“Arthur will speak in a light tenor.”
“Will his walk be heavy and clumsy?” asked Mrs. Phillips.
“He is an artist,” replied Cope.
“Not too much of one, I trust,” she returned. “I confess I like boys best in such parts when they frankly and honestly seem to be boys. That’s half the fun—and nine-tenths of the taste.”
“Taste?”
“Yes, taste. Short for good taste. There’s a great deal of room for bad. A thing may be done too thoroughly. Once or twice I’ve seen it done that way, by—artists.”
Cope, in the half-light, seemed rather unhappy.
“He finds time for—for all this—this technique?” Mrs. Phillips asked.
“He’s very clever,” replied Cope, rather unhappy still. “It does take time, of course. I’m concerned,” he added.
“About his other work?”
“Yes.” He stepped aside a little into the shadow.
“Come back to your place,” said Medora Phillips. “You look quite spectral.”
Cope, with a light sigh, returned to his post on the settle and to his share in the firelight. Silence fell. From far below were heard the active waves, moaning themselves to rest. And a featureless evening moved on slowly.
XXX
Cope as a Hero
At ten o’clock Cope found himself tucked away in a small room on the ground floor. It had been left quite as planned and constructed by the original builder of the house. It was cramped and narrow, with low ceiling and one small window. It gave on a short side-porch which was almost too narrow to sit on and which was apropos of no special prospect. Doubtless more than one stalwart youth had slept there before him—a succession of farmers’ sons who fed all day on the airs and spaces of the great out-of-doors, and who needed little of either through a short night’s rest. It was more comfortable at the end of April than other guests had found it in mid-August.
A little before eleven he awoke the house with a loud, ringing cry. Someone outside had passed his narrow window; feet were heard on the back porch and hands at the kitchen door. Peter was out as quickly as Cope himself; and the women, in differing stages of dress and half-dress, followed at once.
While Mrs. Phillips and Carolyn were clinging to Cope, who had rushed out in undershirt and trousers, Peter had a short tussle on the porch with the intruder. He came in showing a scratch or two on his face, and he reported the pantry window broken open.
“Some tramp along the beach saw our lights,” suggested Carolyn.
“What was he like, Peter?” asked Mrs. Phillips.
“I couldn’t make out in the dark,” Peter replied. “But he fought hard for what he took, and he got away with it.” He felt the marks on his face. “Must have been a pretty hungry man.”
“It was some refugee hiding in my woods,” said Medora Phillips. She made her real thought no plainer. She never liked to see, in her walks, that distant prison, and she never spoke of it to her guests; but the fancy of some escaped convict lurking below among her thickets was often present in her mind.
Her fancy was now busy with some burglar, or even some murderer, who had made his bolt for liberty; and she clung informally to the clarion-voiced Cope as to a savior. She saw, with displeasure, that Carolyn was disposed to cling too. She asked Carolyn to control herself and told her the danger was over; she even requested her to return to her room. But Carolyn lingered.
Medora herself stood with Cope in the light of the dying fire. She was dressed almost as inadequately as he, but she felt that she must cling tremblingly to him and thank him for something or other.
“I don’t know what you’ve saved us from,” she panted. “We may owe our very lives to you!”
Peter, in the background, again thoughtfully felt his face and became conscious of a growing ache in the muscles of his arms. He retired, with a smile, to a still more distant plane. The regular did the work and the volunteer got the praise.
Mrs. Phillips presently gave up her drooping hold on the reluctant Cope and called Peter forward. “Is anything missing?” she asked.
“Only part of the breakfast, I expect,” said Peter, with a grin. “And maybe some of the lunch. He surely was a hungry man!”
“Well, we shan’t starve. See to all the doors and windows before you go back to bed.”
But going back to bed was the one thing that she herself felt unable to do. She asked Carolyn to bring her a wrap of some kind or other, and sat down on the settle to talk it over. Cope had modestly slipped on a coat. The fire was dying—that was the only difference between twelve o’clock and ten.
“If I had known what was going to happen,” declared Medora volubly, “I never could have gone to bed at all! And to think”—here she left Carolyn’s end of the settle and drew nearer to Cope’s—“that I should ever have even thought of coming out here without a man!”
She now rated her midnight intruder as a murderer, and believed more devoutly than ever that Cope had saved all their lives. Cope, who knew that he had contributed nothing but a loud pair of lungs, began to feel rather foolish.
Nor did the anomalous situation commend itself in any degree to his taste. But it hit Medora Phillips’ taste precisely, and she continued to sit there, pressing an emotional enjoyment from it. An hour passed before her excitement—an excitement kept up, perhaps, rather factitiously—was calmed, and she trusted herself back in her own room.
Breakfast was a scanty affair—it must be that if anything was to be left over for lunch. While they were busy with toast and coffee voices were heard in the woods—loud cries in call and answer.
“There!” said Medora, setting down her cup; “I knew it!”
Presently two men came climbing up
