atmosphere. Medora Phillips, who had begun by raising her eyebrows in
light criticism, now lowered them in frowning protest. She had found
Cope "charming"; but this charm of his was to add to the attractiveness
of her house and to give her a high degree of personal gratification.
It was not to be frittered away; still less was it to be absorbed
elsewhere. Hortense, who had been secretly at work on a portrait-sketch
of Cope in oil, and rather despising herself for it, now began to make
another bold picture in her own mind. She saw herself handing out the
sketch to Cope in person, with an air of high bravado; she might say,
if bad came to worse, that she had found some professional interest in
his color or in his "planes." On one occasion Medora hardily
requisitioned Cope for an evening at the theatre, in the city; miles in
and miles back she had him in her car all to herself; and if Amy, next
day, appeared to feel that wealth and organization had taken an unfair
advantage of simple, honest love, Medora herself was troubled by no
stirrings of conscience.
The new atmosphere reached even Foster on the top floor; and when, one
evening in mid-December, he finally carried out his long-meditated plan
to dine with Randolph, the household situation was uppermost in his
mind. That he had not the clearest understanding of the situation did
not diminish his interest in it. Though he sat in the dark, and far
apart, some sense all his own, cultivated through years of deprivation,
came to his aid. Peter brought him down the street and round the
corner; and Randolph's Chinaman, fascinated by his green shade and his
tortuous method of locomotion (once out of his wheeled-chair), did the
rest. "You had better stay all night," Randolph had suggested; and he
was glad to avoid a second awkward trip on the same evening.
Foster had wondered whether Cope would be present. He had not asked to
meet him--for he hardly knew whether he wished to or not. Though this
was an "occasion,"--and his,--he had left Randolph to act quite as he
might choose. There was a third chair at table and Randolph delayed
dinner ten minutes while waiting for it to be filled.
"Well, let's go in and sit down," he said presently, with a slight
twist of the mouth. He spoke lightly, as if it were as easy for Foster
to sit down as for himself. But Foster got into his place after a
moment and contrived to spread his napkin over his legs.
"I expected Bertram Cope," Randolph went on; "but he isn't here, and I
have no word from him and do not know whether----"
He paused, obviously at a loss.
"Not here?" repeated Foster. "Is there, then, one place where he is
not?"
"Why, Joe----!"
"Our house is full of him!" Foster burst out raucously. He had removed
the green _abat-jour_, for the candle-shades (as they sometimes will)
were performing their office. In the low but clear light his face
seemed distorted.
"He rises to my floor like incense. The very halls and stairways reek
with his charms and perfections."
"Well, you escape him here," said Randolph ruefully.
"The whole miserable place is steaming with expectation,--with the
deadly aroma of a courtship going stale. I can't stand it! I can't
stand it!"
"Courtship?"
"You may think it takes two, but it doesn't. That foolish girl has
thrown the whole place into discomfort and confusion; and I don't know
who's for or who's against----"
"What foolish girl?" asked Randolph quickly. Sing-Lo was at his elbow,
changing plates: it was assumed, justly enough, that he would not be
able to follow the intricacies of a situation purely occidental.
"Our Amy," replied Foster, with a dash of bitterness.
"Amy Leffingwell?" asked Randolph, still more quickly.
Foster had blind eyes, but alert ears. He felt that Randolph was
surprised and displeased. And indeed his host was both. That boy fallen
maladroitly in love? thought Randolph. It was a second check. He had
exerted himself to show a friendliness for Cope, had expected to enjoy
him while he stayed on for his months in town, and had hoped to help
push his fortunes in whatever other field he might enter. He had even
taken his present quarters--no light task, all the details
considered--to make Cope's winter agreeable, no less than his own. And
now? First the uncounted-upon friend from Wisconsin with whom Cope was
arranging to live; next, this sudden, unexpected affair with that girl
at Medora's. Did the fellow not know his own mind? Could he formulate
no hard-and-fast plan? Here Randolph, in his disappointment,
inconsistently forgot that a hard-and-fast plan was largely his real
annoyance and grievance. Then he remembered. He looked at the vacant
place, and tried for composure and justice.
"I shall probably hear some good reason, in due time," he said.
