Bertram Cope's Year

by Henry Blake Fuller

Lemoyne had been heralded as a young man of parts, and as the son of a family which enjoyed, in Winnebago, some significant share of worldly prosperity, and, therefore, of social consideration. The simpler Copes, putting him in the other back bedroom, the ceiling of which sloped the opposite way, wondered if they were quite giving him his just dues. When Rosalys came to set away his handbag and to rearrange, next morning, his brushes on the top of the dresser, she gathered from various indications supplied by his outfit that the front chamber, at whatever inconvenience to whomever, would have been more suitable. But, "Never mind," said her mother; "they'll do very well as they are—side by side, with the door conveniently between. Then Bert can look after him a little more and we a little less."

Lemoyne presented himself to the combined family gaze as a young man of twenty-seven or so, with dark, limpid eyes, a good deal of dark, wavy hair, and limbs almost too plumply well-turned. In his hands the flesh minimized the prominence of joints and knuckles, and the fingers (especially the little fingers) displayed certain graceful, slightly affected movements of the kind which may cause a person to be credited—or taxed—with possessing the "artistic temperament." To end with, he carried two inches of short black stubble under his nose. He was a type which one may admire—or not. Rosalys Cope found in him a sort of picturesque allure. Rather liking him herself, she found a different reason for her brother's liking. "If Bert cares for him," she remarked, "I suppose it's largely by contrast—he's so spare and light-colored himself."

It was evident that, on this first meeting, Lemoyne meant to ingratiate himself—to make himself attractive and entertaining. He had determined to say a thing or two before he went away, and it would be advantageous to consolidate his position.

He had had five or six hours of cross-country travel, with some tedious waits at junctions, and at about ten o'clock, after some showy converse, he acknowledged himself tired enough for bed. Cope saw him up, and did not come down again. The two talked till past eleven; and even much later, when light sleepers in other parts of the house were awake for a few minutes, muffled sounds from the same two voices reached their ears.

But Cope's words, many as they were, told Lemoyne nothing that he did not know, little that he had not divined. The sum of all was this: Cope did not quite know how he had got into it; but he knew that he was miserable and wanted to get out of it.

Lemoyne had asked, first of all, to see the letter from Iowa. "Oh, come," Cope had replied, half-bashful, half-chivalrous, "you know it wasn't written for anybody but me."

"The substance of it, then," Lemoyne had demanded; and Cope, reluctant and shame-faced, had given it. "You've never been in anything of this sort, you know," he submitted.

"I should say not!" Lemoyne retorted. "Nor you, either. You're not in it now,—or, if you are, you're soon going to be out of it. You would help me through a thing like this, and I'm going to help you."

The talk went on. Lemoyne presented the case for a broken engagement. Engagements, as it was well known to human experience, might, if quickly made, be as quickly unmade: no novelty in that. "I had never expected to double up with an engaged man," Lemoyne declared further. "Nothing especially jolly about that—least of all when the poor wretch is held dead against his will." As he went on, he made Cope feel that he had violated an entente of long standing, and had almost brought a trusting friend down from home under false pretenses.

But phrases from Amy's letter continued to plague Cope. There was a confiding trust, a tender who-could-say-just-what?…