despite numerous minor disputes. The last new picture did not always
find at once its proper place on the wall; and sometimes there were
discussions as to whether it should be toast or rolls, and whether
there should be eggs or not. Occasionally sharp tones and quivering
nostrils, but commonly amity and peace.
They were seen, or heard of, as going about a great deal together: to
lectures, to restaurants, to entertainments in the city. But they went
no longer, for the present, to Ashburn Avenue; they took their time to
remember Randolph's repeated invitation; and there was, as yet, no
further attendance at the studio in the Square,--for any reference to
the unfinished portrait was likely to produce sharp tones and quivering
nostrils indeed.
Other invitations began to come to Cope,--some of them from people he
knew but slightly. He wondered whether his swoon and his shipwreck
really could have done so much to make him known. Sometimes when these
cards seemed to imply but a simple form of entertainment, at a
convenient hour of the late afternoon, he would attend. It did not
occur to him to note that commonly Medora Phillips was present: she was
always in "active circulation," as he put it; and there he let things
lie.
One of these entertainments was an afternoon reception of ordinary
type, and the woman giving it had thrown a smallish library into closer
communication with her drawing-room without troubling to reduce the
library to order: books, pamphlets, magazines lay about in profuse
carelessness. And it was in this library that Cope and Medora Phillips
met.
"You've been neglecting me," she said.
"But how can I----?" he began.
"Yes, I know," she returned generously. "But after the first of
May--Well, he is a young man of decisiveness and believes in quick
action." She made a whiff, accompanied by an outward and forward motion
of the hands. She was wafting Amy Leffingwell out of her own house into
the new home which George Pearson was preparing for her. "After
that----"
"Yes, after that, of course."
Mrs. Phillips was handling unconsciously a small pamphlet which lay on
the library table. It was a magazine of verse--a monthly which did not
scorn poets because they happened to live in the county in which it was
published. The table of contents was printed on the cover, and the
names of contributors were arranged in order down the right-hand side.
Mrs. Phillips, carelessly running her eye over it while thinking of
other things, was suddenly aware of the name of Carolyn Thorpe.
"What's this?" she asked. She ran her eye across to the other edge of
the cover, and read, "Two Sonnets."
"Well, well," she observed, and turned to the indicated page. And,
"When in the world----?" she asked, and turned back to the cover. It
was the latest issue of the magazine, and but a day or two old.
"Carolyn in print, at last!" she exclaimed. "Why, isn't this splendid!"
Then she returned to the text of the two sonnets and read the first of
them--part of it aloud.
"Well," she gasped; "this is ardent, this is outspoken!"
"That's the fashion among woman poets today," returned Cope, in a
matter-of-fact tone. "They've gone farther and farther, until they
hardly realize how far they _have_ gone. Don't let them disturb you."
Mrs. Phillips reread the closing lines of the first sonnet, and then
ran over the second. "Good heavens!" she exclaimed; "when _I_ was a
girl----!"
"Times change."
"I should say so." She looked from the magazine to Cope. "I wonder who
'the only begetter' may be."
"Is that quite fair? So many writers think it unjust--and even obtuse
and offensive--if the thing is put on too personal a basis. It's all
just an imagined situation, manipulated artistically...."
Mrs. Phillips looked straight at him. "Bertram Cope, it's _you_!" She
spoke with elation. These sonnets constituted a tribute. Cope, she
knew, had never looked three times, all told, at Carolyn Thorpe; yet
here was Carolyn saying that she...
Cope dropped his eyes and slightly flushed.
"I wonder if she knows it's out?" Mrs. Phillips went on swiftly. "Did
you?"
"I?" cried Cope, in dismay.
"You were taking it all so calmly."
"'Calmly'? I don't take it at all! Why should I? And why should you
think there is any ref----?"
"Because I'm so 'obtuse' and 'offensive,' I suppose. Oh, if _I_ could
only write, or paint, or play, or something!"
Cope put his hand wearily to his forehead. The arts were a curse. So
were gifted girls. So were over-appreciative women. He wished he were
back home, smoking a quiet cigarette with Arthur Lemoyne.
Mrs. Ryder came bustling up--Mrs. Ryder, the mathematical lady who had
given the first tea of all.