"I hope so," rejoined Foster; "but it takes these young fellows to be
careless--and ungrateful." He made no pretense of ignoring the fact
that Randolph had moved into this apartment more on account of Cope
than for any other reason.
"H'm, yes," responded Randolph thoughtfully. "I suppose it is the
tendency of a young fellow who has never quite stood on his own legs
financially to accept about everything that comes his way, and to
accept it as a matter of course."
"It is," said Foster.
"I know that _I_ was that way," continued Randolph, looking studiously
at the nearest candle-shade. "I was beyond the middle twenties before I
quite launched out for myself, and any kindness received was taken
without much question and without much thanks. I presume that he still
has some assistance from home...."
He dropped youthful insouciance over favors received to consider the
change that marriage makes in a young man's status. "I wouldn't go so
far as to assert that a young man married is a man that's marred----"
"This _is_ stiff doctrine," Foster acknowledged.
"But somehow he does seem done for. He is placed; he is cut off from
wide ranges of interesting possibilities; he offers himself less
invitingly to the roving imagination...."
Meanwhile Cope, with Randolph's invitation driven altogether from his
mind by more urgent matters, was pacing the streets, through the first
snow-flurries of the winter, and was wondering, rather distractedly,
just where he stood. Precisely what words, at a very brief yet critical
juncture, had he said, or not said? Exactly how had he phrased--or
failed to phrase--the syllables which constituted, perhaps, a
turning-point in his life?
Amy Leffingwell had demanded his attendance for one more walk, that
afternoon, and he had not been dextrous enough, face to face with her,
to refuse. She had expressed herself still more insistently on
"happiness"--(on hers, his, theirs; the two were one, in her view)--and
on a future shared together. In just what inadequate way had he tried
to fend her off? Had he said, "I shall have to wait?" Or had his
blundering tongue said, instead, "We should have to wait?"--or even
worse, "We shall have to wait?" In any event, he had used that
cowardly, temporizing word "wait"--for she had instantly seized upon
it. Why, yes, indeed; she was willing to wait; she had expected to
wait....
He turned out from an avenue lighted with electric globes, past which
the snowflakes were drifting, and entered a quieter and darker
side-street. In the dusk she had put up her face, expecting to be
kissed; and he, partly out of pity for the expression that came when he
hesitated, and partly out of pure embarrassment and inexpertness, had
lightly touched her lips. That had sealed it, possibly. He saw her
sitting in rapt fancy in her bedroom--if not more vocal in the rooms
below. He saw her writing to an unseen mother in a tone of joyful
complacency, and looking at her finger for a ring which he could not
place there. He saw the distaste of his own home circle, to which this
event had come at least a year too soon. He saw the amazement, and
worse, of Arthur Lemoyne, whose plans for coming to town were now all
made and to whom this turn would prove a psychological shock which
might deter him from coming at all. But, most of all, he saw--and felt
to the depths of his being--his own essential repugnance to the life
toward which he now seemed headed. What an outlook for Christmas! What
an unpleasant surprise for his parents! What opportunity in Amy
Leffingwell's holiday vacation at Fort Lodge to reinforce the written
page by the spoken word! Still forgetful of his engagement with
Randolph, he continued to walk the streets. He turned in at midnight,
hoping he might sleep, and trusting that morning would throw a less
sinister light on his misadventure.
Long before this, Joseph Foster had been put to bed, by Sing-Lo, in
this spare room. It was Foster's crutch, rather than a knightly sword,
which leaned against the door-jamb; and it was Foster's crooked
members, rather than the straight young limbs of Cope, which first
found place among the sheets and blankets of that shining new brass
bedstead.
20
_COPE HAS A DISTRESSFUL CHRISTMAS_
Cope awakened at seven. After an early interval of happy lightness,
there came suddenly and heavily the crushing sense of his predicament.
How monstrous it was that one instant of time, one ill-considered
action, one poorly-chosen word could clamp a repellent burden on a man
for the rest of his life!
Well, he must expect telephone messages and letters. They came. That
afternoon Mrs. Peck had "a lady's voice" to report: "It sounded like a
_young_ lady's voice," she added. And she looked at Cope with some
curiosity: a "young lady" asking for him over the wire was the rarest
thing in the world.
