Several of the party threaded their way down over the sliding sandy path which led through the pines and junipers. Cope was willing to go with the others—on the present understanding. He objected to promiscuous bathing even more strongly than he objected to promiscuous dancing.
There were some new cumuli in the east, out above the water, and they began to take the late afternoon sun. Hortense cast about for just the right point of view, with Carolyn to help on “atmosphere” and two young men to be superserviceable over campstool, sketch-block and box of colors. She brought back a few dabs which may have served some future use;—at all events they served as items in a social record.
Cope and Amy, with some of the others, strolled off in the opposite direction. The water remained smooth, and some of the men idly skipped stones. One of them dipped in his hand. “Cold?” he exclaimed; “I should say!”
Amy looked admiringly at Cope, as one who had braved, beyond season, the chill of the great deep, and he tried to reward her with a “thought” or two. He had skipped stones himself between dips, and Randolph had made a reflection which he could now revise and employ.
“See!” he said, as a flat, waveworn piece of slate left the hand of the young businessman and careered over the water; “one, two, three—six, eight—ten, thirteen; and then down, down, after all—down to the bottom. And so we end—every one of us. The great thing is to crowd in all the action we can before the final plunge comes—to go skipping and splashing as hard and long and fast and far as we may!”
A valuable thought, possibly, and elaborated beyond Randolph’s sketchy and casual utterance; but Amy looked uncomfortable and chilled and glanced with little favor at a few other flat stones lying at her feet. “Please don’t. Please change the subject,” she seemed to ask.
She changed it herself. “You sang beautifully,” she said, with some return of warmth—even with some approach to fervor.
“Oh, I can sing,” he returned nonchalantly, “if I can only have my hands in my pockets, or waving in the air, or anywhere but on a keyboard.”
“I wish you had let them persuade you to sing another.” She was not only willing to admire, but desirous: conscientious amends, perhaps, for an earlier verdict. “One or two more skips, you know, after getting started.”
“Oh, once was enough. A happy coincidence. The next might have been an unhappy one.”
“You have never learned to accompany yourself?”
“As you’ve seen, I’m a rather poor hand at it; I’ve depended a good deal on others. Or, better, on another.”
She looked at him earnestly. “Have you ever sung to an obbligato?”
“None of my songs, thus far, has called for one. An obbligato? Never so much honored. No, indeed. Why, to me it would seem almost like singing with an orchestra. Imagine a cello. Imagine a flute—still I’m not a soprano going mad. Or imagine a saxophone; that might be droll.”
He gave out a sort of dragging bleat. She did not smile; perhaps she felt such an approach to waggery unworthy of him. Perhaps she was holding him up to the dignity of the natural scene, and to the importance of the occasion as she conceived it.
Cope had no desire to figure as a comique, and at once regained sobriety. “Of course,” he admitted, “we are not at a thé dansant or a cabaret. Such things ought not to be thought of—here.”
She turned her eyes on him again, with a new look of sympathy and understanding. Perhaps understanding between them had failed or lapsed but a moment before.
“How all of this shames the town!” she said.
“And us—if we misbehave,” he added.
Mrs. Phillips came scurrying along, collecting her scattered guests, as before. “Tea!” she said. “Tea for one or two who must make an early start back to town. Also a sip and a bite for those who stay.”
She moved along toward Hortense and her little group. Hortense’s “color-notes” did not appear to amount to much. Hortense seemed to have been “fussed”—either by an excess of company and of help, or by some private source of discontent and disequilibrium.
“Come,” Mrs. Phillips cried to her, “I need every Martha to lend a hand.” Hortense rose, and one of her young men picked up her campstool.
“So glad you haven’t got to go early,” said Mrs. Phillips to Randolph and Cope. “In fact, you might stay all night. It will be warm, and there are cots and blankets for the porch.”
“Thanks, indeed,” said Cope. “But I have a class at eight-fifteen tomorrow morning, and they’ll be waiting to hear about the English Novel in the Eighteenth Century, worse luck! Fielding and Richardson and—”
“Are you going to explain Pamela and Clarissa to them?” asked Hortense. She was abrupt and possibly a bit scornful.
Cope seemed to scent a challenge and accepted it. “I am. The women may figure on the covers, but the men play their own strong part through the pages.”
“I seem to recall,” contributed Mrs. Phillips, “that Sir Charles Grandison figured both ways.”
“That prig!” said Hortense.
“Well, if you can’t stay overnight,” Mrs. Phillips proceeded, “at least stay a few hours for the moonlight. The moon will be almost full tonight, and the walk across the marshes to the trolley-line ought to be beautiful. Or Peter could run you across in eight or ten minutes.”
She did not urge Randolph to remain in the absence of Cope, though Randolph’s appearance at his office at ten in the morning would have surprised no one, and have embarrassed no one.
Tea was served before the big fireplace in which a small flame to heat the kettle was rising. Randolph set his empty cup on the shelf above.
“Notice,” said Mrs. Phillips to him, “that poem of Carolyn’s just behind your cup: ‘Summer Day in
