Chapter XIV
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 muffler, 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 stitch 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."
"I hope it's poetry!" said Foster, with a fierce promptness. "I hope it's about Adonis, or Thammuz, whose mishap 'in Lebanon' set all the Syrian females a-going. I could stand a lot more of that,—or perhaps I couldn't!"
"Why, Joe, what's gone wrong?"
"I suppose you know that your young friend got up a great to-do for us the other evening?"
"Yes; I've heard something about it." He looked at Foster's drawn face, and heard with surprise the rasping note in his voice. "Was it as bad as that?" Foster drew his shade down farther over his eyes and clashed his needles together.
"I remember how, when I was in Florence, we went out to a religious festival one evening at some small hill-town near by. This was twenty years ago, when I could travel. There was a kind of grotto in the church, under the high altar; and in the grotto was a full-sized figure of a dead man, carved and painted—and covered with wounds; and round that figure half the women and girls of the town were collected, stroking, kissing . . . Adonis all over again!"
"Oh, come, Joe; don't get morbid."
Foster lifted one shoulder.
"Well, the young fellow began by roaring through the house like a bull of Bashan, and he ended by toppling over like a little wobbly calf."
He spoke like a man who had imaged a full measure of physical powers and had envied them . . . had been exasperated by the exuberant presentation of them . . . had felt a series of contradictory emotions when they had seemed to fail . . .
"It was only a moment of dizziness," said Randolph. "I imagine he was fairly himself next day."
"Well, I've heard too much about it. Medora came up here and——"
"Need we go into that?"
"There were plenty more to help," Foster went on doggedly. "One dear creature, who was old enough to be more cautious, spilt water down the whole front of her dress——"
"I expect," said Randolph, "that the poor chap has been overworked; or careless about his meals; or worried in his classes—for he may not be fully settled in his new place; or some emotional strain may have set itself up——"
"I vote for the emotional strain," said Foster bluntly.
"A guess in the dark," commented Randolph, and paused. He himself knew little enough of Cope as a complex. He had met him but a few times, and could not associate him with his unknown background. He knew next to nothing of Cope's family, his connections, his intimates, his early associations and experiences. Nor had he greatly bestirred himself to learn. He had done little more than go to a library in the city and turn over the leaves of the Freeford directory. This publication, like most of those dealing with the smaller cities, gave separately the names of all the members of a family; and repetitions of the same address helped toward the arrangement of these individuals (disposed alphabetically) into family groups. Freeford had no great number of Copes, and several of them lived at 1636 Cedar Street. "Elm, Pine, Locust, Cedar," had thought Randolph; "the regular set." And, "One of the good streets," he surmised, "but rather far out. Cedar!" he repeated, and thought of Lebanon and the Miltonic Adonis. Of these various Copes, "Cope, David L., bookpr," might be the father,—unless "Cope, Leverett C., mgr" were the right man. If the former, he was employed by the Martin & Graves Furniture Company, and the Martins were probably important people who lived far out—and handsomely, one might guess—on a Prospect Avenue. . . . Then there was "Cope, Miss Rosalys M., schooltchr," same address as "David": she was likely his daughter. "H'm!" Randolph had thought, "these pickings are scanty,—enough anatomical reconstruction for to-day. . . ." And now he was thinking, as he sat opposite Foster, "If I had only picked up another bone or two, I might really have put together the domestic organism. Yet why should 1 trouble? It would all be plain, humdrum prose, no doubt. Glamour doesn't spread indefinitely. And then—men's brothers . . ."
"Well," asked Foster sharply, "are you mooning? Medora sat in the same place yesterday, and she talked for awhile too and then fell into a moonstruck silence. What's it all about?"
Randolph came out of his reverie. "Oh, I was just hoping the poor boy was back on his pins all right again."
Then he dropped back into thought. He was devising an outing designed to restore Cope to condition. If Cope could arrange for a free Saturday, they might contrive a week-end from Friday afternoon to Monday morning. It was too late for the north and too late for the opposite Michigan shore; but there was "down state" itself, where the days grew warmer and the autumn younger the farther south one went. There was a trip down a certain historic river,—historic, as our rivers went, and admirably scenic always. He recalled an exceptional hotel on one of its best reaches; one overrun in midsummer, but doubtless quiet at this season. It stood in the midst of some striking cliffs and gorges; and possibly one of the little river-steamers was in commission, or could be induced to run . . .
Foster dropped his muffler pettishly. "Read,—if you won't talk!"
"I can talk all right," returned Randolph. "In fact, I have a bit of news for you."
"What is it?"
"I'm going to move."
Foster peered out from under his shade.
"Move? What for? I thought you were all right where you are."
"All right enough; except that I want more room—and a house of my own."
"Have you found one?"
"I've about decided on an apartment. And I expect to move into it early next month."
"Top floor, of course?"
"No; first floor, not six feet above the street level."
"Good. If they'll lend me a hand here, to get down and out, I'll come and see you, now and then."
"Do so."
"That will give me a chance to wear this muffler, after all."
"So it will."
"Well, be a little more cordial. You expect to see your friends, don't you?"
"Of course. That's what it's for. Have I got to exert myself," he added, '"to be cordial with you?" "What's the neighborhood?"
"Oh, this one, substantially. The next street from where I am now."
"Housekeeper?"
"I think I'll have a Jap alone, at first."
"Dinners?"
"A few small try-outs, perhaps."
"Mixed parties?"
"Not at the beginning, anyhow."
"Oh; bachelor's hall."
"About that."
