“Hum!” he thought; “if there’s to be a lot of ‘entertaining,’ the more there are to be entertained the better it might turn out.”
He met Hortense and Carolyn—with due stress laid on their respective patronymics—and he made an early acquaintance with Amy’s violin.
And further on Mrs. Phillips said:
“Now, Amy, before you really stop, do play that last little thing. The dear child,” she said to Cope in a lower tone, “composed it herself and dedicated it to me.”
The last little thing was a kind of “meditation,” written very simply and performed quite seriously and unaffectedly. And it gave, of course, a good chance for the arms.
“There!” said Mrs. Phillips, at its close. “Isn’t it too sweet? And it inspired Carolyn too. She wrote a poem after hearing it.”
“A copy of verses,” corrected Carolyn, with a modest catch in her breath. She was a quiet, sedate girl, with brown eyes and hair. Her eyes were shy, and her hair was plainly dressed.
“Oh, you’re so sweet, so old-fashioned!” protested Mrs. Phillips, slightly rolling her eyes. “It’s a poem—of course it’s a poem. I leave it to Mr. Cope, if it isn’t!”
“Oh, I beg—” began Cope, in trepidation.
“Well, listen, anyway,” said Medora.
The poem consisted of some six or seven brief stanzas. Its title was read, formally, by the writer; and, quite as formally, the dedication which intervened between title and first stanza—a dedication to “Medora Townsend Phillips.”
“Of course,” said Cope to himself. And as the reading went on, he ran his eyes over the dusky, darkening walls. He knew what he expected to find.
Just as he found it the sophomore standing between the big padded chair and the bookcase spatted his hands three times. The poem was over, the patroness duly celebrated. Cope spatted a little too, but kept his eye on one of the walls.
“You’re looking at my portrait!” declared Mrs. Phillips, as the poetess sank deeper into the big chair. “Hortense did it.”
“Of course she did,” said Cope under his breath. He transferred an obligatory glance from the canvas to the expectant artist. But—
“It’s getting almost too dark to see it,” said his hostess, and suddenly pressed a button. This brought into play a row of electric bulbs near the top edge of the frame and into full prominence the dark plumpness of the subject. He looked back again from the painter (who also had black hair and eyes) to her work.
“I am on Parnassus!” Cope declared, in one general sweeping compliment, as he looked toward the sofa where Medora Phillips sat with the three girls now grouped behind her. But he made it a boreal Parnassus—one set in relief by the cold flare and flicker of northern lights.
“Isn’t he the dear, comical chap!” exclaimed Mrs. Phillips, with unction, glancing upward and backward at the girls. They smiled discreetly, as if indulging in a silent evaluation of the sincerity of the compliment. Yet one of them—Hortense—formed her black brows into a frown, and might have spoken resentfully, save for a look from their general patroness.
“Meanwhile, how about a drop of tea?” asked Mrs. Phillips suddenly. “Roddy”—to the sophomore—“if you will help clear that table. …”
The youth hastened to get into action. Cope went on with his letter to “Arthur”:
“It was an afternoon in Lesbos—with Sappho and her band of appreciative maidens. Phaon, a poor lad of nineteen, swept some pamphlets and paper-cutters off the center-table, and we all plunged into the ocean of Oolong—the best thing we do on this island. …”
He was lingering in a smiling abstractedness on his fancy, when—
“Bertram Cope!” a voice suddenly said, “do you do nothing—nothing?”
He suddenly came to. Perhaps he had really deserved his hostess’ rebuke. He had not offered to help with the tea-service; he had preferred no appropriate remark, of an individual nature, to any of the three ancillae. …
“I mean,” proceeded Mrs. Phillips, “can you do nothing whatever to entertain?”
Cope gained another stage on the way to self-consciousness and self-control. Entertainment was doubtless the basic curse of this household.
“I sing,” he said, with naïf suddenness and simplicity.
“Then, sing—do. There’s the open piano. Can you play your own accompaniments?”
“Some of the simpler ones.”
“Some of the simpler ones! Do you hear that, girls? He is quite prepared to wipe us all out. Shall we let him?”
“That’s unfair,” Cope protested. “Is it my fault if composers will write hard accompaniments to easy airs?”
“Will you sing before your tea, or after it?”
“I’m ready to sing this instant—during it, or before it.”
“Very well.”
The room was now in dusk, save for the bulbs which made the portrait shine forth like a wayside shrine. Roddy, the possible sophomore, helped a maid find places for the cups and saucers; and the three girls, still formed in a careful group about the sofa, silently waited.
“Of course you realize that this is not such a very large room,” said Mrs. Phillips.
“Meaning. … ?”
“Well, your speaking voice is resonant, you know.”
“Meaning, then, that I am not to raise the roof nor jar the china. I’ll try not to.”
Nor did he. He sang with care rather than with volume, with discretion rather than with abandon. The “simple accompaniments” went off with but a slight hitch or two, yet the “resonant voice” was somehow, somewhere lost. Possibly Cope gave too great heed to his hostess’ caution; but it seemed as if a voice essentially promising had slipped through some teacher’s none too competent hands, or—what was quite as serious—as if some temperamental brake were operating to prevent the complete expression of the singer’s nature. Lassen, Grieg, Rubinstein—all these were carried through rather cautiously, perhaps a little mechanically; and there was a silence. Hortense broke it.
“Parnassus, yes. And finally comes Apollo.” She reached over and murmured to Mrs. Phillips: “None too skillful on the lyre, and none too strong in the lungs. …”
Medora spoke up loudly and promptly.
“Do you know, I think I’ve
