Bertram Cope's Year Part 17

"I hope it's poetry!" said Foster, with a fierce promptness. "I hope it's about Adonis, or Thammuz, whose mishap 'in Lebanon' set all the Syrian females a-going. I could stand a lot more of that,--or perhaps I couldn't!"

"Why, Joe, what's gone wrong?"

"I suppose you know that your young friend got up a great to-do for us the other evening?"

"Yes; I've heard something about it." He looked at Foster's drawn face, and heard with surprise the rasping note in his voice. "Was it as bad as that?"

Foster drew his shade down farther over his eyes and clashed his needles together.

"I remember how, when I was in Florence, we went out to a religious festival one evening at some small hill-town near by. This was twenty years ago, when I _could_ travel. There was a kind of grotto in the church, under the high altar; and in the grotto was a full-sized figure of a dead man, carved and painted--and covered with wounds; and round that figure half the women and girls of the town were collected, stroking, kissing ... Adonis all over again!"

"Oh, come, Joe; don't get morbid."

Foster lifted one shoulder.

"Well, the young fellow began by roaring through the house like a bull of Bashan, and he ended by toppling over like a little wobbly calf."

He spoke like a man who had imagined a full measure of physical powers and had envied them ... had been exasperated by the exuberant presentation of them... had felt a series of contradictory emotions when they had seemed to fail....

"It was only a moment of dizziness," said Randolph. "I imagine he was fairly himself next day."

"Well, I've heard too much about it. Medora came up here and----"

"Need we go into that?"

"There were plenty more to help," Foster went on doggedly. "One dear creature, who was old enough to be more cautious, spilt water down the whole front of her dress----"

"I expect," said Randolph, "that the poor chap has been overworked; or careless about his meals; or worried in his cla.s.ses--for he may not be fully settled in his new place; or some emotional strain may have set itself up----"

"I vote for the emotional strain," said Foster bluntly.

"A guess in the dark," commented Randolph, and paused. He himself knew little enough of Cope as a complex. He had met him but a few times, and could not a.s.sociate him with his unknown background. He knew next to nothing of Cope's family, his connections, his intimates, his early a.s.sociations and experiences. Nor had he greatly bestirred himself to learn. He had done little more than go to a library in the city and turn over the leaves of the Freeford directory. This publication, like most of those dealing with the smaller cities, gave separately the names of all the members of a family; and repet.i.tions of the same address helped toward the arrangement of these individuals (disposed alphabetically) into family groups. Freeford had no great number of Copes, and several of them lived at 1636 Cedar Street. "Elm, Pine, Locust, Cedar," had thought Randolph; "the regular set." And, "One of the good streets," he surmised, "but rather far out. Cedar!" he repeated, and thought of Lebanon and the Miltonic Adonis. Of these various Copes, "Cope, David L., bookpr," might be the father,--unless "Cope, Leverett C., mgr" were the right man. If the former, he was employed by the Martin & Graves Furniture Company, and the Martins were probably important people who lived far out--and handsomely, one might guess--on a Prospect Avenue.... Then there was "Cope, Miss Rosalys M., schooltchr," same address as "David": she was likely his daughter.

"H'm!" Randolph had thought, "these pickings are scanty,--enough anatomical reconstruction for to-day...." And now he was thinking, as he sat opposite Foster, "If I had only picked up another bone or two, I might really have put together the domestic organism. Yet why should I trouble? It would all be plain, humdrum prose, no doubt. Glamour doesn't spread indefinitely. And then--men's brothers...."

"Well," asked Foster sharply, "are you mooning? Medora sat in the same place yesterday, and she talked for awhile too and then fell into a moonstruck silence. What's it all about?"

Randolph came out of his reverie. "Oh, I was just hoping the poor boy was back on his pins all right again."

Then he dropped back into thought. He was devising an outing designed to restore Cope to condition. If Cope could arrange for a free Sat.u.r.day, they might contrive a week-end from Friday afternoon to Monday morning. It was too late for the north and too late for the opposite Michigan sh.o.r.e; but there was "down state" itself, where the days grew warmer and the autumn younger the farther south one went.

There was a trip down a certain historic river,--historic, as our rivers went, and admirably scenic always. He recalled an exceptional hotel on one of its best reaches; one overrun in midsummer, but doubtless quiet at this season. It stood in the midst of some striking cliffs and gorges; and possibly one of the little river-steamers was in commission, or could be induced to run....

Foster dropped his m.u.f.fler pettishly. "Read,--if you won't talk!"

"I can talk all right," returned Randolph. "In fact, I have a bit of news for you."

"What is it?"

"I'm going to move."

Foster peered out from under his shade.

"Move? What for? I thought you were all right where you are.

"All right enough; except that I want more room--and a house of my own."

"Have you found one?"

"I've about decided on an apartment. And I expect to move into it early next month."

"Top floor, of course?"

"No; first floor, not six feet above the street level."

"Good. If they'll lend me a hand here, to get down and out, I'll come and see you, now and then."

"Do so."

"That will give me a chance to wear this m.u.f.fler, after all."

"So it will."

"Well, be a little more cordial. You expect to see your friends, don't you?"

"Of course. That's what it's for. Have I got to exert myself," he added, "to be cordial with _you_?"

"What's the neighborhood?"

"Oh, this one, substantially. The next street from where I am now."

"Housekeeper?"

"I think I'll have a j.a.p alone, at first."

"Dinners?"

"A few small try-outs, perhaps."

"Mixed parties?"

"Not at the beginning, anyhow."

"Oh; bachelor's hall."

"About that."

Foster readjusted his shade, and drove his needles into his ball of yarn.