No answer. One pair of eyes sought the floor; another searched the
ceiling; a third became altogether subordinate to questioning,
high-held brows.
Pearson glanced from one face to another. The doubt as to her "caring"
seemed universal. The doubt that she cared deeply, essentially, was one
that he had brought away from the ball-room. And he went home, at ten
twenty-three, pretty well determined that he would very soon try to
change doubt to certainty.
"Thank you so much," said Mrs. Phillips to Randolph, as he went out
with her and Hortense to put them in the car. "I'm sure we don't want
him to be burdened and miserable; and I'm sure we all do want her to be
happy. George is a lovely, capable chap,--and, really, he has quite a
way."
23
_COPE REGAINS HIS FREEDOM_
On Friday evening Randolph, at home, was glancing now and then at the
clock (as on a previous occasion), while waiting for Cope. At
eight-fifteen the telephone rang; it was Cope, with excuses, as before.
He was afraid he should be unable to come; some unexpected work... It
was that autumn excursion all over again.
Randolph hung up the receiver, with some impatience. Still, never mind;
if Cope would make no effort to save himself, others were making the
effort for him. He had considerable confidence in George Pearson's
state of mind, as well as in George's egoism and drive.
Foster heard of Cope's new delinquency, through Randolph's own
reluctant admission. "He is an ingrate, after all," said Foster
savagely, and gave his wheels an exceptionally violent jerk. And
Randolph made little effort, this time, toward Cope's defense.
"You've done so much for him," Foster went on; "and you're willing to
do so much more."
"I _could_ do a great deal, of course. There may be a good reason this
time, too," said Randolph soberly.
"Humph!" returned Foster.
Cope had hung up the receiver to turn toward Lemoyne and to say: "I
really ought to have gone."
"Wait until I can go with you," Lemoyne insisted, as he had been
insisting just before. The still unseen man of Indian Rock was again
the subject of his calculations.
"You've been asked," Cope submitted. "He has been very friendly to me,
and I am sure he would be the same to you."
"I think that, personally, I can get along without him," the other
muttered ungraciously to himself.
Aloud he said: "As I've told you, I've got the president of the
dramatic club to see tonight, and it's high time that I was leaving."
He looked with intention at the desk which had superseded that old
table, with ink-stained cover, at which Cope had once worked. "You can
use a little time to advantage over those themes. I'll be back within
an hour."
Lemoyne had entered for Psychology, and was hoping that he now enjoyed
the status necessary for participation in the college theatricals. But
he was relying still more on a sudden defection or lapse which had left
the dramatic club without a necessary actor at a critical time. "It's
me, or postponement," he said; "and I think it's me." The new
opportunity--or bare chance--loomed before him with immensity. Cope's
affair might wait. He would even risk Cope's running over to Randolph's
place alone.
Cope seated himself at his desk with loyalty, or at least with
docility; and Lemoyne, putting on his hat and coat, started out for the
fraternity house where the president of the club was in residence.
Five minutes after Lemoyne's departure Cope heard the telephone ringing
downstairs, and presently a patient, middle-aged man knocked at the
door and told him the call was for him.
Cope sighed apprehensively and went down. Of course it was Amy. Would
he not come over for an hour? Everybody was away, and they could have a
quiet talk together.
Cope, conscious of others in the house, replied cautiously. Lemoyne, he
said, had gone out and left him with a deskful of themes: tiresome
routine work, but necessary, and immensely absorptive of time. He was
afraid that he could scarcely come this evening....
Amy's voice took on a new tone. Why, she seemed to be feeling, must
Arthur Lemoyne be mentioned, and mentioned so early? Yet Bertram had
put him--instinctively, unconsciously--at the head of the little verbal
procession just begun.
Cope's response was dry and meagre; free speech was impossible over a
lodging-house telephone set in the public hall. Amy, who knew little of
Cope's immediate surroundings at the moment, went on in accents of
protest and of grievance, and Cope went on replying in a half-hushed
voice as non-committally as he was able. He dwelt more and more on the
trying details of his work in words which conveyed no additional
information to any fellow-dwellers who might overhear.
"You haven't been to see me for a week," came Amy's voice petulantly,
indignantly.
