Bertram Cope's Year Part 15

"Possibly,--according to the conventions they themselves have established--and according to the society they depict."

"Well, Academe hasn't nailed you yet!"

"No; and I hope it won't. I should like to write a whole book about our new men."

"But don't write a thesis and then expect to publish it with profit _as_ a book. That's a common enough expectation--or temptation."

They turned away from the lake terrace and the imposing coal-pile.

Cope, Randolph saw, was in quite a glow; a generous interest had touched him, putting fresh light into his eyes and a new vigor into his step. He had displayed a charming enthusiasm, and a pure, disinterested one. Randolph, under a quiet exterior, was delighted. He liked the boy better than ever, and felt more than ever prompted to attach him to himself.

"How are you pleased with your present quarters?" he asked, as they returned through the Botany court. He thought of the narrow couch, the ink-spotted cover on the deal table, the few coats and shoes (they _couldn't_ be many) behind that calico curtain.

"None too well," replied Cope. "I shall soon begin to look for another room. I rather expect to change about holiday time."

"I am thinking of making a change too," declared Randolph.

"Why, could you better yourself?" asked Cope, in a tone of surprise. "I never knew a bachelor to be better fixed."

"I need a little wider margin of room. I can afford it, and ought to have had it long ago. And I learn that the lease of the people I'm with expires in the spring. My collection is growing; and I ought to have another bedroom. Think of not being able to put a man up, on occasion!

I shall take a small apartment on my own account, catch some Oriental who is studying frogs' legs or Occidental theology; and then--open house. In a moderate measure, of course."

"That listens good--as the young fellows say," replied Cope. "A not uncommon ideal, possibly; but I'm glad that some man, now and then, is able to realize it."

"I should hope to see you there," said Randolph intently.

"Thank you, indeed. Yes, while my time lasts. But my own lease is like your landlord's--short. Next year,--who knows where?"

"Why not here?"

"Oh!" Cope shrugged, as if conscious of the need of something better, and of presently deserving it. "Some big university in the East?"

wondered Randolph to himself. Well, the transfer, if it came, was still a long way ahead.

As he walked home to dinner he entertained himself by imagining his new regime. There would be an alert, intelligent j.a.p, who, in some miraculous way, could "do for him" between his studies. There would be a cozy dining-room where three or four fellows could have a snug little dinner, with plenty of good talk during it and after it. There would be, finally, a convenient little spare room, wherein a young knight, escaped from some "Belle Dame sans Merci," might lean his sword against the wardrobe, prop his greaves along the baseboard, lay his steel gauntlets neatly on the top of the dresser, fold his hands over the turned-down sheet of a neat three-quarter-width bra.s.s bedstead, and with a satisfied sigh of utter well-being pa.s.s away into sleep. Such facilities, even if they scarcely equaled a chateau on the Ridge or a villa among the Dunes, might serve.

Cope, on his own way to dinner, indulged in parallel imaginings. He saw a larger room than his present, with more furniture and better; a bookcase instead of a shelf; a closet, and hot and cold water in some convenient alcove; a second table, with a percolator on it, at which Arthur, who was a light sleeper and willingly an early riser, might indulge his knack for coffee-making to the advantage of them both. And Arthur had the same blessed facility with toast.

Then his thoughts made an excursion toward Randolph. Here was a man who was in business in the city, and who was related, by marriage, to the board of trustees. How soon might one feel sufficiently well acquainted with him to ask his friendly offices in behalf of the new-comer,--the man who might reasonably be expected the first week in January?

13

_COPE DINES AGAIN--AND STAYS AFTER_

Medora Phillips' social activities ran through several social strata and her entertainments varied to correspond. Sometimes she contented herself with mere boy-and-girl affairs, which were thrown together from material gathered within her own household and from the humbler walks of undergraduate life. Sometimes she entertained literary celebrities, and invited the head professors and their wives to meet them. And two or three times a season she gave real dinners to "society," summoning to Ashburn avenue, from homes even more architectural than her own, the banking and wholesale families whose incomes were derived from the city, but who pillared both the university and the many houses of worship in Churchton itself. And sometimes, when she pa.s.sed over the older generation of these families in favor of the younger, her courses were more "liberal" than Churchton's earlier standards quite approved.

On such formal occasions her three young ladies were dispensed with.

They were encouraged to go to some sorority gathering or to some fudge-party. On the occasion now meditated she had another young person in mind. This was the granddaughter of one of the banking families; the girl might come along with her father and mother. She was not very pretty, not very entertaining; however, Mrs. Phillips needed one girl, and if she were not very attractive, none the worse. The one girl was for the one young man. The one young man was to be Bertram Cope. Our fond lady meant to have him and to show him off, sure that her choicest circle could not but find him as charming as she herself did. Most of us, at one time or another, have thrust forward our preferences in the same confident way.

Cope made less of an impression than his patroness had hoped for.

Somehow his lithe youthfulness, his fine hair and teeth and eyes, the rich resonance of his voice counted for little--except, perhaps, with the granddaughter. The middle-aged people about him were used to young college men and indifferent to them. Cope himself felt that he was in a new environment, and a loftier one. Several of these were important people, with names familiar through the town and beyond. He employed a caution that almost became inexpressiveness. He also found Mrs.

