There was nothing miraculous about it. That is to say, it was no more of a miracle than hundreds of similar cases in the World War. The papers of those years were constantly printing stories of men over whose supposed graves funeral sermons had been preached, to whose heirs insurance payments had been made, in whose memory grateful communities had made speeches and delivered eulogiums—the papers were telling of instance after instance of those men being discovered alive and in the flesh, as casuals in some French hospital or as inmates of German prison camps.
Rachel Ellis had asked what was to hinder Albert's having been taken prisoner by the Germans and carried off by them. As a matter of fact nothing had hindered and that was exactly what had happened. Sergeant Speranza, wounded by machine gun fire and again by the explosion of the grenade, was found in the ruins of the cottage when the detachment of the enemy captured it. He was conscious and able to speak, so instead of being bayonetted was carried to the rear where he might be questioned concerning the American forces. The questioning was most unsatisfactory to the Prussian officers who conducted it. Albert fainted, recovered consciousness and fainted again. So at last the Yankee swine was left to die or get well and his Prussian interrogators went about other business, the business of escaping capture themselves. But when they retreated the few prisoners, mostly wounded men, were taken with them.
Albert's recollections of the next few days were hazy and very doubtful. Pain, pain and more pain. Hours and hours—they seemed like years—of jolting over rough roads. Pawing-over by a fat, bearded surgeon, who may not have been intentionally brutal, but quite as likely may. A great desire to die, punctuated by occasional feeble spurts of wishing to live. Then more surgical man-handling, more jolting—in freight cars this time—a slow, miserable recovery, nurses who hated their patients and treated them as if they did, then, a prison camp, a German prison camp. Then horrors and starvation and brutality lasting many months. Then fever.
He was wandering in that misty land between this world and the next when, the armistice having been signed, an American Red Cross representative found him. In the interval between fits of delirium he told this man his name and regiment and, later, the name of his grandparents. When it seemed sure that he was to recover the Red Cross representative cabled the facts to this country. And, still later, those facts, or the all-important fact that Sergeant Albert M. C. Speranza was not dead but alive, came by telegraph to Captain Zelotes Snow of South Harniss. And, two months after that, Captain Zelotes himself, standing on the wharf in Boston and peering up at a crowded deck above him, saw the face of his grandson, that face which he had never expected to see again, looking eagerly down upon him.
A few more weeks and it was over. The brief interval of camp life and the mustering out were things of the past. Captain Lote and Albert, seated in the train, were on their way down the Cape, bound home. Home! The word had a significance now which it never had before. Home!
Albert drew a long breath. “By George!” he exclaimed. “By George, Grandfather, this looks good to me!”
It might not have looked as good to another person. It was raining, the long stretches of salt marsh were windswept and brown and bleak. In the distance Cape Cod Bay showed gray and white against a leaden sky. The drops ran down the dingy car windows.
Captain Zelotes understood, however. He nodded.
“It used to look good to me when I was bound home after a v'yage,” he observed. “Well, son, I cal'late your grandma and Rachel are up to the depot by this time waitin' for you. We ain't due for pretty nigh an hour yet, but I'd be willin' to bet they're there.”
Albert smiled. “My, I do want to see them!” he said.
“Shouldn't wonder a mite if they wanted to see you, boy. Well, I'm kind of glad I shooed that reception committee out of the way. I presumed likely you'd rather have your first day home to yourself—and us.”
“I should say so! Newspaper reporters are a lot of mighty good fellows, but I hope I never see another one. . . . That's rather ungrateful, I know,” he added, with a smile, “but I mean it—just now.”
He had some excuse for meaning it. The death of Albert Speranza, poet and warrior, had made a newspaper sensation. His resurrection and return furnished material for another. Captain Zelotes was not the only person to meet the transport at the pier; a delegation of reporters was there also. Photographs of Sergeant Speranza appeared once more in print. This time, however, they were snapshots showing him in uniform, likenesses of a still handsome, but less boyish young man, thinner, a scar upon his right cheek, and the look in his eyes more serious, and infinitely older, the look of one who had borne much and seen more. The reporters found it difficult to get a story from the returned hero. He seemed to shun the limelight and to be almost unduly modest and retiring, which was of itself, had they but known it, a transformation sufficiently marvelous to have warranted a special “Sunday special.”
“Will not talk about himself,” so one writer headed his article. Gertie Kendrick, with a brand-new ring upon her engagement finger, sniffed as she read that headline to Sam Thatcher, who had purchased the ring. “Al Speranza won't talk about himself!” exclaimed Gertie. “Well, it's the FIRST time, then. No wonder they put it in the paper.”
But Albert would not talk, claiming that he had done nothing worth talking about, except to get himself taken prisoner in almost his first engagement. “Go and ask some of the other fellows aboard here,” he urged. “They have been all through it.” As he would not talk the newspaper men were obliged to talk for him, which they did by describing his appearance and his manner, and by rehashing the story of the fight in the French village. Also, of course, they republished some of his verses. The Lances of Dawn appeared in a special edition in honor of its author's reappearance on this earth.
“Yes sir,” continued Captain Zelotes, “the reception committee was consider'ble disappointed. They'd have met you with the Orham band if they'd had their way. I told 'em you'd heard all the band music you wanted in camp, I guessed likely, and you'd rather come home quiet. There was goin' to be some speeches, too, but I had them put off.”
“Thanks, Grandfather.”
“Um-hm. I had a notion you wouldn't hanker for speeches. If you do Issy'll make one for you 'most any time. Ever since you got into the papers Issy's been swellin' up like a hot pop-over with pride because you and he was what he calls chummies. All last summer Issachar spent his evenin's hangin' around the hotel waitin' for the next boarder to mention your name. Sure as one did Is was ready for him. 'Know him?' he'd sing out. 'Did I know Al Speranza? ME? Well, now say!—' And so on, long as the feller would listen. I asked him once if he ever told any of 'em how you ducked him with the bucket of water. He didn't think I knew about that and it kind of surprised him, I judged.”
