The Portygee

CHAPTER XVII

So the first three weeks of his proposed month's visit passed and the fourth began. And more and more his feelings of dissatisfaction and uneasiness increased. The reasons for those feelings he found hard to define. The Fosdicks were most certainly doing their best to make him comfortable and happy. They were kind—yes, more than kind. Mr. Fosdick he really began to like. Mrs. Fosdick's manner had a trace of condescension in it, but as the lady treated all creation with much the same measure of condescension, he was more amused than resentful. And Madeline—Madeline was sweet and charming and beautiful. There was in her manner toward him, or so he fancied, a slight change, perhaps a change a trifle more marked since the evening when his expressed opinion of “The Greater Love” had offended her and the Bacons. It seemed to him that she was more impatient, more capricious, sometimes almost overwhelming him with attention and tenderness and then appearing to forget him entirely and to be quite indifferent to his thoughts and opinions. Her moods varied greatly and there were occasions when he found it almost impossible to please her. At these times she took offense when no offense was intended and he found himself apologizing when, to say the least, the fault, if there was any, was not more than half his. But she always followed those moods with others of contrition and penitence and then he was petted and fondled and his forgiveness implored.

These slight changes in her he noticed, but they troubled him little, principally because he was coming to realize the great change in himself. More and more that change was forcing itself upon him. The stories and novels he had read during the first years of the war, the stories by English writers in which young men, frivolous and inconsequential, had enlisted and fought and emerged from the ordeal strong, purposeful and “made-over”—those stories recurred to him now. He had paid little attention to the “making-over" idea when he read those tales, but now he was forced to believe there might be something in it. Certainly something, the three years or the discipline and training and suffering, or all combined, had changed him. He was not as he used to be. Things he liked very much he no longer liked at all. And where, oh where, was the serene self-satisfaction which once was his?

The change must be quite individual, he decided. All soldiers were not so affected. Take Blanchard, for instance. Blanchard had seen service, more and quite as hard fighting as he had seen, but Blanchard was, to all appearances, as light-hearted and serene and confident as ever. Blanchard was like Madeline; he was much the same now as he had been before the war. Blanchard could dance and talk small talk and laugh and enjoy himself. Well, so could he, on occasions, for that matter, if that had been all. But it was not all, or if it was why was he at other times so discontented and uncomfortable? What was the matter with him, anyway?

He drew more and more into his shell and became more quiet and less talkative. Madeline, in one of her moods, reproached him for it.

“I do wish you wouldn't be grumpy,” she said.

They had been sitting in the library and he had lapsed into a fit of musing, answering her questions with absentminded monosyllables. Now he looked up.

“Grumpy?” he repeated. “Was I grumpy? I beg your pardon.”

“You should. You answered every word I spoke to you with a grunt or a growl. I might as well have been talking to a bear.”

“I'm awfully sorry, dear. I didn't feel grumpy. I was thinking, I suppose.”

“Thinking! You are always thinking. Why think, pray? . . . If I permitted myself to think, I should go insane.”

“Madeline, what do you mean?”

“Oh, nothing. I'm partially insane now, perhaps. Come, let's go to the piano. I feel like playing. You don't mind, do you?”

That evening Mrs. Fosdick made a suggestion to her husband.

“Fletcher,” she said, “I am inclined to think it is time you and Albert had a talk concerning the future. A business talk, I mean. I am a little uneasy about him. From some things he has said to me recently I gather that he is planning to earn his living with his pen.”

“Well, how else did you expect him to earn it; as bookkeeper for the South Harniss lumber concern?”

“Don't be absurd. What I mean is that he is thinking of devoting himself to literature exclusively. Don't interrupt me, please. That is very beautiful and very idealistic, and I honor him for it, but I cannot see Madeline as an attic poet's wife, can you?”

“I can't, and I told you so in the beginning.”

“No. Therefore I should take him to one side and tell him of the opening in your firm. With that as a means of keeping his feet on the ground his brain may soar as it likes, the higher the better.”

Mr. Fosdick, as usual, obeyed orders and that afternoon Albert and he had the “business talk.” Conversation at dinner was somewhat strained. Mr. Fosdick was quietly observant and seemed rather amused about something. His wife was dignified and her manner toward her guest was inclined to be abrupt. Albert's appetite was poor. As for Madeline, she did not come down to dinner, having a headache.

She came down later, however. Albert, alone in the library, was sitting, a book upon his knees and his eyes fixed upon nothing in particular, when she came in.

“You are thinking again, I see,” she said.

He had not heard her enter. Now he rose, the book falling to the floor.

“Why—why, yes,” he stammered. “How are you feeling? How is your head?”

“It is no worse. And no better. I have been thinking, too, which perhaps explains it. Sit down, Albert, please. I want to talk with you. That is what I have been thinking about, that you and I must talk.”

