Chapter X
Cope at His House Party
"You look as fit as two fiddles," said Medora Phillips, at the top of her sandhill.
"We are," declared Randolph. "Have the rest of the orchestra arrived.?"
"Most of us are here, and the rest will arrive presently. Listen. I think I hear a honk somewhere back in the woods."
The big room of the house, made by knocking two small rooms together, seemed fairly full already, and other guests were on the back porch. The Graces were there, putting the finishing-touches to the table;—Helga had not come, after all, but had gone instead, with her young man, to spend a few sunny afternoon hours among the films. And one of the young business-men present at Mrs. Phillips' dinner was present here; he seemed to know how to handle the oil-stove and the pump (with the cooperation of the chauffeur), and how to aid the three handmaidens in putting on the knives, forks, plates and napkins that Helga had decided to ignore. The people in the distant motor-car became less distant; soon they stopped in a clearing at the foot of the hill, and before long they appeared at the top with a small hamper of provisions.
"Oh, why didn't you ask us to bring something!" cried Cope. Randolph shrugged his shoulders: he saw himself lugging a basket of eatables through five miles of sand and thicket.
"You've brought yourself," declared Mrs. Phillips genially. "That's enough."
There was room for the whole dozen on the dining-porch. The favored few in one corner of it could glimpse the blue plane of the lake, or at least catch the horizon; the rest could look over the treetops toward the changing colors of the wide marshes inland. And when the feast was over, the chauffeur took his refreshment off to one side, and then amiably lent a hand with the dishes.
"Let me help wipe," cried Cope impulsively.
"There are plenty of hands to help," returned his hostess. She seemed to be putting him on a higher plane and saving him for better things.
One of the better things was a stroll over her tumultuous domain: the five miles he had already covered were not enough.
"I'll stay where I am," declared Randolph, who had taken this regulation jaunt before. He followed Cope to the hook from which he was taking down his hat. "Admire everything," he counselled in a whisper.
"Eh?"
"Adjust yourself to our dominant mood without delay or reluctance. Praise promptly and fully everything that is ours."
The party consisted of four or five of the younger people and two or three of the older. Most of them had taken the walk before; Cope, as a novice, became the especial care of Mrs. Phillips herself. The way led sandily along the crest of a wooded amphitheatre, with less stress on the prospect waterward than might have been expected. Cope was not allowed, indeed, to overlook the vague horizon where, through the pine groves, the blue of sky and of sea blended into one; but, under Medora Phillips' guidance, his eyes were mostly turned inland.
"People think," she said, "that 'the Dimes' means nothing beyond a regular row of sandhills following the edge of the water; yet half the interest and three-quarters of the variety are to be found in behind them. See my wide marsh, off to the southeast, with those islands of tamarack here and there, and imagine how beautiful the shadows are toward sunset. Look at that thick wood at the foot of the slope: do you think it is flat? No, it's as humpy and hilly as anything ever traversed. Only this spring a fascinating murderer hid there for weeks, and last January we could hear the howls of timber-wolves driven down from Michigan by the cold. And see those tall dead pines rising above it all. I call them the Three Witches. You'll get them better just a few paces to the left. This way." She even placed her hand on his elbow to make sure that her tragic group should appear to highest advantage. Yes, he was an admirable young man, giving admirable attention; thrusting out his hat toward prospects of exceptional account and casting his frank blue eyes into her face between-times. Charmingly perfect teeth and a wonderful sweep of yellow hair. A highly civilized faun for her highly sylvan setting. Indifferent, perhaps, to her precious Trio; but there were other young fellows to look after them.
Cope praised loudly and readily. The region was unique and every view had its charm—every view save one. Beyond the woods and the hills and the distant marshes which spread behind all these, there rose on the bluish horizon a sole tall chimney, with its long black streak of smoke. Below it and about it spread a vast rectangular structure with watch-towers at its corners. The chimney bespoke light and heat and power furnished in quantities—power for many shops, manned by compulsory workers: a prison, in short.
"Why, what's that?" asked Cope tactlessly.
Medora Phillips withheld her eyes and sent out a guiding finger in the opposite direction. "Only see the red of those maples!" she said; "and that other red just to the left—the tree with the small, fine leaves all aflame. Do you know what it is?"
"I'm afraid not."
"It's a tupelo. And this shrub, right here?" She took between her fingers one large, bland indented leaf on a small tree close to the path.
Cope shook his head.
"Why, it's a sassafras. And this?"—she thrust her toe into a thick, lustrous bed of tiny leaves that hugged the ground. "No, again? That's kinnikin-nick. Oh, my poor boy, you have everything to learn. Brought up in the country, too!"
"But, really," said Cope in defense, "Freeford isn't so small as that. And even in the country one may turn by preference to books. Try me on primroses and date-palms and pomegranates!"
Medora broke off a branch of sassafras and swished it to and fro as she walked. "See," she said; "three kinds of leaves on the same tree: one without lobes, one with a single lobe, and one with two."
"Isn't Nature wonderful," replied Cope easily.
