Bertram Cope's Year/Chapter 3
Chapter III
Cope Is "entertained"
Mrs. Phillips stepped to the front door to meet the half dozen young people who were cheerily coming up the walk. Cope, looking at the fallen cushions with an unseeing eye, remained within the drawing-room door to compose a further paragraph for the behoof of his correspondent in Wisconsin:
"Several girls helped entertain me. They came on as thick as spatter. One played a few things on the violin. Another set up her easel and painted a picture for us. A third wrote a poem and read it to us. And a few sophomores hung about in the background. It was all rather too much. I found myself preferring those hours together in dear old Winnebago . . ."
Only one of the sophomores—if the young men were really of that objectionable tribe—came indoors with the young ladies. The others—either engaged elsewhere or consciously unworthy—went away after a moment or two on the front steps. Perhaps they did not feel "encouraged." And in fact Mrs. Phillips looked back toward Cope with the effect of communicating the idea that she had enough men for to-day. She even conveyed to him the notion that he had made the others superfluous. But——
"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 book-case 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 proffered 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 skilful on the lyre, and none too strong in the lungs . . ."
Medora spoke up loudly and promptly.
"Do you know, I think I've heard you sing before."
"Possibly," Cope said, turning his back on the keyboard. "I sang in the University choir for a year or two."
"In gown and mortar-board? 'Come, Holy Spirit,' and all that?"
"Yes; I sang solos now and then."
"Of course," she said. "I remember now. But I never saw you before without your mortar-board. That changes the forehead. Yes, you're yourself," she went on, adding to her previous pleasure the further pleasure of recognition. "You've earned your tea," she added. "Hortense," she said over her shoulder to the dark girl behind the sofa, "will you——? No; I'll pour, myself."
She slid into her place at table and got things to going. There was an interval which Cope might have employed in praising the artistic aptitudes of this variously gifted household, but he found no appropriate word to say,—or at least uttered none. And none of the three girls made any further comment on his own performance.
Mrs. Phillips accompanied him, on his way out, as far as the hall. She looked up at him questioningly.
"You don't like my poor girls," she said. "You don't find them clever; you don't find them interesting."
"On the contrary," he rejoined, "I have spent a delightful hour." Must he go on and confess that he had developed no particular dexterity in dealing with the younger members of the opposite sex?
"No, you don't care for them one bit," she insisted. She tried to look rebuking, reproachful; yet some shade of expression conveyed to him a hint that her protest was by no means sincere: if he really didn't, it was no loss—it was even a possible gain.
"It's you who don't care for me," he returned. "I'm vieux jeu."
"Nonsense," she rejoined. "If you have a slight past, that only makes you the more atmospheric. Be sure you come again soon, and put in a little more work on the foreground."
Cope, on his way eastward, in the early evening, passed, near the trolley tracks, the Greek lunchcounter, without a thought; he was continuing his letter to "Dear Arthur":
"I think," he wrote, with his mind's finger, "that you might as well come down. I miss you—even more than I thought I should. The term is young, and you can enter for Spanish, or Psychology, or something. There's nothing for you up there. The bishop can spare you. Your father will be reasonable. We can easily arrange some suitable quarters . . ."
And we await a reply from "Dear Arthur"—the fifth and last of our little group. But no; there are two or three others—as you have just seen.