twilight. The three took up rather ornamentally (with aid from Peter
and Helga) the lighter details of housekeeping. Toward the end of the
stroll, Cope and Carolyn,--perhaps upon the mere unconscious basis of
youth,--had rather fallen in together, and Medora Phillips, once or
twice, had had to safeguard for herself her face and eyesight from the
young trees that bordered their path. But that evening, as they sat on
a settle before the driftwood fire, Medora took pains to place herself
in the middle. Carolyn was a sweet young flower, doubtless--humbler,
possibly, than Amy or Hortense; yet she too perhaps must be extirpated,
gently but firmly, from the garden of desire.
"You look better already," Medora said to Cope. "You'll go back
to-morrow a new man."
Her elbow was on the back of the settle and close to his shoulder. His
face caught the glow from the fire.
"Oh, I'm all right, I assure you," he said.
"You _do_ look better," observed Carolyn on her own account. "This air
is everything. Only a few hours of it----"
"Another bit of wood on the fire, if you please, Carolyn," said her
patroness.
"Let me do it," said Cope. He rose quickly and laid on a stick or two.
He remained standing on the edge of the glow. He hoped nobody would say
again that he was looking rather thin and pale.
"And what is Mr. Lemoyne doing this evening?" presently asked Mrs.
Phillips in a dreamy undertone. Her manner was casual and negligent;
her voice was low and leisurely. She seemed to place Lemoyne at a
distance of many, many leagues. "Rehearsing, I suppose?"
"Yes," replied Cope. "This new play has absorbed him completely."
"He will do well?"
"He always does. He always has."
"Men in girls' parts are so amusing," said Carolyn. "Their walk is so
heavy and clumsy, even if their dancing isn't. And when they speak up
in those big deep bass and baritone voices...!"
"Arthur will speak in a light tenor."
"Will his walk be heavy and clumsy?" asked Mrs. Phillips.
"He is an artist," replied Cope.
"Not too much of one, I trust," she returned. "I confess I like boys
best in such parts when they frankly and honestly seem to be boys.
That's half the fun--and nine-tenths of the taste."
"Taste?"
"Yes, taste. Short for good taste. There's a great deal of room for
bad. A thing may be done too thoroughly. Once or twice I've seen it
done that way, by--artists."
Cope, in the half-light, seemed rather unhappy.
"He finds time for--for all this--this technique?" Mrs. Phillips asked.
"He's very clever," replied Cope, rather unhappy still. "It does take
time, of course. I'm concerned," he added.
"About his other work?"
"Yes." He stepped aside a little into the shadow.
"Come back to your place," said Medora Phillips. "You look quite
spectral."
Cope, with a light sigh, returned to his post on the settle and to his
share in the firelight. Silence fell. From far below were heard the
active waves, moaning themselves to rest. And a featureless evening
moved on slowly.
30
_COPE AS A HERO_
At ten o'clock Cope found himself tucked away in a small room on the
ground floor. It had been left quite as planned and constructed by the
original builder of the house. It was cramped and narrow, with low
ceiling and one small window. It gave on a short side-porch which was
almost too narrow to sit on and which was apropos of no special
prospect. Doubtless more than one stalwart youth had slept there before
him,--a succession of farmers' sons who fed all day on the airs and
spaces of the great out-of-doors, and who needed little of either
through a short night's rest. It was more comfortable at the end of
April than other guests had found it in mid-August.
A little before eleven he awoke the house with a loud, ringing cry.
Some one outside had passed his narrow window; feet were heard on the
back porch and hands at the kitchen door. Peter was out as quickly as
Cope himself; and the women, in differing stages of dress and
half-dress, followed at once.
While Mrs. Phillips and Carolyn were clinging to Cope, who had rushed
out in undershirt and trousers, Peter had a short tussle on the porch
with the intruder. He came in showing a scratch or two on his face, and
he reported the pantry window broken open.
"Some tramp along the beach saw our lights," suggested Carolyn.
"What was he like, Peter?" asked Mrs. Phillips.
"I couldn't make out in the dark," Peter replied. "But he fought hard
for what he took, and he got away with it." He felt the marks on his
face. "Must have been a pretty hungry man."
"It was some refugee hiding in my woods," said Medora Phillips. She
made her real thought no plainer. She never liked to see, in her walks,
that distant prison, and she never spoke of it to her guests; but the
fancy of some escaped convict lurking below among her thickets was
often present in her mind.