"I have just heard about Carolyn's poems. What it must be to live in
the midst of talents! And I hear that Hortense has finally taken a
studio for her portraits."
"Yes," replied Mrs. Phillips. "And she"--with a slight emphasis--"is
doing Mr. Cope's picture,"--with another slight emphasis at the end.
Cope felt a half-angry tremor run through him. He was none the less
perturbed because Medora Phillips meant obviously no offense. Hortense
and Carolyn were viewed as but her delegates; they were doing for her
what she would have been glad to be able to do for herself. Clearly, in
her mind, there was not to be another Amy.
Well, that was something, he thought. He laughed uneasily, and gave the
enthusiastic Mrs. Ryder a few details of the art-world (as she called
it),--details which she would not be denied.
"I must call on dear Hortense, some afternoon," she said.
"Do," returned Hortense's aunt. "And mention the place. Let's keep the
dear girl as busy as possible."
"If it were only photographs...." submitted Mrs. Ryder.
"That's a career too," Mrs. Phillips acknowledged.
They all drifted out into the larger room. Mrs. Ryder left
them,--perhaps to distribute her small change of art and literature
through the crowd.
"You're not forgetting Hortense?" Mrs. Phillips herself said, before
leaving him.
"By no means," Cope replied.
"I hear you didn't make much of a start."
"We had tea," returned Cope, with satirical intention.
This left Medora Phillips unscathed. "Tea puts on no paint," she
observed, and was lost in the press.
It need not be assumed that knowledge of Carolyn Thorpe's verse gained
wide currency through University circles, but there was a copy of the
magazine in the University library. Lemoyne saw it there. He scarcely
knew whether to be pleased or vexed. Finally he decided that there was
safety in numbers. If Cope really intended to go to that studio, it was
just as well that there should be an impassioned poetess in the
background. And it was just as well that Cope should know she was
there. Lemoyne took a line not unlike Mrs. Phillips' own.
"I only wish there were more of them," he declared, looking up from his
desk. "I'd like a lady barber for your head, a lady shoemaker for your
feet, a lady psychologist for your soul----"
"Stop it!" cried Cope. "I've had about all I can stand. If you want to
live in peace, as you sometimes say, do your share to keep the peace."
"You _are_ going to have another sitting?"
"I am. How can I get out of it?"
"You don't want to get out of it."
"Well, after all the attentions they've shown us----"
"Us? You."
"Me, then. Shall I be so uncivil as to hold back?"
"It might not displease her if you did."
"Her?"
"Your Mrs. Phillips. If I may risk a guess------"
"You may not. Your precious 'psychology' can wait. Don't be in such a
damned hurry to use it."
"It had better be used in time."
"It had better not be used at all. Drop it. Think about your new play,
or something."
"Oh, the devil!" sighed Lemoyne. "Winnebago seems mighty far off. We
got on there, at least." He bent again over his desk.
Cope put down his book and came across. There were tears, perhaps, in
his eyes--the moisture of vexation, or of contrition, or of both. "We
can get along here, too," he said, with an arm around Lemoyne's
shoulder.
"Let's hope so," returned Lemoyne, softening, with his hand pressed on
Cope's own.
26
_COPE AS A GO-BETWEEN_
This brief exchange might have passed for a quarrel and a
reconciliation; and the reconciliation seemed to call for a seal. That
was soon set by another of Randolph's patient invitations to dinner.
"Let's go," said Cope; "I've got to go again--sometime."
"I don't care about it, very much," replied Lemoyne.
"If you want any help of his toward a position.... Time's passing. And
a man can't be expected to bestir himself much for another man he's
never even seen."
"All right. I'll go with you."
Randolph was glad to see Cope again, whom he had not met since the half
hour in Hortense Dunton's studio. He was also glad to secure, finally,
a close and leisurely look at Lemoyne. Lemoyne took the same occasion
for a close and leisurely look at Randolph. Each viewed the other with
dislike and distrust. Each spoke, so far as might be, to Cope--or
through him. Sing-Lo, who was prepared to smile, saw few smiles
elsewhere, and became sedate, even glum.
