“To be young!” he said. “To be young!”
Do you figure Basil Randolph, alongside his portière, as but the observer, the raisonneur, in this narrative? If so, you err. What!—you may ask—a rival, a competitor? That more nearly.
It was Medora Phillips herself who, within a moment or two, inducted him into this role.
A gap had come in her chat with Cope. He had told her all he had been asked to tell—or all he meant to tell: at any rate he had been given abundant opportunity to expatiate upon a young man’s darling subject—himself. Either she now had enough fixed points for securing the periphery of his circle or else she preferred to leave some portion of his area (now ascertained approximately) within a poetic penumbra. Or perhaps she wished some other middle-aged connoisseur to share her admiration and confirm her judgment. At all events—
“Oh, Mr. Randolph,” she cried, “come here.”
Randolph left his doorway and stepped across.
“Now you are going to be rewarded,” said the lady, broadly generous. “You are going to meet Mr. Cope. You are going to meet Mr.—” She paused. “Do you know,”—turning to the young man—“I haven’t your first name?”
“Why, is that necessary?”
“You’re not ashamed of it? Theodosius? Philander? Hieronymus?”
“Stop!—please. My name is Bertram.”
“Never!”
“Bertram. Why not?”
“Because that would be too exactly right. I might have guessed and guessed—!”
“Right or wrong, Bertram’s my name.”
“You hear, Mr. Randolph? You are to meet Mr. Bertram Cope.”
Cope, who had risen and had left any embarrassment consequent upon the short delay to Basil Randolph himself, shot out a hand and summoned a ready smile. Within his cuff was a hint for the construction of his forearm: it was lean and sinewy, clear-skinned, and with strong power for emphasis on the other’s rather short, well-fleshed fingers. And as he gripped, he beamed; beamed just as warmly, or just as coldly—at all events, just as speciously—as he had beamed before: for on a social occasion one must slightly heighten good will—all the more so if one be somewhat unaccustomed and even somewhat reluctant.
Mrs. Phillips caught Cope’s glance as it fell in all its glacial geniality.
“He looks down on us!” she declared.
“How down?” Cope asked.
“Well, you’re taller than either of us.”
“I don’t consider myself tall,” he replied. “Five foot nine and a half,” he proceeded ingenuously, “is hardly tall.”
“It is we who are short,” said Randolph.
“But really, sir,” rejoined Cope kindly, “I shouldn’t call you short. What is an inch or two?”
“But how about me?” demanded Mrs. Phillips.
“Why, a woman may be anything—except too tall,” responded Cope candidly.
“But if she wants to be stately?”
“Well, there was Queen Victoria.”
“You incorrigible! I hope I’m not so short as that! Sit down, again; we must be more on a level. And you, Mr. Randolph, may stand and look down on us both. I’m sure you have been doing so, anyway, for the past ten minutes!”
“By no means, I assure you,” returned Randolph soberly.
Soberly. For the young man had slipped in that “sir.” And he had been so kindly about Randolph’s five foot seven and a bit over. And he had shown himself so damnably tender toward a man fairly advanced within the shadow of the fifties—a man who, if not an acknowledged outcast from the joys of life, would soon be lagging superfluous on their rim.
Randolph stood before them, looking, no doubt, a bit vacant and inexpressive. “Please go and get Amy,” Mrs. Phillips said to him. “I see she’s preparing to give way to someone else.”
Amy—who was a blonde girl of twenty or more—came back with him pleasantly and amiably enough; and her aunt—or whatever she should turn out to be—was soon able to lay her tongue again to the syllables of the interesting name of Bertram.
Cope, thus finally introduced, repeated the facial expressions which he had employed already beside the tea-table. But he added no new one; and he found fewer words than the occasion prompted, and even required. He continued talking with Mrs. Phillips, and he threw an occasional remark toward Randolph; but now that all obstacles were removed from free converse with the divinity of the samovar he had less to say to her than before. Presently the elder woman, herself no whit offended, began to figure the younger one as a bit nonplussed.
“Never mind, Amy,” she said. “Don’t pity him, and don’t scorn him. He’s really quite self-possessed and quite chatty. Or”—suddenly to Cope himself—“have you shown us already your whole box of tricks?”
“That must be it,” he returned.
“Well, no matter. Mr. Randolph can be nice to a nice girl.”
“Oh, come now—”
“Well, shall I ask you to my house, after this?”
“No. Don’t. Forbid it. Banish me.”
“Give one more chance,” suggested Randolph sedately.
“Why, what’s all this about?” said the questioning glance of Amy. If there was any offense at all, on anybody’s part, it lay in making too much of too little.
“Take back my plate, somebody,” said Mrs. Phillips.
Randolph put out his hand for it.
“This sandwich,” said Amy, reaching