"I'm very sorry, I'm sure," returned Cope in a carefully generalized
tone of suavity. It was successful with the spinster in the side room
above, but it was no tone to use with a protesting _fiancee_.
"Why do you neglect me so?" Amy's voice proceeded, with no shade of
appeasement.
"There is no intention of that," replied Cope; "--so far as I know," he
added, for ears about or above.
Again Amy's tone changed. It took on a tang of anger, and also a
curious ring of finality--as if, suddenly, a last resolution had been
reached. "Good night," she said abruptly, and the interview was over.
Cope forgot Randolph, and Lemoyne, and his themes. Lemoyne, returning
within the hour, found him seated at his desk in self-absorbed
depression, his work untouched.
"Well, they've taken me," he began; "and I shall have a fairly good
part." Cope made no effort to respond to the other's glowing
self-satisfaction, but sat with thoughtful, downcast eyes at his desk
before the untouched themes. "What's the matter?" asked Lemoyne. "Has
she been calling up again?"
Cope raised his head and gave him a look. Lemoyne saw that his very
first guess had been correct.
"This is a gay life!" he broke out; "just the life I have come down
here to lead. You're making yourself miserable, and you're making me
miserable. It's got to end."
Cope gave him a second woeful glance.
"Write to her, breaking it off," prompted Lemoyne. "Draft a letter
tonight."
His mind was full of _cliches_ from his reading and his "scripts." He
had heard all the necessary things said: in fact, had said them
himself--now in evening dress, now in hunting costume, now in the loose
habiliments of Pierrot--time and time again. The dissatisfied _fiance_
need but say that he could not feel, after all, that they were as well
suited to each other as they ought to be, that he could not bring
himself to believe that his feeling for her was what love really should
be, and that----
Thus, with a multiplicity of "that's," they accomplished a rough draft
which might be restudied and used on the morrow. "There!" said Lemoyne
to the weary Cope at eleven o'clock; "it ought to have been written a
month ago."
Cope languidly slipped the oft-amended sheet under his pile of themes
and in a spent voice suggested bed.
Over night and through the following forenoon the draft lay on his
desk. When he returned to his room at three o'clock a note, which had
been delivered by hand, awaited him. It was from Amy Leffingwell.
Cope read it, folded his arms on his desk, bowed his head on his arms,
and, being alone, gave a half-sob. Then he lifted his head, with face
illumined and soul refreshed. Amy had asked for an end to their
engagement.
"What does she say?" asked Lemoyne, an hour later.
"She says what you say!" exclaimed Cope with shining eyes and a trace
of half-hysteric bravado. "She does not feel that we are quite so well
suited to each other as we ought to be, nor that her feeling toward me
is what love really... Can she have been in dramatics too!"
"Your letter," returned Lemoyne, with dignity, "would have been
understood."
"Quite so," Cope acknowledged, in a kind of exultant excitation. He
caught the rough draft from his desk--it was all seared with new
emendations--tore it up, and threw the fragments into the waste-basket.
"Thank Heaven, I haven't had to send it!" In a moment, "What am I to
write now?" he asked with irony.
"The next will be easier," returned Lemoyne, still with dignity.
"It will," replied Cope.
It was,--so much easier that it became but an elegant literary
exercise. A few touches of nobility, a few more of elegiac regret, and
it was ready at nine that night for the letter-box. Cope dropped it in
with an iron clang and walked back to his quarters a free man.
A few days later Lemoyne, working for his new play, met Amy Leffingwell
in the music-alcove of the University library. She had removed her
gloves with their furry wristlets, and he saw that she had a ring on
the third finger of her left hand. Its scintillations made a stirring
address to his eye.
Cope heard about the ring that evening, and about Amy Leffingwell's
engagement to George Pearson the next day.
He had no desire to dramatize the scene of Pearson's advance, assault
and victory, nor to visualize the setting up of the monument by which
that victory was commemorated. Lemoyne did it for him.
Pearson had probably indulged in some disparagement of Cope--a phase on
which Lemoyne, as a faithful friend, did not dwell. But he clearly saw
George taking Amy's hand, on which there was still no ring, and
declaring that she should be wearing one before tomorrow night. He
figured both George and Amy as rather glad that Cope had not given one,
and as more and more inclining, with the passage of the days, to the
comfortable feeling that there had never been any real engagement at
all.
