The Portygee Part 34

The Fosd.i.c.k mansion is growing fast. South Harniss may well be proud of its new ornament.

The rise in three successive numbers from "cottage" to "mansion" is perhaps sufficient to indicate that the Fosd.i.c.k summer home was to be, as Issachar Price described it, "Some considerable house! Yes sir, by crimus, some considerable!"

In June, Helen came home for a week. At the end of the week she left to take up her new duties at the summer camp for girls in Vermont. Albert and she were together a good deal during that week. Antic.i.p.ating her arrival, the young man's ardent imagination had again fanned what he delighted to think of as his love for her into flame. During the last months of the winter he had not played the languishing swain as conscientiously as during the autumn. Like the sailor in the song "is 'eart was true to Poll" always, but he had broken away from his self-imposed hermitage in his room at the Snow place several times to attend sociables, entertainments and, even, dances. Now, when she returned he was eagerly awaiting her and would have haunted the parsonage before and after working hours of every day as well as the evening, if she had permitted, and when with her a.s.sumed a proprietary air which was so obvious that even Mr. Price felt called upon to comment on it.

"Say, Al," drawled Issachar, "cal'late you've cut out Eddie Raymond along with Helen, ain't ye? Don't see him hangin' around any since she got back, and the way you was actin' when I see you struttin' into the parsonage yard last night afore mail time made me think you must have a first mortgage on Helen and her pa and the house and the meetin'-house and two-thirds of the graveyard. I never see such an important-lookin'

critter in MY life. Haw, haw! Eh? How 'bout it?"

Albert did not mind the Price sarcasm; instead he felt rather grateful to have the proletariat recognize that he had triumphed again. The fly in his ointment, so to speak, was the fact that Helen herself did not in the least recognize that triumph. She laughed at him.

"Don't look at me like that, please, please, don't," she begged.

"Why not?" with a repet.i.tion of the look.

"Because it is silly."

"Silly! Well, I like that! Aren't you and I engaged? Or just the same as engaged?"

"No, of course we are not."

"But we promised each other--"

"No, we did not. And you know we didn't."

"Helen, why do you treat me that way? Don't you know that--that I just worship the ground you tread on? Don't you know you're the only girl in this world I could ever care for? Don't you know that?"

They were walking home from church Sunday morning and had reached the corner below the parsonage. There, screened by the thicket of young silver-leafs, she stopped momentarily and looked into his face. Then she walked on.

"Don't you know how much I care?" he repeated.

She shook her head. "You think you do now, perhaps," she said, "but you will change your mind."

"What do you mean by that? How do you know I will?"

"Because I know you. There, there, Albert, we won't quarrel, will we?

And we won't be silly. You're an awfully nice boy, but you are just a boy, you know."

He was losing his temper.

"This is ridiculous!" he declared. "I'm tired of being grandmothered by you. I'm older than you are, and I know what I'm doing. Come, Helen, listen to me."

But she would not listen, and although she was always kind and frank and friendly, she invariably refused to permit him to become sentimental. It irritated him, and after she had gone the irritation still remained. He wrote her as before, although not quite so often, and the letters were possibly not quite so long. His pride was hurt and the Speranza pride was a tender and important part of the Speranza being. If Helen noted any change in his letters she did not refer to it nor permit it to influence her own, which were, as always, lengthy, cheerful, and full of interest in him and his work and thoughts.

During the previous fall, while under the new influence aroused in him by his discovery that Helen Kendall was "the most wonderful girl in the world," said discovery of course having been previously made for him by the unfortunate Raymond, he had developed a habit of wandering off into the woods or by the seash.o.r.e to be alone and to seek inspiration. When a young poet is in love, or fancies himself in love, inspiration is usually to be found wherever sought, but even at that age and to one in that condition solitude is a marked aid in the search. There were two or three spots which had become Albert Speranza's favorites. One was a high, wind-swept knoll, overlooking the bay, about a half mile from the hotel, another was a secluded nook in the pine grove beside Carver's Pond, a pretty little sheet of water on the Bayport boundary. On pleasant Sat.u.r.day afternoons or Sundays, when the poetic fit was on him, Albert, with a half dozen pencils in his pocket, and a rhyming dictionary and a scribbling pad in another, was wont to stroll towards one or the other of these two retreats. There he would sprawl amid the beachgra.s.s or upon the pine-needles and dream and think and, perhaps, ultimately write.