Next day came the first note. The handwriting was utterly new to him;
but his intuition, applied instantly to the envelope, told him of the
source. The nail, driven, was now to be clinched. She had the right to
ask him to come; and she did ask him to come--"soon."
Cope's troubled eyes sought the calendar above his table. How many days
to Christmas? How much time might he spend in Freeford? How long before
Christmas might he arrange to leave Churchton? The holidays at home
loomed as a harbor of refuge. By shortening as far as possible the
interval here and by lengthening as far as possible the stay with his
family, he might cut down, in some measure, the imminent threatenings
of awkwardness and constraint; then, beyond the range of anything but
letters, he might study the unpleasant situation at his leisure and
determine a future course.
He set himself to answer Amy's note. He hoped, he said, to see her in a
few days, but he was immensely busy in closing the term-work before the
holidays; he also suggested that their affair--"their" affair!--be kept
quiet for the present. Yet he had all too facile a vision of beatific
meditations that were like enough to give the situation away to all the
household; and he was nervously aware of Amy Leffingwell as continually
on the verge of bubbling confidences.
He also wrote to Lemoyne. His letter was less an announcement than a
confession.
"I like this!" began Lemoyne's reply, with abrupt, impetuous sarcasm.
"You have claimed, more than once," he went on, "to have steadied me
and kept me out of harm's way; but I've never yet made any such demands
on you as you are making on me. This thing can't go on, and you know it
as well as I do. Nip it. Nip it now. Don't think that our intimacy is
to end in any such fashion as this, for it isn't--especially at this
particular time."...
Lemoyne proceeded to practical matters. "If that room is still free,
engage it from the first of January. I will have a few things sent
down. Father is weakening a little. Anyhow, I've got enough money for a
couple of months. I will join you in Freeford between Christmas and New
Year's (nearer the latter, probably), and we will go back together."...
Cope rather took heart from these rough, outspoken lines. Lemoyne was
commonly neither rough nor outspoken; but here was an emergency,
involving his own interests, which must be dealt with decisively. Cope
seemed to feel salvation on the way. Perhaps that was why he still did
so little to save himself. He took the new room; he had one meeting
with Amy; and he left for home at least two days before he was strictly
entitled to do so.
The meeting took place in Mrs. Phillips' drawing-room; he would trust
himself to no more strolls on the campus, to no more confabs in college
halls. There was protection in numbers, and numbers seldom failed
beneath Medora Phillips' roof. They failed this time, however. Mrs.
Phillips and Hortense were away at a reading; only Amy and Carolyn were
at home. Cope seized on Carolyn as at a straw. He thanked her warmly
again for her halting offices in the matter of that last song, and he
begged that he might hear some of her recent verse. His appeal was
vehement, almost boisterous: Carolyn, surprised, felt that he was ready
at last to grant her a definite personality.
Amy tried in vain to remove Carolyn from the board. But Carolyn, like
Hortense, had finally joined the ranks of the "recognized"; she was
determined (being still ignorant, Cope was glad to see, regarding Amy's
claims) to make this recognition so marked as to last beyond the
moment. She played a little--not well. She read. She even accompanied
Amy to the door at the close of Cope's short stay. He shook hands with
them both. He had decided that he would do no more than this with Amy,
in any event, and Carolyn's presence made his predetermined course
easy, even obligatory. Yet he went out into the night feeling, somehow,
that he had acted solely on his resolution and that he might consider
himself a man of some decisiveness, after all. Amy had looked
disappointed, but had contrived to whisper that she would write from
Iowa. That, of course, was to be looked for, and would represent the
combined efforts of herself and her home circle; yet he had a fortnight
for consideration and counsel.
Cope, during his first few days at home, was moody and abstracted: his
parents found him adding little to the Christmas cheer. His mother,
always busy over domestic cares and now busier than ever, thought that
he must have been working too hard. She would stand in the kitchen door
with a half-trimmed pie on one hand and ponder him as he sat in the
dining-room, staring absorbedly at the Franklin stove. His father, who
saw him chiefly in the evening, by the gas-light of the old-fashioned
house, found his face slightly pinched: was his pocket pinched too, and
would he be likely, before leaving, to ask help toward making up a
deficit? His sister Rosalys, who lived a life of dry routine, figured
him as deep in love. He let several days pass without hinting what the
real situation was.