She seated herself upon the davenport and he pulled forward a chair and sat facing her. For a moment she was silent. When she did speak, however, her question was very much to the point.

“Why did you say 'No' to Father's offer?” she asked. He had been expecting this very question, or one leading up to it. Nevertheless, he found answering difficult. He hesitated, and she watched him, her impatience growing.

“Well?” she asked.

He sighed. “Madeline,” he said, “I am afraid you think me very unreasonable, certainly very ungrateful.”

“I don't know what to think about you. That is why I feel we must have this talk. Tell me, please, just what Father said to you this afternoon.”

“He said—well, the substance of what he said was to offer me a position in his office, in his firm.”

“What sort of a position?”

“Well, I—I scarcely know. I was to have a desk there and—and be generally—ornamental, I suppose. It was not very definite, the details of the position, but—”

“The salary was good, wasn't it?”

“Yes; more than good. Much too good for the return I could make for it, so it seemed to me.”

“And your prospects for the future? Wasn't the offer what people call a good opportunity?”

“Why, yes, I suppose it was. For the right sort of man it would have been a wonderful opportunity. Your father was most kind, most generous, Madeline. Please don't think I am not appreciative. I am, but—”

“Don't. I want to understand it all. He offered you this opportunity, this partnership in his firm, and you would not accept it? Why? Don't you like my father?”

“Yes, I like him very much.”

“Didn't you,” with the slightest possible curl of the lip, “think the offer worthy of you? . . . Oh, I don't mean that! Please forgive me. I am trying not to be disagreeable. I—I just want to understand, Albert, that's all.”

He nodded. “I know, Madeline,” he said. “You have the right to ask. It wasn't so much a question of the offer being worthy of me as of my being worthy the offer. Oh, Madeline, why should you and I pretend? You know why Mr. Fosdick made me that offer. It wasn't because I was likely to be worth ten dollars a year to his firm. In Heaven's name, what use would I be in a stockbroker's office, with my make-up, with my lack of business ability? He would be making a place for me there and paying me a high salary for one reason only, and you know what that is. Now don't you?”

She hesitated now, but only for an instant. She colored a little, but she answered bravely.

“I suppose I do,” she said, “but what of it? It is not unheard of, is it, the taking one's prospective son-in-law into partnership?”

“No, but—We're dodging the issue again, Madeline. If I were likely to be of any help to your father's business, instead of a hindrance, I might perhaps see it differently. As it is, I couldn't accept unless I were willing to be an object of charity.”

“Did you tell Father that?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“He said a good deal. He was frank enough to say that he did not expect me to be of great assistance to the firm. But I might be of SOME use—he didn't put it as baldly as that, of course—and at all times I could keep on with my writing, with my poetry, you know. The brokerage business should not interfere with my poetry, he said; your mother would scalp him if it did that.”

She smiled faintly. “That sounds like dad,” she commented.

“Yes. Well, we talked and argued for some time on the subject. He asked me what, supposing I did not accept this offer of his, my plans for the future might be. I told him they were pretty unsettled as yet. I meant to write, of course. Not poetry altogether. I realized, I told him, that I was not a great poet, a poet of genius.”

Madeline interrupted. Her eyes flashed.

“Why do you say that?” she demanded. “I have heard you say it before. That is, recently. In the old days you were as sure as I that you were a real poet, or should be some day. You never doubted it. You used to tell me so and I loved to hear you.”

Albert shook his head. “I was sure of so many things then,” he said. “I must have been an insufferable kid.”

She stamped her foot. “It was less than three years ago that you said it,” she declared. “You are not so frightfully ancient now. . . . Well, go on, go on. How did it end, the talk with Father, I mean?”

“I told him,” he continued, “that I meant to write and to earn my living by writing. I meant to try magazine work—stories, you know—and, soon, a novel. He asked if earning enough to support a wife on would not be a long job at that time. I said I was afraid it might, but that that seemed to me my particular game, nevertheless.”

She interrupted again. “Did it occur to you to question whether or not that determination of yours was quite fair to me?” she asked.

“Why—why, yes, it did. And I don't know that it IS exactly fair to you. I—”

“Never mind. Go on. Tell me the rest. How did it end?”

“Well, it ended in a sort of flare-up. Mr. Fosdick was just a little bit sarcastic, and I expressed my feelings rather freely—too freely, I'm afraid.”

“Never mind. I want to know what you said.”

“To be absolutely truthful, then, this is what I said: I said that I appreciated his kindness and was grateful for the offer. But my mind was made up. I would not live upon his charity and draw a large salary for doing nothing except be a little, damned tame house-poet led around in leash and exhibited at his wife's club meetings. . . . That was about all, I think. We shook hands at the end. He didn't seem to like me any the less for . . . Why, Madeline, have I offended you? My language was pretty strong, I know, but—”

She had bowed her head upon her arms amid the sofa cushions and was crying. He sprang to his feet and bent over her.

