Bertram Cope's Year Part 4

"I mean," proceeded Mrs. Phillips, "can you do nothing whatever to entertain?"

Cope gained another stage on the way to self-consciousness and self-control. Entertainment was doubtless the basic curse of this household.

"I sing," he said, with naf suddenness and simplicity.

"Then, sing--do. There's the open piano. Can you play your own accompaniments?"

"Some of the simpler ones."

"Some of the simpler ones! Do you hear that, girls? He is quite prepared to wipe us all out. Shall we let him?"

"That's unfair," Cope protested. "Is it my fault if composers _will_ write hard accompaniments to easy airs?"

"Will you sing before your tea, or after it?"

"I'm ready to sing this instant,--during it, or before it."

"Very well."

The room was now in dusk, save for the bulbs which made the portrait shine forth like a wayside shrine. Roddy, the possible soph.o.m.ore, helped a maid find places for the cups and saucers; and the three girls, still formed in a careful group about the sofa, silently waited.

"Of course you realize that this is not such a very large room," said Mrs. Phillips.

"Meaning....?"

"Well, your speaking voice _is_ resonant, you know."

"Meaning, then, that I am not to raise the roof nor jar the china. I'll try not to."

Nor did he. He sang with care rather than with volume, with discretion rather than with abandon. The "simple accompaniments" went off with but a slight hitch or two, yet the "resonant voice" was somehow, somewhere lost. Possibly Cope gave too great heed to his hostess' caution; but it seemed as if a voice essentially promising had slipped through some teacher's none too competent hands, or--what was quite as serious--as if some temperamental brake were operating to prevent the complete expression of the singer's nature. La.s.sen, Grieg, Rubinstein--all these were carried through rather cautiously, perhaps a little mechanically; and there was a silence. Hortense broke it.

"Parna.s.sus, yes. And finally comes Apollo." She reached over and murmured to Mrs. Phillips: "None too skillful on the lyre, and none too strong in the lungs...."

Medora spoke up loudly and promptly.

"Do you know, I think I've heard you sing before."

"Possibly," Cope said, turning his back on the keyboard. "I sang in the University choir for a year or two."

"In gown and mortar-board? 'Come, Holy Spirit,' and all that?"

"Yes; I sang solos now and then."

"Of course," she said. "I remember now. But I never saw you before without your mortar-board. That changes the forehead. Yes, you're yourself," she went on, adding to her previous pleasure the further pleasure of recognition. "You've earned your tea," she added.

"Hortense," she said over her shoulder to the dark girl behind the sofa, "will you--? No; I'll pour, myself."

She slid into her place at table and got things to going. There was an interval which Cope might have employed in praising the artistic apt.i.tudes of this variously gifted household, but he found no appropriate word to say,--or at least uttered none. And none of the three girls made any further comment on his own performance.

Mrs. Phillips accompanied him, on his way out, as far as the hall. She looked up at him questioningly.

"You don't like my poor girls," she said. "You don't find them clever; you don't find them interesting."

"On the contrary," he rejoined, "I have spent a delightful hour." Must he go on and confess that he had developed no particular dexterity in dealing with the younger members of the opposite s.e.x?

"No, you don't care for them one bit," she insisted. She tried to look rebuking, reproachful; yet some shade of expression conveyed to him a hint that her protest was by no means sincere: if he really didn't, it was no loss--it was even a possible gain.

"It's you who don't care for me," he returned. "I'm _vieux jeu_."

"Nonsense," she rejoined. "If you have a slight past, that only makes you the more atmospheric. Be sure you come again soon, and put in a little more work on the foreground."

Cope, on his way eastward, in the early evening, pa.s.sed near the trolley tracks, the Greek lunch-counter, without a thought; he was continuing his letter to "Dear Arthur":

"I think," he wrote, with his mind's finger, "that you might as well come down. I miss you--even more than I thought I should. The term is young, and you can enter for Spanish, or Psychology, or something.

There's nothing for you up there. The bishop can spare you. Your father will be reasonable. We can easily arrange some suitable quarters..."

And we await a reply from "Dear Arthur"--the fifth and last of our little group. But no; there are two or three others--as you have just seen.

4

_COPE IS CONSIDERED_

A few days after the mathematical tea, Basil Randolph was taking a sedate walk among the exotic elms and the indigenous oaks of the campus; he was on his way to the office of the University registrar. He felt interested in Bertram Cope and meant to consult the authorities.

That is to say, he intended to consult the written and printed data provided by the authorities,--not to make verbal inquiries of any of the college officials themselves. He was, after all, sufficiently in the academic tradition to prefer the consultation of records as against the employment of _viva voce_ methods; and he saw no reason why his new interest should be widely communicated to other individuals. There was an annual register; there was an alb.u.m of loose sheets kept up by the members of the faculty; and there was a card-catalogue, he remembered, in half a dozen little drawers. All this ought to remove any necessity of putting questions by word of mouth.

The young clerk behind the broad counter annoyed him by no offer of aid, but left him to browse for himself. First, the printed register.

This was crowded with professors--full, head, a.s.sociate, a.s.sistant; there were even two or three professors emeritus. And each department had its tale of instructors. But no mention of a Bertram Cope. Of course not; this volume, it occurred to him presently, represented the state of things during the previous scholastic year.

Next the card-catalogue. But this dealt with the students only--undergraduate, graduate, special. No Cope there.

Remained the loose-leaf faculty-index, in which the members of the professorial body told something about themselves in a great variety of handwriting: among other things, their full names and addresses, and their natures in so far as penmanship might reveal it. Ca; Ce; Cof; Collard, Th. J., who was an instructor in French and lived on Rosemary Place; Copperthwaite, Julian M., Cotton ... No Cope. He looked again, and further. No slightest alphabetical misplacement.

"You are not finding what you want?" asked the clerk at last. The search was delaying other inquirers.

"Bertram Cope," said Randolph. "Instructor, I think."

"He has been slow. But his page will be in place by tomorrow. If you want his address...."

"Yes?"

"--I think I can give it to you." The youth retired behind a screen.

"There," he said, returning with a bit of pencilling on a sc.r.a.p of paper.

Randolph thanked him, folded up the paper, and put it in his pocket. A mere bit of ordinary clerkly writing; no character, no allure. Well, the actual chirography of the absentee would be made manifest before long. What was it like? Should he himself ever have a specimen of it in a letter or a note?