There was interest all round when, the day before Christmas, the
postman came along the bleak and flimsy street and left a letter for
him. Cope was away from the house, and Rosalys, studying the envelope's
penmanship and even its postmark, found vague confirmation of her
theory: some college girl--one of his own students, probably--was home
on vacation just as he was. If so, a "small town" person of caste and
character like themselves; not brilliant, but safe. She set up the
letter edgewise on the back parlor mantelpiece.
When Cope came in at noon and saw the letter, his face fell. He put it
in his pocket, sat silent at table, and disappeared as soon as the meal
was over. Rosalys, whose pupils were off her mind for a few days and
who had thought to spare, began to shade her theory.
Cope read the letter in the low-ceiled back bedroom (the ceiling sloped
away on one side) which had been his for so many years. Those years of
happy boyhood--how far away they seemed now, and how completely past!
Surely he had never thought to come back to these familiar walls to
such effect as this.... Well, what did it say?
It said, in its four pages (yes, Amy had really limited herself thus),
how joyous she was that the dear Christmas season had brought her such
a beautiful love-gift; it said that mother was so pleased and
happy--and even mentioned a sudden aunt; it said how willingly she
would wait on until....
That evening Cope made his announcement. They were all seated round the
reading-lamp in the back parlor, where the old Brussels carpet looked
dim and where only venerated age kept the ornate French clock from
seeming tawdry. Cope looked down at the carpet and up at the clock, and
spoke.
Yes, they must have it.
His mother took the shock first and absorbed most of it. She led a
humdrum life and she was ready to welcome romance. To help adjust
herself she laid her hands, with a soft, sweeping motion, on the two
brown waves that drew smoothly across her temples, and then she
transferred them to his, held his head, and gave him a kiss. Rosalys
took his two hands warmly and smiled, and he tried to smile back. His
father twisted the tip of his short gray beard, watched his son's mien,
and said little. Day after to-morrow, with the major part of their
small Christmas festivities over, he would ask how this unexpected and
unwarranted situation had come about, and how, in heaven's name, the
thing was to be carried through: by what means, with whose help?... In
his complex of thought the word "thesis" came to his tongue, but he
kept from speaking it. He had been advised that his son had at last
struck out definitely into some bookish bypath--just what bypath
mattered little, he gathered, if it were but followed to the end. Yet
the end was still far--and the boy evidently realized this. He was glad
that Bertram was sober over the prospect and over his present
plan--which was a serious undertaking, just now, in truth.
Cope had to adjust himself to all this, and to endure, besides, the
congratulations--or the comments--of a number of tiresome relatives;
and it was a relief when, on the twenty-ninth, Arthur Lemoyne finally
arrived.
Lemoyne had been heralded as a young man of parts, and as the son of a
family which enjoyed, in Winnebago, some significant share of worldly
prosperity, and, therefore, of social consideration. The simpler Copes,
putting him in the other back bedroom, the ceiling of which sloped the
opposite way, wondered if they were quite giving him his just dues.
When Rosalys came to set away his handbag and to rearrange, next
morning, his brushes on the top of the dresser, she gathered from
various indications supplied by his outfit that the front chamber, at
whatever inconvenience to whomever, would have been more suitable. But,
"Never mind," said her mother; "they'll do very well as they are--side
by side, with the door conveniently between. Then Bert can look after
him a little more and we a little less."
Lemoyne presented himself to the combined family gaze as a young man of
twenty-seven or so, with dark, limpid eyes, a good deal of dark, wavy
hair, and limbs almost too plumply well-turned. In his hands the flesh
minimized the prominence of joints and knuckles, and the fingers
(especially the little fingers) displayed certain graceful, slightly
affected movements of the kind which may cause a person to be
credited--or taxed--with possessing the "artistic temperament." To end
with, he carried two inches of short black stubble under his nose. He
was a type which one may admire--or not. Rosalys Cope found in him a
sort of picturesque allure. Rather liking him herself, she found a
different reason for her brother's liking. "If Bert cares for him," she
remarked, "I suppose it's largely by contrast--he's so spare and
light-colored himself."
