John Cope

“ During the execution of this movement the enemy’s cavalry pressed forward so rapidly and in such large masses that they compelled the 15th Hussars, who were in rear of the two companies, to retreat at full gallop. And Sir John Moore and his Staff also dashed past. The Riflemen, having opened to let them pass, immediately faced about, and forming across the whole breadth of the street of the village which they had now entered, poured on the enemy’s cavalry such a rapid and well-aimed fire that many saddles were emptied and the pursuit instantly checked. ”

“ Major John Stewart was killed in this fight, and Lieutenant Strode received wounds of which he died. Stewart was a most admirable officer of light troops, skilful in handling them, experienced in outpost duty, and (after Beckwith’s example) , while strictly maintaining discipline, never harassing the men with matters of minute detail. Strode, who was also an excellent officer, always carried a rifle in action, and in the accurate use of it he excelled. ”

“ Cope, when advised, came down in a sort of bathrobe which he made do duty as a dressing-gown. He took the stairs in a rapid run, produced an emphatic smile for the parlor threshold, and put a good measure of energy into his handshakes. "Mighty good of you to call," he said to Mrs. Phillips. "Mighty good of you to call," he said to Amy Leffingwell.
Well, he was on his feet, then. No chance to feel anxiously the brow of a poor boy in bed, or to ask if the window was right or if he wouldn't like a sip of water. Life's little disappointments . ”

“ Cope stood on the height, and tossed his bare head like a tireless young colt. The sun fell bright on his mane of yellow hair. He took in a deep breath. "It's good!" he declared. "It's great! And the water looks better yet. Shall we make it in a rush?" He began to plunge down the long, broken sand-slope. Each step was worth ten. Randolph followed—with judgment. He would not seem young enough to be a competitor, nor yet old enough to be a drag. ”

“ But there was no such consolation for poor abashed Cope. He had disclosed himself, for some reason or other, a weakling; and he had weakened at a conspicuously wrong time and in a conspicuously mistaken place. He had hoped, over the cigars and coffee, to lay the foundation of an acquaintance with the brother-in-law who was a trustee,—to set up an identity in this influential person's mind as a possible help to the future of Arthur Lemoyne. But the man now in the dining-room, or the drawing-room, or wherever, might as well be in the next state. ”

“ In short, every thing is in a strange way, and nobody, hardly, is affected as they ought; at least as I am.... This is the real state of things, however they may be disguised, and I fear Sir J. Cope’s not equal to his business. ”

“ A present partner and pal ought to be a prop rather than a drag: however welcome his company, he must bear his share.
"Look about a bit for quarters," Lemoyne went on, drawing toward his conclusion. "I presume roomrent is little more for two than for one. Possibly," he put down in an afterthought, "I might get a job in the city and then, "with warm regards," he came to a close as "Art."
Cope finished his lunch and walked out. If Arthur could do one thing better than another, it was to make coffee; his product was assuredly better than the Greek's. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Cope kept his self-possession and smiled brilliantly.
"Gracious!" he said, no less resonant than before. "Am I a landscape garden? Am I a stage-setting? Am I a——?"
Medora Phillips finally dropped his hand. "You're a wicked, unappreciative boy," she declared. "I don't know whether to ask you to my house or not. But you may make yourself useful in this house, at least. Run along over to that corner and see if you can't get me a cup of tea."
Cope bowed and smiled and stepped toward the tea-table. ”

“ One face and figure, as Mrs. Phillips presently came to notice, occurred again and again, in various attitudes and costumes. It was a young man of Cope's own age—or perhaps two or three years older. He was of Cope's own height, but slightly heavier, with a possible tendency to plumpness. The best of the photographs made him dark, with black, wavy hair; and in some cases (where sunlight did not distort his expression) he indulged a determined sort of smile. He figured once, all by himself, in choir vestments ”

“ The delay in the offer of the car sometimes induced a young man to remain. Tasteful pajamas and the promise of a suitably early breakfast assured him that he had made no mistake.
Cope's first call was made, not on a tempestuous evening in the winter time, but on a quiet Sunday afternoon toward the end of September. The day was sunny and the streets were full of strollers moving along decorously beneath the elms, maples and catalpas.
"Drop in some Sunday about five," Medora Phillips had said to him, "and have tea. The girls will be glad to meet you." ”

“ Amy gave a nod of agreement. Yet why this critical zeal? There was but one man to like, after all.
"That make-up! That low-cut gown!" said George, in further condemnation. "There's such a thing as going too far."
Basil Randolph met Cope in the back lobby at the close of the performance. The dramatic season in the city itself had begun to languish; besides that, Randolph, in order to maintain his place on the edge of the life academical, always made it a point to remember the Grayfriars each spring. ”

“ Somehow his lithe youthfulness, his fine hair and teeth and eyes, the rich resonance of his voice counted for little—except, perhaps, with the granddaughter. The middle-aged people about him were used to young college men and indifferent to them. Cope himself felt that he was in a new environment, and a loftier one. Several of these were important people, with names familiar through the town and beyond. He employed a caution that almost became inexpressiveness. He also found Mrs. Phillips a shade more formal and stately than her wont. ”

“ Company's the thing. A fellow finds it rather slow, going in alone."
Cope whisked off his clothes with incredible rapidity and piled them—or flung them—under the basswoods: the suddenly resuscitated technique of the small-town lad who could take avail of any pond or any quiet stretch of river on the spur of the moment. He waded in quickly up to his waist, and then took an intrepid header. His lithe young legs and arms threw themselves about hither and yon. After a moment or two he got on his feet and made his way back across a yard of fine shingle to the sand itself. ”

