The Portygee Part 50

And when the brief leave was over he took the train for Boston, no longer Alberto Miguel Carlos Speranza, South Harniss's Beau Brummel, poet and Portygee, but Private Speranza, U.S.A. The farewells were brief and no one cried--much. His grandmother hugged and kissed him, Rachel looked very much as if she wanted to. Laban and Issachar shook hands with him.

"Good luck to you, boy," said Mr. Keeler. "All the luck there is."

"Same to you, old man," replied Albert. Then, in a lower tone, he added, "We'll fight it out together, eh?"

"We'll try. Yes, yes. We'll try. So long, Al."

Issachar struck the rea.s.suring note. "Don't fret about things in the office," he said. "I'll look out for 'em long's I keep my health."

"Be sure and keep that, Issy."

"You bet you! Only thing that's liable to break it down is over-work."

Captain Zelotes said very little. "Write us when you can, Al," he said.

"And come home whenever you get leave."

"You may be sure of that, Grandfather. And after I get to camp perhaps you can come and see me."

"Maybe so. Will if I can... . Well, Al, I ... I... . Good luck to you, son."

"Thank you, Grandfather."

They shook hands. Each looked as if there was more he would have liked to say but found the saying hard. Then the engine bell rang and the hands fell apart. The little group on the station platform watched the train disappear. Mrs. Snow and Rachel wiped their eyes with their handkerchiefs. Captain Zelotes gently patted his wife's shoulder.

"The team's waitin', Mother," he said. "Labe'll drive you and Rachel home."

"But--but ain't you comin', too, Zelotes?" faltered Olive. Her husband shook his head.

"Not now, Mother," he answered. "Got to go back to the office."

He stood for an instant looking at the faint smear of smoke above the curve in the track. Then, without another word, he strode off in the direction of Z. Snow and Co.'s buildings. Issachar Price sniffed.

"Crimus," he whispered to Laban, as the latter pa.s.sed him on the way to where Jessamine, the Snow horse, was tied, "the old man takes it cool, don't he! I kind of imagined he'd be sort of shook up by Al's goin' off to war, but he don't seem to feel it a mite."

Keeler looked at him in wonder. Then he drew a long breath.

"Is," he said, slowly, "it is a mighty good thing for the Seven Wise Men of Greece that they ain't alive now."

It was Issachar's turn to stare. "Eh?" he queried. "The Seven Wise Men of Which? Good thing for 'em they ain't alive? What kind of talk's that?

Why is it a good thing?"

Laban spoke over his shoulder. "Because," he drawled, "if they was alive now they'd be so jealous of you they'd commit suicide. Yes, they would.

... Yes, yes."

With which enigmatical remark he left Mr. Price and turned his attention to the tethered Jessamine.

And then began a new period, a new life at the Snow place and in the office of Z. Snow and Co. Or, rather, life in the old house and at the lumber and hardware office slumped back into the groove in which it had run before the opera singer's son was summoned from the New York school to the home and into the lives of his grandparents. Three people instead of four sat down at the breakfast table and at dinner and at supper.

Captain Zelotes walked alone to and from the office. Olive Snow no longer baked and iced large chocolate layer cakes because a certain inmate of her household was so fond of them. Rachel Ellis discussed Foul Play and Robert Penfold with no one. The house was emptier, more old-fas.h.i.+oned and behind the times, more lonely--surprisingly empty and behind the times and lonely.

The daily mails became matters of intense interest and expectation.

Albert wrote regularly and of course well and entertainingly. He described the life at the camp where he and the other recruits were training, a camp vastly different from the enormous military towns built later on for housing and training the drafted men. He liked the life pretty well, he wrote, although it was hard and a fellow had precious little opportunity to be lazy. Mistakes, too, were unprofitable for the maker. Captain Lote's eye twinkled when he read that.

Later on he wrote that he had been made a corporal and his grandmother, to whom a major general and a corporal were of equal rank, rejoiced much both at home and in church after meeting was over and friends came to hear the news. Mrs. Ellis declared herself not surprised. It was the Robert Penfold in him coming out, so she said.

A month or two later one of Albert's letters contained an interesting item of news. In the little spare time which military life afforded him he continued to write verse and stories. Now a New York publisher, not one of the most prominent but a reputable and enterprising one, had written him suggesting the collecting of his poems and their publication in book form. The poet himself was, naturally, elated.

"Isn't it splendid!" he wrote. "The best part of it, of course, is that he asked to publish, I did not ask him. Please send me my sc.r.a.pbook and all loose ma.n.u.script. When the book will come out I'm sure I don't know.