“Why, Madeline,” he said again, “I beg your pardon. I'm sorry—”

“Oh, it isn't that,” she sobbed. “It isn't that. I don't care what you said.”

“What is it, then?”

She raised her head and looked at him.

“It is you,” she cried. “It is myself. It is everything. It is all wrong. I—I was so happy and—and now I am miserable. Oh—oh, I wish I were dead!”

She threw herself upon the cushions again and wept hysterically. He stood above her, stroking her hair, trying to soothe her, to comfort her, and all the time he felt like a brute, a heartless beast. At last she ceased crying, sat up and wiped her eyes with her handkerchief.

“There!” she exclaimed. “I will not be silly any longer. I won't be! I WON'T! . . . Now tell me: Why have you changed so?”

He looked down at her and shook his head. He was conscience-stricken and fully as miserable as she professed to be.

“I don't know,” he said. “I am older and—and—and I DON'T see things as I used to. If that book of mine had appeared three years ago I have no doubt I should have believed it to be the greatest thing ever printed. Now, when people tell me it is and I read what the reviewers said and all that, I—I DON'T believe, I KNOW it isn't great—that is, the most of it isn't. There is some pretty good stuff, of course, but—You see, I think it wasn't the poems themselves that made it sell; I think it was all the fool tommyrot the papers printed about me, about my being a hero and all that rubbish, when they thought I was dead, you know. That—”

She interrupted. “Oh, don't!” she cried. “Don't! I don't care about the old book. I'm not thinking about that. I'm thinking about you. YOU aren't the same—the same toward me.”

“Toward you, Madeline? I don't understand what you mean.”

“Yes, you do. Of course you do. If you were the same as you used to be, you would let Father help you. We used to talk about that very thing and—and you didn't resent it then.”

“Didn't I? Well, perhaps I didn't. But I think I remember our speaking sometimes of sacrificing everything for each other. We were to live in poverty, if necessary, and I was to write, you know, and—”

“Stop! All that was nonsense, nonsense! you know it.”

“Yes, I'm afraid it was.”

“You know it was. And if you were as you used to be, if you—”

“Madeline!”

“What? Why did you interrupt me?”

“Because I wanted to ask you a question. Do you think YOU are exactly the same—as you used to be?”

“What do you mean?”

“Haven't YOU changed a little? Are you as sure as you were then—as sure of your feeling toward me?”

She gazed at him, wide-eyed. “WHAT do you mean?”

“I mean ARE you sure? It has seemed to me that perhaps—I was out of your life for a long time, you know, and during a good deal of that time it seemed certain that I had gone forever. I am not blaming you, goodness knows, but—Madeline, isn't there—Well, if I hadn't come back, mightn't there have been some one—else?”

She turned pale.

“What do—” she stammered, inarticulate. “Why, why—”

“It was Captain Blanchard, wasn't it?”

The color came back to her cheeks with a rush. She blushed furiously and sprang to her feet.

“How—how can you say such things!” she cried. “What do you mean? How DARE you say Captain Blanchard took advantage of—How—how DARE you say I was not loyal to you? It is not true. It is not true. I was. I am. There hasn't been a word—a word between us since—since the news came that you were—I told him—I said—And he has been splendid! Splendid! And now you say—Oh, what AM I saying? What SHALL I do?”

She collapsed once more among the cushions. He leaned forward.

“My dear girl—” he began, but she broke in.

“I HAVEN'T been disloyal,” she cried. “I have tried—Oh, I have tried so hard—”

“Hush, Madeline, hush. I understand. I understand perfectly. It is all right, really it is.”

“And I should have kept on trying always—always.”

“Yes, dear, yes. But do you think a married life with so much trying in it likely to be a happy one? It is better to know it now, isn't it, a great deal better for both of us? Madeline, I am going to my room. I want you to think, to think over all this, and then we will talk again. I don't blame you. I don't, dear, really. I think I realize everything—all of it. Good night, dear.”

He stooped and kissed her. She sobbed, but that was all. The next morning a servant came to his room with a parcel and a letter. The parcel was a tiny one. It was the ring he had given her, in its case. The letter was short and much blotted. It read:

Dear Albert:

I have thought and thought, as you told me to, and I have concluded that you were right. It IS best to know it now. Forgive me, please, PLEASE. I feel wicked and horrid and I HATE myself, but I think this is best. Oh, do forgive me. Good-by.

MADELINE.

His reply was longer. At its end he wrote:

Of course I forgive you. In the first place there is nothing to forgive. The unforgivable thing would have been the sacrifice of your happiness and your future to a dream and a memory. I hope you will be very happy. I am sure you will be, for Blanchard is, I know, a fine fellow. The best of fortune to you both.