Albert smiled. “Laban told you about it, I suppose,” he said. “What a kid trick that was, wasn't it?”
The captain turned his head and regarded him for an instant. The old twinkle was in his eye when he spoke.
“Wouldn't do a thing like that now, Al, I presume likely?” he said. “Feel a good deal older now, eh?”
Albert's answer was seriously given.
“Sometimes I feel at least a hundred and fifty,” he replied.
“Humph! . . . Well, I wouldn't feel like that. If you're a hundred and fifty I must be a little older than Methuselah was in his last years. I'm feelin' younger to-day, younger than I have for quite a spell. Yes, for quite a spell.”
His grandson put a hand on his knee. “Good for you, Grandfather,” he said. “Now tell me more about Labe. Do you know I think the old chap's sticking by his pledge is the bulliest thing I've heard since I've been home.”
So they talked of Laban and of Rachel and of South Harniss happenings until the train drew up at the platform of that station. And upon that platform stepped Albert to feel his grandmother's arms about him and her voice, tremulous with happiness, at his ear. And behind her loomed Mrs. Ellis, her ample face a combination of smiles and tears, “all sunshine and fair weather down below but rainin' steady up aloft,” as Captain Lote described it afterwards. And behind her, like a foothill in the shadow of a mountain, was Laban. And behind Laban—No, that is a mistake—in front of Laban and beside Laban and in front of and beside everyone else when opportunity presented was Issachar. And Issachar's expression and bearings were wonderful to see. A stranger, and there were several strangers amid the group at the station, might have gained the impression that Mr. Price, with of course a very little help from the Almighty, was responsible for everything.
“Why, Issy!” exclaimed Albert, when they shook hands. “You're here, too, eh?”
Mr. Price's already protuberant chest swelled still further. His reply had the calmness of finality.
“Yes, sir,” said Issy, “I'm here. 'Who's goin' to look out for Z. Snow and Co. if all hands walks out and leaves 'em?' Labe says. 'I don't know,' says I, 'and I don't care. I'm goin' to that depot to meet Al Speranzy and if Z. Snow and Co. goes to pot while I'm gone I can't help it. I have sacrificed,' I says, 'and I stand ready to sacrifice pretty nigh everything for my business, but there's limits and this is one of 'em. I'm goin' acrost to that depot to meet him,' says I, 'and don't you try to stop me, Labe Keeler.'”
“Great stuff, Is!” said Albert, with a laugh. “What did Labe say to that?”
“What was there for him to say? He could see I meant it. Course he hove out some of his cheap talk, but it didn't amount to nothin'. Asked if I wan't goin' to put up a sign sayin' when I'd be back, so's to ease the customers' minds. 'I don't know when I'll be back,' I says. 'All right,' says he, 'put that on the sign. That'll ease 'em still more.' Just cheap talk 'twas. He thinks he's funny, but I don't pay no attention to him.”
Others came to shake hands and voice a welcome. The formal reception, that with the band, had been called off at Captain Zelotes's request, but the informal one was, in spite of the rain, which was now much less heavy, quite a sizable gathering.
The Reverend Mr. Kendall held his hand for a long time and talked much, it seemed to Albert that he had aged greatly since they last met. He wandered a bit in his remarks and repeated himself several times.
“The poor old gentleman's failin' a good deal, Albert,” said Mrs. Snow, as they drove home together, he and his grandparents, three on the seat of the buggy behind Jessamine. “His sermons are pretty tiresome nowadays, but we put up with 'em because he's been with us so long. . . . Ain't you squeezed 'most to death, Albert? You two big men and me all mashed together on this narrow seat. It's lucky I'm small. Zelotes ought to get a two-seated carriage, but he won't.”
“Next thing I get, Mother,” observed the captain, “will be an automobile. I'll stick to the old mare here as long as she's able to navigate, but when she has to be hauled out of commission I'm goin' to buy a car. I believe I'm pretty nigh the last man in this county to drive a horse, as 'tis. Makes me feel like what Sol Dadgett calls a cracked teapot—a 'genuine antique.' One of these city women will be collectin' me some of these days. Better look out, mother.”
Olive sighed happily. “It does me good to hear you joke again, Zelotes,” she said. “He didn't joke much, Albert, while—when we thought you—you—”
Albert interrupted in time to prevent the threatened shower.
“So Mr. Kendall is not well,” he said. “I'm very sorry to hear it.”
“Of course you would be. You and he used to be so friendly when Helen was home. Oh, speakin' of Helen, she IS comin' home in a fortni't or three weeks, so I hear. She's goin' to give up her teachin' and come back to be company for her father. I suppose she realizes he needs her, but it must be a big sacrifice for her, givin' up the good position she's got now. She's such a smart girl and such a nice one. Why, she came to see us after the news came—the bad news—and she was so kind and so good. I don't know what we should have done without her. Zelotes says so too, don't you, Zelotes?”
Her husband did not answer. Instead he said: “Well, there's home, Al. Rachel's there ahead of us and dinner's on the way, judgin' by the smoke from the kitchen chimney. How does the old place look to you, boy?”
Albert merely shook his head and drew a long breath, but his grandparents seemed to be quite satisfied.
There were letters and telegrams awaiting him on the table in the sitting-room. Two of the letters were postmarked from a town on the Florida coast. The telegram also was from that same town.
“Ihad one of those things,” observed Captain Zelotes, alluding to the telegram. “Fosdick sent me one of those long ones, night-letters I believe they call 'em. He wants me to tell you that Mrs. Fosdick is better and that they cal'late to be in New York before very long and shall expect you there. Of course you knew that, Al, but I presume likely the main idea of the telegram was to help say, 'Welcome home' to you, that's all.”
