Chapter 11

"Why the Sassafras has Three Kinds of Leaves!" cried Medora in triumph. Mittens for midsummer made no difficulty.

Cope gave Carolyn careful thanks for her support at the piano, and did not see that she felt he too could be a poet if he only would. He went out of his way to shake hands with Hortense, and did not realize how nearly a new quarrel had opened. He stepped over to do the like with Amy; but she went out with him into the hall,--the only one of the party who did,--and even accompanied him to the front door.

"Thank you so much," she said, looking up into his face smilingly and holding his hand with a long, clinging touch. "It went beautifully; and there are others that will go even better."

"Others?" He thought, for an instant, that she was thanking him for his Legend and was even threatening to regard him as a flowing fount of invention; but he soon realized that her mind was fixed exclusively on their duet--if such it was to be called.

"The deuce!" he thought. "Enough is enough."

Despite his success with the Sassafras, he went home discomforted and even flustered. That hand was too much like the hand of possession. The girl was stealing over him like a light, intangible vapor. He struck ahead with a quicker gait, as if trying to outwalk a creeping fog. One consolation, however: Hortense had come like a puff of wind. Even a second squall from the same quarter would not be altogether amiss.

And had there not been one further fleeting source of reassurance? Had he not, on leaving, caught through the open door of the drawing room an elevation of Medora Phillips' eyebrows which seemed to say fondly, indulgently, yet a bit ironically, "Oh, you foolish girl!"? Yet if a girl is foolish, and is going to persist in her folly, a lightly lifted pair of eyebrows will not always stay her course. Her gathering momentum is hardly to be checked by such slender means.

19

_COPE FINDS HIMSELF COMMITTED_

Amy Leffingwell, having written once, found it easier to write again. And having strolled along the edge of the bluff with Cope on that fateful Sunday, she found it natural to intercept him on other parts of the campus (where their paths might easily cross), or to stroll with him, after casual encounters carefully planned, through sheets of fallen leaves under the wide avenues of elms just outside. Her third note almost summoned him to a rendezvous. It annoyed him; but he might have been more than annoyed had he known of her writing, rather simply, to a rather simple mother in Fort Lodge, Iowa, about her hopes and her expectations. Her mother had, of course, heard in detail of the rescue; and afterward had heard in still greater detail, as the roseate lime-light of idealization had come to focus more exactly on the scene. She had had also an unaffected appreciation--or several--of Cope's personal graces and accomplishments. She had heard, lastly, of Cope's song to her daughter's obbligato: a duet _in vacuo_, since Carolyn had been suppressed and the surrounding company had been banished to a remote circumference. What wonder that she began to see her daughter and Bertram Cope in an admirable isolation and to intimate that she hoped, very soon, for definite news?

Well, not a few of us have met an Amy Leffingwell: some plump-faced, pink-cheeked child, with a delicate little concave nose not at all "strong," and a fine little chin none too vigorously moulded, and a pair of timid candid blue eyes shadowed by a wisp or so of fluffy hair--and have not always taken her for what she was. She "wouldn't hurt a kitten," we say; and we assume that her "striking out a line for herself" is the last thing she would try to do. Yet such an unimpressive and disarming façade may mask large chambers of stubbornness and tenacity.

Amy knew how long and hard she had thought of Cope, and she asked for some evidence that he had been thinking long and hard of her. She desired a "response." But, in fact, he had been thinking of her only when he must. He thought of her whenever he saw himself caught in that flapping sail, and he thought of her whenever he recalled that she had taken it on herself to select his songs. But he did not want her to make out-and-out demands on his time and attention. Still less did he want her to talk about "happiness." This had come to be her favorite topic, and she discoursed on it profusely: he was almost ungracious enough to say that she did so glibly. "Happiness"--that conventional bliss toward which she was turning her mind as they strolled together on these late November afternoons--was for him a long way ahead. How furnish a house, how clothe and feed a wife?--at least until his thesis should be written and a place, with a real salary, found in the academic world. How, even, buy an engagement ring--that costly superfluity? How even contrive to pay for all the small gifts and attentions which an engagement involved? Yet why ask himself such questions? For he was conscious of a fundamental repugnance to any such scheme of life and was acutely aware that--for awhile, at least, and perhaps for always--he wanted to live in quite a different mode.

