The next afternoon he walked over to Medora Phillips. Medora’s upper floor gave asylum to a half-brother of her husband’s—an invalid who seldom saw the outside world and who depended for solace and entertainment on neighbors of his own age and interests. Randolph expected to contribute, during the week, about so many hours of talk or of reading. But he would have a few words with Medora before going up to Joe.
Medora, among her grilles and lambrequins, was only too willing to talk about young Cope.
“A charming fellow—in a way,” she said judicially. “Frank, but a little too self-assured and self-centered. Exuberant, but possibly a bit cold. Yet—charming.”
“Oh,” thought Randolph, “one of the cool boys, and one of the self-sufficing. Probably a bit of an ascetic at bottom, with good capacity for self-control and self-direction. Not at all an uninteresting type,” he summed it up. “An ebullient Puritan?” he asked aloud.
“That’s it,” she declared, “—according to my sense of it.”
“Yet hardly a New Englander, I suppose?”
“Not directly, anyhow. From down state—from Freeford, I think he said. I judge that there’s quite a family of them.”
“Quite a family of them,” he repeated inwardly. A drawback indeed. Why could an interesting young organism so seldom be detached from its milieu and enjoyed in isolation? Prosy parents; tiresome, detrimental brothers … He wondered if she had any idea what they were all like. It might be just as well, however, not to know.
“And, judging from the family name, and from their taste at christenings, I should say there might be some slant toward England itself. A nomenclature not without distinction. ‘Bertram’; rather nice, eh? And there is a sister who teaches in one of the schools, I understand; and her name is Rosalind, or Rosalys. Think of that! I gather that the father is in some business,” she concluded.
“Well, well,” thought Randolph; “more than one touch of gentility, of fine feeling.” If the father was in “some business,” most likely it was someone else’s business.
“He sings,” said Medora, further. “Entertained us the other Sunday afternoon. Cool and correct, but pleasant. No warmth, no passion. No special interest in any of my poor girls. I didn’t feel that he was drawing any of them too near the danger-line.”
“Mighty gratifying, that. Where does one learn to sing without provoking danger?”
“In a church choir, of course. He sang last year in the cathedral at Winnebago.”
“Oh, in Wisconsin. And what took us to Winnebago, I wonder?”
“We were teaching in a college there.”
“I see.”
The talk languished. Basil Randolph had learned most that he wanted to know, and had learned it without asking too many direct questions. He began to pick at the fussy fringe on the arm of his chair and to cast an empty eye on the other fussy things that filled the room. The two had exhausted long ago all the old subjects, and he did not care to show an eagerness—still less, a continuing eagerness—for this new one: much could be picked up by indirection, even by waiting.
Medora felt him as distrait. “Do you want to go up and see Joe for a little while before you leave us?”
“I believe I will. Not that I’ve brought anything to read.”
“I doubt if he cares to be read to this time—Carolyn gave him the headlines this forenoon. He’s a bit restless; I think he’d rather talk. If you have nothing more to say to me, perhaps you can find something to say to him.”
“Oh, come! I’m sure we’ve had a good enough little chat. Aren’t you a bit restless yourself?”
“Well, run along. I’ve heard his chair rolling about up there for the last half hour.”
V
Cope Is Considered Further
Randolph took the stairs to the second floor, and presently his footfalls were heard on the bare treads that led from the second to the third. At the top landing he paused and looked in through the open door of the picture-gallery.
Over the varnished oak floor of this roomy apartment a middle-aged man who wore a green shade above his eyes was propelling himself in a wheeled chair. Thus did Joseph Foster cover the space where the younger and more fortunate sometimes danced, and thus did he move among works of art which, even on the brightest days, he could barely see.
He knew the step. “Brought anything?” he asked.
He depended on Randolph for the latest brief doings in current fiction; and usually in the background—and often long in abeyance—was something in the way of memoirs or biography, many-volumed, which could fill the empty hours either through retrospect or anticipation.
“Only myself,” replied the other, stepping in. Foster dextrously manoeuvred his chair toward the entrance and reached out his hand.
“Well, yourself is enough. It’s good to have a man about the place once in a while. Once in a while, I said. It gets tiresome, hearing all those girls slithering and chattering through the halls.” He put his bony hands back on the rims of his wheels. “Where have you been all this time?”
“Oh, you know I come when I can.” Randolph ran his eye over the walls of the big empty room. The pictures were all in place—landscapes, figure-pieces, what not; everything as familiar as the form of words he had just employed to meet an oft repeated query implying indifference and neglect.
“How is it outside? I haven’t been down on the street for a month.”
“Oh, things are bright and pleasant enough.” Through the wide window there appeared, half a mile away, the square twin towers of the University library, reminiscent of Oxford and Ely. Round them lesser towers and gables, scholastic in their gray stone, rose above the trees of the campus. Beyond all these a level line of watery blue ran for miles and provided an eventless horizon. A bright and pleasant enough sight indeed, but nothing for Joe Foster.
“Well, let me by,” he said, “and