Albert nodded. Madeline and her mother had been in Florida all winter. Mrs. Fosdick's health was not good. She declared that her nerves had given way under her frightful responsibilities during the war. There was, although it seems almost sacrilege to make such a statement, a certain similarity between Mrs. Fletcher Fosdick and Issachar Price. The telegram was, as his grandfather surmised, an expression of welcome and of regret that the senders could not be there to share in the reception. The two letters which accompanied it he put in his pocket to read later on, when alone. Somehow he felt that the first hours in the old house belonged exclusively to his grandparents. Everything else, even Madeline's letters, must take second place for that period.
Dinner was, to say the least, an ample meal. Rachel and Olive had, as Captain Lote said, “laid themselves out” on that dinner. It began well and continued well and ended best of all, for the dessert was one of which Albert was especially fond. They kept pressing him to eat until Laban, who was an invited guest, was moved to comment.
“Humph!” observed Mr. Keeler. “I knew 'twas the reg'lar program to kill the fatted calf when the prodigal got home, but I see now it's the proper caper to fat up the prodigal to take the critter's place. No, no, Rachel, I'd like fust-rate to eat another bushel or so to please you, but somethin'—that still, small voice we're always readin' about, or somethin'—seems to tell me 'twouldn't be good jedgment. . . . Um-hm. . . . 'Twouldn't be good jedgment. . . . Cal'late it's right, too. . . . Yes, yes, yes.”
“Now, Cap'n Lote,” he added, as they rose from the table, “you stay right to home here for the rest of the day. I'll hustle back to the office and see if Issy's importance has bust his b'iler for him. So-long, Al. See you pretty soon. Got some things to talk about, you and I have. . . . Yes, yes.”
Later, when Rachel was in the kitchen with the dishes, Olive left the sitting room and reappeared with triumph written large upon her face. In one hand she held a mysterious envelope and in the other a book. Albert recognized that book. It was his own, The Lances of Dawn. It was no novelty to him. When first the outside world and he had reopened communication, copies of that book had been sent him. His publisher had sent them, Madeline had sent them, his grandparents had sent them, comrades had sent them, nurses and doctors and newspaper men had brought them. No, The Lances of Dawn was not a novelty to its author. But he wondered what was in the envelope.
Mrs. Snow enlightened him. “You sit right down now, Albert,” she said. “Sit right down and listen because I've got somethin' to tell you. Yes, and somethin' to show you, too. Here! Stop now, Zelotes! You can't run away. You've got to sit down and look on and listen, too.”
Captain Zelotes smiled resignedly. There was, or so it seemed to his grandson, an odd expression on his face. He looked pleased, but not altogether pleased. However, he obeyed his wife's orders and sat.
“Stop, look and listen,” he observed. “Mother, you sound like a railroad crossin'. All right, here I am. Al, the society of 'What did I tell you' is goin' to have a meetin'.”
His wife nodded. “Well,” she said, triumphantly, “what DID I tell you? Wasn't I right?”
The captain pulled his beard and nodded.
“Right as right could be, Mother,” he admitted. “Your figgers was a few hundred thousand out of the way, maybe, but barrin' that you was perfectly right.”
“Well, I'm glad to hear you say so for once in your life. Albert,” holding up the envelope, “do you know what this is?”
Albert, much puzzled, admitted that he did not. His grandmother put down the book, opened the envelope and took from it a slip of paper.
“And can you guess what THIS is?” she asked. Albert could not guess.
“It's a check, that's what it is. It's the first six months' royalties, that's what they call 'em, on that beautiful book of yours. And how much do you suppose 'tis?”
Albert shook his head. “Twenty-five dollars?” he suggested jokingly.
“Twenty-five dollars! It's over twenty-five HUNDRED dollars. It's twenty-eight hundred and forty-three dollars and sixty-five cents, that's what it is. Think of it! Almost three thousand dollars! And Zelotes prophesied that 'twouldn't be more than—”
Her husband held up his hand. “Sh-sh! Sh-sh, Mother,” he said. “Don't get started on what I prophesied or we won't be through till doomsday. I'll give in right off that I'm the worst prophet since the feller that h'isted the 'Fair and Dry' signal the day afore Noah's flood begun. You see,” he explained, turning to Albert, “your grandma figgered out that you'd probably clear about half a million on that book of poetry, Al. I cal'lated 'twan't likely to be much more'n a couple of hundred thousand, so—”
“Why, Zelotes Snow! You said—”
“Yes, yes. So I did, Mother, so I did. You was right and I was wrong. Twenty-eight hundred ain't exactly a million, Al, but it's a darn sight more than I ever cal'lated you'd make from that book. Or 'most anybody else ever made from any book, fur's that goes,” he added, with a shake of the head. “I declare, I—I don't understand it yet. And a poetry book, too! Who in time BUYS 'em all? Eh?”
Albert was looking at the check and the royalty statement.
“So this is why I couldn't get any satisfaction from the publisher,” he observed. “I wrote him two or three times about my royalties, and he put me off each time. I began to think there weren't any.”
Captain Zelotes smiled. “That's your grandma's doin's,” he observed. “The check came to us a good while ago, when we thought you was—was—well, when we thought—”
“Yes. Surely, I understand,” put in Albert, to help him out.
“Yes. That's when 'twas. And Mother, she was so proud of it, because you'd earned it, Al, that she kept it and kept it, showin' it to all hands and—and so on. And then when we found out you wasn't—that you'd be home some time or other—why, then she wouldn't let me put it in the bank for you because she wanted to give it to you herself. That's what she said was the reason. I presume likely the real one was that she wanted to flap it in my face every time she crowed over my bad prophesyin', which was about three times a day and four on Sundays.”
“Zelotes Snow, the idea!”
