Bertram Copes Year | Page 9

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 officials themselves. He was, after all, sufficiently in the
academic tradition to prefer the consultation of records as against the
employment of viva voce methods; and he saw no reason why his new
interest should be widely communicated to other individuals. There
was an annual register; there was an album of loose sheets kept up by
the members of the faculty; and there was a card-catalogue, he
remembered, in half a dozen little drawers. All this ought to remove
any necessity of putting questions by word of mouth.
The young clerk behind the broad counter annoyed him by no offer of
aid, but left him to browse for himself. First, the printed register. This
was crowded with professors--full, head, associate, assistant; there were
even two or three professors emeritus. And each department had its tale
of instructors. But no mention of a Bertram Cope. Of course not; this
volume, it occurred to him presently, represented the state of things
during the previous scholastic year.
Next the card-catalogue. But this dealt with the students only--
undergraduate, graduate, special. No Cope there.
Remained the loose-leaf faculty-index, in which the members of the
professorial body told something about themselves in a great variety of
handwriting: among other things, their full names and addresses, and
their natures in so far as penmanship might reveal it. Ca; Ce; Cof;

Collard, Th. J., who was an instructor in French and lived on Rosemary
Place; Copperthwaite, Julian M., Cotton ... No Cope. He looked again,
and further. No slightest alphabetical misplacement.
"You are not finding what you want?" asked the clerk at last. The
search was delaying other inquirers.
"Bertram Cope," said Randolph. "Instructor, I think."
"He has been slow. But his page will be in place by tomorrow. If you
want his address...."
"Yes?"
"--I think I can give it to you." The youth retired behind a screen.
"There," he said, returning with a bit of pencilling on a scrap of paper.
Randolph thanked him, folded up the paper, and put it in his pocket. A
mere bit of ordinary clerkly writing; no character, no allure. Well, the
actual chirography of the absentee would be made manifest before long.
What was it like? Should he himself ever have a specimen of it in a
letter or a note?
That evening, with his after-dinner cigarette, he strolled casually
through Granville Avenue, the short street indicated by the address. It
was a loosely-built neighborhood of frame dwellings, with yards and a
moderate provision of trees and shrubs--a neighborhood of people who
owned their houses but did not spend much money on them. Number
48 was a good deal like the others. "Decent enough, but
commonplace," Randolph pronounced. "Yet what could I have been
expecting?" he added; and his whimsical smile told him not to let
himself become absurd.
There were lighted windows in the front and at the side. Which of these
was Cope's, and what was the boy doing? Was he deep in black-letter,
or was he selecting a necktie preliminary to some evening diversion
outside? Or had he put out his light--several windows were dark--and
already taken the train into town for some concert or theatre?

"Well," said Randolph to himself, with a last puff at his cigarette,
"they're not likely to move out