It was evident that, on this first meeting, Lemoyne meant to ingratiate
himself--to make himself attractive and entertaining. He had determined
to say a thing or two before he went away, and it would be advantageous
to consolidate his position.
He had had five or six hours of cross-country travel, with some tedious
waits at junctions, and at about ten o'clock, after some showy
converse, he acknowledged himself tired enough for bed. Cope saw him
up, and did not come down again. The two talked till past eleven; and
even much later, when light sleepers in other parts of the house were
awake for a few minutes, muffled sounds from the same two voices
reached their ears.
But Cope's words, many as they were, told Lemoyne nothing that he did
not know, little that he had not divined. The sum of all was this: Cope
did not quite know how he had got into it; but he knew that he was
miserable and wanted to get out of it.
Lemoyne had asked, first of all, to see the letter from Iowa. "Oh,
come," Cope had replied, half-bashful, half-chivalrous, "you know it
wasn't written for anybody but me."
"The substance of it, then," Lemoyne had demanded; and Cope, reluctant
and shame-faced, had given it. "You've never been in anything of this
sort, you know," he submitted.
"I should say not!" Lemoyne retorted. "Nor you, either. You're not in
it now,--or, if you are, you're soon going to be out of it. You would
help me through a thing like this, and I'm going to help you."
The talk went on. Lemoyne presented the case for a broken engagement.
Engagements, as it was well known to human experience, might, if
quickly made, be as quickly unmade: no novelty in that. "I had never
expected to double up with an engaged man," Lemoyne declared further.
"Nothing especially jolly about that--least of all when the poor wretch
is held dead against his will." As he went on, he made Cope feel that
he had violated an _entente_ of long standing, and had almost brought a
trusting friend down from home under false pretenses.
But phrases from Amy's letter continued to plague Cope. There was a
confiding trust, a tender who-could-say-just-what?...
"Well," said Lemoyne, at about two o'clock, "let's put it off till
morning. Turn over and go to sleep."
But before he fell asleep himself he resolved that he would make the
true situation clear next day. He would address that sympathetic mother
and that romantic sister in suitably cogent terms; the father, he felt
sure, would require no effort and would even welcome his aid with a
strong sense of relief.
So next day, Lemoyne, deploying his natural graces and his dramatic
dexterities, drew away the curtain. He did not go so far as to say that
Bertram had been tricked; he did not even go so far as to say that he
had been inexpert: he contented himself with saying that his friend had
been over-chivalrous and that his fine nature had rather been played
upon. The mother took it all with a silent, inexpressive
thoughtfulness, though it was felt that she did not want her boy to be
unhappy. Rosalys, if she admired Lemoyne a little more, now liked him
rather less. Her father, when the declaration reached him by secondary
impact, did feel the sense of relief which Lemoyne had anticipated, and
came to look upon him as an able, if somewhat fantastic, young fellow.
Cope himself, when his father questioned him, said with frank
disconsolateness, "I'm miserable!" And, "I wish to heaven I were out of
it!" he added.
"_Get_ out of it," his father counselled; and when Cope's own feelings
were clearly known through the household there was no voice of dissent.
"And then buckle down for your degree," the elder added, to finish.
"If I only could!" exclaimed Cope, with a wan face,--convinced,
youthfully, that the trouble through which he was now striving must
last indefinitely. "I should be glad enough to get my mind on it, I'm
sure."
He walked away to reconstruct a devastated privacy. "Arthur, I'm not
quite sure that I thank you," he said, later.
"H'm!" replied Lemoyne non-committally. "I hope," he added, more
definitely articulate, "that we're going to have a pleasanter life in
our new quarters. I'm getting mighty little pleasure--if you'll just
understand me--here!"
21
_COPE, SAFEGUARDED, CALLS AGAIN_
If Cope came back from Freeford with the moral support of one family,
Amy Leffingwell came back from Fort Lodge with the moral support of
another. Hers was a fragmental family, true; but its sentiment was
unanimous; she had the combined support of a pleased mother and of an
enthusiastic maiden aunt.
Amy reached Churchton first, and it soon transpired through the house
in which she lived that she was engaged to Bertram Cope. Cope,
returning two days later, with Lemoyne, found his new status an open
book to the world--or to such a small corner of the world as cared to
read.