Bertram Cope's Year Part 16

Meanwhile, in the drawing-room, among the ladies, Mrs. Phillips was anxiously asking: "Was the room too warm? Could the wine have been too much for him?" And out in the dining-room itself, one man said, "Heaven knows just how they live;" and another, "Or what they eat, or don't eat;" and a third, "Or just how hard these young beginners are driven."

"Ought he to go out to-night, Doctor?" asked Mrs. Phillips in a whisper, appearing in the dining-room door.

"He might better stay if he can," replied the authority, who happened to be at the nearer end of the table.

"Of course he can," she returned. Of course there was a room for him.

When the party finally rea.s.sembled in the drawing-room Cope had disappeared. Mrs. Phillips could now enlarge on his attractiveness as a singer, and could safely a.s.sure them--what she herself believed--that they had lost a really charming experience. "If you could only have heard him that Sunday!" she concluded.

Cope had said, of course, "I can get home perfectly well," and, "It's a shame for me to be putting you out this way," and so on and on,--the things you yourself would have said in the circ.u.mstances; but he said them with no particular spirit, and was glad, as he walked uncertainly up stairs, that he had not far to go.

Mrs. Phillips indeed "had a room for him." She had rooms a-plenty.

There was the chintz chamber on the third floor, where the Irish poet (who seemed not to expect very much for himself) had been put; and there was the larger, handsomer chamber on the second floor, where the Hindoo philosopher (who had loomed up big and important through a vague Oriental atmosphere) had been installed in state. It was a Louis Quinze room, and the bed had a kind of silken canopy and a great deal too much in the way of bolsters and lace coverings. It was thought that the Hindoo, judging from the report of the maid next morning, had been moved by some ascetic impulse to sleep not in the bed but on the floor beside it. This was the room now destined for Cope; surely one flight of stairs was enough. But there must be no further practice of asceticism,--least of all by a man who was really ill; so Mrs.

Phillips, s.n.a.t.c.hing a moment from her guests, herself saw the maid remove the lace pillow-shams and coverlet, and turn down the sheets, and set the thermos-bottle on the stand beside the reading lamp....

"Don't get up a moment earlier than you feel like doing," she said, at the door. "Breakfast----"

"To-morrow is one of my busy days," replied Cope wanly. "Goldsmith, Sheridan...."

"Well, we have other wage-workers in the house, you know. At seven-thirty, then, if you must."

"Seven-thirty, if you please. Thank you."

By the time Mrs. Phillips had returned to her guests, the first of the limousines was standing before the house; its wet top shone under an electric globe. Her own car, meanwhile, obdurately reposed in its garage. Presently a second limousine joined the first, and a third the second; and in another quarter of an hour her guests were well on their way to dispersal. She bade them all goodnight in the best of good humor.

"You've never before had quite such an evening as this, I'm sure!" she said, with great gaiety.

"Isn't it wonderful how she took it all!" said one lady to another, on the back seat of her car. "Anything like that would have thrown me off completely."

The other lady laughed amusedly. She often found our Medora "great fun."

Meanwhile, Cope, up stairs, was sinking deeper and deeper into his big, wide, overupholstered bed. And as his body sank, his spirit sank with it. He felt poor, unimportant, ill at ease. In especial, he felt greatly subordinated; he wished that he might have capitulated to a man. Then the mystery of handsome houses and of handsome furnishings came to hara.s.s him. Such things were everywhere: how were they got, how were they kept? Should he himself ever----? But no; nothing ahead for years, even in the most favorable of circ.u.mstances, save an a.s.sistant professorship, with its inconceivably modest emoluments....

And Medora Phillips, in the stir of getting her guests out of the house, had her first vision of him as sinking off to sleep. Somehow or other his fine, straight yellow hair retained its backward sweep with no impairment by reason of turnings and tossings; his clear profile continued to keep itself disengaged from any depression in the pillows; his slender hands were laid in quiet symmetry over the wide edge of the down-turned coverlet. A decorous, unperturbed young old-master ... Van Eyck ... Carpaccio....