“All right, Mother, all right. Anyhow, she got me to write your publisher man and ask him not to give you any satisfaction about those royalties, so's she could be the fust one to paralyze you with 'em. And,” with a frank outburst, “if you ain't paralyzed, Al, I own up thatIam. Three thousand poetry profits beats me.Idon't understand it.”
His wife sniffed. “Of course you don't,” she declared. “But Albert does. And so do I, only I think it ought to have been ever and ever so much more. Don't you, yourself, Albert?”
The author of The Lances of Dawn was still looking at the statement of its earnings.
“Approximately eighteen thousand sold at fifteen cents royalty,” he observed. “Humph! Well, I'll be hanged!”
“But you said it would be twenty-five cents, not fifteen,” protested Olive. “In your letter when the book was first talked about you said so.”
Albert smiled. “Did I?” he observed. “Well, I said a good many things in those days, I'm afraid. Fifteen cents for a first book, especially a book of verse, is fair enough, I guess. But eighteen thousand SOLD! That is what gets me.”
“You mean you think it ought to be a lot more. So do I, Albert, and so does Rachel. Why, we like it a lot better than we do David Harum. That was a nice book, but it wasn't lovely poetry like yours. And David Harum sold a million. Why shouldn't yours sell as many? Only eighteen thousand—why are you lookin' at me so funny?”
Her grandson rose to his feet. “Let's let well enough alone, Grandmother,” he said. “Eighteen thousand will do, thank you. I'm like Grandfather, I'm wondering who on earth bought them.”
Mrs. Snow was surprised and a little troubled.
“Why, Albert,” she said, “you act kind of—kind of queer, seems to me. You talk as if your poetry wasn't beautiful. You know it is. You used to say it was, yourself.”
He interrupted her. “Did I, Grandmother?” he said. “All right, then, probably I did. Let's walk about the old place a little. I want to see it all. By George, I've been dreaming about it long enough!”
There were callers that afternoon, friends among the townsfolk, and more still after supper. It was late—late for South Harniss, that is—when Albert, standing in the doorway of the bedroom he nor they had ever expected he would occupy again, bade his grandparents good night. Olive kissed him again and again and, speech failing her, hastened away down the hall. Captain Zelotes shook his hand, opened his mouth to speak, shut it again, repeated both operations, and at last with a brief, “Well, good night, Al,” hurried after his wife. Albert closed the door, put his lamp upon the bureau, and sat down in the big rocker.
In a way the night was similar to that upon which he had first entered that room. It had ceased raining, but the wind, as on that first night, was howling and whining about the eaves, the shutters rattled and the old house creaked and groaned rheumatically. It was not as cold as on that occasion, though by no means warm. He remembered how bare and comfortless he had thought the room. Now it looked almost luxurious. And he had been homesick, or fancied himself in that condition. Compared to the homesickness he had known during the past eighteen months that youthful seizure seemed contemptible and quite without excuse. He looked about the room again, looked long and lovingly. Then, with a sigh of content, drew from his pocket the two letters which had lain upon the sitting-room table when he arrived, opened them and began to read.
Madeline wrote, as always, vivaciously and at length. The maternal censorship having been removed, she wrote exactly as she felt. She could scarcely believe he was really going to be at home when he received this, at home in dear, quaint, queer old South Harniss. Just think, she had not seen the place for ever and ever so long, not for over two years. How were all the funny, odd people who lived there all the time? Did he remember how he and she used to go to church every Sunday and sit through those dreadful, DREADFUL sermons by that prosy old minister just as an excuse for meeting each other afterward? She was SO sorry she could not have been there to welcome her hero when he stepped from the train. If it hadn't been for Mother's poor nerves she surely would have been. He knew it, didn't he? Of course he did. But she should see him soon “because Mother is planning already to come back to New York in a few weeks and then you are to run over immediately and make us a LONG visit. And I shall be so PROUD of you. There are lots of Army fellows down here now, officers for the most part. So we dance and are very gay—that is, the other girls are; I, being an engaged young lady, am very circumspect and demure, of course. Mother carries The Lances about with her wherever she goes, to teas and such things, and reads aloud from it often. Captain Blanchard, he is one of the family's officer friends, is crazy about your poetry, dear. He thinks it WONDERFUL. You know whatIthink of it, don't you, and when I think thatIactually helped you, or played at helping you write some of it!
“And I am WILD to see your war cross. Some of the officers here have them—the crosses, I mean—but not many. Captain Blanchard has the military medal, and he is almost as modest about it as you are about your decoration. I don't see how you CAN be so modest. IfIhad a Croix de Guerre I should want EVERY ONE to know about it. At the tea dance the other afternoon there was a British major who—”
And so on. The second letter was really a continuation of the first. Albert read them both and, after the reading was finished, sat for some time in the rocking chair, quite regardless of the time and the cold, thinking. He took from his pocketbook a photograph, one which Madeline had sent him months before, which had reached him while he lay in the French hospital after his removal from the German camp. He looked at the pretty face in the photograph. She looked just as he remembered her, almost exactly as she had looked more than two years before, smiling, charming, carefree. She had not, apparently, grown older, those age-long months had not changed her. He rose and regarded his own reflection in the mirror of the bureau. He was surprised, as he was constantly being surprised, to see that he, too, had not changed greatly in personal appearance.
He walked about the room. His grandmother had told him that his room was just as he had left it. “I wouldn't change it, Albert,” she said, “even when we thought you—you wasn't comin' back. I couldn't touch it, somehow. I kept thinkin', 'Some day I will. Pretty soon I MUST.' But I never did, and now I'm so glad.”
He wandered back to the bureau and pulled open the upper drawers. In those drawers were so many things, things which he had kept there, either deliberately or because he was too indolent to destroy them. Old dance cards, invitations, and a bundle of photographs, snapshots. He removed the rubber band from the bundle and stood looking them over. Photographs of school fellows, of picnic groups, of girls. Sam Thatcher, Gertie Kendrick—and Helen Kendall. There were at least a dozen of Helen.