Her fancy was now busy with some burglar, or even some murderer, who
had made his bolt for liberty; and she clung informally to the
clarion-voiced Cope as to a savior. She saw, with displeasure, that
Carolyn was disposed to cling too. She asked Carolyn to control herself
and told her the danger was over; she even requested her to return to
her room. But Carolyn lingered.
Medora herself stood with Cope in the light of the dying fire. She was
dressed almost as inadequately as he, but she felt that she must cling
tremblingly to him and thank him for something or other.
"I don't know what you've saved us from," she panted. "We may owe our
very lives to you!"
Peter, in the background, again thoughtfully felt his face and became
conscious of a growing ache in the muscles of his arms. He retired,
with a smile, to a still more distant plane. The regular did the work
and the volunteer got the praise.
Mrs. Phillips presently gave up her drooping hold on the reluctant Cope
and called Peter forward. "Is anything missing?" she asked.
"Only part of the breakfast, I expect," said Peter, with a grin. "And
maybe some of the lunch. He surely was a hungry man!"
"Well, we sha'n't starve. See to all the doors and windows before you
go back to bed."
But going back to bed was the one thing that she herself felt unable to
do. She asked Carolyn to bring her a wrap of some kind or other, and
sat down on the settle to talk it over. Cope had modestly slipped on a
coat. The fire was dying--that was the only difference between twelve
o'clock and ten.
"If I had known what was going to happen," declared Medora volubly, "I
never could have gone to bed at all! And to think"--here she left
Carolyn's end of the settle and drew nearer to Cope's--"that I should
ever have even thought of coming out here without a man!"
She now rated her midnight intruder as a murderer, and believed more
devoutly than ever that Cope had saved all their lives. Cope, who knew
that he had contributed nothing but a loud pair of lungs, began to feel
rather foolish.
Nor did the anomalous situation commend itself in any degree to his
taste. But it hit Medora Phillips' taste precisely, and she continued
to sit there, pressing an emotional enjoyment from it. An hour passed
before her excitement--an excitement kept up, perhaps, rather
factitiously--was calmed, and she trusted herself back in her own room.
Breakfast was a scanty affair,--it must be that if anything was to be
left over for lunch. While they were busy with toast and coffee voices
were heard in the woods--loud cries in call and answer.
"There!" said Medora, setting down her cup; "I knew it!"
Presently two men came climbing up to the house, while the voices of
others were still audible in the humpy thickets below.
The men were part of a search-party, of course,--a posse; and they
wanted to know whether....
"He tried to break in," said Medora Phillips eagerly; "but this
gentleman...."
She turned appreciatively to Cope. Carolyn, really impressed by her
well-sustained seriousness and ardor, almost began to believe that they
owed their lives to Bertram Cope alone.
"Was he a--murderer?" asked Medora.
The men looked serious, but made no categorical reply. They glanced at
the wrecked pantry window, and they looked with more intentness at the
long sliding footprints which led away, down the half-bare sand-slope.
Then they slid down themselves.
Medora asked Carolyn to do what she could toward constructing a lunch
and then walked down to the shore with Cope to compose her nerves. No
stroll today along the ridged amphitheatre of the hills, whence the
long, low range of buildings, under that tall chimney, was so plainly
in view. Still less relishing the idea of a tramp through the woods
themselves, the certain haunt--somewhere--of some skulking desperado.
No, they would take the shore itself--open to the wide firmament, clear
of all snares, and free from every disconcerting sight.
"Poor Carolyn!" said Medora presently. "How fluttered and inefficient
she was! A good secretary--in a routine way--but so lacking in
initiative and self-possession!"
Cope's look tended to become a stare. He thought that Carolyn had been
in pretty fair control of herself,--had been less fluttery and excited,
indeed, than her employer.
But Medora had been piqued, the night before, by Carolyn's tendency to
linger on the scene and to help skim the emotional cream from the
situation.
"And in such dishabille, too! I hope you don't think she seemed
immodest?"
But Cope had given small heed to their dress, or to their lack of it.
In fact, he had noticed little if any difference between them. He only
knew that he had felt a degree more comfortable after getting his own
coat on.
"Carolyn understands her place pretty well," mused Medora. "Yet..."
