The Portygee Part 35

"No; I had made two or three attempts, but nothing that I did satisfied me. I had just about decided to tear them up and to give up trying for this afternoon."

"Oh, I hope you won't tear them up. I'm sure they shouldn't be. Perhaps you were not in a proper mood to judge, yourself."

"Perhaps not. Perhaps they might look a little less hopeless to some one else. But that person would have to be really interested, and there are few people in South Harniss who know or care anything about poetry."

"I suppose that is true. I--I don't suppose you would care to show them to me, would you?"

"Why," eagerly, "would you really care to see them?"

"Indeed I should! Not that my judgment or advice is worth anything, of course. But I am very, very fond of poetry, and to see how a real poet wrote would be wonderful. And if I could help you, even the least little bit, it would be such an honor."

This sort of thing was balm to the Speranza spirit. Albert's temperamental ego expanded under it like a rosebud under a summer sun.

Yet there was a faint shadow of doubt--she might be making fun of him.

He looked at her intently and she seemed to read his thoughts, for she said:

"Oh, I mean it! Please believe I do. I haven't spoken that way when Jane was with me, for she wouldn't understand and would laugh, but I mean it, Mr. Speranza. It would be an honor--a great honor."

So the still protesting and rebellious Googoo was compelled to go a few feet away and lie down, while his mistress and the young man whom he had attempted to devour bent their heads together over a scribbling-pad and talked and exclaimed during the whole of that hour and a full three-quarters of the next. Then the distant town clock in the steeple of the Congregational church boomed five times and Miss Fosd.i.c.k rose to her feet.

"Oh," she said, "it can't really be five o'clock, can it? But it is!

What WILL mother fancy has become of me? I must go this minute. Thank you, Mr. Speranza. I have enjoyed this so much. It has been a wonderful experience."

Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were s.h.i.+ning. She had grown handsomer than ever during the winter months. Albert's eyes were s.h.i.+ning also as he impulsively seized her hand.

"Thank you, Miss Fosd.i.c.k," he said. "You have helped me more than I can tell you. I was about to give up in despair before you came, and now--now I KNOW I shall write the best thing I have ever done. And you will be responsible for it."

She caught her breath. "Oh, not really!" she exclaimed. "You don't mean it, really?"

"Indeed I do! If I might have your help and sympathy once in awhile, I believe--I believe I could do almost anything. Will you help me again some day? I shall be here almost every pleasant Sat.u.r.day and Sunday afternoon. Will you come again?"

She hesitated. "I--I'll see; perhaps," she answered hurriedly. "But I must go now. Come, Goo."

She hastened away, down the knoll and along the beach toward the hotel.

Googoo followed her, turning occasionally to cast diabolical glances at the Speranza ankles. Albert gazed until the graceful figure in the trim sport costume disappeared behind the corner of the point of the beach.

Just at the point she paused to wave to him. He waved in return. Then he tramped homeward. There was deep sand beneath his feet and, later, pine-needles and gra.s.s. They were all alike to him, for he was traveling on air.

That evening at supper his radiant appearance caused comment.

"What makes you look so happy, Albert?" asked his grandmother. "Seems to me I never saw you look so sort of--well, glorified, as you might say.

What is the reason?"

The glorified one reddened and was confused. He stammered that he did not know, he was not aware of any particular reason.

Mrs. Ellis beamed upon him. "I presume likely his bookkeepin' at the office has been goin' pretty well lately," she suggested.

Captain Zelote's gray eyes twinkled. "Cal'late he's been makin' up more poetry about girls," was his offering. "Another one of those pieces about teeth like pearls and hair all curls, or somethin' like that. Say, Al, why don't you poetry-makin' fellers try a new one once in a while?

Say, 'Her hair's like rope and her face has lost hope.' Eh? Why not, for a change?"

The protests on the part of Olive and the housekeeper against the captain's innovation in poetry-making had the effect of distracting attention from Albert's "glorified" appearance. The young man himself was thankful for the respite.

That night before he retired he took Madeline Fosd.i.c.k's photograph from the back of the drawer among the ties and collars and looked at it for five minutes at least. She was a handsome girl, certainly. Not that that made any difference to him. And she was an intelligent girl; she understood his poetry and appreciated it. Yes, and she understood him, too, almost as well as Helen... . Helen! He hastily returned the Fosd.i.c.k photograph to the drawer; but this time he did not put it quite so near the back.

On the following Sat.u.r.day he was early at the knoll, a brand-new scribbling-pad in his pocket and in his mind divine gems which were later, and with Miss Fosd.i.c.k's a.s.sistance, to be strung into a glittering necklace of lyric song and draped, with the stringer's compliments, about the throat of a grateful muse. But no gems were strung that day. Madeline did not put in an appearance, and by and by it began to rain, and Albert walked home, damp, dejected, and disgusted.

When, a day or two later, he met Miss Fosd.i.c.k at the post office and asked why she had not come he learned that her mother had insisted upon a motor trip to Wapatomac that afternoon.

"Besides," she said, "you surely mustn't expect me EVERY Sat.u.r.day."

"No," he admitted grudgingly, "I suppose not. But you will come sometimes, won't you? I have a perfectly lovely idea for a ballad and I want to ask your advice about it."

"Oh, do you really? You're not making fun? You mean that my advice is really worth something? I can't believe it."