Meanwhile the young ladies sauntered along—before or behind, as the case might be—in the company of the young business-man and that of another youth who had come out independently on the trolley. They appeared to be suitably accompanied and entertained. But shiftings and readjustments ensued, as they are sure to do with a walking-party. Cope presently found himself scuffling through the thin grass and the briery thickets alongside the young business-man. He was a clever, companionable chap, but he declared himself all too soon, even in this remote Arcadia, as utterly true to type. Cope was not long in feeling him as operating on the unconscious assumption—unconscious, and therefore all the more damnable—that the young man in business constituted, ipso facto, a kind of norm by which other young men in other fields of endeavor were to be gauged: the farther they deviated from the standard he automatically set up, the more lamentable their deficiencies. A few condescending inquiries as to the academic life, that strange aberration from the normality of the practical and profitable course which made the ordinary life of the day, and the separation came. "Enough of him!" muttered Cope to himself presently, and began to cast about for other company. Amy Leffingwell was strolling along alone: he caught a branch of haw from before her meditative face and proffered a general remark about the beauty of the day and the interest in the changing prospect.
Amy's pretty pink face brightened. "'It is a lovely day," she said. "And the more of this lovely weather we have in October—and especially in November—the more trouble it makes."
"Surely you don't want rain or frost?"
"No; but it becomes harder to shut the house up for good and all. Last fall we opened and closed two or three times. We even tried coming out in December."
"In mackintoshes and rubber boots?"
"Almost. But the boots are better for February. At least, they would have been last February."
"It seems hard to imagine such a future for a place like this,—or such a past."
"Things can be pretty rough, I assure you. And the roads are not always as good as they are to-day." And when the pump froze, she went on, they had to depend upon the lake; and when the lake froze they had to fall back on melted snow and ice. And even when the lake didn't freeze, the blowing waters and the flying sands often heaped up big ridges that quite cut them off from the open sea. Then they had to prospect along those tawny hummocks for some small inlet that would yield a few buckets of frozen spray,—keeping on the right side of the deep fissures that held the threat of icebergs to be cast loose at any moment; "and sometimes," she added, in search of a little thrill, "we would get back toward shore to find deep openings with clear water dashing beneath—we had been walking on a mere snow-crust half the time."
"Most interesting," said Cope accommodatingly. He saw no winter shore.
"Yes, February was bad, but Mrs. Phillips wanted to make sure, toward the end of the winter, that the house hadn't blown away,—nor the contents; for we have housebreakers every so often. And Hortense wanted to make some 'color-notes.' I believe she's going to try for some more to-day."
"To-day is a good day—unless the October tints are too obvious."
"She says they are not subtle, but that she can use them."
Well, here he was, talking along handily enough. But he had no notion of talking for long about Hortense. He preferred returning to the weather.
"And what does such a day do for you?" he asked.
"Oh, I suppose it helps me in a general way. But my notes, of course, are on paper already."
Yes, he was walking alongside her and holding his own—thus far. She seemed a pretty enough, graceful enough little thing; not so tall by an inch or so as she appeared when seated behind that samovar. On that day she had been reasonably sprightly—toward others, even if not toward him. To-day she seemed meditative, rather; even elegiac—unless there was a possible sub-acid tang in her reference to Hortense's color-notes. Aside from that possibility, there was little indication of the "dexterity" which Randolph had asked him to beware.
"On paper already?" he repeated. "But not all of them? I know you compose. You are not saying that you are about to give composition up?" A forced and awkward "slur," perhaps; but it served.
She gave a little sigh. "Pupils don't want my pieces," she said. "Scales; exercises . . ."
"I know," he returned. "Themes,—clearness, mass, unity . . . It's the same."
They looked at each other and smiled. "We ought not to think of such things to-day," she said.
Mrs. Phillips came along, shepherding her little flock for the return. "But before we do turn back," she adjured them, "just look at those two lovely spreading pines standing together alone on that far hill." The small group gazed obediently—though to many of them the prospect was a familiar one. Yes, there stood two pines, one just a little taller than the other, and just a little inclined across the other's top. "A girl out here in August called them Paolo and Francesca. Do you think," she asked Cope, "that those names are suitable?"
"Oh, I don't know," he replied, looking at the trees thoughtfully. "They seem rather—static; and Dante's lovers, if I recollect, had considerable drive. They were 'al vento'—on the wind—weren't they? It might be less violent and more modern to call your trees Pelleas and Melisande, or——"
"That's it. That's the very thing!" said Medora Phillips heartily. "Pelleas and Melisande, of course. That girl had a very ordinary mind."
"I've felt plenty of wind on the dunes, more than once," interjected Hortense.
"Or Darby and Joan," Cope continued. "Not that I'm defending that poor creature, whoever she was. They seem to be a pretty staid, steady-going couple."
"Don't," said Medora. "Too many ideas are worse than too few. They confuse one."
And Amy Leffingwell, who had seemed willing to admire him, now looked at him with an air of plaintive protest.
"'Darby and Joan'!" muttered Hortense into a sumach bush. "You might as well call them Jack and Jill!"
"They're Pelleas and Melisande," declared Mrs. Phillips, in a tone of finality. "Thank you so much," she said, with a smile that reinstated Cope after a threatened lapse from favor.