The Portygee

CHAPTER XVI

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 things I had 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. I couldn'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.