The Portygee Part 59

The next day he went shopping. Fosd.i.c.k 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 p.r.o.nounced. His next visits were at establishments farther downtown and not as exclusive.

He returned to the Fosd.i.c.k 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 pa.s.sable 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. Fosd.i.c.k 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-cla.s.ses with the Misses Bradshaw's young ladies, perfectly self-possessed, charmingly polite, absolutely self-a.s.sured. 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. Fosd.i.c.k marked his manner and appearance and breathed a sigh of satisfaction. Madeline noted them. Her young friends of the s.e.x 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. Fosd.i.c.k'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 gus.h.i.+ng 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.

CHAPTER XVII

So the first three weeks of his proposed month's visit pa.s.sed 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 Fosd.i.c.ks were most certainly doing their best to make him comfortable and happy. They were kind--yes, more than kind. Mr.

Fosd.i.c.k he really began to like. Mrs. Fosd.i.c.k'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, princ.i.p.ally 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 sh.e.l.l 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?"