"Anybody might be excused for looking anyhow, at such a time," observed
Cope, fending off the intrusion of a new set of considerations; "and in
such a sudden stir. I hope nobody noticed how I looked!"
"Well, you were noticeable," declared Medora, with some archness. She
had been conscious enough of his spare waist, his sinewy arms, his
swelling chest. "It was easy enough to see where the noise came from,"
she said, looking him over.
"Yes, I supplied the noise--and that only. It was Peter, please
remember, who supplied the muscle."
She declined to let her mind dwell on Peter. Peter possessed no charm.
Besides, he was prosaically on the payroll.
They continued to saunter along the sand. Yesterday's sparse clouds had
vanished, along with much of yesterday's wind. The waters that had
tumbled and vociferated now merely murmured. The lake stood calmly
blue, and the new green was thickening on the hills. Confident birds
flitted busily among the trees and shrubs. Spring was disclosed in its
most alluring mood.
Suddenly three or four figures appeared on the beach, a quarter of a
mile away. They had descended through one of the sandy and ravaged
channelings which broke at intervals the regulated rim of the hills,
and they came on toward our two strollers. Medora closed her eyes to
peer at them. "Are they marching a prisoner?" she asked.
"They all appear to be walking free."
"Are they carrying knapsacks?"
"Khaki, puttees,--and knapsacks, I think."
"Some university men said they might happen along to-day. If they
really have knapsacks, and anything to eat in them, they're welcome.
Otherwise, we had better hide quick--and hope they'll lose the place
and pass us by."
One of the advancing figures lifted a semaphoric arm. "Too late," said
Cope; "They recognize you."
"Then we'll walk on and meet them," declared Medora.
The new-comers were young professors and graduate students. They were
soon in possession of the thrilling facts of the past night, and one of
them offered to be a prisoner, if a prisoner was desired. When they
heard how Bertram Cope had saved the lives of defenseless women in a
lonely land, they inclined to smile. Two of them had been present on
another shore when Cope had "saved" Amy Leffingwell from a watery
death, and they knew how far heroics might be pushed by women who were
willing to idealize. Cope saw their smiles and felt that he had fumbled
an opportunity: when he might have been a truncheon, he had been only a
megaphone.
The new arrivals, after climbing the sandy rise to the house, were
shown the devastated kitchen and were asked to declare what provisions
they carried. They had enough food for their own needs and a trifle to
spare. Lunch might be managed, but any thought of a later meal was out
of the question. "We'll start back at four-thirty," said Medora to
Peter. "Meanwhile"--to the college men--"the world is ours."
After lunch the enlarged party walked forth again. Mrs. Phillips had
old things to show to fresh eyes: she formed the new visitors into a
compact little group and let them see how good a guide she could be.
Cope and Carolyn strolled negligently--even unsystematically--behind.
Once or twice the personally conducted looked back.
"I hope she won't tell them again how I came to the rescue," said Cope.
"It makes a man feel too flat for words. Anybody might think, to hear
her go on, that I had saved you all from robbery and murder...."
"Why, but didn't you?" inquired Carolyn seriously.
31
_COPE GETS NEW LIGHT ON HIS CHUM_
Cope had the luck to get back to Churchton with little further in the
way of homage. He was careful with Carolyn; she had perhaps addressed
him in a sonnet, and she might go on and address him in an ode. He
thought he had done nothing to deserve the one, and he would do almost
anything to escape the other. She was a nice pleasant quiet girl; but
nice pleasant quiet girls were beginning to do such equivocal things in
poetical print!
Having returned to town by a method that put the minimum tax on his
powers, Cope was in shape, next day, for an hour on the faculty
tennis-courts. He played with no special skill or vigor, but he made a
pleasing picture in his flannels; and Carolyn, who happened to
pass--who passed by at about five in the afternoon, lingered for the
spectacle and thought of two or three lines to start a poem with.
Cope, unconscious of this, presently turned his attention to Lemoyne,
who was on the eve of his first dress rehearsal and who was a good deal
occupied with wigs and lingerie. Here one detail leads to another, and
anyone who goes in wholeheartedly may go in dreadfully deep. Their room
came to be strown with all the disconcerting items of a theatrical
wardrobe. Cope soon reached the point where he was not quite sure that
he liked it all, and he began to develop a distaste for Lemoyne's
preoccupation with it. He came home one afternoon to find on the corner
of his desk a long pair of silk stockings and a too dainty pair of
ladies' shoes. "Oh, Art!" he protested. And then,--not speaking his
essential thought,--"Aren't these pretty expensive?"
