Bertram Cope's Year Part 27

"Roddy may stay with me," declared Pearson. "I can put him up. Come on, Aldridge," he said; "you're good for a hundred yard dash." And down they started.

"I don't want to stay," muttered Cope to Lemoyne, under cover of the others' departure. "Devil take it; it's the last thing in the world I want to do!"

"It's awkward," returned Lemoyne, "but we're in for it. After all, it isn't _her_ house, nor her family's. Besides, you've got me."

Mrs. Phillips summoned Helga and another maid, who were just on the point of going to bed, and directed their efforts toward the chintz chamber. "Ah, well," thought M. Pelouse, "the _fiance_, then, is going to remain over night in the house of his _fiancee_!" It was droll; yet there were extenuating circ.u.mstances. But--such a singular climate, such curious temperaments, such a general chill! And M. Pelouse was presently lost to view among the welcome trappings of Louis Quinze.

22

_COPE SHALL BE RESCUED_

Next morning Cope left the house before breakfast. He had had the forethought to plead an exceptionally early engagement, and thus he avoided meeting, after the strain of the evening before, any of the various units of the household. He and Lemoyne, draping their parti-colored pajamas over the foot of the bedstead, left the chintz chamber at seven and walked out into the new day. The air was cold and tingling; the ground was white as a sheet; the sky was a strident, implacable blue. The glitter and the glare a.s.saulted their sleepy eyes.

They turned up their collars, thrust their hands deep into their pockets, and took briskly the half mile which led to their own percolator and electric toaster.

Cope threw himself down on the bed and let Lemoyne get the breakfast.

Well, he had called; he had done the just and expected thing; he had held his face through it all; but he was tired after a night of much thought and little sleep. Possibly he might not have to call again for a full week. If 'phone messages or letters came, he would take them as best he could.

Nor was Lemoyne very alert. He was less prompt than usual in gaining his early morning loquacity. His coffee was lacking in spirit, and much of his toast was burnt. But the two revived, in fair measure, after their taxing walk.

They had talked through much of the dead middle of the night. Foster, wakeful and restless, had become exasperated beyond all power of a return to sleep. Concerns of youth and love kept them murmuring, murmuring in the acute if distant ears of one whom youth had left and for whom love was impossible. Beyond his foolish, figured wall were two contrasted types of young vigor, and they babbled, babbled on, in the sensitized hearing of one from whom vigor was gone and for whom hope was set.

"What do you think of her?" Cope had asked. Then he had thrown his face into his pillow and left one ear for the reply.

"She is a clinger," returned Lemoyne. "She will cling until she is loosened by something or somebody. Then she will cling to the second somebody as hard as she did to the first. I'm not so sure that it's you as an individual especially."

Cope had now no self-love to consider, no self-esteem to guard. He did not raise his face from out the pillow to reply. But he found Lemoyne rather drastic. Arthur had shown himself much in earnest, of course; he had the right, doubtless, to be reproachful; and he was fertile in suggestions looking toward his friend's freedom. Yet his expedients were not always delicate or fair: Cope would have welcomed a lighter hand on his exacerbated spirit, a more disinterested, more impartial touch. He was glad when, one afternoon at five, a few days later, he met Randolph on the steps of the library. Randolph, by his estimate, was disinterested and impartial.

The weather still held cold: it was no day for spending time, conversationally, outside; and they stepped back for a little into a recess of the vestibule. Cope found an opening by bolstering up his previous written excuses. He was still very general.

"That's all right," replied Randolph, in friendly fashion. "Some time, soon, we must try again. And this time we must have your friend." His glance was kind, yet keen; nor was it brief.

Randolph had already the outlines of the situation as Foster understood them. He sometimes slipped in, on Sunday forenoon, to read the newspapers to Foster, instead of going to church. Hortense and Carolyn came up now and then: indeed, this reading was, theoretically, a part of Carolyn's duties, but she was coming less and less frequently, and often never got beyond the headlines. So that, every other Sunday at least, Randolph set aside prayer-book and hymnal for dramatic criticisms, editorials, sports and "society."

