XXI
Cope, Safeguarded, Calls Again
If Cope came back from Freeford with the moral support of one family, Amy Leffingwell came back from Fort Lodge with the moral support of another. Hers was a fragmental family, true; but its sentiment was unanimous; she had the combined support of a pleased mother and of an enthusiastic maiden aunt.
Amy reached Churchton first, and it soon transpired through the house in which she lived that she was engaged to Bertram Cope. Cope, returning two days later, with Lemoyne, found his new status an open book to the world—or to such a small corner of the world as cared to read.
Cope had written from Freeford, explaining to Randolph the broken dinner-engagement: at least he had said that immediate concerns of importance had driven the date from his mind, and that he was sorry. Randolph, only too willing to accept any fair excuse, good-naturedly made this one serve: the boy was not so negligent and ungrateful, after all. He got the rest of the story a few days later, in a message from Foster. What was the boy, then? he asked himself. He recalled their talk as they had walked past the sandhills on that October Sunday. Cope had disclaimed all inclination for matrimony. He had confessed a certain inability to safeguard himself. Was he a victim, after all? A victim to his own ineptitude? A victim to his own highmindedness? Well, whatever the alternative, a field for the work of the salvage-corps had opened.
At the big house on Ashburn Avenue a like feeling had come to prevail. Medora Phillips herself had passed from the indulgently satirical to the impatient, and almost to the indignant. Her niece thought the new relation clearly superfluous. She put away the portrait in oil, but she rather hoped to resume work on it, some time. Meanwhile, she was far from kind to Amy.
Cope soon made an obligatory appearance at the house. He was glad enough to have the presence and the support of Arthur Lemoyne. The call came on a rigorous evening at the beginning of the second week in January. The two young men had about brought their new quarters to shape and subjection. They had spent two or three evenings in shifting and rearranging things—trifling purchases in person and larger things sent by express. They had reached a good degree of snugness and comfort; but—
“We’ve got to go tonight!” said Cope firmly.
“Tonight?” repeated Lemoyne. “Unless I’m mistaken, we’re in for a deuce of a time.” He snuggled again into the big easy chair that had just arrived from Winnebago.
“We are!” returned Cope, with unhappy mien. “But it’s got to be gone through with.”
“I’m talking about the weather,” rejoined Lemoyne plumply. He was versed in the reading of signs as they presented themselves a hundred and fifty miles to the north, and he thought he could accurately apply his experience to a locale somewhat beyond his earlier ken. The vast open welter of water to the east would but give the roaring north wind a greater impetus. “We’re going to have tonight, the storm of the season.”
“Storm or no storm, I can’t put it off any longer. I’ve got to go.”
As they started out the wind was keen, and a few fine flakes, driven from the north, flew athwart their faces. When they reached Mrs. Phillips’ house, Peter, wrapped in furs, was sitting in the limousine by the curb, and two or three people were seen in the open door of the vestibule.
“Well, the best of luck, cher Professeur,” Cope heard the voice of Mrs. Phillips saying, in a quick expulsion of syllables. “This is going to be a bad night, I’m afraid; but I hope your audience will get to the hall to hear you, and that our Pierre will be able to get you back to us.”
“Oh, Madame,” returned the plump little man, “what a climate!” And he ran down the walk to the car.
Yes, Mrs. Phillips had another celebrity on her hands. It was an eminent French historian who was going across to the campus to deliver the second lecture of his course. “How lucky,” she had said to Hortense, just after dinner, “that we went to hear him last night!” Their visitor was handsomely accommodated—and suitably, too, she felt—in the Louis Quinze chamber, and he was expected back in it a little after ten.
“Why, Bertram Cope!” she exclaimed, as the two young men came up the walk while the great historian ran down; “come in, come in; don’t let me stand here freezing!”
It turned out to be a young man’s night. Mrs. Phillips had invited a few “types” to entertain and instruct her Frenchman. They had come to dinner, and they had stayed on afterward.
Among them was the autumn undergraduate whom Cope, at an earlier day, had disdainfully called “Phaon,” a youth of twenty. “You know,” said Medora Phillips to Randolph, a few days later, when reviewing the stay of her newest guest, “Those sophisticated, world-worn people so appreciate our fresh, innocent, ingenuous boys. M. Pelouse told me, on leaving, that Roddy quite met his ideal of the young American. So open-faced, so inexperienced, so out of the great world. …”
“Good heavens!” said Randolph impatiently. “Do they constitute the world? You might think so—going about giving us awards, and hanging medals on us, and certifying how well we speak French! Fudge! The world is changing. It would be better,” he added, “if more of us—college students included—learned how to speak a decenter English. I went to their dramatic club the other evening. Such pronunciation! Such delivery! I almost longed for the films.”
A second “young American” was present—George F. Pearson. Pearson lived with his parents in another big house a block down the street. Mrs. Phillips had summoned him as a type that was purely indigenous—the “young American business man.” Pearson had just made a “kill,” as he called it—a