One in particular was very good. From that photograph the face of Helen as he had known it four years before looked straight up into his—clear-eyed, honest, a hint of humor and understanding and common-sense in the gaze and at the corners of the lips. He looked at the photograph, and the photograph looked up at him. He had not seen her for so long a time. He wondered if the war had changed her as it had changed him. Somehow he hoped it had not. Change did not seem necessary in her case.
There had been no correspondence between them since her letter written when she heard of his enlistment. He had not replied to that because he knew Madeline would not wish him to do so. He wondered if she ever thought of him now, if she remembered their adventure at High Point light. He had thought of her often enough. In those days and nights of horror in the prison camp and hospital he had found a little relief, a little solace in lying with closed eyes and summoning back from memory the things of home and the faces of home. And her face had been one of these. Her face and those of his grandparents and Rachel and Laban, and visions of the old house and the rooms—they were the substantial things to cling to and he had clung to them. They WERE home. Madeline—ah! yes, he had longed for her and dreamed of her, God knew, but Madeline, of course, was different.
He snapped the rubber band once more about the bundle of photographs, closed the drawer and prepared for bed.
For the two weeks following his return home he had a thoroughly good time. It was a tremendous comfort to get up when he pleased, to eat the things he liked, to do much or little or nothing at his own sweet will. He walked a good deal, tramping along the beach in the blustering wind and chilly sunshine and enjoying every breath of the clean salt air. He thought much during those solitary walks, and at times, at home in the evenings, he would fall to musing and sit silent for long periods. His grandmother was troubled.
“Don't it seem to you, Zelotes,” she asked her husband, “as if Albert was kind of discontented or unsatisfied these days? He's so—so sort of fidgety. Talks like the very mischief for ten minutes and then don't speak for half an hour. Sits still for a long stretch and then jumps up and starts off walkin' as if he was crazy. What makes him act so? He's kind of changed from what he used to be. Don't you think so?”
The captain patted her shoulder. “Don't worry, Mother,” he said. “Al's older than he was and what he's been through has made him older still. As for the fidgety part of it, the settin' down and jumpin' up and all that, that's the way they all act, so far as I can learn. Elisha Warren, over to South Denboro, tells me his nephew has been that way ever since he got back. Don't fret, Mother, Al will come round all right.”
“I didn't know but he might be anxious to see—to see her, you know.”
“Her? Oh, you mean the Fosdick girl. Well, he'll be goin' to see her pretty soon, I presume likely. They're due back in New York 'most any time now, I believe. . . . Oh, hum! Why in time couldn't he—”
“Couldn't he what, Zelotes?”
“Oh, nothin', nothin'.”
The summons came only a day after this conversation. It came in the form of another letter from Madeline and one from Mrs. Fosdick. They were, so the latter wrote, back once more in their city home, her nerves, thank Heaven, were quite strong again, and they were expecting him, Albert, to come on at once. “We are all dying to see you,” wrote Mrs. Fosdick. “And poor, dear Madeline, of course, is counting the moments.”
“Stay as long as you feel like, Al,” said the captain, when told of the proposed visit. “It's the dull season at the office, anyhow, and Labe and I can get along first-rate, with Issy to superintend. Stay as long as you want to, only—”
“Only what, Grandfather?”
“Only don't want to stay too long. That is, don't fall in love with New York so hard that you forget there is such a place as South Harniss.”
Albert smiled. “I've been in places farther away than New York,” he said, “and I never forgot South Harniss.”
“Um-hm. . . . Well, I shouldn't be surprised if that was so. But you'll have better company in New York than you did in some of those places. Give my regards to Fosdick. So-long, Al.”
The Fosdick car was at the Grand Central Station when the Knickerbocker Limited pulled in. And Madeline, a wonderfully furred and veiled and hatted Madeline, was waiting there behind the rail as he came up the runway from the train. It was amazing the fact that it was really she. It was more amazing still to kiss her there in public, to hold her hand without fear that some one might see. To—
“Shall I take your bags, sir?”
It was the Fosdick footman who asked it. Albert started guiltily. Then he laughed, realizing that the hand-holding and the rest were no longer criminal offenses. He surrendered his luggage to the man. A few minutes later he and Madeline were in the limousine, which was moving rapidly up the Avenue. And Madeline was asking questions and he was answering and—and still it was all a dream. It COULDN'T be real.
It was even more like a dream when the limousine drew up before the door of the Fosdick home and they entered that home together. For there was Mrs. Fosdick, as ever majestic, commanding, awe-inspiring, the same Mrs. Fosdick who had, in her letter to his grandfather, written him down a despicable, underhanded sneak, here was that same Mrs. Fosdick—but not at all the same. For this lady was smiling and gracious, welcoming him to her home, addressing him by his Christian name, treating him kindly, with almost motherly tenderness. Madeline's letters and Mrs. Fosdick's own letters received during his convalescence abroad had prepared him, or so he had thought, for some such change. Now he realized that he had not been prepared at all. The reality was so much more revolutionary than the anticipation that he simply could not believe it.
But it was not so very wonderful if he had known all the facts and had been in a frame of mind to calmly analyze them. Mrs. Fletcher Fosdick was a seasoned veteran, a general who had planned and fought many hard campaigns upon the political battlegrounds of women's clubs and societies of various sorts. From the majority of those campaigns she had emerged victorious, but her experiences in defeat had taught her that the next best thing to winning is to lose gracefully, because by so doing much which appears to be lost may be regained. For Albert Speranza, bookkeeper and would-be poet of South Harniss, Cape Cod, she had had no use whatever as a prospective son-in-law. Even toward a living Albert Speranza, hero and newspaper-made genius, she might have been cold. But when that hero and genius was, as she and every one else supposed, safely and satisfactorily dead and out of the way, she had seized the opportunity to bask in the radiance of his memory. She had talked Albert Speranza and read Albert Speranza and boasted of Albert Speranza's engagement to her daughter before the world. Now that the said Albert Speranza had been inconsiderate enough to “come alive again,” there was but one thing for her to do—that is, to make the best of it. And when Mrs. Fletcher Fosdick made the best of anything she made the very best.