"The thing has got to be done right," returned Lemoyne. "Feet are about
the first thing they notice."
At the actual performance Lemoyne's feet were noticed, certainly;
though perhaps not more than his head. His wig, as is usually the case
with dark people, was of a sunny blond hue. Its curls, as palpably
artificial as they were voluminous, made his eyes look darker and
somehow more liquid than ever. The contrast was piquant, almost
sensational. Of course he had sacrificed, for the time, his small
moustache. Lemoyne was not "Annabella" herself, but only her chief
chum; yet shorter skirts and shorter sleeves and a deliberately assumed
feminine air helped distinguish him from the hearty young lads who
manoeuvred in the chorus.
Just who are those who enjoy the epicene on the stage? Not many women,
one prefers to think; and surely it arouses the impatience, if not
worse, of many men. Most amateur drama is based, perhaps, on the
attempted "escape": one likes to bolt from his own day, his own usual
costume, his own range of ideas, and even from his own sex. Endeavors
toward this last are most enjoyable--or least offensive--when they show
frank and patent inadequacy. It was Arthur Lemoyne's fortune--or
misfortune--to do his work all too well.
Mrs. Phillips found his performance as little to her taste as she had
anticipated. Carolyn Thorpe got as much enjoyment out of the gauche
carriage and rough voices of the "chorus girls" as she had expected,
but was not observed to warm toward "Annabella's" closest friend. The
Pearsons, back from their wedding trip, had seats near the big crimson
velvet curtain. Pearson himself openly luxuriated in the amusing
ineptitude of two or three beskirted acquaintances among the upper
classmen, but frowned at Lemoyne's light tenor tones and mincing ways.
Of course the right sort of fellow, even if he had to sing his solo in
the lightest of light tenors, would still, on lapsing into dialogue,
reinstate himself apologetically by using as rough and gruff a voice as
he could summon. Not so Lemoyne: he was doing a consistent piece of
"characterization," and he was feminine, even overfeminine, throughout.
"I never liked him, anyway," said George to Amy.
Amy gave a nod of agreement. Yet why this critical zeal? There was but
one man to like, after all.
"That make-up! That low-cut gown!" said George, in further
condemnation. "There's such a thing as going too far."
Basil Randolph met Cope in the back lobby at the close of the
performance. The dramatic season in the city itself had begun to
languish; besides that, Randolph, in order to maintain his place on the
edge of the life academical, always made it a point to remember the
Grayfriars each spring.
"A very thorough, consistent piece of work--your friend's," said
Randolph. He spoke in a firm, net, withholding tone, looking Cope full
in the face, meanwhile. What he said was little, perhaps, of what was
in his mind; yet Cope caught a note of criticism and of condemnation.
"Yes," he almost felt constrained to say in reply, "yes, I know what
you did for him--for me, rather; and possibly this is not the outcome
foreseen. I hope you won't regret your aid."
Randolph went past him placidly. He seemed to have little to regret. On
the contrary, he almost appeared to be pleased. He may have felt that
Lemoyne had shown himself in a tolerably clear light, and that it was
for Cope, should he choose, to take heed.
Two days later, Randolph gave his impression of the performance to
Foster. "It's just what I should have expected," declared the cripple
acrimoniously. "I'm glad you never had any taste for the fellow; and I
should have been quite as well pleased if I hadn't found you caring for
the other."
Randolph took refuge in a bland inexpressiveness. There was no need to
school his face: he had only to discipline his voice.
"Oh, well," he said smoothly, "it's only a passing _amitié_--something
soon to be over, perhaps." He used an alien word because he could not
select, on the instant, from his stock of English, the word he needed,
and because he was not quite sure what idea he wanted to express. "I
only wish," he went on, in the same even tone, "that this chap had been
doing better by his work. At one early stage of the rehearsals there
was a lot of registration and fee-paying for the new term. Well, if he
hasn't been satisfactory, they needn't blame me. Let them blame the
system that diverts so much time and attention to interests quite
outside the regular curriculum."
"You talk like a book!" said Foster, with blunt disdain.
"Language----" began Randolph.
"----was made to conceal thought," completed the other. "Stop talking.
Stop thinking. Or, if you must think, just get your thoughts back on
your business."