Lemoyne attempted to put some of his visualizings before Cope, but Cope
cut him short. "Now I will settle down to work on my thesis," he said,
"and get my degree at the June convocation."
"Good," said Lemoyne; "and now I can get my mind on the club." He went
to the window and looked out on the night. The stars were a-glitter.
"Let's take a turn round the block before we turn in."
They spent ten minutes in the clear winter air. As Cope, on their
return, stooped to put his latch-key to use, Lemoyne impulsively threw
an arm across his shoulder. "Everything is all right, now," he said, in
a tone of high gratification; and Urania, through the whole width of
her starry firmament, looked down kindly upon a happier household.
24
_COPE IN DANGER ANEW_
A similar satisfaction came to prevail in University circles, and in
the lesser circle which Cope had formed outside. His own classroom,
after a week, became a different place. There had been some disposition
to take a facetious view of Cope's adventure. His class had felt him as
cool and rather stiff, and comment would not be stayed. One bright girl
thought he had spoiled a good suit of clothes for nothing. The boys,
who knew how much clothes cost, and how much every suit counted, put
their comment on a different basis. The more serious among them went no
further, indeed, than to say that if a man had found himself making a
mistake, the sooner he got out of it the better. For weeks this affair
of Cope's had hung over the blackboard like a dim tapestry. Now it was
gone; and when he tabulated in chalk the Elizabethan dramatists or the
Victorian novelists there was nothing to prevent his students from
seeing them.
Medora Phillips became sympathetic and tender. She let him understand
that she thought he had been unfairly treated. This did not prevent her
from being much kinder to Amy Leffingwell. Amy, earlier, had been so
affected by the general change of tone that, more than once, she had
felt prompted to take herself and her belongings out of the house. But
she still lingered on, as she was likely to do, during a short
engagement; and Mrs. Phillips was now amiability itself to George and
Amy both.
Her method of soothing Cope was to take him to the theatre and the
opera in town: he could scarcely come to the house. It was now late in
January and the opera season was near its end. People were tiring of
their boxes, or had started South: it had become almost a work of merit
to fill a friend's box for her. During the last week of the season,
Mrs. Phillips was put in position to do this. She invited Cope, and
took along Hortense, and found in the city itself a married pair who
could get to the place and home again without her help. Lemoyne would
have made six, and the third man; but he was not bidden. Why pack the
box? A better effect was made by presenting, negligently, one empty
seat. Lemoyne dressed Cope, however. He had brought to Churchton the
outgrown evening clothes; and Cope, in his exuberance, bought a new
pair of light shoes and white gloves. He looked well as he sat on the
back seat of the limousine with Medora Phillips, during the long drive
in; and he looked well--strikingly, handsomely well--in the box itself.
Indeed, thought Medora, he made other young men in nearby boxes--young
men of "means" and "position"--look almost plebian. "He is charming,"
she said to herself, over and over again.
What about him "took" her? Was it his slenderness, his grace? Was it
his youthfulness, intact to this moment and promising an extension of
agreeable possibilities into an entertaining future? Or was it more
largely his fundamental coolness of tone? Again he was an icicle on the
temple--this time the temple of song. "He is glittering." said Medora,
intent on his blazing blue eyes, his beautiful teeth ever ready for a
public smile, and the luminous backward sweep of his hair; "and he is
not soft." She thought suddenly of Arthur Lemoyne; he, by comparison,
seemed like a dark, yielding plum-pudding.
On the way into town Medora had had Hortense sit in front with Peter.
This arrangement had enabled her to lay her hand more than once on
Cope's, and to tell him again that he had been rather badly treated,
and that Amy, when you came to it, was a poor slight child who scarcely
knew her own mind. "I hope she has not made a mistake, after all,"
breathed Medora.
