Chapter XXIV
Cope in Danger Anew
A similar satisfaction came to prevail in University circles, and in the lesser circle which Cope had formed outside. His own classroom, after a week, became a different place. There had been some disposition to take a facetious view of Cope's adventure. His class had felt him as cool and rather stiff, and comment would not be stayed. One bright girl thought he had spoiled a good suit of clothes for nothing. The boys, who knew how much clothes cost, and how much every suit counted, put their comment on a different basis. The more serious among them went no further, indeed, than to say that if a man had found himself making a mistake, the sooner he got out of it the better. For weeks this affair of Cope's had hung over the blackboard like a dim tapestry. Now it was gone; and when he tabulated in chalk the Elizabethan dramatists or the Victorian novelists there was nothing to prevent his students from seeing them.
Medora Phillips became sympathetic and tender. She let him understand that she thought he had been unfairly treated. This did not prevent her from being much kinder to Amy Leffingwell. Amy, earlier, had been so affected by the general change of tone that, more than once, she had felt prompted to take herself and her belongings out of the house. But she still lingered on, as she was likely to do, during a short engagement; and Mrs. Phillips was now amiability itself to George and Amy both.
Her method of soothing Cope was to take him to the theatre and the opera in town: he could scarcely come to the house. It was now late in January and the opera season was near its end. People were tiring of their boxes, or had started South: it had become almost a work of merit to fill a friend's box for her. During the last week of the season, Mrs. Phillips was put in position to do this. She invited Cope, and took along Hortense, and found in the city itself a married pair who could get to the place and home again without her help. Lemoyne would have made six, and the third man; but he was not bidden. Why pack the box? A better effect was made by presenting, negligently, one empty seat. Lemoyne dressed Cope, however. He had brought to Churchton the outgrown evening clothes; and Cope, in his exuberance, bought a new pair of light shoes and white gloves. He looked well as he sat on the back seat of the limousine with Medora Phillips, during the long drive in; and he looked well—strikingly, handsomely well—in the box itself. Indeed, thought Medora, he made other young men in nearby boxes—young men of "means" and "position"—look almost plebeian. "He is charming," she said to herself, over and over again.
What about him "took" her? Was it his slenderness, his grace? Was it his youthfulness, intact to this moment and promising an extension of agreeable possibilities into an entertaining future? Or was it more largely his fundamental coolness of tone? Again he was an icicle on the temple—this time the temple of song. "He is glittering," said Medora, intent on his blazing blue eyes, his beautiful teeth ever ready for a public smile, and the luminous backward sweep of his hair; "and he is not soft." She thought suddenly of Arthur Lemoyne; he, by comparison, seemed like a dark, yielding plum-pudding.
On the way into town Medora had had Hortense sit in front with Peter. This arrangement had enabled her to lay her hand more than once on Cope's, and to tell him again that he had been rather badly treated, and that Amy, when you came to it, was a poor slight child who scarcely knew her own mind. "I hope she has not made a mistake, after all," breathed Medora.
All this soothed Cope. The easy motion of the luxurious car half-hypnotized him; a scene of unaccustomed splendor and brilliancy lay just ahead . . . What wonder that Medora found him sceni-cally gratifying in her box (the dear creature's titillation made it seem "hers" indeed), and gave his name with great gusto to the young woman of the notebook and pencil? And the box was not at the back, but well along to one side, where people could better see him. Its number, too, was lower; so that, next morning, he was well up in the list, instead of at the extreme bottom, where two or three of the young men of means and position found themselves. Some of the girls in his class read his name, and had no more to say about wet clothes.
Hortense, on the front seat of the car, had had the good sense to say little and the acumen to listen much. She knew that Cope must "call" soon, and she knew it would be on some evening when he had been advised that Amy was not at home. There came, before long, an evening when Amy and George Pearson went into town for a musical comedy, and Cope walked across once more to the familiar house.
Hortense was in the drawing-room. She was brilliantly dressed, and her dark aggressive face wore a look of bravado. In her rich contralto she welcomed Cope with an initiative which all but crowded her aunt into second place. Under the very nose of Medora Phillips, whom she breezily seemed to regard as a chaperon, she brought forward the sketch of Cope in oils, which she had done partly from observation and partly from memory. She may have had, too, some slight aid from a photograph,—one which her aunt had wheedled out of Cope and had missed, on one occasion at least, from her desk in the library. Hortense now boldly asked his cooperation for finishing her small canvas.
Though the "wood-nymphs" of last autumn's legend might indeed be, as he had broadly said, "a nice enough lot of girls," they really were not all alike and indistinguishable: one of them at least, as he should learn, had thumbs.
Hortense wheeled into action.
"The composition is good," she observed, looking at the canvas as it stood propped against the back of a Chippendale chair; "and, in general, the values are all right. But——" She glanced from the sketch back to the subject of it.
Cope started. He recognized himself readily enough. However, he had had no idea that self-recognition was to be one of the pleasures of his evening.
"——but I shall need you yourself for the final touches—the ones that will make all the difference."
"It's pretty good as it is," declared Mrs. Phillips, who, privately, was almost as much surprised as Cope. "When did you get to do it?"