Randolph felt a physical distaste for Lemoyne. His dark eyes were too
liquid; his person was too plump; the bit of black bristle beneath his
nose was an offense; his aura----Yet who can say anything definite
about so indefinite a thing as an aura, save that one feels it and is
attracted or repelled by it? Lemoyne, on his side, developed an equal
distaste (or repugnance) for the "little gray man"--as he called
Randolph to himself and, later, even to Cope; though Randolph, speaking
justly, was exactly neither gray nor little. Lemoyne noted, too, the
early banishment of Randolph's eyeglasses, which disappeared as they
had disappeared once or twice before. He felt that Randolph was trying
to stay young rather late, and was showing himself inclined to "go"
with younger men longer than they would welcome him. Why didn't he
consort with people of his own age and kind? He was old; so why
couldn't he _be_ old?
The talk led--through Cope--to reminiscences of life in Winnebago.
Randolph presently began to feel Lemoyne as a variously yet equivocally
gifted young fellow--one so curiously endowed as to be of no use to his
own people, and of no avail for any career they were able to offer him.
A bundle of minor talents; a possible delight to casual acquaintances,
but an exasperation to his own household; an ornamental skimmer over
life's surfaces, when not a false fire for other young voyagers along
life's coasts. Yet Bertram Cope admired him and had become absorbed in
him. Their life in that northern town, with its fringe of
interests--educational, ecclesiastical, artistic and aquatic--had been
intimate, fused to a degree. Randolph began to realize, for the first
time, the difficulties in the way of "cultivating" Cope. Cope was a
field already occupied, a niche already filled.
While Randolph was gathering (through Cope) details of the life in
Winnebago, Lemoyne was gathering (through Cope) details of the life in
Churchton during the past autumn. He began to reconstruct that season:
the long range of social entertainments, the proposed fall excursions,
the sudden shifting of domicile. Randolph, it was clear, had tried to
appropriate Cope and to supplant (knowingly or unknowingly) Cope's
closest friend. Lemoyne became impatient over the fact that he was now
sitting at Randolph's table. However, if Randolph could help him to a
place and a salary, that would make some amends.
Presently Cope, having served as an intermediary, became the open
centre of interest. His thesis was brought forward as a suitable
subject of inquiry and comment. It was a relief to have come to a final
decision; but no relief was in sight for a long time from the slavery
of close reading. Every moment that could be spared from his classroom
was given up to books--authors in whom he might be interested or not
interested, but who must be gone through.
"A sort of academic convention," said Cope, rather wanly; "but a
necessary one."
His eyes had begun to show excessive application; at least they looked
tired and dim. His color, too, was paler. He had come to suggest again
the young man who had been picked up from Medora Phillips' dining-room
floor and laid out on the couch in her library, and who had shown a
good deal of pallor during the few days that followed. "Take a little
more air and exercise," Randolph counselled.
"A good rule always, for everybody," said Lemoyne, with a withholding
of all tone and expression.
"I believe," Randolph continued, "that you are losing in both weight
and color. That would be no advantage to yourself--and it might
complicate Miss Dunton's problem. It's perplexing to an artist when
one's subject changes under one's very eye."
"There won't be much time for sitting, from now on," observed Lemoyne
concisely.
"I might try to go round once more," said Cope, "--in fairness. If
there are to be higher lights on my cheekbones and lower lights for my
eyes, an hour or so should serve to settle it."
"I wouldn't introduce many changes into my eyes and cheekbones, if I
were you," said Randolph. Lemoyne was displeased; he thought that
Randolph was taking advantage of his position as host to make an
observation of unwarranted saliency, and he frowned at his plate.
Cope flushed, and looked at his.
The talk drifted toward dramatics, with Winnebago once more the
background; but the foreground was occupied by a new musical comedy
which one of the clubs might try in another month, and the tone became
more cheery. Sing-Lo, who had come in with a maple mousse of his own
making, smiled at last; and he smiled still more widely when, at the
end of the course, his chief occidental masterpiece was praised.
Sing-Lo also provided coffee and cigars in the den; and it was here
that Cope felt the atmosphere right for venturing a word in behalf of
Lemoyne. There had been few signs of relenting in Winnebago; and some
modest source of income would be welcome--in fact, was almost necessary.
"Of course work _is_ increasing in the offices," said Randolph, looking
from one young man to the other; "and of course I have, directly or
indirectly, some slight 'influence.'"
He felt no promptings to lend Lemoyne a hand; yet Cope himself, even if
out of reach, might at least remain an object of continuing kindness.
