_COPE IN A FINAL VIEW_

Cope, after a few days, followed his parents back to Freeford. He may have said good-bye to his landlady and to some of his a.s.sociates in his department; but he contrived no set adieux for the friends who had done so much for him--or had tried to--through the past year. Basil Randolph and Medora Phillips had their last view of him when, diploma in hand, he led his parents away, over the campus.

"Oh, well," said Randolph resignedly, "we were less important to him than we thought. Only a couple of negligible items among many. Entered in his ledger--if we _were_ entered--and now faded away to a dim, rusty, illegible scrawl...."

"Stop it, Basil! You make me feel old, antique, antediluvian. I don't want to. I shan't let myself be pushed back and ignored. I'm going to give Amy and George a rousing big dinner before long; and when the fall term opens I shall entertain as never before. And if that young man from the South turns up here during the summer to see Hortense, I shall do a lot for them."

Hortense Dunton had long since returned, of course, from the Tennessee and North Carolina mountains; but she ignored the convocation. One drop of bitterness, if tasted again--even reminiscently--would have turned everything to gall. Instead, she found a measure of sweetness in the letters which followed on her return from that region. They were addressed in a bold, dashing young hand, and bore the postmark "Nashville." Hortense was inclined to let them lie conspicuously on the front-hall table, for half an hour or so, before she took them up.

Little might be absolutely known about her pa.s.sage with Cope; but there the letters lay, for her aunt's eye and for Carolyn Thorpe's.

Carolyn prattled a little, not indiscreetly, about her meeting with the Freeford family on the campus. As Basil Randolph himself had done months before, she endeavored to construct a general environment for them and to determine their place in the general social fabric. She had, however, the advantage of having seen them; she was not called to make an exiguous evocation from the void. She still held that they were nice, good, pleasant, friendly people: if they had subordinated themselves, docilely and automatically, to the prepotent social and academic figures of the society about them, that in no wise detracted from the favorable impression they had made on her.

"Just the right parents for Bertram," she said fondly, to herself. She made, almost unconsciously, the allowance that is still generally made, among Americans, for the difference between two generations: the elder, of course, continues to provide a staid, sober, and somewhat primitive background for the brilliancy of the younger. Her own people, if they appeared in Churchton, might seem a bit simple and provincial too.

Hortense took Carolyn's slight and fond observations with a silent scorn. When she spoke at all, she was likely to say something about "family"; and it was gathered that the dashing correspondent at Nashville was conspicuously "well-connected." Also, that he belonged to the stirring New South and had put money in his purse. Hortense's contempt for the semi-rustic and impecunious Cope became boundless.

About the middle of July a letter lay on the front-hall table for Carolyn. It was from Cope.

"Only think!" said Carolyn to herself, in a small private ecstasy within her locked bedchamber; "he wrote on his own account and of his own accord. Not a line from me; not a suggestion!"

The letter was an affair of two small pages. "Yours very sincerely, Bertram L. Cope" simply told "My dear Miss Thorpe" that he had been spending three or four days in Winnebago, Wisconsin, and that he had now returned home for a month of further study, having obtained a post in an important university in the East, at a satisfactory stipend. A supplementary line conveyed regards to Mrs. Phillips. And that was all.

Was it a handful of husks, or was it a banquet? Carolyn took it for the latter and lived on it for days. Little it mattered what or how much he had written: he had written, and of his own accord--as Carolyn made a point of from the first. There is an algebraic formula expressive of the truth that "1" is an infinitely greater number of times than "0."

And a single small taper is infinitely greater in point of light and cheer than none at all. Carolyn's little world underwent illumination, and she with it. She promptly soared to a shining infinity.

Medora Phillips could not overlook Carolyn's general glow, nor the sense of elevation she conveyed. Things became clearer still when Carolyn pa.s.sed on the scanty message which Cope had added at the end.