All this soothed Cope. The easy motion of the luxurious car
half-hypnotized him; a scene of unaccustomed splendor and brilliancy
lay just ahead... What wonder that Medora found him scenically
gratifying in her box (the dear creature's titillation made it seem
"hers" indeed), and gave his name with great gusto to the young woman
of the notebook and pencil? And the box was not at the back, but well
along to one side, where people could better see him. Its number, too,
was lower; so that, next morning, he was well up in the list, instead
of at the extreme bottom, where two or three of the young men of means
and position found themselves. Some of the girls in his class read his
name, and had no more to say about wet clothes.
Hortense, on the front seat of the car, had had the good sense to say
little and the acumen to listen much. She knew that Cope must "call"
soon, and she knew it would be on some evening when he had been advised
that Amy was not at home. There came, before long, an evening when Amy
and George Pearson went into town for a musical comedy, and Cope walked
across once more to the familiar house.
Hortense was in the drawing-room. She was brilliantly dressed, and her
dark aggressive face wore a look of bravado. In her rich contralto she
welcomed Cope with an initiative which all but crowded her aunt into
second place. Under the very nose of Medora Phillips, whom she breezily
seemed to regard as a chaperon, she brought forward the sketch of Cope
in oils, which she had done partly from observation and partly from
memory. She may have had, too, some slight aid from a photograph,--one
which her aunt had wheedled out of Cope and had missed, on one occasion
at least, from her desk in the library. Hortense now boldly asked his
cooperation for finishing her small canvas.
Though the "wood-nymphs" of last autumn's legend might indeed be, as he
had broadly said, "a nice enough lot of girls," they really were not
all alike and indistinguishable: one of them at least, as he should
learn, had thumbs.
Hortense wheeled into action.
"The composition is good," she observed, looking at the canvas as it
stood propped against the back of a Chippendale chair; "and, in
general, the values are all right. But----" She glanced from the sketch
back to the subject of it.
Cope started. He recognized himself readily enough. However, he had had
no idea that self-recognition was to be one of the pleasures of his
evening.
"----but I shall need you yourself for the final touches--the ones that
will make all the difference."
"It's pretty good as it is," declared Mrs. Phillips, who, privately,
was almost as much surprised as Cope. "When did you get to do it?"
This inquiry, simple as it was, put the canvas in a new light--that of
an icon long cherished as the object of private devotion. Hortense
stepped forward to the chair and made an adjustment of the picture's
position: she had a flush and a frown to conceal. "But never mind," she
thought, as she turned the canvas toward a slightly different light;
"if Aunt Medora wants to help, let her."
She did not reply to her aunt's question. "Retouched from life, and
then framed--who knows?" she asked. Of course it would look immensely
better; would look, in fact, as it was meant to look, as she could make
it look.
She told Cope that she had set up a studio near the town square, not
far from the fountain-basin and the elms----
"Which won't count for much at this time of year," interjected her aunt.
"Well, the light is good," returned Hortense, "and the place is quiet;
and if Mr. Cope will drop in two or three times, I think he will end by
feeling that I have done him justice."
"This is a most kind attention," said Cope, slightly at sea. "I ought
to be able to find time some afternoon...."
"Not too late in the afternoon," Hortense cautioned. "The light in
February goes early."
When Lemoyne heard of this new project he gave Cope a _look_. He had no
concern as to Mrs. Phillips, who was, for him, but a rather dumpy,
over-brisk, little woman of forty-five. If she must run off with Bert
every so often in a motor-car, he could manage to stand it. Besides, he
had no desire to shut Cope--and himself--out of a good house. But the
niece, scarcely twenty-three, was a more serious matter.
"Look out!" he said to Cope. "Look out!"
"I can take care of myself," the other replied, rather tartly.
"I wish you could!" retorted Lemoyne, with poignant brevity. "I'll go
with you."
"You won't!"
"I'd rather save you near the start, than have to try at the very end."
Cope flung himself out; and he looked in at Hortense's studio--which
she had taken (or borrowed) for a month--before the week was half over.
Hortense had stepped into the shoes of a young gentlewoman who had been
trying photography, and who had rather tired of it. At any rate, she
had had a chance to go to Florida for a month and had seized it.
Hortense had succeeded to her little north skylight, and had rearranged
the rest to her own taste; it was a mingling of order and disorder, of
calculation and of careless chance. She had a Victory of Samothrace and
a green-and-gold dalmatic from some Tuscan town----But why go on?