"But if you are to interest yourself in some new undertaking by 'The
Grayfriars,'" he said to Lemoyne, "will you have much time and
attention to give to office-work?"
"Oh, I have time," replied Lemoyne jauntily, "and not many studies.
Half a day of routine work, I thought.... Of course I'm not a manager,
or director, or anything like that. I should just have a part of
moderate importance, and should have only to give good heed to
rehearsals...."
"Well," said Randolph thoughtfully.
"I hope you can do something," put in Cope, with fervor.
"Well," said Randolph again.
This uncomfortable and unsatisfactory dinner of three presently drew to
its end. "I'd have made it four," said Randolph to Foster, a day or two
later, "if I'd only thought of it in time."
"_I_ don't want to meet them again," returned Foster quickly.
"Well," said Randolph, "I've no fondness for the new fellow, myself;
but----"
"And I don't care about the other, either."
Randolph sighed. This was plainly one of Foster's off days. The only
wonder was he had not more of them. He sat in darkness, with few
diversions, occupations, ameliorations. His mind churned mightily on
the scanty materials that came his way. He founded big guesses on
nothings; he raised vast speculative edifices on the slightest of
premises. To dislike a man he could not even see! Well, the blind--and
the half-blind--had their own intuitions and followed their own
procedures.
"Then you wouldn't advise me to speak a word for him?--for them?"
"Certainly not!" rejoined Foster, with all promptness. "They've treated
you badly. They've put you off; and they came, finally, only because
they counted on getting something out of you.
"Oh, I wouldn't say that of Cope."
"I would. And I do. They're completely wrapped up in their own
interests, and in each other; and they're coupled to get anything they
can out of Number Three. Or out of Number Four. Or Five. Or out of
X,--the world, that is to say."
Randolph shrugged. This was one of Foster's bad days indeed.
"And what's this I hear about Hortense?" asked Foster, with bitterness.
"That won't amount to much."
"It won't? She's out in the open, finally. She took that place for a
month with one express object--to get him there, paint or no paint.
She's fretful and cantankerous over every day of delay, and soon she'll
be in an undisguised rage."
"What does her aunt say to it?"
"She's beginning to be vexed. She's losing patience. She thinks it's a
mistake--and an immodest one. She wants to send her away for a visit.
To think of it!--as soon as one girl lets go another takes hold,--and a
third person holds on through all!"
"Joe! Joe!"
But Foster was not to be stayed.
"And that poetry of Carolyn's! Medora herself came up and read it to
me. It was a 'tribute,' she thought!"
"That won't amount to anything at all."
"It won't? With Hortense scornfully ridiculing it, and Carolyn bursting
into tears before she can make her bolt from the room, and Amy
wondering whether, after all...! If things are as bad as they are for
me up here, how much worse must they be for the rest of them below! And
that confounded engagement has made it still worse all round!"
Randolph ran his palms over his perplexed temples. "Whose?"
"Whose? No wonder you ask! Engagements, then."
"When are they going to be married?"
"The first week in May, I hear. But Pearson is trying for the middle of
April. His flat is taken." Foster writhed in his chair.
"Why do they care for him?" he burst out. "He's nothing in himself. And
he cares nothing for them. And he cares nothing for you," Foster added
boldly. "All he has thought for is that fellow from up north."
"Don't ask me why they care," replied Randolph, with studied sobriety.
"Why does anybody care? And for what? For the thing that is just out of
reach. He's cool; he's selfish; he's indifferent. Yet, somehow, frost
and fire join end to end and make the circle complete." He fell into
reflection. "It's all like children straining upward for an icicle, and
presently slipping, with cracked pates, on the ice below."
"Well, _my_ pate isn't cracked."
"Unless it's the worst cracked of all."
Foster tore off his shade and threw it on the floor. "Mine?" he cried.
"Look to your own!"
"Joe!" said Randolph, rising. "That won't quite do!"
"Be a fool along with the others, if you will!" retorted Foster. "Oh!"
he went on, "Haven't I seen it all? Haven't I felt it all? You, Basil
Randolph, mind your own ways too!"
