Bertram Cope's Year/Chapter 30
Chapter 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. Some one 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 sha'n'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 know 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 to the house, while the voices of others were still audible in the humpy thickets below.
The men were part of a search-party, of course,—a posse; and they wanted to know whether . . .
"He tried to break in," said Medora Phillips eagerly; "but this gentleman . . ."
She turned appreciatively to Cope. Carolyn, really impressed by her well-sustained seriousness and ardor, almost began to believe that they owed their lives to Bertram Cope alone.
"Was he a—murderer?" asked Medora.
The men looked serious, but made no categorical reply. They glanced at the wrecked pantry window, and they looked with more intentness at the long sliding footprints which led away, down the half-bare sand-slope. Then they slid down themselves.
Medora asked Carolyn to do what she could toward constructing a lunch and then walked down to the shore with Cope to compose her nerves. No stroll today along the ridged amphitheatre of the hills, whence the long, low range of buildings, under that tall chimney, was so plainly in view. Still less relishing the idea of a tramp through the woods themselves, the certain haunt—somewhere—of some skulking desperado. No, they would take the shore itself—open to the wide firmament, clear of all snares, and free from every disconcerting sight.
"Poor Carolyn!" said Medora presently. "How fluttered and inefficient she was! A good secretary—in a routine way—but so lacking in initiative and self-possession!"
Cope's look tended to become a stare. He thought that Carolyn had been in pretty fair control of herself,—had been less fluttery and excited, indeed, than her employer.
But Medora had been piqued, the night before, by Carolyn's tendency to linger on the scene and to help skim the emotional cream from the situation.
"And in such dishabille, too! I hope you don't think she seemed immodest?"
But Cope had given small heed to their dress, or to their lack of it. In fact, he had noticed little if any difference between them. He only knew that he had felt a degree more comfortable after getting his own coat on.
"Carolyn understands her place pretty well," mused Medora. "Yet . . ."
"Anybody might be excused for looking anyhow', at such a time," observed Cope, fending off the intrusion of a new set of considerations; "and in such a sudden stir. I hope nobody noticed how I looked!"
"Well, you were noticeable," declared Medora, with some archness. She had been conscious enough of his spare waist, his sinewy arms, his swelling chest. "It was easy enough to see where the noise came from," she said, looking him over.
"Yes, I supplied the noise—and that only. It was Peter, please remember, who supplied the muscle."
She declined to let her mind dwell on Peter. Peter possessed no charm. Besides, he was prosaically on the payroll.
They continued to saunter along the sand. Yesterday's sparse clouds had vanished, along with much of yesterday's wind. The waters that had tumbled and vociferated now merely murmured. The lake stood calmly blue, and the new green was thickening on the hills. Confident birds flitted busily among the trees and shrubs. Spring was disclosed in its most alluring mood.
Suddenly three or four figures appeared on the beach, a quarter of a mile away. They had descended through one of the sandy and ravaged channelings which broke at intervals the regulated rim of the hills, and they came on toward our two strollers. Medora closed her eyes to peer at them. "Are they marching a prisoner?" she asked.
"They all appear to be walking free."
"Are they carrying knapsacks?"
"Khaki, puttees,—and knapsacks, I think."
"Some university men said they might happen along to-day. If they really have knapsacks, and anything to eat in them, they're welcome. Otherwise, we had better hide quick—and hope they'll lose the place and pass us by."
One of the advancing figures lifted a semaphoric arm. "Too late," said Cope; "they recognize you."
"Then we'll walk on and meet them," declared Medora.
The newcomers were young professors and graduate students. They were soon in possession of the thrilling facts of the past night, and one of them offered to be a prisoner, if a prisoner was desired. When they heard how Bertram Cope had saved the lives of defenseless women in a lonely land, they inclined to smile. Two of them had been present on another shore when Cope had "saved" Amy Leffingwell from a watery death, and they knew how far heroics might be pushed by women who were willing to idealize. Cope saw their smiles and felt that he had fumbled an opportunity: when he might have been a truncheon, he had been only a megaphone.
The new arrivals, after climbing the sandy rise to the house, were shown the devastated kitchen and were asked to declare what provisions they carried. They had enough food for their own needs and a trifle to spare. Lunch might be managed, but any thought of a later meal was out of the question. "We'll start back at four-thirty," said Medora to Peter. "Meanwhile"—to the college men—"the world is ours."
After lunch the enlarged party walked forth again. Mrs. Phillips had old things to show to fresh eyes: she formed the new visitors into a compact little group and let them see how good a guide she could be. Cope and Carolyn strolled negligently—even unsystematically—behind. Once or twice the personally conducted looked back.
"I hope she won't tell them again how I came to the rescue," said Cope. "It makes a man feel too flat for words. Anybody might think, to hear her go on, that I had saved you all from robbery and murder . . ."
"Why, but didn't you?" inquired Carolyn seriously.