“ Cope, on his own way to dinner, indulged in parallel imaginings. He saw a larger room than his present, with more furniture and better; a bookcase instead of a shelf; a closet, and hot and cold water in some convenient alcove; a second table, with a percolator on it, at which Arthur, who was a light sleeper and willingly an early riser, might indulge his knack for coffee-making to the advantage of them both. And Arthur had the same blessed facility with toast. ”

“ 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." ”

“ As they started out the wind was keen, and a few fine flakes, driven from the north, flew athwart their faces. When they reached Mrs. Phillips' house, Peter, wrapped in furs, was sitting in the limousine by the curb, and two or three people were seen in the open door of the vestibule.
"Well, the best of luck, cher Professeur," Cope heard the voice of Mrs. Phillips saying, in a quick expulsion of syllables. "This is going to be a bad night, I'm afraid; but I hope your audience will get to the hall to hear you, and that our Pierre will be able to get you back to us." ”

“ In 1879 Cope left his house at Kensington and married his second wife, Miss Eleanor Smart. They settled at Maidenhead on the Thames in a house called Craufurd Rise. In 1883 he retired on to the list of honorary members of the Royal Academy, and ceased the active practice of his profession, though he still amused himself occasionally with painting, and as late as 1886 acted as examiner in painting for the South Kensington Schools of Art. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was about an even thing, he guessed,—a matter of cooperation.
"Isn't that delightful!" exclaimed the president's wife to the wife of the banker, before passing Cope on. "And so modern! Equality of the sexes.... Woman doing her share, et cetera! For this," she presently said to the impatient educator from outside, "are we co-educational!" And, "Good teamwork!" she contrived to call after Cope, who was now disappearing in the crowd.
Cope lost himself from Randolph, and presently got away without seeing who was pouring coffee or who was the lightest on foot among the younger professors. ”

“ She often found our Medora "great fun."
Meanwhile, Cope, up stairs, was sinking deeper and deeper into his big, wide, overupholstered bed. And as his body sank, his spirit sank with it. He felt poor, unimportant, ill at ease. In especial, he felt greatly subordinated; he wished that he might have capitulated to a man. Then the mystery of handsome houses and of handsome furnishings came to harass him. Such things were everywhere: how were they got, how were they kept? Should he himself ever——? ”

“ Hortense, who had been moping, brightened too. "I thought you had forgotten me," she said chidingly. Yet her tone had less acerbity than that which she had employed, but a few moments before, to address him in his absence. For she often had in mind, at intervals longer or shorter, Cope's improvisation about the Sassafras—too truly that dense-minded shrub had failed to understand the "young ladies" and their "needs."
"My thesis," he said. "From now on, it must take a lot of my thought and every moment of my spare time." He looked at the waiting canvas. "Clinch it to-day. Hurry it through." ”

“ Beyond his foolish, figured wall were two contrasted types of young vigor, and they babbled, babbled on, in the sensitized hearing of one from whom vigor was gone and for whom hope was set.
"What do you think of her?" Cope had asked. Then he had thrown his face into his pillow and left one ear for the reply.
"She is a clinger," returned Lemoyne. "She will cling until she is loosened by something or somebody. Then she will cling to the second somebody as hard as she did to the first. I'm not so sure that it's you as an individual especially." ”

“ Ceremonially, at least, the rite was complete.
"It's never so cold the second time," declared Cope encouragingly. "One dip doesn't make a swim, any more than one swallow—"
He flashed his soles in the sunlight and was once again immersed, gulping, in a maelstrom of his own making.
"Twice, to oblige you," said Randolph. "But no more. I'll leave the rest to the sun and the air."
Cope, out again, ran up and down the sands for a hundred feet or so. "I know something better than this," he declared presently. He threw himself down and rolled himself in the abundance of fine, dry, clean sand. ”

“ He was for many years lecturer at Trinity, his favourite subjects being the Greek tragedians, Plato and Aristotle. When the professorship of Greek became vacant, the votes were equally divided between Cope and B. H. Kennedy, and the latter was appointed by the chancellor. It is said that the keenness of Cope’s disappointment was partly responsible for the mental affliction by which he was attacked in 1869, and from which he never recovered. He died on the 5th of August 1873. As his published works show, Cope was a thoroughly sound scholar, with perhaps a tendency to over-minuteness. ”

“ Once in a while the evening might be stormy, and then the gauntlets would be laid on the dresser—perhaps after an informal smoke in pajamas among the curios ranged round the small den.
Cope set down his demi-tasse with a slight sigh. "Well," he said, "I suppose that, before long, I shall have to buy a few sticks of furniture myself and a trifle of 'crockery.' And a percolator." Randolph looked across at him in surprise.
"You are moving, then,—you too?" Not to greatly better quarters, he almost hoped.
"Yes; and we shall need a few small things by way of outfit." "We." ”

“ Medora directed the disposition of the hamper of food with a relieved air and sent Cope down with Peter for an armful or two of driftwood from the assertive shore.
"And you, Carolyn," she said, "see if the oil-stove will really go."
Down on the beach itself, where the past winter's waste was still profusely spread, Cope rose to the greening hills, to the fresh sweep of the wind, and to the sun-shot green and purple streakings over the water. The wind, in particular, took its own way: dry light sand, blown from higher shelvings, striped the dark wet edges of the shore ”