Amy's confident assumptions began to fill the house, to alter its atmosphere. Medora Phillips, who had begun by raising her eyebrows in light criticism, now lowered them in frowning protest. She had found Cope "charming"; but this charm of his was to add to the attractiveness of her house and to give her a high degree of personal gratification. It was not to be frittered away; still less was it to be absorbed elsewhere. Hortense, who had been secretly at work on a portrait-sketch of Cope in oil, and rather despising herself for it, now began to make another bold picture in her own mind. She saw herself handing out the sketch to Cope in person, with an air of high bravado; she might say, if bad came to worse, that she had found some professional interest in his color or in his "planes." On one occasion Medora hardily requisitioned Cope for an evening at the theatre, in the city; miles in and miles back she had him in her car all to herself; and if Amy, next day, appeared to feel that wealth and organization had taken an unfair advantage of simple, honest love, Medora herself was troubled by no stirrings of conscience.

The new atmosphere reached even Foster on the top floor; and when, one evening in mid-December, he finally carried out his long-meditated plan to dine with Randolph, the household situation was uppermost in his mind. That he had not the clearest understanding of the situation did not diminish his interest in it. Though he sat in the dark, and far apart, some sense all his own, cultivated through years of deprivation, came to his aid. Peter brought him down the street and round the corner; and Randolph's Chinaman, fascinated by his green shade and his tortuous method of locomotion (once out of his wheeled-chair), did the rest. "You had better stay all night," Randolph had suggested; and he was glad to avoid a second awkward trip on the same evening.

Foster had wondered whether Cope would be present. He had not asked to meet him--for he hardly knew whether he wished to or not. Though this was an "occasion,"--and his,--he had left Randolph to act quite as he might choose. There was a third chair at table and Randolph delayed dinner ten minutes while waiting for it to be filled.

"Well, let's go in and sit down," he said presently, with a slight twist of the mouth. He spoke lightly, as if it were as easy for Foster to sit down as for himself. But Foster got into his place after a moment and contrived to spread his napkin over his legs.

"I expected Bertram Cope," Randolph went on; "but he isn't here, and I have no word from him and do not know whether----"

He paused, obviously at a loss.

"Not here?" repeated Foster. "Is there, then, one place where he is not?"

"Why, Joe----!"

"Our house is full of him!" Foster burst out raucously. He had removed the green _abat-jour_, for the candle-shades (as they sometimes will) were performing their office. In the low but clear light his face seemed distorted.

"He rises to my floor like incense. The very halls and stairways reek with his charms and perfections."

"Well, you escape him here," said Randolph ruefully.

"The whole miserable place is steaming with expectation,--with the deadly aroma of a courtship going stale. I can't stand it! I can't stand it!"

"Courtship?"

"You may think it takes two, but it doesn't. That foolish girl has thrown the whole place into discomfort and confusion; and I don't know who's for or who's against----"

"What foolish girl?" asked Randolph quickly. Sing-Lo was at his elbow, changing plates: it was assumed, justly enough, that he would not be able to follow the intricacies of a situation purely occidental.

"Our Amy," replied Foster, with a dash of bitterness.

"Amy Leffingwell?" asked Randolph, still more quickly.

Foster had blind eyes, but alert ears. He felt that Randolph was surprised and displeased. And indeed his host was both. That boy fallen maladroitly in love? thought Randolph. It was a second check. He had exerted himself to show a friendliness for Cope, had expected to enjoy him while he stayed on for his months in town, and had hoped to help push his fortunes in whatever other field he might enter. He had even taken his present quarters--no light task, all the details considered--to make Cope's winter agreeable, no less than his own. And now? First the uncounted-upon friend from Wisconsin with whom Cope was arranging to live; next, this sudden, unexpected affair with that girl at Medora's. Did the fellow not know his own mind? Could he formulate no hard-and-fast plan? Here Randolph, in his disappointment, inconsistently forgot that a hard-and-fast plan was largely his real annoyance and grievance. Then he remembered. He looked at the vacant place, and tried for composure and justice.