Cope had not been in this new milieu fifteen minutes before Randolph
happened along.
Randolph, as a friend of the family, could scarcely be other than
persona grata. Hortense, however, gave him no great welcome. She
stopped in the work that had but been begun. The winter day was none
too bright, and the best of the light would soon be past, she said. The
engagement could stand over. In any event, he was there ("he," of
course, meaning Cope), and a present delay would only add to the total
number of his calls. Hortense began to wipe her brushes and to talk of
tea.
"I'll go, I'll go," said Randolph obligingly. "I heard about the new
shop only yesterday, and I wanted to see it. I don't exact that I shall
witness the mysteries in active operation."
Cope's glance asked Randolph to remain.
"There are no mysteries," returned Hortense. "It's just putting on a
few dabs of paint in the right places."
She continued to take a few dabs from her brushes and to talk tea.
"Stay for a sip," she said.
"Very well; thank you," replied Randolph, and wondered how long "a sip"
might mean.
In the end it meant no longer for him than for Cope; they came away
together. Hortense held Cope for a moment to make a second engagement
at an earlier hour.
Randolph had not met Cope for several days, except at the opera, where
he had left his regular Monday evening seat in the parquet to spend a
few moments in Mrs. Phillips' friend's box. He had never seen Cope in
evening dress before; but he found him handsome and distinguished, and
some of the glamour of that high occasion still lingered about the
young man as he now walked through High Street, in his rather shabby
tweeds, at Randolph's side.
Randolph looked back upon his dinner as a complete success: Pearson was
engaged, and Cope was free. He now said to Cope:
"Of course you must know I feel you were none too handsomely treated.
George is a pleasant, enterprising fellow, but somewhat sudden and
rapacious. If he is happy, I hope you are no less happy yourself...."
Thus he resumed the subject which had been dropped at the Library door.
Cope shrank a little, and Randolph felt him shrinking. He fell silent;
he understood. Pain sometimes took its own time to travel, and reached
its goal by a slow, circuitous route. He thought suddenly of his
bullfight in Seville, twenty-five years before. He had sat out his six
bulls with entire composure; yet, back in America, some time later, he
had encountered a bullfight in an early film and had not been able to
follow it through. Cope, perhaps, was beginning to feel the edge of the
sword and the drag at his vitals. The thing was over, and his, the
elder man's, own part in it successfully accomplished; so why had he,
conventional commentator, felt the need of further words?
He let the unhappy matter drop. When he spoke again he reminded Cope
that the invitation for himself and Lemoyne still held good. Amy had
been swept from the stage; but Lemoyne, a figure of doubt, was yet in
its background. "I must have a 'close-up'," Randolph declared to
himself, "and find out what he comes to." Cope had shown some
reluctance to meet his advances--a reluctance which, he felt, was not
altogether Cope's own.
"I know we shall be glad to come sometime," replied Cope, with seeming
heartiness. This heartiness may have had its element of the genuine; at
any rate, here was another "good house," from which no one need shut
himself out without good cause. If Lemoyne developed too extreme a
reluctance, he would be reminded that he was cherishing the hope of a
position in the registrar's office, for at least half of the day; also,
that Randolph enjoyed some standing in University circles, and that his
brother-in-law was one of the trustees.
"Yes, indeed," continued Cope, in a further corroboration which might
better have been dispensed with.
"You will be welcome," replied Randolph quietly. He would have
preferred a single assurance to a double one.
25
_COPE IN DOUBLE DANGER_
Meanwhile Cope and Lemoyne refined daily on the details of their new
menage and applied themselves with new single-mindedness to their
respective interests. Cope had found a subject for his thesis in the
great field of English literature,--or, rather, in a narrow bypath
which traversed one of its corners. The important thing, as he
frequently reminded Lemoyne, was not the thesis itself, but the aid
which it might give his future. "It will make a difference, in salary,
of three or four hundred dollars," he declared.
Lemoyne himself gave a few hours a week to Psychology in its humbler
ranges. There were ways to hold the attention of children, and there
were forms of advertising calculated to affect favorably the man who
had money to spend. In addition, the University had found out that he
could sing as well as act, and something had been said about a place
for him in a musical play.