Cope came down to breakfast a little pale, a little shamefaced; but he felt pretty well revived and he made up in excess of speech and action what he essentially lacked in spirit. Mrs. Phillips descended as early as the three girls,--earlier, in fact, than Hortense, who entered informally through the butler's pantry and apparently in full possession of last night's facts. Carolyn inquired civilly after his condition; Amy Leffingwell, with her blue eyes intent upon him, expressed concern and sympathy; Hortense, with her lips closely shut in a satirical smile, said nothing at all: a possible exhibition of self-control which gave her aunt some measure of solicitude. It was not always well when she talked, and it was not always well when she kept silent. Mrs. Phillips pressed the toast upon him and recommended the grape-fruit. He took both with satisfaction, and a second cup of coffee. With that he felt he could easily walk to his cla.s.s-room; and the walk itself, in the fresh morning air, would brace him further for his hours of routine with his students.

"What a regular nuisance I've made of myself!" he said, on leaving the house.

"Oh, haven't you, just!" exclaimed Mrs. Phillips joyously.

"Your name as an entertainer will be all over town! I'm sure you gave some of those poky people a real touch of novelty!"

Amy Leffingwell was in the front hall at the same time, with her music-roll. They were going the same way, to substantially the same place, to meet about the same hour in the day's schedule. They went along the street together.

The morning air was brisk and cool after last night's shower. Like the trees under which they pa.s.sed, it gave the first decided intimation of autumn. They set off at a lively pace toward the college towers and the lake.

Cope was soon sailing along with his head high, his trim square shoulders much in action, and his feet throwing themselves spiritedly here and there. Amy, who was not very tall, kept up as well as she could.

"This isn't too fast for you...?" she asked presently.

"No; but it may be a little too fast for you. Excuse me; I've never learned to keep pace with a woman. But as for myself, I never felt better in my life. Every yard toward the good old lake"--the wind was coming down from the north in a great sweep--"makes me feel finer."

He slowed up appreciably.

"Oh, not for me!" she said in deprecation. "I like a brisk morning walk as well as anybody. Did you sing at all?" she asked.

"Not a note. They put the soft pedal on me. They 'muted' me," he amended, in deference to her own branch of the profession.

"We came in by the side door about half past nine. It was a dull meeting. I listened for you. Somebody was playing."

Cope gave a sly smile.

"It must have been the poor disappointed woman who was to have accompanied me. She had had a list of three or four of my things--to run them over in her own alb.u.m, I suppose. Think just how disappointed she must have been to find that she had the whole field to herself!"

"Oh, musicians--even we poor, despised professionals--are not all like that. If it had been arranged for me to accompany you with an obbligato, I shouldn't have been pleased if opportunity had failed me."

"Your contribution would have been more important than hers. And your subst.i.tution for my failure would have given added interest."

The talk, having reached the zone of arid compliment, tended to languish. They had now reached Learning's side of the trolley-tracks, and rills in the great morning flood of the scholastic life were beginning to gather about them and to unite in a rolling stream which flowed toward the campus.

Two or three streets on, the pair separated, she to her work, he to his. For him the walk had been a nothing in particular--he would a little have preferred taking it alone. For her it had been--despite the low level of expressiveness reached on either side--a privilege which had been curtailed much too soon.

Meanwhile, back in the house, Hortense was detailing the events of the previous evening to Joe Foster; the general access of activity on the morning after had made it desirable that she help with his breakfast.

She went at it with a will.

"Why," she said, as Foster sat at his coffee, boiled egg and toast, "he keeled over like a baby."

"Hum!" said Foster darkly. It was as if a shaping ideal had dissipated.

Or as if a trace of weakness in one seemingly so young and strong was not altogether unacceptable as a source of consolation.

However, Cope, at half past four that afternoon, was on the faculty tennis-courts, with a racquet in his hand. But one set was enough. "I seem to be a day ahead of my schedule," he said, pulling out and strolling along homeward.

14

_COPE MAKES AN EVASION_

Two or three days later, Randolph put a book of essays in his pocket and went round to spend an hour with Joseph Foster. Foster sat in his wheeled chair in his own room. He was knitting. The past year or two had brought knitting-needles into countenance for men, and he saw no reason why he should not put a few hanks of yarn into shape useful for himself. He might not have full command of his limbs nor of his eyes, but he did have full command of his fingers. He had begun to knit socks for his own use; and even a m.u.f.fler, in the hope that on some occasion, during the coming months, he might get outside.

As Randolph entered, Foster looked up from under his green shade with an expression of perplexity. "Have I dropped a st.i.tch here or not?" he asked. "I wish you knew something about knitting; I don't like to call Medora or one of the girls away up here to straighten me out. Look; what do you think?"

"They count all right," said Randolph; and he sat down on the couch opposite. "I've brought a book."