"I shall probably hear some good reason, in due time," he said.

"I hope so," rejoined Foster; "but it takes these young fellows to be careless--and ungrateful." He made no pretense of ignoring the fact that Randolph had moved into this apartment more on account of Cope than for any other reason.

"H'm, yes," responded Randolph thoughtfully. "I suppose it is the tendency of a young fellow who has never quite stood on his own legs financially to accept about everything that comes his way, and to accept it as a matter of course."

"It is," said Foster.

"I know that _I_ was that way," continued Randolph, looking studiously at the nearest candle-shade. "I was beyond the middle twenties before I quite launched out for myself, and any kindness received was taken without much question and without much thanks. I presume that he still has some assistance from home...."

He dropped youthful insouciance over favors received to consider the change that marriage makes in a young man's status. "I wouldn't go so far as to assert that a young man married is a man that's marred----"

"This _is_ stiff doctrine," Foster acknowledged.

"But somehow he does seem done for. He is placed; he is cut off from wide ranges of interesting possibilities; he offers himself less invitingly to the roving imagination...."

Meanwhile Cope, with Randolph's invitation driven altogether from his mind by more urgent matters, was pacing the streets, through the first snow-flurries of the winter, and was wondering, rather distractedly, just where he stood. Precisely what words, at a very brief yet critical juncture, had he said, or not said? Exactly how had he phrased--or failed to phrase--the syllables which constituted, perhaps, a turning-point in his life?

Amy Leffingwell had demanded his attendance for one more walk, that afternoon, and he had not been dextrous enough, face to face with her, to refuse. She had expressed herself still more insistently on "happiness"--(on hers, his, theirs; the two were one, in her view)--and on a future shared together. In just what inadequate way had he tried to fend her off? Had he said, "I shall have to wait?" Or had his blundering tongue said, instead, "We should have to wait?"--or even worse, "We shall have to wait?" In any event, he had used that cowardly, temporizing word "wait"--for she had instantly seized upon it. Why, yes, indeed; she was willing to wait; she had expected to wait....

He turned out from an avenue lighted with electric globes, past which the snowflakes were drifting, and entered a quieter and darker side-street. In the dusk she had put up her face, expecting to be kissed; and he, partly out of pity for the expression that came when he hesitated, and partly out of pure embarrassment and inexpertness, had lightly touched her lips. That had sealed it, possibly. He saw her sitting in rapt fancy in her bedroom--if not more vocal in the rooms below. He saw her writing to an unseen mother in a tone of joyful complacency, and looking at her finger for a ring which he could not place there. He saw the distaste of his own home circle, to which this event had come at least a year too soon. He saw the amazement, and worse, of Arthur Lemoyne, whose plans for coming to town were now all made and to whom this turn would prove a psychological shock which might deter him from coming at all. But, most of all, he saw--and felt to the depths of his being--his own essential repugnance to the life toward which he now seemed headed. What an outlook for Christmas! What an unpleasant surprise for his parents! What opportunity in Amy Leffingwell's holiday vacation at Fort Lodge to reinforce the written page by the spoken word! Still forgetful of his engagement with Randolph, he continued to walk the streets. He turned in at midnight, hoping he might sleep, and trusting that morning would throw a less sinister light on his misadventure.

Long before this, Joseph Foster had been put to bed, by Sing-Lo, in this spare room. It was Foster's crutch, rather than a knightly sword, which leaned against the door-jamb; and it was Foster's crooked members, rather than the straight young limbs of Cope, which first found place among the sheets and blankets of that shining new brass bedstead.

