第62章

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 Fosdick'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 Fosdick photograph to the drawer;but this time he did not put it quite so near the back.

On the following Saturday 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 Fosdick's assistance, 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 Fosdick 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 Saturday.""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 Saturday 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 Fosdick residence upon the Bay Road grew and grew, so did the acquaintanceship, the friendship, the poetic partnership between the Fosdick daughter and the grandson of Captain Zelotes Snow grow and grow.They met almost every Saturday, they met at the post office on week evenings, occasionally they saw each other for a moment after church on Sunday mornings.Mrs.Fletcher Fosdick 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.Fosdick said she doted on Tagore; Mrs.Calvin expressed herself as being positively insane about him.A warm friendship had sprung up between the two ladies, as each was particularly fond of shining as a literary light and neither under any circumstances 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.Fosdick was too busy to accompany Madeline to church on Sunday or to walk on Saturday, 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 Fosdick, 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 passed and late August came, the last Saturday 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 plashing along the shore, 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-god, 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 Fosdick 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.