"Best regards to Mrs. Phillips"--there it was, so far as it went. And Medora felt, along with Carolyn, that a slight mention was an immensity of times greater than no mention at all. "Very kind, very thoughtful of him, I'm sure," she said without irony.

Carolyn let her read the letter for herself. It was a brief, cool, succinct thing, and not at all unsuited for general circulation. "Best regards to Mrs. Phillips. Yours very sincerely, Bertram L. Cope," she read again; then, like Carolyn, she retired for meditation.

Well, from its dozen or fifteen lines several things might fairly be inferred. "Three or four days in Winnebago"--a scanty pattern for a visit. Had three or four been enough? Had Lemoyne been found glum and unpleasant? Had those months of close companionship brought about a mutually diminished interest? Not a word as to Lemoyne's accompanying him to Freeford, or joining him there later. On the contrary, a strong implication that there would be sufficient to occupy him without the company of Lemoyne or anybody else: evidences of an eye set solely on the new opportunity in the East.

"Well, if he is going to get along without him," said Medora to herself, "it will be all the better for him. He was never any advantage to him," she added, with an informal and irresponsible use of her p.r.o.nouns. But she knew what she meant and had no auditor to satisfy.

When, however, she touched on the matter with Basil Randolph she showed more exact.i.tude. Randolph had lingered late upstairs with Foster, and he had been intercepted, on his way out, with an invitation to remain to dinner. "Very well," he said. "Sing-Lo is not invariably inspired on Monday evening. I shall be glad to stay."

He felt, in fact, the need of a little soothing. Foster had been taking a farewell shot at Cope and had been rough and vindictive. He had heard something of the antics of "Annabella's" partner and had magnified characteristically the seriousness of the offense. "What hope for him"--meaning Cope--"so long as he goes on liking and admiring that fellow?"

"Well," returned Randolph, in an effortless plat.i.tude, "liking is the great mystery--whether you take its coming or its going."

"The sooner this one goes, the better," snapped Foster. "Have you heard from that fellow at all?" he inquired.

"'That fellow'? What fellow--this time?"

"The other one, of course. Cope."

"No."

Foster wiped out Cope with one question.

"Likely to 'cultivate' some other young chap, next year?"

Randolph had a moment of sober thoughtfulness.

"No."

"Good! Get back into harness; have 'hours' and all the rest of it. Best thing in the world for you. The young care so much for us--the devil they do!"

Foster gave a savage, dragging clutch at his shade and twisted rebelliously in his chair.

Randolph left him to himself and went below.

Downstairs dinner proceeded cautiously. There was no chance for an interchange of thought until the two young women should have been got out of the way. Hortense had her own affair at the back of her head, and Carolyn hers. Neither could sympathize with the other. Hortense's manner to Carolyn was one of half-suppressed insolence. Carolyn, buoyed up interiorly, seemed able to endure it,--perhaps was not fully conscious of it. There was relief when, after dessert, each arose and went her respective way.

Medora and Randolph settled down on a causeuse in the drawing-room. The place was half-lighted, but Randolph made out that his companion was taking on a conscious air of pseudo-melancholy.

Her eyes roved the dim, cluttered room with studied mournfulness, and she said, presently:

"Dear old house! Undergoing depopulation, and soon to be a waste."

"Depopulation?"

"Yes; they're leaving it one by one. First, Amy. You remember Amy?"

"I believe so."

"She married George and went away. You recall the occasion?"

"I think I was present."

"And now it's Hortense."

"Is it, indeed?"

She told him about the gallant young Southerner in Tennessee, and gave a forecast of a probable pairing.

"And next it will be Carolyn."

"Carolyn? Who has cast his eye on her?"

Medora shot it out.

"Bertram Cope!"

"Cope!" Randolph gave himself another twist in that well-twisted sofa.

"Cope," she repeated. If the boy were indeed beyond her own reach, she would report his imminent capture by another with as much effect as she could command.