This time Foster was full of the events of Friday night. "As I make it out, he kept away from her the whole evening, and that new man helped him do it. Our friend down the street, Hortense says, showed every disposition to cut in, and the girl showed at least some disposition to let him. I don't wonder: when you come right down to it, he's twice the man the other is."

"Young Pearson?"

"Yes."

"Clever lad. Confident. But brash. Just what his father used to be."

"He praised her playing. Cope sat dumb. And next morning he hurried away before breakfast. You know what kind of a morning it was. Anything very pressing at the University on a Sat.u.r.day morning at eight?"

"I hardly know."

"How about this sudden new friend?" Foster twitched in his chair.

"Medora," he went on, "seems to have no special fancy for him. She even objects to his calling Cope 'Bert.' Of course he sings. And he seems to be self-possessed and clever. But 'self-possessed'--that doesn't express it. He was so awfully, so publicly, at home; at least that's as I gather it. Always hanging over the other man's chair; always finding a reason to put his hand on his shoulder...."

"Body-guard? No wonder Pearson came to the fore."

"I don't know. What I've heard makes me think of----"

And here, Foster, speaking with a keen and complicated acerbity, recalled how, during earlier years of travel, he had had opportunity to observe a young married couple at a Saratoga hotel. They had made their partiality too public, and an elderly lady not far away in the vast "parlor" had audibly complained that they brought the manners of the bed-chamber into the drawing-room.

"They talked half through the night, too," Foster added bitterly.

"Young men's problems," said Randolph. "Possibly they were considering Pearson."

"Possibly," repeated Foster; and neither followed further, for a moment, the pathway of surmise.

Presently Randolph rose and scuffled through the ruck of newspapers, with which no great progress had been made. "Is Medora at home?" he asked.

"I think she's off at church," said Foster discontentedly. "And Hortense went with her."

"I'll call her up later. If I can get her for Wednesday--and Pearson too...."

Foster, accustomed to piecing loose ends as well as he could, did not ask him to finish. Randolph picked up a crumpled sheet from the floor, reseated himself, and read out the account of yesterday's double performance at the opera.

When Randolph, then, met Cope in the vestibule of the library, on Monday, he felt that he had ground under his feet. Just how solid, just how extensive, he was not quite sure; but he could safely take a few steps experimentally. Cope was a picture of uncertainty and woe; his face was an open bid for sympathy and aid.

"You are unhappy," said Randolph; "and I think I know why." He meant to advance toward the problem as if it were a case of jealousy--a matter of Pearson's intrusion and of Amy's seemingly willing acceptance of it.

Cope soon caught Randolph's idea, and he stared. He did not at all resent Randolph's advances; misapprehension, in fact, might serve as fairly, in the end, as the clearest understanding.

Randolph placed his hand on Cope's shoulder. "You have only to a.s.sert yourself," he said. "The other man is an intruder; it would be easy to warn him off before he starts in to win her."

"George Pearson?" said Cope. "Win her? In heaven's name," he blurted out, "let him!"

It was a cry of distaste and despair, in which no rival was concerned.

Randolph now had the situation in its real lines.

"Well, this is no place for a talk," he said. "If you should care to happen in on me some evening before long...."

"I have Wednesday," returned Cope, with eagerness.

"Not Wednesday. I have an engagement for that evening. But any evening a little later."

"Friday? The worst of my week's work is over by then."

"Friday will do." And they parted.

Randolph had secured for his Wednesday evening Medora Phillips and Hortense. Hortense was the young person to pair with Pearson, who had thrown over an evening at his club for the dinner with Randolph. The talk was to be--in sections and installments--of Amy Leffingwell, and of Cope in so far as he might enter. Medora would speak; Hortense would speak; Randolph himself should speak. To complete the party he had asked his relations from the far side of the big city. His sister would preside for him; and his brother-in-law might justify his expenditure of time and trouble by stopping off in advance for a brief confab, as trustee, at the administration building, with the president. A compatriot had been secured by Sing-Lo to help in dining-room and kitchen.