Bertram Cope's Year/Chapter 12
Chapter XII
Cope Amidst Cross-Purposes
Next morning's mail brought Cope a letter from Arthur Lemoyne. The letter was short—at least when compared with Cope's own plentiful pennings; but it gave our young instructor a few points to think about while he was illuminating Clarissa Harlowe and making some careful comments on Joseph Andrews. Released toward noon, he read the letter over again; and he ran over it again during lunch. Lemoyne possessed a variety of gifts, but the gift of letter-writing, in an extended form, was not among them. He said all he had to say in four moderate pages.
"Yours received," he wrote. "Am glad the year has opened up so interestingly for you. Of course I want to come down as soon as I can, if I can, and be with you."
Well, the "if," as the latter part of the letter indicated, was not likely to prove insurmountable. The assurance that he wanted to come was grateful, though superfluous: who had supposed for a moment that he didn't.? Still, the thing, put down in plain black and white, had its look of comfort.
"Of course the business is not gaining much through my connection with it. I expect father begins to see that, pretty plainly. As for the cathedral choir and the dramatic club and all the rest, I am willing to throw them over—expecting that larger interests can be opened to me by you." . . .
Cope paused on these points. He had suggested that Lemoyne enroll as a student in some slight course or other, with the hope that his voice might lead to his wearing cap and gown at chapel services and that his dramatic experience might give him some rôle in the annual operetta. In either of these quarters a good tenor voice was usually to seek. And as for the business . . . Well, he had once overheard the elder Lemoyne's partner audibly wonder whether Arthur would ever learn how to ship a keg of nails out of their back door, even.
Cope pushed away his coffee-cup and asked the young Greek for a cut of pie.
"I sort of sounded father the other day, but he was pretty huffy. I'll try again, soon; but I doubt if I can manage to come down until after the holidays. You begin a new term, then, I suppose. The fact is, I took a week off in the middle of September, and father hasn't forgiven it. One of our fellows in the choir had just bought a little roadster, and he invited me for a trip to Green Bay and beyond. We dipped along through Fish Creek, Ephraim, and so on. Good weather, good roads, good scenery, good hotels; and a pleasant time was had by all—or, rather, by both." . . .
Cope dwelt darkly on this passage. Arthur was flighty; Arthur was volatile; Arthur was even fickle, when the mood took him. Some arrangement that partook more of the hard-and-fast was needed. But there was comfort—of a kind—in the next passage. "Though father, at best, will do very little, and though I have just now little enough of my own, there may be somebody or other among your faculty or trustees who could find me a niche in the college library or in the registrar's office. Or have all such posts been snapped up by Johnnys-on-the-spot? A small weekly stipend would rather help our ménage,—hein?"
This definite inquiry (which carried its own answer) seemed to drive one or two brass tacks with some definiteness. Cope himself was eking out his small salary with a small allowance from home; next year, with the thesis accomplished, better pay in some better place. A present partner and pal ought to be a prop rather than a drag: however welcome his company, he must bear his share.
"Look about a bit for quarters," Lemoyne went on, drawing toward his conclusion. "I presume roomrent is little more for two than for one. Possibly," he put down in an afterthought, "I might get a job in the city and then, "with warm regards," he came to a close as "Art."
Cope finished his lunch and walked out. If Arthur could do one thing better than another, it was to make coffee; his product was assuredly better than the Greek's. The two had camped out more than once on the shores of Lake Winnebago, and Arthur had deftly managed the commissariat. They had had good times together and had needed no other company. How had it been on Green Bay—at Eagle Cliff and Apron Bluff and all the other places lately celebrated in lithographed "folders" and lately popularized by motorists? And who was the particular "fellow" who ran the roadster?
Late that afternoon Cope chanced upon Randolph among the fantastic basins and floral parterres of the court in front of the Botany building: Randolph had had a small matter for one of the deans. Together they sauntered over to the lake. From the edge of the bluff they walked out upon the concrete terrace above the general boiler-room and its dynamos. Alongside this, the vast tonnage of coal required for the coming winter was beginning to pile up. The weather was still mild and sunny and the lake was as valiantly blue as ever.
"It doesn't look like the same body of water, does it?" said Cope.
"It might be just as beautiful in its own way, here, as we found it yesterday, out there," returned Randolph. "I've asked my brother-in-law, I don't know how many times, why they can't do better by this unfortunate campus and bring it all up to a reasonable level of seemliness. But——"
"You have a relative among the——?"
"Yes, my sister's husband is one of the University trustees. But he lives miles from this spot and hardly ever sees it. Besides, his aesthetic endowments are not beyond those of the average university trustee. Sometimes they're as hard on Beauty as they are on Free Speech."
"I see they're hard on beauty; and I may live to find free speech mauled, too."
"Well, you're not in Sociology or Economics. Still, don't trifle with a long-established æsthetic idol either. Trustees—and department heads—are conservative."