“It doesn't make any difference,” she told her husband, “whether he really is a genius or whether he isn't. We have said he is and now we must keep on saying it. And if he can't earn his salt by his writings—which he probably can't—then you must fix it in some way so that he can make-believe earn it by something else. He is engaged to Madeline, and we have told every one that he is, so he will have to marry her; at least, I see no way to prevent it.”
“Humph!” grunted Fosdick. “And after that I'll have to support them, I suppose.”
“Probably—unless you want your only child to starve.”
“Well, I must say, Henrietta—”
“You needn't, for there is nothing more TO say. We're in it and, whether we like it or not, we must make the best of it. To do anything now except appear joyful about it would be to make ourselves perfectly ridiculous. We can't do that, and you know it.”
Her husband still looked everything but contented.
“So far as the young fellow himself goes,” he said, “I like him, rather. I've talked with him only once, of course, and then he and I weren't agreeing exactly. But I liked him, nevertheless. If he were anything but a fool poet I should be more reconciled.”
He was snubbed immediately. “THAT,” declared Mrs. Fosdick, with decision, “is the only thing that makes him possible.”
So Mrs. Fosdick's welcome was whole-handed if not whole-hearted. And her husband's also was cordial and intimate. The only member of the Fosdick household who did not regard the guest with favor was Googoo. That aristocratic bull-pup was still irreconcilably hostile. When Albert attempted to pet him he appeared to be planning to devour the caressing hand, and when rebuked by his mistress retired beneath a davenport, growling ominously. Even when ignominiously expelled from the room he growled and cast longing backward glances at the Speranza ankles. No, Googoo did not dissemble; Albert was perfectly sure of his standing in Googoo's estimation.
Dinner that evening was a trifle more formal than he had expected, and he was obliged to apologize for the limitations of his wardrobe. His dress suit of former days he had found much too dilapidated for use. Besides, he had outgrown it.
“I thought I was thinner,” he said, “and I think I am. But I must have broadened a bit. At any rate, all the coats I left behind won't do at all. I shall have to do what Captain Snow, my grandfather, calls 'refit' here in New York. In a day or two I hope to be more presentable.”
Mrs. Fosdick assured him that it was quite all right, really. Madeline asked why he didn't wear his uniform. “I was dying to see you in it,” she said. “Just think, I never have.”
Albert laughed. “You have been spared,” he told her. “Mine was not a triumph, so far as fit was concerned. Of course, I had a complete new rig when I came out of the hospital, but even that was not beautiful. It puckered where it should have bulged and bulged where it should have been smooth.”
Madeline professed not to believe him.
“Nonsense!” she declared. “I don't believe it. Why, almost all the fellows I know have been in uniform for the past two years and theirs fitted beautifully.”
“But they were officers, weren't they, and their uniforms were custom made.”
“Why, I suppose so. Aren't all uniforms custom made?”
Her father laughed. “Scarcely, Maddie,” he said. “The privates have their custom-made by the mile and cut off in chunks for the individual. That was about it, wasn't it, Speranza?”
“Just about, sir.”
Mrs. Fosdick evidently thought that the conversation was taking a rather low tone. She elevated it by asking what his thoughts were when taken prisoner by the Germans. He looked puzzled.
“Thoughts, Mrs. Fosdick?” he repeated. “I don't know that I understand, exactly. I was only partly conscious and in a good deal of pain and my thoughts were rather incoherent, I'm afraid.”
“But when you regained consciousness, you know. What were your thoughts then? Did you realize that you had made the great sacrifice for your country? Risked your life and forfeited your liberty and all that for the cause? Wasn't it a great satisfaction to feel that you had done that?”
Albert's laugh was hearty and unaffected. “Why, no,” he said. “I think what I was realizing most just then was that I had made a miserable mess of the whole business. Failed in doing what I set out to do and been taken prisoner besides. I remember thinking, when I was clear-headed enough to think anything, 'You fool, you spent months getting into this war, and then got yourself out of it in fifteen minutes.' And it WAS a silly trick, too.”
Madeline was horrified.
“What DO you mean?” she cried. “Your going back there to rescue your comrade a silly trick! The very thing that won you your Croix de Guerre?”
“Why, yes, in a way. I didn't save Mike, poor fellow—”
“Mike! Was his name Mike?”
“Yes; Michael Francis Xavier Kelly. A South Boston Mick he was, and one of the finest, squarest boys that ever drew breath. Well, poor Mike was dead when I got to him, so my trip had been for nothing, and if he had been alive I could not have prevented his being taken. As it was, he was dead and I was a prisoner. So nothing was gained and, for me, personally, a good deal was lost. It wasn't a brilliant thing to do. But,” he added apologetically, “a chap doesn't have time to think collectively in such a scrape. And it was my first real scrap and I was frightened half to death, besides.”
“Frightened! Why, I never heard anything so ridiculous! What—”
“One moment, Madeline.” It was Mrs. Fosdick who interrupted. “I want to ask—er—Albert a question. I want to ask him if during his long imprisonment he composed—wrote, you know. I should have thought the sights and experiences would have forced one to express one's self—that is, one to whom the gift of expression was so generously granted,” she added, with a gracious nod.
Albert hesitated.
“Why, at first I did,” he said. “When I first was well enough to think, I used to try to write—verses. I wrote a good many. Afterwards I tore them up.”