Foster might have expressed himself still more pungently if he had been
aware, as Cope was, of an episode which took place, behind the scenes,
at the close of the performance. Lemoyne's singing and dancing in the
last act had had a marked success: after all, people had come to enjoy
and to applaud. Following two or three recalls, a large sheaf of roses
had been passed over the footlights; for a close imitation of
professional procedure was held to give the advantage of strict
vraisemblance. This "tribute" Lemoyne took in character, with certain
graces, pirouettes and smiles. His success so mounted to his head (for
he was the one person in the case who approximated a professional
effect) that after he had retired he could not quiet down and leave his
part. He continued to act off-stage; and in his general state of
ebulliency he endeavored to bestow a measure of upwelling femininity
upon another performer who was in the dress of his own sex. This
downright fellow, in cutaway and silk hat, did not understand,--or at
least had no patience with a rôle carried too far. He brusquely cleared
himself of Lemoyne's arm with a good vigorous push. This effort not
only propelled Lemoyne against some scenery and left him, despite the
voluminous blond wig, with a bruise on his forehead; it immediately
pushed him out of his part, and it ended by pushing him out of the
organization and even out of the University.
"Keep off, will you!" said the young _élégant_ crudely.
Lemoyne's "atmosphere" dissipated suddenly. His art-structure
collapsed. As he looked about he saw plainly that the other man's act
was approved. He had carried things too far. Well, such are the risks
run by the sincere, self-revealing artist.
When all this reached Cope, he felt a personal chagrin. Truly, the art
of human intercourse was an art that called for some care. Lemoyne's
slight wound left no trace after forty-eight hours--perhaps his
"notices" in "The Index" and "The Campus" had acted as a salve; but
certain sections of opinion remained unfriendly, and there was arising
a new atmosphere of distaste and disapproval.
The college authorities had not been satisfied, for some time, with his
clerical labors, and some of them thought that his stage
performance--an "exhibition" one of them termed it--called for reproof,
or more. They laid their heads together and Lemoyne and Cope were not
long in learning their decision. Lemoyne was pronounced a useless
element in one field, a discrepant element in another, a detriment in
both. His essentially slight connection with the real life of the
University came to be more fully recognized. Alma Mater, in fine, could
do without him, and meant to. Censure was the lot of the indignant boys
who officered the society, and who asked Lemoyne to withdraw; and
complete scission from the nourishing vine of Knowledge was his final
fate.
No occupation; no source of income. Winnebago was cold; nor was it to
be warmed into ardor by press-notices. It had seen too many already and
was tired of them.
The two young men conferred. Again Basil Randolph was their hope.
"He ought to be able to do something for me in the city," said Lemoyne.
"He's acquainted in business circles, isn't he?"
Cope bent over him--paler, thinner, more solicitous. "I'll try it," he
said.
Cope once more approached Randolph, but Randolph shook his head. He had
no faith in Lemoyne, and he had done enough already against his own
interests and desires.
Lemoyne fluttered about to little effect for a few weeks, while Cope
was finishing up his thesis. Beyond an accustomed and desired
companionship, Lemoyne contributed nothing--was a drag, in truth. He
returned to Winnebago a fortnight before the convocation and the
conferring of degrees; and it was the understanding that, somehow, he
and Cope should share together a summer divided between Winnebago and
Freeford. Randolph was left to claim Cope's interest, if he could.
32
_COPE TAKES HIS DEGREE_
Lemoyne's departure but a fortnight before Cope's small share in the
convocation seemed to hint at mutual dissatisfaction; it might even
stand for a disagreement, or possibly a quarrel. "It's just as well
that he went," said Randolph to himself. "His presence here was no
advantage to Bertram--nor to anybody else." And with another fortnight
Cope himself would be gone; and who knew in what distant quarter he
might take up his autumn work? His ambitions, as Randolph knew, pointed
to some important university in the East. Meanwhile, make the most of
the flying days.
Medora Phillips took the same view. She let Carolyn Thorpe loose for a
week's spring vacation, and sent Cope word that she was alone in a
darkened, depopulated home. Amy married. Hortense banished. Carolyn
waved aside. With all such varying devotions removed, why should he not
look in on her loneliness, during these final days, for dinner or tea?
He was still "charming"--however difficult, however recalcitrant. And
he was soon to depart. And who could believe that the fall term would
bring his equal or his like?