seemed, on this one, to couple their names quite
unwarrantably. "Couple!" Cope repeated the word, and felt an injury. If
he had known that Amy had carefully cut out and preserved the offending
paragraph, his thought would have taken on a new and more disquieting
tone.
In the inquiry of the president's wife about the condition of his
copartner in adventure he found a second source of dissatisfaction. He
had not called up to ask after Amy; but Mrs. Phillips, with a great
show of solicitude, had called up early on Monday morning to ask after
him. He had then, in turn, made a counter-inquiry, of course; but he
could take no credit for initiative. Neither had he yet called at the
house; nor did he feel greatly prompted to do so. That must doubtless
be done; but he might wait until the first fresh impact of the event
should somewhat have lost its force.
Mrs. Phillips' voice had kept, over the telephone, all its vibratory
quality; its tones expressed the most palpitating interest. It was
already clear--and it became even clearer when he finally called at the
house--that she was poetizing him into a hero, and that she regarded
Amy herself as but a means, an instrument. At this, Cope felt a little
more mortified than before. He knew that he had done poorly in the
boat, and he was not sure that, in the first moment of the upset, he
should have freed himself unaided; and he confessed that he had not
been quite in condition to do very well on the way landward. However,
all passed.... Within a fortnight or less the incident would have
dropped back into its proper perspective, and his students would have
found some other matter for entertainment. In the circumstances he
grasped at the first source of consolation that came. Randolph was now
installed in his new apartment and felt that, though not fully settled,
he might risk asking Cope to dinner. "You are the first," Randolph had
said. Cope could not escape the flattery; it was almost comfort.
His prompt acceptance was most welcome to Randolph. Cope had dwelt, for
a moment, on the actual presence of Aunt Harriet and on his need of
her. Randolph had made no precise study of recent chronology, taking
the reason given over the wire as a valid one and feeling glad that
there was no hitch this time.
Randolph gave Cope a rapid view of the apartment before they sat down
to dinner. There were fewer pictures on the newly-papered walls than
there were to be, and fewer rugs on the freshly-varnished floors. "My
standing lamp will be in that corner," said Randolph, in the
living-room, "--when it comes." He drew attention to a second bedroom
where a man could be put up on occasion: "you, for example, if you ever
find yourself shut out late." He saw Sir Galahad's gauntlets on the
dresser. He even gave Cope a glimpse of his kitchen, where a
self-contained Oriental, slightly smiling but otherwise inexpressive,
seemed to be dealing competently with the gas-range. But Cope was
impressed, most of all, by the dining-room table and its paraphernalia.
At Mrs. Phillips' he had accepted the china, silver and napery as a
matter of course--an elaborate entity quite outside his own thoughts
and calculations: it was all so immensely far beyond his reach and his
needs. Randolph, however, had dealt as a bachelor with a problem which
he himself as a bachelor must soon take up, on however different a
scale and plane. For everything here was rich and handsome; he should
not know how to select such things--still less how to pay for them. He
felt dashed; he felt depressed; once more the wonder of people's
"having things." He sipped his soup in the spirit of humility, and did
not quite recover with the chops.
Randolph made little talk; he was glad merely to have Cope there. He
indulged no slightest reference to the accident; he assumed, willingly
enough, that Cope had done well in a sudden emergency, but did not care
to dwell on his judgment at the beginning. Still, a young man was
properly enough experimental, venturesome...
Cope had recovered himself by the time dessert was reached. He
accomplished an adjustment to his environment, and Randolph was glad to
feel his unaffected response to good food properly cooked and served.
"He sha'n't gipsy _all_ the time," Randolph said to himself. "I shall
try to have him here at least twice a week." Once in a while the
evening might be stormy, and then the gauntlets would be laid on the
dresser--perhaps after an informal smoke in pajamas among the curios
ranged round the small den.
Cope set down his demi-tasse with a slight sigh. "Well," he said, "I
suppose that, before long, I shall have to buy a few sticks of
furniture myself and a trifle of 'crockery.' And a percolator."
Randolph looked across at him in surprise.
"You are moving, then,--you too?" Not to greatly better quarters, he
almost hoped.
"Yes; and we shall need a few small things by way of outfit."
"We." Randolph looked more intently. Housekeeping _à deux_? A
roommate? Matrimony? Here was the intrusion of another piece on the
board--a piece new and unexpected. Would it turn out to be an added
interest for himself, or a plain source of disconcertment? Cope,
having unconsciously set the ball rolling, gave it further impetus.
He sketched his absent friend and told of their plans for the winter
and spring terms. "I shall try for a large easy chair," he concluded,
"unless Arthur can be induced to bring one with him."