“Tore them up!” Both Mrs. and Miss Fosdick uttered this exclamation.
“Why, yes. You see, they were such rot. The things I wanted to write about, the thingsIhad seen and was seeing, the—the fellows like Mike and their pluck and all that—well, it was all too big for me to tackle. My jingles sounded, when I read them over, like tunes on a street piano.Icouldn't do it. A genius might have been equal to the job, but I wasn't.”
Mrs. Fosdick glanced at her husband. There was something of alarmed apprehension in the glance. Madeline's next remark covered the situation. It expressed the absolute truth, so much more of the truth than even the young lady herself realized at the time.
“Why, Albert Speranza,” she exclaimed, “I never heard you speak of yourself and your work in that way before. Always—ALWAYS you have had such complete, such splendid confidence in yourself. You were never afraid to attempt ANYTHING. You MUST not talk so. Don't you intend to write any more?”
Albert looked at her. “Oh, yes, indeed,” he said simply. “That is just what I do intend to do—or try to do.”
That evening, alone in the library, he and Madeline had their first long, intimate talk, the first since those days—to him they seemed as far away as the last century—when they walked the South Harniss beach together, walked beneath the rainbows and dreamed. And now here was their dream coming true.
Madeline, he was realizing it as he looked at her, was prettier than ever. She had grown a little older, of course, a little more mature, but surprisingly little. She was still a girl, a very, very pretty girl and a charming girl. And he—
“What are you thinking about?” she demanded suddenly.
He came to himself. “I was thinking about you,” he said. “You are just as you used to be, just as charming and just as sweet. You haven't changed.”
She smiled and then pouted.
“I don't know whether to like that or not,” she said. “Did you expect to find me less—charming and the rest?”
“Why, no, of course not. That was clumsy on my part. What I meant was that—well, it seems ages, centuries, since we were together there on the Cape—and yet you have not changed.”
She regarded him reflectively.
“You have,” she said.
“Have what?”
“Changed. You have changed a good deal. I don't know whether I like it or not. Perhaps I shall be more certain by and by. Now show me your war cross. At least you have brought that, even if you haven't brought your uniform.”
He had the cross in his pocket-book and he showed it to her. She enthused over it, of course, and wished he might wear it even when in citizen's clothes. She didn't see why he couldn't. And it was SUCH a pity he could not be in uniform. Captain Blanchard had called the evening before, to see Mother about some war charities she was interested in, and he was still in uniform and wearing his decorations, too. Albert suggested that probably Blanchard was still in service. Yes, she believed he was, but she could not see why that should make the difference. Albert had BEEN in service.
He laughed at this and attempted to explain. She seemed to resent the attempt or the tone.
“I do wish,” she said almost pettishly, “that you wouldn't be so superior.”
He was surprised. “Superior!” he repeated. “Superior! I? Superiority is the very least of my feelings. I—superior! That's a joke.”
And, oddly enough, she resented that even more. “Why is it a joke?” she demanded. “I should think you had the right to feel superior to almost any one. A hero—and a genius! You ARE superior.”
However, the little flurry was but momentary, and she was all sweetness and smiles when she kissed him good night. He was shown to his room by a servant and amid its array of comforts—to him, fresh from France and the camp and his old room at South Harniss, it was luxuriously magnificent—he sat for some time thinking. His thoughts should have been happy ones, yet they were not entirely so. This is a curiously unsatisfactory world, sometimes.
The next day he went shopping. Fosdick had given him a card to his own tailor and Madeline had given him the names of several shops where, so she declared, he could buy the right sort of ties and things. From the tailor's Albert emerged looking a trifle dazed; after a visit to two of the shops the dazed expression was even more pronounced. His next visits were at establishments farther downtown and not as exclusive. He returned to the Fosdick home feeling fairly well satisfied with the results achieved. Madeline, however, did not share his satisfaction.
“But Dad sent you to his tailor,” she said. “Why in the world didn't you order your evening clothes there? And Brett has the most stunning ties. Every one says so. Instead you buy yours at a department store. Now why?”
He smiled. “My dear girl,” he said, “your father's tailor estimated that he might make me a very passable dress suit for one hundred and seventy-five dollars. Brett's ties were stunning, just as you say, but the prices ranged from five to eight dollars, which was more stunning still. For a young person from the country out of a job, which is my condition at present, such things may be looked at but not handled. I can't afford them.”
She tossed her head. “What nonsense!” she exclaimed. “You're not out of a job, as you call it. You are a writer and a famous writer. You have written one book and you are going to write more. Besides, you must have made heaps of money from The Lances. Every one has been reading it.”
When he told her the amount of his royalty check she expressed the opinion that the publisher must have cheated. It ought to have been ever and ever so much more than that. Such wonderful poems!
The next day she went to Brett's and purchased a half dozen of the most expensive ties, which she presented to him forthwith.
“There!” she demanded. “Aren't those nicer than the ones you bought at that old department store? Well, then!”
“But, Madeline, I must not let you buy my ties.”
“Why not? It isn't such an unheard-of thing for an engaged girl to give her fiance a necktie.”
“That isn't the idea. I should have bought ties like those myself, but I couldn't afford them. Now for you to—”
“Nonsense! You talk as if you were a beggar. Don't be so silly.”
“But, Madeline—”
“Stop! I don't want to hear it.”
She rose and went out of the room. She looked as if she were on the verge of tears. He felt obliged to accept the gift, but he disliked the principle of the things as much as ever. When she returned she was very talkative and gay and chatted all through luncheon. The subject of the ties was not mentioned again by either of them. He was glad he had not told her that his new dress suit was ready-made.
While in France, awaiting his return home, he had purchased a ring and sent it to her. She was wearing it, of course. Compared with other articles of jewelry which she wore from time to time, his ring made an extremely modest showing. She seemed quite unaware of the discrepancy, but he was aware of it.