"Oh, you mean about——?"
"About your immortal William. He wrote them. Don't try to rob him. Don't try to knock him off his pedestal."
"Oh, you're thinking about my thesis. What I said about Warwickshire was just a little flight of fancy, I guess,—a bit of doorstep travel. I'm likely enough to stay where I am."
"Well, how about the thesis, really?"
"I think I shall end by digging something out of Here and Now. 'Our Middle-West School of Fiction,' —what would you think of that?"
"H'm! If you can make it seem worth while. . ."
"Well, can't I?"
"Your work, from the very nature of it, must be critical. Now the critic, nine times out of ten, takes down a volume from its established shelf, dusts it off, ruffles the leaves a bit, and then puts it back where it was. The ruffling is sometimes very nice and interesting and often gives the ruffler a good position in the glorious company of earlier rufflers——"
"I shouldn't be satisfied with anything like that. Things have got to move. I want to take some recent, less-known men and put them on the shelves."
"Yet you don't want to waste work on material which time may show as of transient value, or of none."
"A fellow must chance it. Who gives quickly gives twice;—I suppose that applies to praise as well as to money. It irks me to find more praise bestowed on the praised-enough,—even on groups of secondary importance, sometimes just because they are remote (in England, perhaps), and so can be treated with an easy objectivity. To dig in your own day and your own community is harder, but I should feel it more rewarding."
"But aren't the English books really better? Haven't they more depth, substance and background?"
"Possibly,—according to the conventions they themselves have established—and according to the society they depict."
"Well, Academe hasn't nailed you yet!"
"No; and I hope it won't. I should like to write a whole book about our new men."
"But don't write a thesis and then expect to publish it with profit as a book. That's a common enough expectation—or temptation."
They turned away from the lake terrace and the imposing coal-pile. Cope, Randolph saw, was in quite a glow; a generous interest had touched him, putting fresh light into his eyes and a new vigor into his step. He had displayed a charming enthusiasm, and a pure, disinterested one. Randolph, under a quiet exterior, was delighted. He liked the boy better than ever, and felt more than ever prompted to attach him to himself.
"How are you pleased with your present quarters?" he asked, as they returned through the Botany court. He thought of the narrow couch, the ink-spotted cover on the deal table, the few coats and shoes (they couldn't be many) behind that calico curtain.
"None too well," replied Cope. "I shall soon begin to look for another room. I rather expect to change about holiday time."
"I am thinking of making a change too," declared Randolph.
"Why, could you better yourself?" asked Cope, in a tone of surprise. "I never knew a bachelor to be better fixed."
"I need a little wider margin of room. I can afford it, and ought to have had it long ago. And I learn that the lease of the people I'm with expires in the spring. My collection is growing; and I ought to have another bedroom. Think of not being able to put a man up, on occasion! I shall take a small apartment on my own account, catch some Oriental who is studying frogs' legs or Occidental theology; and then—open house. In a moderate measure, of course."
"That listens good—as the young fellows say," replied Cope. "A not uncommon ideal, possibly; but I'm glad that some man, now and then, is able to realize it."
"I should hope to see you there," said Randolph intently.
"Thank you, indeed. Yes, while my time lasts. But my own lease is like your landlord's—short. Next year,—who knows where?"
"Why not here?"
"Oh!" Cope shrugged, as if conscious of the need of something better, and of presently deserving it. "Some big university in the East?" wondered Randolph to himself. Well, the transfer, if it came, was still a long way ahead.
As he walked home to dinner he entertained himself by imagining his new régime. There would be an alert, intelligent Jap, who, in some miraculous way, could "do for him" between his studies. There would be a cozy dining-room where three or four fellows could have a snug little dinner, with plenty of good talk during it and after it. There would be, finally, a convenient little spare room, wherein a young knight, escaped from some "Belle Dame sans Merci," might lean his sword against the wardrobe, prop his greaves along the baseboard, lay his steel gauntlets neatly on the top of the dresser, fold his hands over the turned-down sheet of a neat three-quarter-width brass bedstead, and with a satisfied sigh of utter well-being pass away into sleep. Such facilities, even if they scarcely equaled a chateau on the Ridge or a villa among the Dunes, might serve.
Cope, on his own way to dinner, indulged in parallel imaginings. He saw a larger room than his present, with more furniture and better; a bookcase instead of a shelf; a closet, and hot and cold water in some convenient alcove; a second table, with a percolator on it, at which Arthur, who was a light sleeper and willingly an early riser, might indulge his knack for coffee-making to the advantage of them both. And Arthur had the same blessed facility with toast.
Then his thoughts made an excursion toward Randolph. Here was a man who was in business in the city, and who was related, by marriage, to the board of trustees. How soon might one feel sufficiently well acquainted with him to ask his friendly offices in behalf of the new-comer,—the man who might reasonably be expected the first week in January?