He convinced her that it was, and the next Sat.u.r.day afternoon they spent together at the inspiration point among the dunes, at work upon the ballad. It was not finished on that occasion, nor on the next, for it was an unusually long ballad, but progress was made, glorious progress.

And so, during that Summer, as the Fosd.i.c.k residence upon the Bay Road grew and grew, so did the acquaintances.h.i.+p, the friends.h.i.+p, the poetic partners.h.i.+p between the Fosd.i.c.k daughter and the grandson of Captain Zelotes Snow grow and grow. They met almost every Sat.u.r.day, they met at the post office on week evenings, occasionally they saw each other for a moment after church on Sunday mornings. Mrs. Fletcher Fosd.i.c.k could not imagine why her only child cared to attend that stuffy little country church and hear that prosy Kendall minister drone on and on. "I hope, my dear, that I am as punctilious in my religious duties as the average woman, but one Kendall sermon was sufficient for me, thank you. What you see in THAT church to please you, _I_ can't guess."

If she had attended as often as Madeline did she might have guessed and saved herself much. But she was busy organizing, in connection with Mrs. Seabury Calvin, a Literary Society among the summer people of South Harniss. The Society was to begin work with the discussion of the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore. Mrs. Fosd.i.c.k said she doted on Tagore; Mrs.

Calvin expressed herself as being positively insane about him. A warm friends.h.i.+p had sprung up between the two ladies, as each was particularly fond of s.h.i.+ning as a literary light and neither under any circ.u.mstances permitted a new lion to roar unheard in her neighborhood, provided, of course, that the said roarings had been previously endorsed and well advertised by the critics and the press.

So Mrs. Fosd.i.c.k was too busy to accompany Madeline to church on Sunday or to walk on Sat.u.r.day, and the young lady was left to wander pretty much at her own sweet will. That sweet will led her footsteps to trails frequented by Albert Speranza and they walked and talked and poetized together. As for Mr. Fletcher Fosd.i.c.k, he was busy at his office in New York and came to South Harniss only for infrequent week-ends.

The walks and talks and poetizings were innocent enough. Neither of the partners in poesy had the least idea of anything more than being just that. They liked each other, they had come to call each other by their Christian names, and on Albert's bureau Madeline's photograph now stood openly and without apology. Albert had convinced himself there was nothing to apologize for. She was his friend, that was all. He liked to write and she liked to help him--er--well, just as Helen used to when she was at home. He did not think of Helen quite as often as formerly, nor were his letters to her as frequent or as long.

So the summer pa.s.sed and late August came, the last Sat.u.r.day afternoon of that month. Albert and Madeline were together, walking together along the beach from the knoll where they had met so often. It was six o'clock and the beach was deserted. There was little wind, the tiny waves were lapping and plas.h.i.+ng along the sh.o.r.e, and the rosy light of the sinking sun lay warm upon the water and the sand. They were thinking and speaking of the summer which was so near its end.

"It has been a wonderful summer, hasn't it?" said Albert.

"Yes, wonderful," agreed Madeline.

"Yes, I--I--by George, I never believed a summer could be so wonderful."

"Nor I."

Silence. Then Albert, looking at her, saw her eyes looking into his and saw in them--

He kissed her.

That morning Albert Speranza had arisen as usual, a casual, careless, perfectly human young fellow. He went to bed that night a superman, an archangel, a demi-G.o.d, with his head in the clouds and the earth a cloth of gold beneath his feet. Life was a pathway through Paradise arched with rainbows.

He and Madeline Fosd.i.c.k loved each other madly, devotedly. They were engaged to be married. They had plighted troth. They were to be each other's, and no one else's, for ever--and ever--and ever.

CHAPTER X

The remainder of that summer was a paradisical meandering over the cloth of gold beneath the rainbows. Albert and his Madeline met often, very often. Few poems were written at these meetings. Why trouble to put penciled lines on paper when the entire universe was a poem especially composed for your benefit? The lovers sat upon the knoll amid the sand dunes and gazed at the bay and talked of themselves separately, individually, and, more especially, collectively. They strolled through the same woody lanes and discussed the same satisfactory subjects. They met at the post office or at the drug store and gazed into each other's eyes. And, what was the most astonis.h.i.+ng thing about it all, their secret remained undiscovered. Undiscovered, that is to say, by those by whom discovery would have meant calamity. The gossips among the townspeople winked and chuckled and cal'lated Fletcher Fosd.i.c.k had better look out or his girl would be took into the firm of Z. Snow and Co. Issachar Price uttered sarcastic and sly innuendoes. Jane Kelsey and her set ragged the pair occasionally. But even these never really suspected that the affair was serious. And neither Mrs. Fletcher Fosd.i.c.k nor Captain and Mrs. Zelotes Snow gave it a minute's attention.

It was serious enough with the princ.i.p.als, however. To them it was the only serious matter in the world. Not that they faced or discussed the future with earnest and complete attention. Some day or other--that was of course the mutually accepted idea--some day or other they were to marry. In the meantime here was the blissful present with its roses and rainbows and here, for each, was the other. What would be likely to happen when the Fosd.i.c.k parents learned of the engagement of their only child to the a.s.sistant bookkeeper of the South Harniss lumber and hardware company was unpleasant to contemplate, so why contemplate it?

Upon one point they were agreed--never, never, NEVER would they give each other up. No power on earth--which included parents and grandparents--should or could separate them.