20

_COPE HAS A DISTRESSFUL CHRISTMAS_

Cope awakened at seven. After an early interval of happy lightness, there came suddenly and heavily the crushing sense of his predicament. How monstrous it was that one instant of time, one ill-considered action, one poorly-chosen word could clamp a repellent burden on a man for the rest of his life!

Well, he must expect telephone messages and letters. They came. That afternoon Mrs. Peck had "a lady's voice" to report: "It sounded like a _young_ lady's voice," she added. And she looked at Cope with some curiosity: a "young lady" asking for him over the wire was the rarest thing in the world.

Next day came the first note. The handwriting was utterly new to him; but his intuition, applied instantly to the envelope, told him of the source. The nail, driven, was now to be clinched. She had the right to ask him to come; and she did ask him to come--"soon."

Cope's troubled eyes sought the calendar above his table. How many days to Christmas? How much time might he spend in Freeford? How long before Christmas might he arrange to leave Churchton? The holidays at home loomed as a harbor of refuge. By shortening as far as possible the interval here and by lengthening as far as possible the stay with his family, he might cut down, in some measure, the imminent threatenings of awkwardness and constraint; then, beyond the range of anything but letters, he might study the unpleasant situation at his leisure and determine a future course.

He set himself to answer Amy's note. He hoped, he said, to see her in a few days, but he was immensely busy in closing the term-work before the holidays; he also suggested that their affair--"their" affair!--be kept quiet for the present. Yet he had all too facile a vision of beatific meditations that were like enough to give the situation away to all the household; and he was nervously aware of Amy Leffingwell as continually on the verge of bubbling confidences.

He also wrote to Lemoyne. His letter was less an announcement than a confession.

"I like this!" began Lemoyne's reply, with abrupt, impetuous sarcasm. "You have claimed, more than once," he went on, "to have steadied me and kept me out of harm's way; but I've never yet made any such demands on you as you are making on me. This thing can't go on, and you know it as well as I do. Nip it. Nip it now. Don't think that our intimacy is to end in any such fashion as this, for it isn't--especially at this particular time."...

Lemoyne proceeded to practical matters. "If that room is still free, engage it from the first of January. I will have a few things sent down. Father is weakening a little. Anyhow, I've got enough money for a couple of months. I will join you in Freeford between Christmas and New Year's (nearer the latter, probably), and we will go back together."...

Cope rather took heart from these rough, outspoken lines. Lemoyne was commonly neither rough nor outspoken; but here was an emergency, involving his own interests, which must be dealt with decisively. Cope seemed to feel salvation on the way. Perhaps that was why he still did so little to save himself. He took the new room; he had one meeting with Amy; and he left for home at least two days before he was strictly entitled to do so.

The meeting took place in Mrs. Phillips' drawing-room; he would trust himself to no more strolls on the campus, to no more confabs in college halls. There was protection in numbers, and numbers seldom failed beneath Medora Phillips' roof. They failed this time, however. Mrs. Phillips and Hortense were away at a reading; only Amy and Carolyn were at home. Cope seized on Carolyn as at a straw. He thanked her warmly again for her halting offices in the matter of that last song, and he begged that he might hear some of her recent verse. His appeal was vehement, almost boisterous: Carolyn, surprised, felt that he was ready at last to grant her a definite personality.

Amy tried in vain to remove Carolyn from the board. But Carolyn, like Hortense, had finally joined the ranks of the "recognized"; she was determined (being still ignorant, Cope was glad to see, regarding Amy's claims) to make this recognition so marked as to last beyond the moment. She played a little--not well. She read. She even accompanied Amy to the door at the close of Cope's short stay. He shook hands with them both. He had decided that he would do no more than this with Amy, in any event, and Carolyn's presence made his predetermined course easy, even obligatory. Yet he went out into the night feeling, somehow, that he had acted solely on his resolution and that he might consider himself a man of some decisiveness, after all. Amy had looked disappointed, but had contrived to whisper that she would write from Iowa. That, of course, was to be looked for, and would represent the combined efforts of herself and her home circle; yet he had a fortnight for consideration and counsel.