Phillips a shade more formal and stately than her wont. She herself, in her furtive survey of the board, was disappointed to find that he was not telling. "Perhaps it's that girl," she thought; "she may be even duller than I supposed." But never mind; all would be made right later.

Some music had been arranged and there would be an accompanist who would help him do himself full justice.

"They'll enjoy him," she thought confidently.

She had provided an immensity of flowers. There was an excess of light, both from electric bulbs and from candles. And there was wine.

"I think I can have just one kind, for once," she had said to herself.

"I know several houses where they have two,--Churchton or not,--and at least one where they sometimes have three. If this simple town thinks I can put grape-juice and Apollinaris before such people as these...."

Besides, the interesting Cope might interestingly refuse!

As the many courses moved on, Cope smelt the flowers, which were too many, and some of them too odoriferous; he blinked at the lights and breathed the heavy thickening air; and he took--interestingly--a few sips of burgundy,--for he was now in Rome, and no longer a successful Protestant in some lesser town of the empire. He had had a hard, close day of it, busy indoors with themes and with general reading; and he recalled being glad that the dinner had begun with reasonable prompt.i.tude,--for he had bothered with no lunch beyond a gla.s.s of milk and a roll. To-night there had been everything,--even to an unnecessary entree. He laid down a spoon on his plate, glad that the frozen pudding--of whatever sort--was disposed of. Too much of everything after too little. The people opposite were far away; their murmuring had become a mumbling, and he wished it was all over. The granddaughter at his elbow was less rewarding than ever, less justificatory of the effortful small-talk which he had put forth with more and more labor, and which he could scarcely put forth now at all. What was it he was meaning to do later? To sing? Absurd! Impossible! His head ached; he felt faint and dizzy....

"We will leave you gentlemen to your cigars," he heard a distant voice saying; and he was conscious for an instant that his hostess was looking down the table at him with a face of startled concern....

"Don't try to lead him out," a deep voice said. "Lay him on the floor."

He felt himself lowered; some small rug was doubled and redoubled and placed under his head; a large, firm hand was laid to his wrist; and something--a napkin dipped in a gla.s.s of water and then folded?--was put to his forehead.

"His pulse will come up in a minute," he heard the same deep voice say.

"If he had taken a step he would have fainted altogether."

"My poor, dear boy! Whatever in the world...!" Thus Medora Phillips.

"Better not be moved for a little," was the next p.r.o.nouncement.

Cope lay there inert, but reasonably conscious of what was going on.

His eyes gave him no aid, but his ears were open. He heard the alarmed voice of Medora Phillips directing the disconcerted maids, and the rustle and flutter of the garments of other daughters of Eve, who had found him interesting at last. They remarked appreciatively on his pallor; and one of them said, next day, before forgetting him altogether, that, with his handsome profile (she mentioned especially his nose and chin) and with his colorlessness, he looked for a moment like an ancient cameo.

He knew, now, that he was not going to faint, and that he was in better case than he seemed. In the circ.u.mstances he found nothing more original to say than: "I shall be all right in no time; just a touch of dizziness...." He was glad his dress-coat could stand inspection, and hoped n.o.body would notice that his shoes had been half-soled....

After a little while he was led away to a couch in the library. The deep-voiced doctor was on one side of him and Medora Phillips on the other. Soon he was left alone to recuperate in the dark,--alone, save for one or two brief, fluttery appearances by Mrs. Phillips herself, who allowed the coffee to be pa.s.sed without any supervision on her own part.

On the second of these visitations he found voice to say:

"I'm so sorry for this--and so ashamed. I can't think how it could have happened."

He _was_ ashamed, of course. He had broken up an entertainment pretty completely! Servants running about for him when they had enough to do for the company at large! All the smooth conventions of dinner-giving violently brushed the wrong way! He had fallen by the roadside, a young fellow who had rather prided himself on his health and vigor. Pitiful!

He was glad to lie in the dark with his eyes shut tight, tight.

If he had been fifteen or twenty years older he might have taken it all rather more lightly. Basil Randolph, now----But Randolph had not been invited, though his sister and her husband were of the company. Yet had it been Randolph, he would have smiled a wan smile and tried for a mild joke, conscious that he had made an original and picturesque contribution to the affair,--had broken the bland ba.n.a.lity of routined dinner-giving and had provided woman with a mighty fine chance to "minister" and fuss: a thing she rather enjoyed doing, especially if a hapless, helpless man had been delivered into her hands as a subject.

But there was no such consolation for poor abashed Cope. He had disclosed himself, for some reason or other, a weakling; and he had weakened at a conspicuously wrong time and in a conspicuously mistaken place. He had hoped, over the cigars and coffee, to lay the foundation of an acquaintance with the brother-in-law who was a trustee,--to set up an ident.i.ty in this influential person's mind as a possible help to the future of Arthur Lemoyne. But the man now in the dining-room, or the drawing-room, or wherever, might as well be in the next state.

There came a slight patter of rain on the bay-window near his head. He began to wonder how he was to get home.