In fact it may never come out, we have not gotten as far as terms and contracts yet, but I feel we shall. Send the sc.r.a.pbook and ma.n.u.script right away, PLEASE."

They were sent. In his next letter Albert was still enthusiastic.

"I have been looking over my stuff," he wrote, "and some of it is pretty good, if you don't mind my saying so. Tell Grandfather that when this book of mine is out and selling I may be able to show him that poetry making isn't a pauper's job, after all. Of course I don't know how much it will sell--perhaps not more than five or ten thousand at first--but even at ten thousand at, say, twenty-five cents royalty each, would be twenty-five hundred dollars, and that's something. Why, Ben Hur, the novel, you know, has sold a million, I believe."

Mrs. Snow and Rachel were duly impressed by this prophecy of affluence, but Captain Zelotes still played the skeptic.

"A million at twenty-five cents a piece!" exclaimed Olive. "Why, Zelotes, that's--that's an awful sight of money."

Mental arithmetic failing her, she set to work with a pencil and paper and after a strenuous struggle triumphantly announced that it came to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

"My soul and body!" she cried. "Two hundred and fifty thousand DOLLARS!

My SOUL, Zelotes! Suppose--only suppose Albert's book brought him in as much as that!"

Her husband shook his head. "I can't, Olive," he said, without looking up from his newspaper. "My supposer wouldn't stand the strain."

"But it might, Zelotes, it MIGHT. Suppose it did, what would you say then?"

The captain regarded her over the top of the Transcript. "I shouldn't say a word, Olive," he answered, solemnly. "I should be down sick by the time it got up as far as a thousand, and anything past two thousand you could use to buy my tombstone with... . There, there, Mother,"

he added, noticing the hurt look on her face, "don't feel bad. I'm only jokin'. One of these days Al's goin' to make a nice, comf'table livin'

sellin' lumber and hardware right here in South Harniss. I can SEE that money in the offin'. All this million or two that's comin' from poetry and such is out of sight in the fog. It may be there but--humph! well, I KNOW where Z. Snow and Co. is located."

Olive was not entirely placated. "I must say I think you're awful discouragin' to the poor boy, Zelotes," she said. Her husband put down his paper.

"No, no, I ain't, Mother," he replied, earnestly. "At least I don't mean to be. Way I look at it, this poetry-makin' and writin' yarns and that sort of stuff is just part of the youngster's--er--growin' up, as you might say. Give him time he'll grow out of it, same as I cal'late he will out of this girl business, this--er--Madel--humph--er--ahem... .

Looks like a good day to-morrow, don't it."

He pulled up suddenly, and with considerable confusion. He had kept the news of his grandson's infatuation and engagement even from his wife.

No one in South Harniss knew of it, no one except the captain. Helen Kendall knew, but she was in Boston.

Rachel Ellis picked up the half knitted Red Cross mitten in her lap.

"Well, I don't know whether he's right or you are, Cap'n Lote," she said, with a sigh, "but this I do know--I wish this awful war was over and he was back home again."

That remark ended the conversation. Olive resumed her own knitting, seeing it but indistinctly. Her husband did not continue his newspaper reading. Instead he rose and, saying something about cal'latin' he would go for a little walk before turning in, went out into the yard.

But the war did not end, it went on; so too did the enlisting and training. In the early summer Albert came home for a two days' leave. He was broader and straighter and browner. His uniform became him and, more than ever, the eyes of South Harniss's youthful femininity, native or imported, followed him as he walked the village streets. But the glances were not returned, not in kind, that is. The new Fosd.i.c.k home, although completed, was not occupied. Mrs. Fosd.i.c.k had, that summer, decided that her duties as mover in goodness knows how many war work activities prevented her taking her "usual summer rest." Instead she and Madeline occupied a rented villa at Greenwich, Connecticut, coming into town for meetings of all sorts. Captain Zelotes had his own suspicions as to whether war work alone was the cause of the Fosd.i.c.ks' shunning of what was to have been their summer home, but he kept those suspicions to himself. Albert may have suspected also, but he, too, said nothing. The censored correspondence between Greenwich and the training camp traveled regularly, and South Harniss damsels looked and longed in vain. He saw them, he bowed to them, he even addressed them pleasantly and charmingly, but to him they were merely incidents in his walks to and from the post-office. In his mind's eye he saw but one, and she, alas, was not present in the flesh.

Then he returned to the camp where, later on, Captain Zelotes and Olive visited him. As they came away the captain and his grandson exchanged a few significant words.

"It is likely to be almost any time, Grandfather," said Albert, quietly.