“I’ll take it myself,” declared Mrs. Phillips, reaching out in turn. “Mr. Randolph, bring her a nibble of something.”
“I might—” began Cope.
“You don’t deserve the privilege.”
“Oh, very well,” he returned, lapsing into an easy passivity.
“Never mind, anyway,” said Amy, still without cognomen and connections; “I can starve with perfect convenience. Or I can find a mouthful somewhere, later.”
“Let us starve sitting,” said Randolph, “Here are chairs.”
The hostess herself came bustling up brightly.
“Has everybody … ?”
And she bustled away.
“Yes; everybody—almost,” said Mrs. Phillips to her associates, behind their entertainer’s back. “If you’re hungry, Amy, it’s your own fault. Sit down.”
And there let us leave them—our little group, our cast of characters: “everybody—almost,” save one. Or two. Or three.
II
Cope Makes a Sunday Afternoon Call
Medora Phillips was the widow of a picture-dealer, now three years dead. In his younger days he had been something of a painter, and later in life as much a collector as a merchandizer. Since his death he had been translated gradually from the lower region proper to mere traffickers on toward the loftier plane which harbored the more select company of art-patrons and art-amateurs. Some of his choicer ventures were still held together as a “gallery,” with a few of his own canvases included; and his surviving partner felt this collection gave her good reason for holding up her head among the arts, and the sciences, and humane letters too.
Mrs. Phillips occupied a huge, amorphous house some three-quarters of a mile to the west of the campus. It was a construction in wood, with manifold “features” suggestive of the villa, the bungalow, the château, the palace; it united all tastes and contravened all conventions. In its upper story was the commodious apartment which was known in quiet times as the picture-gallery and in livelier times as the ballroom. It was the mistress’ ambition to have the lively times as numerous as possible—to dance with great frequency among the pictures. Six or eight couples could gyrate here at once. There was young blood under her roof, and there was young blood to summon from outside; and to set this blood seething before the eyes of visiting celebrities in the arts and letters was her dearest wish. She had more than one spare bedroom, of course; and the Eminent and the Queer were always welcome for a sojourn of a week or so, whether they came to read papers and deliver lectures or not. She was quite as well satisfied when they didn’t. If they would but sit upon her wide veranda in spring or autumn, or before her big open fireplace in winter and “just talk,” she would be as open-eyed and open-eared as you pleased.
“This is much nicer,” she would say. Nicer than what, she did not always make clear.
Yes, the house was nearly three-quarters of a mile to the west of the campus, but it was twice as far as if it had been north or south. Trains and trolleys, intent on serving the interests of the great majority, took their own courses and gave her guests no aid. If the evening turned cold or blustery or brought a driving rain she would say:
“You can’t go out in this. You must stay all night. We have room and to spare.”
If she wanted anybody to stay very much, she would even add: “I can’t think of your walking toward the lake with such a gale in your face,”—regardless of the fact that the lake wind was the rarest of them all and that in nine cases out of ten the rain or snow would be not in people’s faces but at their backs.
If she didn’t want anybody to stay, she simply ordered out the car and bundled him off. The delay in the offer of the car sometimes induced a young man to remain. Tasteful pajamas and the promise of a suitably early breakfast assured him that he had made no mistake.
Cope’s first call was made, not on a tempestuous evening in the winter time, but on a quiet Sunday afternoon toward the end of September. The day was sunny and the streets were full of strollers moving along decorously beneath the elms, maples and catalpas.
“Drop in some Sunday about five,” Medora Phillips had said to him, “and have tea. The girls will be glad to meet you.”
“The girls”? Who were they, and how many? He supposed he could account for one of them, at least; but the others?
“You find me alone, after all,” was her greeting. “The girls are out walking—with each other, or their beaux, or whatever. Come in here.”
She led him into a spacious room cluttered with lambrequins, stringy portieres, grilles, scroll-work, bric-a-brac. …
“The fine weather has been too much for them,” she proceeded. “I was relying on them to entertain you.”
“Dear me! Am I to be entertained?”
“Of course you are.” Her expression and inflection indicated to him that he had been caught up in the cogs of a sizable machine, and that he was to be put through it. Everybody who came was entertained—or helped entertain others. Entertainment, in fact, was the one object of the establishment.
“Well, can’t you entertain me yourself?”
“Perhaps I can.” And it almost seemed as if he had been secured and isolated for the express purpose of undergoing a particular course of treatment.
“—in the interval,” she amended. “They’ll be back by sunset. They’re clever girls and I know you’ll enjoy them.”
She uttered this belief emphatically—so emphatically, in truth, that it came to mean: “I wonder if you will indeed.” And there was even an overtone: “After all, it’s not the least necessary that you should.”
“I suppose I have met one of them already.”
“You have met Amy. But there are Hortense and Carolyn.”
“What can they all be?” He wondered to himself: “daughters, nieces, cousins, co-eds, boarders … ?”
“Amy plays. Hortense paints. Carolyn is a poet.”
“Amy plays? Pardon me for calling her Amy, but you
