Amy Leffingwell had demanded his attendance for one more walk, that afternoon, and he had not been dextrous enough, face to face with her, to refuse. She had expressed herself still more insistently on “happiness”—(on hers, his, theirs; the two were one, in her view)—and on a future shared together. In just what inadequate way had he tried to fend her off? Had he said, “I shall have to wait?” Or had his blundering tongue said, instead, “We should have to wait?”—or even worse, “We shall have to wait?” In any event, he had used that cowardly, temporizing word “wait”—for she had instantly seized upon it. Why, yes, indeed; she was willing to wait; she had expected to wait. …
He turned out from an avenue lighted with electric globes, past which the snowflakes were drifting, and entered a quieter and darker side-street. In the dusk she had put up her face, expecting to be kissed; and he, partly out of pity for the expression that came when he hesitated, and partly out of pure embarrassment and inexpertness, had lightly touched her lips. That had sealed it, possibly. He saw her sitting in rapt fancy in her bedroom—if not more vocal in the rooms below. He saw her writing to an unseen mother in a tone of joyful complacency, and looking at her finger for a ring which he could not place there. He saw the distaste of his own home circle, to which this event had come at least a year too soon. He saw the amazement, and worse, of Arthur Lemoyne, whose plans for coming to town were now all made and to whom this turn would prove a psychological shock which might deter him from coming at all. But, most of all, he saw—and felt to the depths of his being—his own essential repugnance to the life toward which he now seemed headed. What an outlook for Christmas! What an unpleasant surprise for his parents! What opportunity in Amy Leffingwell’s holiday vacation at Fort Lodge to reinforce the written page by the spoken word! Still forgetful of his engagement with Randolph, he continued to walk the streets. He turned in at midnight, hoping he might sleep, and trusting that morning would throw a less sinister light on his misadventure.
Long before this, Joseph Foster had been put to bed, by Sing-Lo, in this spare room. It was Foster’s crutch, rather than a knightly sword, which leaned against the doorjamb; and it was Foster’s crooked members, rather than the straight young limbs of Cope, which first found place among the sheets and blankets of that shining new brass bedstead.
XX
Cope Has a Distressful Christmas
Cope awakened at seven. After an early interval of happy lightness, there came suddenly and heavily the crushing sense of his predicament. How monstrous it was that one instant of time, one ill-considered action, one poorly-chosen word could clamp a repellent burden on a man for the rest of his life!
Well, he must expect telephone messages and letters. They came. That afternoon Mrs. Peck had “a lady’s voice” to report: “It sounded like a young lady’s voice,” she added. And she looked at Cope with some curiosity: a “young lady” asking for him over the wire was the rarest thing in the world.
Next day came the first note. The handwriting was utterly new to him; but his intuition, applied instantly to the envelope, told him of the source. The nail, driven, was now to be clinched. She had the right to ask him to come; and she did ask him to come—“soon.”
Cope’s troubled eyes sought the calendar above his table. How many days to Christmas? How much time might he spend in Freeford? How long before Christmas might he arrange to leave Churchton? The holidays at home loomed as a harbor of refuge. By shortening as far as possible the interval here and by lengthening as far as possible the stay with his family, he might cut down, in some measure, the imminent threatenings of awkwardness and constraint; then, beyond the range of anything but letters, he might study the unpleasant situation at his leisure and determine a future course.
He set himself to answer Amy’s note. He hoped, he said, to see her in a few days, but he was immensely busy in closing the term-work before the holidays; he also suggested that their affair—“their” affair!—be kept quiet for the present. Yet he had all too facile a vision of beatific meditations that were like enough to give the situation away to all the household; and he was nervously aware of Amy Leffingwell as continually on the verge of bubbling confidences.
He also wrote to Lemoyne. His letter was less an announcement than a confession.
“I like this!” began Lemoyne’s reply, with abrupt, impetuous sarcasm. “You have claimed, more than once,” he went on, “to have steadied me and kept me out of harm’s way; but I’ve never yet made any such demands on you as you are making on me. This thing can’t go on, and you know it as well as I do. Nip it. Nip it now. Don’t think that our intimacy is to end in any such fashion as this, for it isn’t—especially at this particular time.” …
Lemoyne proceeded to practical matters.
“If that room is still free, engage it from the first of January. I will have a few things sent down. Father is weakening a little. Anyhow, I’ve got enough money for a couple of months. I will join you in Freeford between Christmas and New Year’s (nearer the latter, probably), and we will go back together.” …
Cope rather took heart from these rough, outspoken lines. Lemoyne was commonly neither rough nor outspoken; but here was an emergency, involving his own interests, which must be dealt with decisively. Cope seemed to feel salvation on the way. Perhaps that was why he still did so little