This inquiry, simple as it was, put the canvas in a new light—that of an icon long cherished as the object of private devotion. Hortense stepped forward to the chair and made an adjustment of the picture's position: she had a flush and a frown to conceal. "But never mind," she thought, as she turned the canvas toward a slightly different light; "if Aunt Medora wants to help, let her."
She did not reply to her aunt's question. "Retouched from life, and then framed—who knows?" she asked. Of course it would look immensely better; would look, in fact, as it was meant to look, as she could make it look.
She told Cope that she had set up a studio near the town square, not far from the fountain-basin and the elms——
"Which won't count for much at this time of year," interjected her aunt.
"Well, the light is good," returned Hortense, "and the place is quiet; and if Mr. Cope will drop in two or three times, I think he will end by feeling that I have done him justice."
"This is a most kind attention," said Cope, slightly at sea. "I ought to be able to find time some afternoon . . ."
"Not too late in the afternoon," Hortense cautioned. "The light in February goes early."
When Lemoyne heard of this new project he gave Cope a look. He had no concern as to Mrs. Phillips, who was, for him, but a rather dumpy, over-brisk, little woman of forty-five. If she must run off with Bert every so often in a motor-car, he could manage to stand it. Besides, he had no desire to shut Cope—and himself—out of a good house. But the niece, scarcely twenty-three, was a more serious matter.
"Look out!" he said to Cope. "Look out!"
"I can take care of myself," the other replied, rather tartly.
"I wish you could!" retorted Lemoyne, with poignant brevity. "I'll go with you."
"You won't!"
"I'd rather save you near the start, than have to try at the very end."
Cope flung himself out; and he looked in at Hortense's studio—which she had taken (or borrowed) for a month—before the week was half over.
Hortense had stepped into the shoes of a young gentlewoman who had been trying photography, and who had rather tired of it. At any rate, she had had a chance to go to Florida for a month and had seized it. Hortense had succeeded to her little north skylight, and had rearranged the rest to her own taste; it was a mingling of order and disorder, of calculation and of careless chance. She had a Victory of Samo-thrace and a green-and-gold dalmatic from some Tuscan town—— But why go on?
Cope had not been in this new milieu fifteen minutes before Randolph happened along.
Randolph, as a friend of the family, could scarcely be other than persona grata. Hortense, however, gave him no great welcome. She stopped in the work that had but been begun. The winter day was none too bright, and the best of the light would soon be past, she said. The engagement could stand over. In any event, he was there ("he," of course, meaning Cope), and a present delay would only add to the total number of his calls. Hortense began to wipe her brushes and to talk of tea.
"I'll go, I'll go," said Randolph obligingly. "I heard about the new shop only yesterday, and I wanted to see it. I don't exact that I shall witness the mysteries in active operation."
Cope's glance asked Randolph to remain.
"There are no mysteries," returned Hortense. "It's just putting on a few dabs of paint in the right places."
She continued to take a few dabs from her brushes and to talk tea. "Stay for a sip," she said.
"Very well; thank you," replied Randolph, and wondered how long "a sip" might mean.
In the end it meant no longer for him than for Cope; they came away together. Hortense held Cope for a moment to make a second engagement at an earlier hour.
Randolph had not met Cope for several days, except at the opera, where he had left his regular Monday evening seat in the parquet to spend a few moments in Mrs. Phillips' friend's box. He had never seen Cope in evening dress before; but he found him handsome and distinguished, and some of the glamour of that high occasion still lingered about the young man as he now walked through High Street, in his rather shabby tweeds, at Randolph's side.
Randolph looked back upon his dinner as a complete success: Pearson was engaged, and Cope was free. He now said to Cope:
"Of course you must know I feel you were none too handsomely treated. George is a pleasant, enterprising fellow, but somewhat sudden and rapacious. If he is happy, I hope you are no less happy yourself. . . ." Thus he resumed the subject which had been dropped at the Library door.
Cope shrank a little, and Randolph felt him shrinking. He fell silent; he understood. Pain sometimes took its own time to travel, and reached its goal by a slow, circuitous route. He thought suddenly of his bullfight in Seville, twenty-five years before. He had sat out his six bulls with entire composure; yet, back in America, some time later, he had encountered a bullfight in an early film and had not been able to follow it through. Cope, perhaps, was beginning to feel the edge of the sword and the drag at his vitals. The thing was over, and his, the elder man's, own part in it successfully accomplished; so why had he, conventional commentator, felt the need of further words?
He let the unhappy matter drop. When he spoke again he reminded Cope that the invitation for himself and Lemoyne still held good. Amy had been swept from the stage; but Lemoyne, a figure of doubt, was yet in its background. "I must have a 'close-up'," Randolph declared to himself, "and find out what he comes to." Cope had shown some reluctance to meet his advances—a reluctance which, he felt, was not altogether Cope's own.
"I know we shall be glad to come sometime," replied Cope, with seeming heartiness. This heartiness may have had its element of the genuine; at any rate, here was another "good house," from which no one need shut himself out without good cause. If Lemoyne developed too extreme a reluctance, he would be reminded that he was cherishing the hope of a position in the registrar's office, for at least half of the day; also, that Randolph enjoyed some standing in University circles, and that his brother-in-law was one of the trustees.
"Yes, indeed," continued Cope, in a further corroboration which might better have been dispensed with.
"You will be welcome," replied Randolph quietly. He would have preferred a single assurance to a double one.