The next forenoon he sat once more in the car of the morning train for Cape Cod, looking out of the window. He had made the journey from New York by the night boat and had boarded the Cape train at Middleboro. All the previous day, and in the evening as he tramped the cold wind-swept deck of the steamer, he had been trying to collect his thoughts, to readjust them to the new situation, to comprehend in its entirety the great change that had come in his life. The vague plans, the happy indefinite dreams, all the rainbows and roses had gone, shivered to bits like the reflection in a broken mirror. Madeline, his Madeline, was his no longer. Nor was he hers. In a way it seemed impossible.

He tried to analyze his feelings. It seemed as if he should have been crushed, grief-stricken, broken. He was inclined to reproach himself because he was not. Of course there was a sadness about it, a regret that the wonder of those days of love and youth had passed. But the sorrow was not bitter, the regret was but a wistful longing, the sweet, lingering fragrance of a memory, that was all. Toward her, Madeline, he felt—and it surprised him, too, to find that he felt—not the slightest trace of resentment. And more surprising still he felt none toward Blanchard. He had meant what he said in his letter, he wished for them both the greatest happiness.

And—there was no use attempting to shun the fact—his chief feeling, as he sat there by the car window looking out at the familiar landscape, was a great relief, a consciousness of escape from what might have been a miserable, crushing mistake for him and for her. And with this a growing sense of freedom, of buoyancy. It seemed wicked to feel like that. Then it came to him, the thought that Madeline, doubtless, was experiencing the same feeling. And he did not mind a bit; he hoped she was, bless her!

A youthful cigar “drummer,” on his first Down-East trip, sat down beside him.

“Kind of a flat, bare country, ain't it?” observed the drummer, with a jerk of his head toward the window. “Looks bleak enough to me. Know anything about this neck of the woods, do you?”

Albert turned to look at him.

“Meaning the Cape?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“Indeed I do. I know all about it.”

“That so! Say, you sound as if you liked it.”

Albert turned back to the window again.

“Like it!” he repeated. “I love it.” Then he sighed, a sigh of satisfaction, and added: “You see, I BELONG here.”

His grandparents and Rachel were surprised when he walked into the house that noon and announced that he hoped dinner was ready, because he was hungry. But their surprise was more than balanced by their joy. Captain Zelotes demanded to know how long he was going to stay.

“As long as you'll have me, Grandfather,” was the answer.

“Eh? Well, that would be a consider'ble spell, if you left it to us, but I cal'late that girl in New York will have somethin' to say as to time limit, won't she?”

Albert smiled. “I'll tell you about that by and by,” he said.

He did not tell them until that evening after supper. It was Friday evening and Olive was going to prayer-meeting, but she delayed “putting on her things” to hear the tale. The news that the engagement was off and that her grandson was not, after all, to wed the daughter of the Honorable Fletcher Fosdick, shocked and grieved her not a little.

“Oh, dear!” she sighed. “I suppose you know what's best, Albert, and maybe, as you say, you wouldn't have been happy, but I DID feel sort of proud to think my boy was goin' to marry a millionaire's daughter.”

Captain Zelotes made no comment—then. He asked to be told more particulars. Albert described the life at the Fosdick home, the receptions, his enforced exhibitions and readings. At length the recital reached the point of the interview in Fosdick's office.

“So he offered you to take you into the firm—eh, son?” he observed.

“Yes, sir.”

“Humph! Fosdick, Williamson and Hendricks are one of the biggest brokerage houses goin', so a good many New Yorkers have told me.”

“No doubt. But, Grandfather, you've had some experience with me as a business man; how do you think I would fit into a firm of stockbrokers?”

Captain Lote's eye twinkled, but he did not answer the question. Instead he asked:

“Just what did you give Fosdick as your reason for not sayin' yes?”

Albert laughed. “Well, Grandfather,” he said, “I'll tell you. I said that I appreciated his kindness and all that, but that I would not draw a big salary for doing nothing except to be a little, damned tame house-poet led around in leash and shown off at his wife's club meetings.”

Mrs. Snow uttered a faint scream. “Oh, Albert!” she exclaimed. She might have said more, but a shout from her husband prevented her doing so.

Captain Zelotes had risen and his mighty hand descended with a stinging slap upon his grandson's shoulder.

“Bully for you, boy!” he cried. Then, turning to Olive, he added, “Mother, I've always kind of cal'lated that you had one man around this house. Now, by the Lord A'Mighty, I know you've got TWO!”

Olive rose. “Well,” she declared emphatically, “that may be; but if both those men are goin' to start in swearin' right here in the sittin' room, I think it's high time SOMEBODY in that family went to church.”

So to prayer meeting she went, with Mrs. Ellis as escort, and her husband and grandson, seated in armchairs before the sitting room stove, both smoking, talked and talked, of the past and of the future—not as man to boy, nor as grandparent to grandson, but for the first time as equals, without reservations, as man to man.