Foster readjusted his shade, and drove his needles into his ball of yarn.
"Complete new outfit?"
"Well, I have some things in storage."
"How about the people you're with now?"
"Their lease is up in the spring. They may go on; they may not. Fall's the time to change."
Foster drew out his needles again and fell to work. "You ought to have seen Hortense the next morning. She put my tray on the table, and then went down in a heap on the floor—or it sounded like that. She was fainting away at dinner, she said."
"She found it amusing?"
"I don't know how she found it," returned Foster shortly. "If ever I do anything like that at your house, run me home."
"Not if it's raining. I shall be able to tuck you away somewhere."
"Don't. I never asked to be a centre of interest."
"Well," returned Randolph merely, and fell silent.
Foster resumed work with some excess of vigor, and presently got into a snarl. "Dammit!" he exclaimed, "have I dropped another?"
Randolph leaned over to examine the work. "Something's wrong."
"Well, let it go. Enough for now. Read."
There followed a half hour of historical essay, during which Foster a few times surreptitiously fingered his needles and yarn.
"Shall you have a reading-circle at your new diggings?" he asked after a while.
"If two can be said to make a circle,—and if you will really come."
"I'm coming. But I never understood that only two points could establish a circle. Three, anyway."
"Circle!" exclaimed Randolph. "Don't worry the word to death."
He went away presently, and as he walked his thoughts returned to Indian Rock. The excursion seemed a valid undertaking at an advantageous time; and he could easily spare a couple of days from the formation of his new establishment. He called on Cope that evening. Cope felt sure he could clear things for Saturday, and expressed pleasure at the general prospect. He happened to be writing to Lemoyne that evening and passed along his pleasure at the prospect to his friend. A few jaunts, outings or interludes of that kind, together with his week at his home in Freeford, over Christmas, would agreeably help fill in the time before Arthur's own arrival in January.
Randolph received Cope's response with gratification; it was pleasant to feel oneself acceptable to a younger man. In the intervals between his early looking at rugs and napery he collected timetables and folders, made inquiries, and had some correspondence with the manager of the admirable hotel. He had a fondness for well-kept hostelries just before or just after the active season. It was a pleasure to breakfast or dine in some far corner of a large and almost empty dining-room. It would be a pleasure to stroll through those gorges, which would be reasonably certain to be free from litter, and to perch on the crags, which would be reasonably certain to be free from picnic parties. It would be agreeable also to sleep in a chamber far from town noises and grimes, with few honks from late excursionists and but little early morning clatter from a diminished staff. And the river boats were still running on Sunday.
"It will brace him for the rest of his fall term," thought Randolph, "and me for my confounded shopping. And during some one of our boat-rides or rambles, I shall tell him of my plans for the winter." The departure, it was agreed upon, should take place late on Friday afternoon. On Friday, at half past eleven, Randolph, at his office in the city, received a long-distance call from Churchton. Cope announced, with a breathless particularity not altogether disassociated from self-conscious gaucherie, that he should be unable to go. Some unexpected work had been suddenly thrown upon him . . . He rather thought that one or two of his family might be coming to town for over Sunday . . .
The telephone, as a conveyor of unwelcome messages, strikes a medium between the letter by mail and the face-to-face interview. If it does not quite give chance for the studied guardedness and calculated plausibility of the one, it at least obviates some of the risk involved in personal presence and in the introduction of contradictory evidence often contributed by manner and by facial expression. And a long distance interview must be brief,—at least there can be no surprise, no indignation, if it is made so.
"Very well," said Randolph, in reply to Cope's hurried and indistinct words. "I'm sorry," he added, and the brief talk was over. "You are feeling all right, I hope," he would have added, as the result of an afterthought; but the connection was broken.
Randolph left the instrument. He felt dashed, a good deal disappointed, and a little hurt. He took two or three folders from a pigeon-hole and dropped them into a waste-basket. Well, the boy doubtless had his reasons. But a single good one, frankly put forth, would have been better than duplicate or multiple reasons. He hoped that, on Sunday, a cold drizzle rather than a flood of sunlight might fall upon the autumn foliage of Indian Rock. And he would turn to-morrow to good account by looking, for an hour or two, at china.
Sunday afternoon was gorgeously bright and autumnal in Churchton, whatever it may have been along the middle reaches of the Illinois river; and at about four o'clock Randolph found himself in front of Medora Phillips' house. Medora and her young ladies were out strolling, as was inevitable on such a day; but in her library he found Foster lying on a couch—the same piece of furniture which, at a critical juncture, had comforted Cope.
"Peter brought me down," said the cripple. "I thought I'd rather look at the backs of books than at the fronts of all those tedious pictures. Besides, I'm beginning to practice for my call at your new quarters." Then, with a sudden afterthought: "Why, I understood you were going somewhere out of town. What prevented?"
"Well, I changed my plans. I needed a little more time for my house-furnishing. I was looking yesterday at some table-ware for your use; am wondering, in fact, if Mrs. Phillips couldn't arrange to give me the benefit of her taste to-morrow or Tuesday . . ."
"She likes to shop," replied Foster, "and taste is her strong suit. I'll speak to her,—she's gone off to some meeting or other. Isn't this just the afternoon to be spending indoors?" he commented brusquely. "What a day it would be for the country," he added, sending his ineffectual glance in the direction of Randolph's face.
"We Churchtonians must take what we can get," Randolph replied, with an attempt at indifference. "Our rus in urbs isn't everything, but there are times when it must be made to serve."
Foster said nothing. Silent conjecture, seemingly, was offered him as his part.