“We broke up about eleven, and Mr. Randolph suggested that, as we lived in the same general direction, we might walk homeward together. Great heaven! it’s eleven—and five after—now! Enough, in all conscience, for tonight. You shall have the rest tomorrow.”
VII
Cope Under Scrutiny
An evening or two later Cope again corked his red ink and uncorked his black.
“As I have said, Mr. Randolph and I walked home together. He stopped for a moment in front of his place. Another large, handsome house. He told me he had the use of his quarters as long as his landlord’s lease ran, and asked me to come round some time and see how he was fixed. Then he said suddenly that the evening was fine and the night young and that he would walk on with me to my quarters, if I didn’t mind. Of course I didn’t—he seemed so friendly and pleasant; but I let him learn for himself that I was far from being lodged in any architectural monument. Well, we went on for the necessary ten minutes, and he didn’t seem at all put out by the mediocre aspect of the house where I have put up. He sort of took it all for granted—as if he knew about it already. In fact, on the way from his place to mine, I no more led him (as I sense it now) than he led me. He hesitated at no corner or crossing. ‘I am an old Churchtonian,’ he said incidentally—as if he knew everything and everybody. He also mentioned, just as incidentally, that he had a brother-in-law on our board of trustees. Of course I promised to go round and see him. I presume that I shall drop in on him some time or other. Come down here, and you shall have one more house of call.
“He stopped for a moment in front of my diggings, taking my hand to say goodnight and taking his own time in dropping it. Enough is enough. ‘You have the small change needed for paying your way through society,’ he said, with a sort of smile. ‘I must cultivate a few little arts myself,’ he went on; ‘they seem necessary in some houses. But I’m glad, after all, that I didn’t remember tonight that a tribute was likely to be levied; it would have taken away my appetite and have made the whole evening a misery in advance. As things went, I had, on the whole, a pleasant time. Only, I understood that you sang; and I was rather hoping to hear you.’ ‘I do best with my regular accompanist,’ I returned—meaning you, of course. I hope you don’t mind being degraded to that level. ‘And your regular accompanist is not—not—?’ ‘Is miles away,’ I replied. ‘A hundred and fifty of them,’ I might have added, if I had chosen to be specific. Now, if he had wanted to hear me, why hadn’t he asked? He would have needed only to second Mrs. Phillips herself; and there he was, just on the other side of me. In consequence of his reticence I was driven—or drove myself—to blank verse. And that other man, the one in the chair; he may have had his expectations too. Arthur, Arthur, try to grasp the situation! You must come down here, and you must bring your hands with you. Tell the bishop and the precentor that you are needed elsewhere. They will let you off. Of course I know that a village choir needs every tenor it can get—and keep; but come. If they insist, leave your voice behind; but do bring your hands and your reading eye. Don’t let me go along making my new circle think I’m an utter dub. Tell your father plainly that he can never in the world make a wholesale-hardware-man out of you. Force him to listen to reason. What is one year spent in finding out just what you are fit for? Come along; I miss you like the devil; nobody does my things as sympathetically as you do. Give up your old anthems and your old tinware and tenpennies and come along. I can bolt from this hole at a week’s notice, and we can go into quarters together: a real bed instead of an upholstered shelf, and a closet big enough for two wardrobes (if mine really deserves the name). We could get our own breakfast, and you could take a course in something or other till you found out just what the Big Town could do for you. In any event you would be bearing me company, and your company is what I need. So pack up and appear.”
The delay in the posting of this appeal soon brought from Winnebago a letter outside the usual course of correspondence. It was on a fresh sheet and under a new dateline that Cope continued. After a page of generalities and of attention to particular points in the letter from Wisconsin, Cope took up his own line of thought.
“I had meant, of course, to look in on him within a
