“I think I can have just one kind, for once,” she had said to herself. “I know several houses where they have two—Churchton or not—and at least one where they sometimes have three. If this simple town thinks I can put grape-juice and Apollinaris before such people as these. …” Besides, the interesting Cope might interestingly refuse!
As the many courses moved on, Cope smelt the flowers, which were too many, and some of them too odoriferous; he blinked at the lights and breathed the heavy thickening air; and he took—interestingly—a few sips of burgundy—for he was now in Rome, and no longer a successful Protestant in some lesser town of the empire. He had had a hard, close day of it, busy indoors with themes and with general reading; and he recalled being glad that the dinner had begun with reasonable promptitude—for he had bothered with no lunch beyond a glass of milk and a roll. Tonight there had been everything—even to an unnecessary entrée. He laid down a spoon on his plate, glad that the frozen pudding—of whatever sort—was disposed of. Too much of everything after too little. The people opposite were far away; their murmuring had become a mumbling, and he wished it was all over. The granddaughter at his elbow was less rewarding than ever, less justificatory of the effortful small-talk which he had put forth with more and more labor, and which he could scarcely put forth now at all. What was it he was meaning to do later? To sing? Absurd! Impossible! His head ached; he felt faint and dizzy. …
“We will leave you gentlemen to your cigars,” he heard a distant voice saying; and he was conscious for an instant that his hostess was looking down the table at him with a face of startled concern. …
“Don’t try to lead him out,” a deep voice said. “Lay him on the floor.”
He felt himself lowered; some small rug was doubled and redoubled and placed under his head; a large, firm hand was laid to his wrist; and something—a napkin dipped in a glass of water and then folded?—was put to his forehead.
“His pulse will come up in a minute,” he heard the same deep voice say. “If he had taken a step he would have fainted altogether.”
“My poor, dear boy! Whatever in the world … !” Thus Medora Phillips.
“Better not be moved for a little,” was the next pronouncement.
Cope lay there inert, but reasonably conscious of what was going on. His eyes gave him no aid, but his ears were open. He heard the alarmed voice of Medora Phillips directing the disconcerted maids, and the rustle and flutter of the garments of other daughters of Eve, who had found him interesting at last. They remarked appreciatively on his pallor; and one of them said, next day, before forgetting him altogether, that, with his handsome profile (she mentioned especially his nose and chin) and with his colorlessness, he looked for a moment like an ancient cameo.
He knew, now, that he was not going to faint, and that he was in better case than he seemed. In the circumstances he found nothing more original to say than: “I shall be all right in no time; just a touch of dizziness. …” He was glad his dress-coat could stand inspection, and hoped nobody would notice that his shoes had been half-soled. …
After a little while he was led away to a couch in the library. The deep-voiced doctor was on one side of him and Medora Phillips on the other. Soon he was left alone to recuperate in the dark—alone, save for one or two brief, fluttery appearances by Mrs. Phillips herself, who allowed the coffee to be passed without any supervision on her own part.
On the second of these visitations he found voice to say:
“I’m so sorry for this—and so ashamed. I can’t think how it could have happened.”
He was ashamed, of course. He had broken up an entertainment pretty completely! Servants running about for him when they had enough to do for the company at large! All the smooth conventions of dinner-giving violently brushed the wrong way! He had fallen by the roadside, a young fellow who had rather prided himself on his health and vigor. Pitiful! He was glad to lie in the dark with his eyes shut tight, tight.
If he had been fifteen or twenty years older he might have taken it all rather more lightly. Basil Randolph, now—But Randolph had not been invited, though his sister and her husband were of the company. Yet had it been Randolph, he would have smiled a wan smile and tried for a mild joke, conscious that he had made an original and picturesque contribution to the affair—had broken the bland banality of routined dinner-giving and had provided woman with a mighty fine chance to “minister” and fuss: a thing she rather enjoyed doing, especially if a hapless, helpless man had been delivered into her hands as a subject.
But there was no such consolation for poor abashed Cope. He had disclosed himself, for some reason or other, a weakling; and he had weakened at a conspicuously wrong time and in a conspicuously mistaken place. He had hoped, over the cigars and coffee, to lay the foundation of an acquaintance with the brother-in-law who was a trustee—to set up an identity in this influential person’s mind as a possible help to the future of Arthur Lemoyne. But the man now in the dining-room, or the drawing-room, or wherever, might as well be in the next state.
There came a slight patter of rain on the bay-window near his head. He began to wonder how he was to get home.
Meanwhile, in the drawing-room, among the ladies, Mrs. Phillips was anxiously asking: “Was the room too warm? Could the wine have been too much for him?” And out in the dining-room itself, one man said, “Heaven knows just how they live;” and another, “Or what they eat, or don’t eat;” and a
