Bertram Copes Year | Page 8

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 skillful 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 lunch-counter, 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.

4
COPE IS CONSIDERED
A few days after the mathematical tea, Basil Randolph was taking a sedate walk among the exotic elms and the indigenous oaks of the campus; he was on his way to the office of the University registrar. He felt interested in Bertram Cope and meant to consult the authorities. That is to say, he intended to consult the written and printed data provided by the authorities,--not to make verbal inquiries of any of the college