Bertram Copes Year | Page 8

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
preferred 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 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