“I don’t want to meet them again,” returned Foster quickly.
“Well,” said Randolph, “I’ve no fondness for the new fellow, myself; but—”
“And I don’t care about the other, either.”
Randolph sighed. This was plainly one of Foster’s off days. The only wonder was he had not more of them. He sat in darkness, with few diversions, occupations, ameliorations. His mind churned mightily on the scanty materials that came his way. He founded big guesses on nothings; he raised vast speculative edifices on the slightest of premises. To dislike a man he could not even see! Well, the blind—and the half-blind—had their own intuitions and followed their own procedures.
“Then you wouldn’t advise me to speak a word for him?—for them?”
“Certainly not!” rejoined Foster, with all promptness. “They’ve treated you badly. They’ve put you off; and they came, finally, only because they counted on getting something out of you.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that of Cope.”
“I would. And I do. They’re completely wrapped up in their own interests, and in each other; and they’re coupled to get anything they can out of Number Three. Or out of Number Four. Or Five. Or out of X—the world, that is to say.”
Randolph shrugged. This was one of Foster’s bad days indeed.
“And what’s this I hear about Hortense?” asked Foster, with bitterness.
“That won’t amount to much.”
“It won’t? She’s out in the open, finally. She took that place for a month with one express object—to get him there, paint or no paint. She’s fretful and cantankerous over every day of delay, and soon she’ll be in an undisguised rage.”
“What does her aunt say to it?”
“She’s beginning to be vexed. She’s losing patience. She thinks it’s a mistake—and an immodest one. She wants to send her away for a visit. To think of it!—as soon as one girl lets go another takes hold—and a third person holds on through all!”
“Joe! Joe!”
But Foster was not to be stayed.
“And that poetry of Carolyn’s! Medora herself came up and read it to me. It was a ‘tribute,’ she thought!”
“That won’t amount to anything at all.”
“It won’t? With Hortense scornfully ridiculing it, and Carolyn bursting into tears before she can make her bolt from the room, and Amy wondering whether, after all … ! If things are as bad as they are for me up here, how much worse must they be for the rest of them below! And that confounded engagement has made it still worse all round!”
Randolph ran his palms over his perplexed temples. “Whose?”
“Whose? No wonder you ask! Engagements, then.”
“When are they going to be married?”
“The first week in May, I hear. But Pearson is trying for the middle of April. His flat is taken.” Foster writhed in his chair.
“Why do they care for him?” he burst out. “He’s nothing in himself. And he cares nothing for them. And he cares nothing for you,” Foster added boldly. “All he has thought for is that fellow from up north.”
“Don’t ask me why they care,” replied Randolph, with studied sobriety. “Why does anybody care? And for what? For the thing that is just out of reach. He’s cool; he’s selfish; he’s indifferent. Yet, somehow, frost and fire join end to end and make the circle complete.” He fell into reflection. “It’s all like children straining upward for an icicle, and presently slipping, with cracked pates, on the ice below.”
“Well, my pate isn’t cracked.”
“Unless it’s the worst cracked of all.”
Foster tore off his shade and threw it on the floor. “Mine?” he cried. “Look to your own!”
“Joe!” said Randolph, rising. “That won’t quite do!”
“Be a fool along with the others, if you will!” retorted Foster. “Oh!” he went on, “Haven’t I seen it all? Haven’t I felt it all? You, Basil Randolph, mind your own ways too!”
Randolph thought of words, but held his tongue. Words led to other words, and he might soon find himself involved in what would seem like a defense—an attitude which he did not relish, a course of which he did not acknowledge the need. “Poor Joe!” he thought; “sitting too much by himself and following over-closely the art of putting things together—anyhow!” Joe Foster must have more company and different things to consider. What large standard work—what history, biography, or bulky mass of memoirs in from four to eight volumes—would be the best to begin on before the winter should be too far spent?
Four or five days later, Randolph wrote to Cope that there was a good prospect for a small position in the administration offices of the University, and a week later Lemoyne was in that position. Cope, who recognized Randolph’s handling of the matter as a personal favor, replied in a tone of some warmth. “He’s really a very decent fellow, after all—of course he is,” pronounced Randolph. Lemoyne himself wrote more tardily and more coolly. He was taking time from his Psychology and from “The Antics of Annabella,” it appeared, to acquaint himself with the routine of his new position. Randolph shrugged: he must wait to see which of the three interests would be held the most important.
XXVII
Cope Escapes a Snare
Lemoyne’s first week in his new berth held him rather close, and Cope was able to move about with less need of accounting for his every hour. One of his first concerns was to get over his sitting with Hortense Dunton. His “sitting,” he said: it was to be the first, the only and the last.
He came into her place with a show of confidence, a kind of blustery bonhomie. “I give you an hour from my treadmill,” he declared brightly. “So many books, and such dry ones!”
Hortense, who had been moping, brightened too. “I thought you had forgotten me,” she said chidingly. Yet her tone had less acerbity than that which she had employed, but a few moments before, to address him in his absence. For she