Cope, during his first few days at home, was moody and abstracted: his parents found him adding little to the Christmas cheer. His mother, always busy over domestic cares and now busier than ever, thought that he must have been working too hard. She would stand in the kitchen door with a half-trimmed pie on one hand and ponder him as he sat in the dining-room, staring absorbedly at the Franklin stove. His father, who saw him chiefly in the evening, by the gas-light of the old-fashioned house, found his face slightly pinched: was his pocket pinched too, and would he be likely, before leaving, to ask help toward making up a deficit? His sister Rosalys, who lived a life of dry routine, figured him as deep in love. He let several days pass without hinting what the real situation was.

There was interest all round when, the day before Christmas, the postman came along the bleak and flimsy street and left a letter for him. Cope was away from the house, and Rosalys, studying the envelope's penmanship and even its postmark, found vague confirmation of her theory: some college girl--one of his own students, probably--was home on vacation just as he was. If so, a "small town" person of caste and character like themselves; not brilliant, but safe. She set up the letter edgewise on the back parlor mantelpiece.

When Cope came in at noon and saw the letter, his face fell. He put it in his pocket, sat silent at table, and disappeared as soon as the meal was over. Rosalys, whose pupils were off her mind for a few days and who had thought to spare, began to shade her theory.

Cope read the letter in the low-ceiled back bedroom (the ceiling sloped away on one side) which had been his for so many years. Those years of happy boyhood--how far away they seemed now, and how completely past! Surely he had never thought to come back to these familiar walls to such effect as this.... Well, what did it say?

It said, in its four pages (yes, Amy had really limited herself thus), how joyous she was that the dear Christmas season had brought her such a beautiful love-gift; it said that mother was so pleased and happy--and even mentioned a sudden aunt; it said how willingly she would wait on until....

That evening Cope made his announcement. They were all seated round the reading-lamp in the back parlor, where the old Brussels carpet looked dim and where only venerated age kept the ornate French clock from seeming tawdry. Cope looked down at the carpet and up at the clock, and spoke.

Yes, they must have it.

His mother took the shock first and absorbed most of it. She led a humdrum life and she was ready to welcome romance. To help adjust herself she laid her hands, with a soft, sweeping motion, on the two brown waves that drew smoothly across her temples, and then she transferred them to his, held his head, and gave him a kiss. Rosalys took his two hands warmly and smiled, and he tried to smile back. His father twisted the tip of his short gray beard, watched his son's mien, and said little. Day after to-morrow, with the major part of their small Christmas festivities over, he would ask how this unexpected and unwarranted situation had come about, and how, in heaven's name, the thing was to be carried through: by what means, with whose help?... In his complex of thought the word "thesis" came to his tongue, but he kept from speaking it. He had been advised that his son had at last struck out definitely into some bookish bypath--just what bypath mattered little, he gathered, if it were but followed to the end. Yet the end was still far--and the boy evidently realized this. He was glad that Bertram was sober over the prospect and over his present plan--which was a serious undertaking, just now, in truth.

Cope had to adjust himself to all this, and to endure, besides, the congratulations--or the comments--of a number of tiresome relatives; and it was a relief when, on the twenty-ninth, Arthur Lemoyne finally arrived.

Lemoyne had been heralded as a young man of parts, and as the son of a family which enjoyed, in Winnebago, some significant share of worldly prosperity, and, therefore, of social consideration. The simpler Copes, putting him in the other back bedroom, the ceiling of which sloped the opposite way, wondered if they were quite giving him his just dues. When Rosalys came to set away his handbag and to rearrange, next morning, his brushes on the top of the dresser, she gathered from various indications supplied by his outfit that the front chamber, at whatever inconvenience to whomever, would have been more suitable. But, "Never mind," said her mother; "they'll do very well as they are--side by side, with the door conveniently between. Then Bert can look after him a little more and we a little less."