第58章

"Oh; that so?" observed Captain Zelotes, looking after the flying car with interest."That's who 'tis, eh? Nice lookin', the young one, ain't she?"Albert did not answer.With the noise of the train which was carrying Helen out of his life still ringing in his ears it seemed wicked even to mention another girl's name, to say nothing of commenting upon her good looks.For the rest of that day he was a gloomy spirit, a dark shadow in the office of Z.Snow and Co.

Before the end of another fortnight the season at South Harniss was definitely over.The hotel closed on the Saturday following the dance, and by October first the last of the cottages was locked and shuttered.The Kelseys went on the twentieth and the Fosdicks went with them.Albert met Madeline and Jane at the post-office in the evening of the nineteenth and there more farewells were said.

"Don't forget us down here in the sand, will you?" he suggested to Miss Fosdick.It was Jane Kelsey who answered.

"Oh, she won't forget," returned that young lady."Why she has your photograph to remember you by."Madeline colored becomingly and was, as Jane described it, "awfully fussed.""Nonsense!" she exclaimed, with much indignation, "I haven't any such thing.You know I haven't, Jane.""Yes, you have, my dear.You have a photograph of him standing in front of the drug store and looking dreamily in at--at the strawberry sundaes.It is a most romantic pose, really."Albert laughed.He remembered the photograph.It was one of a series of snapshots taken with Miss Kelsey's camera one Saturday afternoon when a party of young people had met in front of the sundae dispensary.Jane had insisted on "snapping" everyone.

"That reminds me that I have never seen the rest of those photographs," he said.

"Haven't you?" exclaimed Jane."Well, you ought to see them.Ihave Madeline's with me.It is a dream, if I do say it as I took it."She produced the snapshot, which showed her friend standing beside the silver-leaf tree before the druggist's window and smiling at the camera.It was a good likeness and, consequently, a very pretty picture.

"Isn't it a dream, just as I said?" demanded the artist."Honest now, isn't it?

Albert of course declared it to be beyond praise.

"May I have this one?" he asked, on the impulse of the moment.

"Don't ask me, stupid," commanded Jane, mischievously."It isn't my funeral--or my portrait, either.""May I?" he repeated, turning to Madeline.She hesitated.

"Why--why yes, you may, if you care for it," she said."That particular one is Jane's, anyway, and if she chooses to give it away I don't see how I can prevent her.But why you should want the old thing I can't conceive.I look as stiff and wooden as a sign-post."Jane held up a protesting finger.

"Fibs, fibs, fibs," she observed."Can't conceive why he should want it! As if you weren't perfectly aware that he will wear it next his heart and-- Oh, don't put it in THAT pocket! I said next your heart, and that isn't on your RIGHT side."Albert took the photograph home and stuck it between the frame and glass of his bureau.Then came a sudden remembrance of his parting with Helen and with it a twinge of conscience.He had begged her to have nothing to do with any other fellow.True she had refused to promise and consequently he also was unbound, but that made no difference--should not make any.So he put the photograph at the back of the drawer where he kept his collars and ties, with a resolve never to look at it.He did not look at it--very often.

Then came another long winter.He ground away at the bookkeeping--he was more proficient at it, but he hated it as heartily as ever--and wrote a good deal of verse and some prose.For the first time he sold a prose article, a short story, to a minor magazine.He wrote long letters to Helen and she replied.She was studying hard, she liked her work, and she had been offered the opportunity to tutor in a girls' summer camp in Vermont during July and August and meant to accept provided her father's health continued good.

Albert protested violently against her being absent from South Harniss for so long."You will scarcely be home at all," he wrote.

"I shall hardly see you.What am I going to do? As it is now Imiss you--" and so on for four closely written pages.Having gotten into the spirit of composition he, so to speak, gloried in his loneliness, so much so that Helen was moved to remonstrate.

"Your letter made me almost miserable," she wrote, "until I had read it over twice.Then I began to suspect that you were enjoying your wretchedness, or enjoying writing about it.I truly don't believe anyone--you especially--could be quite as lonesome as all that.Honestly now, Albert, weren't you exaggerating a little? Irather think you were?"

He had been, of course, but it irritated him to think that she recognized the fact.She had an uncanny faculty of seeing through his every pretense.In his next letter he said nothing whatever about being lonesome.

At home, and at the office, the war was what people talked about most of the time.Since the Lusitania's sinking Captain Zelotes had been a battle charger chafing at the bit.He wanted to fight and to fight at once.

"We've got to do it, Mother," he declared, over and over again.

"Sooner or later we've got to fight that Kaiser gang.What are we waitin' for; will somebody tell me that?"Olive, as usual, was mild and unruffled.