“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 kinnikinnick. 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 businessman 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 businessman. 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 today.” 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 today.”
“Today 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. Today she seemed meditative, rather; even elegiac—unless there was a possible subacid 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