Randolph thought of words, but held his tongue. Words led to other
words, and he might soon find himself involved in what would seem like
a defense--an attitude which he did not relish, a course of which he
did not acknowledge the need. "Poor Joe!" he thought; "sitting too much
by himself and following over-closely the art of putting things
together--anyhow!" Joe Foster must have more company and different
things to consider. What large standard work--what history, biography,
or bulky mass of memoirs in from four to eight volumes--would be the
best to begin on before the winter should be too far spent?
Four or five days later, Randolph wrote to Cope that there was a good
prospect for a small position in the administration offices of the
University, and a week later Lemoyne was in that position. Cope, who
recognized Randolph's handling of the matter as a personal favor,
replied in a tone of some warmth. "He's really a very decent fellow,
after all,--of course he is," pronounced Randolph. Lemoyne himself
wrote more tardily and more coolly. He was taking time from his
Psychology and from "The Antics of Annabella," it appeared, to acquaint
himself with the routine of his new position. Randolph shrugged: he
must wait to see which of the three interests would be held the most
important.
27
_COPE ESCAPES A SNARE_
Lemoyne's first week in his new berth held him rather close, and Cope
was able to move about with less need of accounting for his every hour.
One of his first concerns was to get over his sitting with Hortense
Dunton. His "sitting," he said: it was to be the first, the only and
the last.
He came into her place with a show of confidence, a kind of blustery
bonhomie. "I give you an hour from my treadmill," he declared brightly.
"So many books, and such dry ones!"
Hortense, who had been moping, brightened too. "I thought you had
forgotten me," she said chidingly. Yet her tone had less acerbity than
that which she had employed, but a few moments before, to address him
in his absence. For she often had in mind, at intervals longer or
shorter, Cope's improvisation about the Sassafras--too truly that
dense-minded shrub had failed to understand the "young ladies" and
their "needs."
"My thesis," he said. "From now on, it must take a lot of my thought
and every moment of my spare time." He looked at the waiting canvas.
"Clinch it to-day. Hurry it through."
He spoke with a factitious vivacity which almost gave a sense of chill.
She looked at him with a shade of dissatisfaction and discomfort.
"What! must it all be done in a drive?" she asked.
"By no means. Watch me relax. Is that my chair? See me drop into
complete physical and mental passivity--the _kef_ of the Arabs."
He mounted the model-throne, sank into the wide chair, and placed his
hands luxuriously on its arms. His general pose mattered little: she
had not gone beyond his head and shoulders.
Hortense stared. Would he push her on the moment into the right mood?
Would he have her call into instant readiness her colors and brushes?
Why, even a modest amateur must be allowed her minutes of preparation
and approach.
"Passivity?" she repeated, beginning to get under way. "Shall I find
you very entertaining in that condition?"
"Entertaining? Me, the sitter? Why, I've always heard it was an
important part of a portrait-painter's work to keep the subject
interested and amused."
He smiled in his cold, distant way. The north light cut across the
forehead, nose and chin which made his priceless profile. The canvas
itself, done on theory in a lesser light, looked dull and lifeless.
Hortense felt this herself. She did not see how she was going to key it
up in a single hour. As she considered among her brushes and tubes, she
began to feel nervous, and her temper stirred.
"You have a great capacity for being interested and amused," she said.
"Most men are like you. Especially young ones. They are amused,
diverted, entertained--and there it ends."
Cope felt the prick. "Well, we are bidden," he said; "and we come. Too
many of us have little to offer in return, except appreciation and
goodwill. How better appreciate such kindness as Mrs. Phillips' than by
gratefully accepting more of it?" (Stilted copy-book talk; and he knew
it.)
"You haven't been accepting much of it lately," she returned, feeling
the point of a new brush. She spoke with the consciousness of empty
evenings that might have been full.
"Hardly," he replied. And he felt that this one word sufficed.
"Well, the coast will be clear after the twentieth of April."
"That is the date, then, is it?" The more he thought of the impending
ceremony, the more grateful he was for his escape. Thankfulness had
salved the earlier wound; no pain now came from his touching it.
"Yes; on that day the house will see the last of them."
"The wedding, then, will----?"
"Yes. Aunt Medora says, 'Why go to Iowa?--you're at home here.' Why,
indeed, drag George away out to Fort Lodge? Let her own people, who are
not many, come to us. Aunt will do everything, and do it handsomely."