On an evening later in the week Mrs. Fosdick gave a reception. “Quite an informal affair,” she said, in announcing her intention. “Just a few intimate friends to meet Mr. Speranza, that is all. Mostly lovers of literature—discerning people, if I may say so.”
The quite informal affair looked quite formidably formal to Albert. The few intimate friends were many, so it seemed to him. There was still enough of the former Albert Speranza left in his make-up to prevent his appearing in the least distressed or ill at ease. He was, as he had always been when in the public eye, even as far back as the school dancing-classes with the Misses Bradshaw's young ladies, perfectly self-possessed, charmingly polite, absolutely self-assured. And his good looks had not suffered during his years of imprisonment and suffering. He was no longer a handsome boy, but he was an extraordinarily attractive and distinguished man.
Mrs. Fosdick marked his manner and appearance and breathed a sigh of satisfaction. Madeline noted them. Her young friends of the sex noted them and whispered and looked approval. What the young men thought does not matter so much, perhaps. One of these was the Captain Blanchard, of whom Madeline had written and spoken. He was a tall, athletic chap, who looked well in his uniform, and whose face was that of a healthy, clean-living and clean-thinking young American. He and Albert shook hands and looked each other over. Albert decided he should like Blanchard if he knew him better. The captain was not talkative; in fact, he seemed rather taciturn. Maids and matrons gushed when presented to the lion of the evening. It scarcely seemed possible that they were actually meeting the author of The Lances of Dawn. That wonderful book! Those wonderful poems! “How CAN you write them, Mr. Speranza?” “When do your best inspirations come, Mr. Speranza?” “Oh, if I could write as you do I should walk on air.” The matron who breathed the last-quoted ecstasy was distinctly weighty; the mental picture of her pedestrian trip through the atmosphere was interesting. Albert's hand was patted by the elderly spinsters, young women's eyes lifted soulful glances to his.
It was the sort of thing he would have revelled in three or four years earlier. Exactly the sort of thing he had dreamed of when the majority of the poems they gushed over were written. It was much the same thing he remembered having seen his father undergo in the days when he and the opera singer were together. And his father had, apparently, rather enjoyed it. He realized all this—and he realized, too, with a queer feeling that it should be so, that he did not like it at all. It was silly. Nothing he had written warranted such extravagances. Hadn't these people any sense of proportion? They bored him to desperation. The sole relief was the behavior of the men, particularly the middle-aged or elderly men, obviously present through feminine compulsion. They seized his hand, moved it up and down with a pumping motion, uttered some stereotyped prevarications about their pleasure at meeting him and their having enjoyed his poems very much, and then slid on in the direction of the refreshment room.
And Albert, as he shook hands, bowed and smiled and was charmingly affable, found his thoughts wandering until they settled upon Private Mike Kelly and the picturesque language of the latter when he, as sergeant, routed him out for guard duty. Mike had not gushed over him nor called him a genius. He had called him many things, but not that.
He was glad indeed when he could slip away for a dance with Madeline. He found her chatting gaily with Captain Blanchard, who had been her most recent partner. He claimed her from the captain and as he led her out to the dance floor she whispered that she was very proud of him. “But I DO wish YOU could wear your war cross,” she added.
The quite informal affair was the first of many quite as informally formal. Also Mrs. Fosdick's satellites and friends of the literary clubs and the war work societies seized the opportunity to make much of the heroic author of The Lances of Dawn. His society was requested at teas, at afternoon as well as evening gatherings. He would have refused most of these invitations, but Madeline and her mother seemed to take his acceptance for granted; in fact, they accepted for him. A ghastly habit developed of asking him to read a few of his own poems on these occasions. “PLEASE, Mr. Speranza. It will be such a treat, and such an HONOR.” Usually a particular request was made that he read “The Greater Love.” Now “The Greater Love” was the poem which, written in those rapturous days when he and Madeline first became aware of their mutual adoration, was refused by one editor as a “trifle too syrupy.” To read that sticky effusion over and over again became a torment. There were occasions when if a man had referred to “The Greater Love,” its author might have howled profanely and offered bodily violence. But no men ever did refer to “The Greater Love.”
On one occasion when a sentimental matron and her gushing daughter had begged to know if he did not himself adore that poem, if he did not consider it the best he had ever written, he had answered frankly. He was satiated with cake and tea and compliments that evening and recklessly truthful. “You really wish to know my opinion of that poem?” he asked. Indeed and indeed they really wished to knew just that thing. “Well, then, I think it's rot,” he declared. “I loathe it.”
Of course mother and daughter were indignant. Their comments reached Madeline's ear. She took him to task.
“But why did you say it?” she demanded. “You know you don't mean it.”
“Yes, I do mean it. It IS rot. Lots of the stuff in that book of mine is rot. I did not think so once, but I do now. If I had the book to make over again, that sort wouldn't be included.”
She looked at him for a moment as if studying a problem.
“I don't understand you sometimes,” she said slowly. “You are different. And I think what you said to Mrs. Bacon and Marian was very rude.”
Later when he went to look for her he found her seated with Captain Blanchard in a corner. They were eating ices and, apparently, enjoying themselves. He did not disturb them. Instead he hunted up the offended Bacons and apologized for his outbreak. The apology, although graciously accepted, had rather wearisome consequences. Mrs. Bacon declared she knew that he had not really meant what he said.
“I realize how it must be,” she declared. “You people of temperament, of genius, of aspirations, are never quite satisfied, you cannot be. You are always trying, always seeking the higher attainment. Achievements of the past, though to the rest of us wonderful and sublime, are to you—as you say, 'rot.' That is it, is it not?” Albert said he guessed it was, and wandered away, seeking seclusion and solitude. When the affair broke up he found Madeline and Blanchard still enjoying each other's society. Both were surprised when told the hour.