One fair Sat.u.r.day in late June he was at the first of these respective points. Lying p.r.o.ne on the beach gra.s.s at the top of the knoll and peering idly out between its stems at the water shimmering in the summer sun, he was endeavoring to find a subject for a poem which should deal with love and war as requested by the editor of the Columbian Magazine.

"Give us something with a girl and a soldier in it," the editor had written. Albert's mind was lazily drifting in search of the pleasing combination.

The sun was warm, the breeze was light, the horizon was veiled with a liquid haze. Albert's mind was veiled with a similar haze and the idea he wanted would not come. He was losing his desire to find it and was, in fact, dropping into a doze when aroused by a blood-curdling outburst of barks and yelps and growls behind him, at his very heels. He came out of his nap with a jump and, scrambling to a sitting position and turning, he saw a small Boston bull-terrier standing within a yard of his ankles and, apparently, trying to turn his brindled outside in, or his inside out, with spiteful ferocity. Plainly the dog had come upon him unexpectedly and was expressing alarm, suspicion and disapproval.

Albert jerked his ankles out of the way and said "h.e.l.lo, boy," in as cheerfully cordial a tone as he could muster at such short notice. The dog took a step forward, evidently with the idea of always keeping the ankles within jumping distance, showed a double row of healthy teeth and growled and barked with renewed violence.

"Nice dog," observed Albert. The nice dog made a snap at the nearest ankle and, balked of his prey by a frenzied kick of the foot attached to the ankle, shrieked, snarled and gurgled like a canine lunatic.

"Go home, you ugly brute," commanded the young man, losing patience, and looking about for a stone or stick. On the top of that knoll the largest stone was the size of a buckshot and the nearest stick was, to be Irish, a straw.

"Nice doggie! Nice old boy! Come and be patted! ... Clear out with you! Go home, you beast!"

Flatteries and threats were alike in their result. The dog continued to snarl and growl, darting toward the ankles occasionally. Evidently he was mustering courage for the attack. Albert in desperation scooped up a handful of sand. If worst came to worst he might blind the creature temporarily. What would happen after that was not clear. Unless he might by a lucky cast fill the dog's interior so full of sand that--like the famous "Jumping Frog"--it would be too heavy to navigate, he saw no way of escape from a painful bite, probably more than one. What Captain Zelotes had formerly called his "Portygee temper" flared up.

"Oh, d.a.m.n you, clear out!" he shouted, springing to his feet.

From a little way below him; in fact, from behind the next dune, between himself and the beach, a feminine voice called his name.

"Oh, Mr. Speranza!" it said. "Is it you? I'm so glad!"

Albert turned, but the moment he did so the dog made a dash at his legs, so he was obliged to turn back again and kick violently.

"Oh, I am so glad it is you," said the voice again. "I was sure it was a dreadful tramp. Googoo loathes tramps."

As an article of diet that meant, probably. Googoo--if that was the dog's name--was pa.s.sionately fond of poets, that was self-evident, and intended to make a meal of this one, forthwith. He flew at the Speranza ankles. Albert performed a most undignified war dance, and dashed his handful of sand into Googoo's open countenance. For a minute or so there was a lively shindy on top of that knoll. At the end of the minute the dog, held tightly in a pair of feminine arms, was emitting growls and coughs and sand, while Madeline Fosd.i.c.k and Albert Speranza were kneeling in more sand and looking at each other.

"Oh, did he bite you?" begged Miss Fosd.i.c.k.

"No ... no, I guess not," was the reply. "I--I scarcely know yet.

... Why, when did you come? I didn't know you were in town."

"We came yesterday. Motored from home, you know. I--be still, Goo, you bad thing! It was such a lovely day that I couldn't resist going for a walk along the beach. I took Googoo because he does love it so, and--Goo, be still, I tell you! I am sure he thinks you are a tramp, out here all alone in the--in the wilderness. And what were you doing here?"

Albert drew a long breath. "I was half asleep, I guess," he said, "when he broke loose at my heels. I woke up quick enough then, as you may imagine. And so you are here for the summer? Your new house isn't finished, is it?"

"No, not quite. Mother and Goo and I are at the hotel for a month.

But you haven't answered my question. What were you doing off here all alone? Have you been for a walk, too?"

"Not exactly. I--well, I come here pretty often. It is one of my favorite hiding places. You see, I ... don't laugh if I tell you, will you?"

"Of course not. Go on; this is very mysterious and interesting."

"Well, I come here sometimes on pleasant days, to be alone--and write."

"Write? Write poetry, do you mean?"

"Yes."

"Oh, how wonderful! Were you writing when I--when Goo interrupted you?"