The Portygee Part 55

Captain Zelotes was standing in the doorway of the private office. The noise had aroused him from his letter writing.

"Who's alive? What's the matter with you this time, Is?" he demanded.

"Shut up, Issy," ordered Laban, seizing the frantic Mr. Price by the collar. "Be still! Wait a minute."

"Be still? What do I want to be still for? I cal'late Cap'n Lote'll holler some, too, when he hears. He's alive, Cap'n Lote, I tell ye. Let go of me, Labe Keeler! He's alive!"

"Who's alive? What is it? Labe, YOU answer me. Who's alive?"

Laban's thoughts were still in a whirl. He was still shaking from the news the telegraph operator had brought. Rachel Ellis was at that moment in his mind and he answered as she might have done.

"Er--er--Robert Penfold," he said.

"Robert PENFOLD! What--"

Issachar could hold in no longer.

"Robert Penfold nawthin'!" he shouted. "Who in thunder's he? 'Tain't Robert Penfold nor Robert Penholder neither. It's Al Speranza, that's who 'tis. He ain't killed, Cap'n Lote. He's alive and he's been alive all the time."

Kelley stepped forward.

"Looks as if 'twas so, Cap'n Snow," he said. "Here's the telegram from the Red Cross."

CHAPTER XV

There was nothing miraculous about it. That is to say, it was no more of a miracle than hundreds of similar cases in the World War. The papers of those years were constantly printing stories of men over whose supposed graves funeral sermons had been preached, to whose heirs insurance payments had been made, in whose memory grateful communities had made speeches and delivered eulogiums--the papers were telling of instance after instance of those men being discovered alive and in the flesh, as casuals in some French hospital or as inmates of German prison camps.

Rachel Ellis had asked what was to hinder Albert's having been taken prisoner by the Germans and carried off by them. As a matter of fact nothing had hindered and that was exactly what had happened. Sergeant Speranza, wounded by machine gun fire and again by the explosion of the grenade, was found in the ruins of the cottage when the detachment of the enemy captured it. He was conscious and able to speak, so instead of being bayonetted was carried to the rear where he might be questioned concerning the American forces. The questioning was most unsatisfactory to the Prussian officers who conducted it. Albert fainted, recovered consciousness and fainted again. So at last the Yankee swine was left to die or get well and his Prussian interrogators went about other business, the business of escaping capture themselves. But when they retreated the few prisoners, mostly wounded men, were taken with them.

Albert's recollections of the next few days were hazy and very doubtful.

Pain, pain and more pain. Hours and hours--they seemed like years--of jolting over rough roads. Pawing-over by a fat, bearded surgeon, who may not have been intentionally brutal, but quite as likely may. A great desire to die, punctuated by occasional feeble spurts of wis.h.i.+ng to live. Then more surgical man-handling, more jolting--in freight cars this time--a slow, miserable recovery, nurses who hated their patients and treated them as if they did, then, a prison camp, a German prison camp. Then horrors and starvation and brutality lasting many months.

Then fever.

He was wandering in that misty land between this world and the next when, the armistice having been signed, an American Red Cross representative found him. In the interval between fits of delirium he told this man his name and regiment and, later, the name of his grandparents. When it seemed sure that he was to recover the Red Cross representative cabled the facts to this country. And, still later, those facts, or the all-important fact that Sergeant Albert M. C. Speranza was not dead but alive, came by telegraph to Captain Zelotes Snow of South Harniss. And, two months after that, Captain Zelotes himself, standing on the wharf in Boston and peering up at a crowded deck above him, saw the face of his grandson, that face which he had never expected to see again, looking eagerly down upon him.

A few more weeks and it was over. The brief interval of camp life and the mustering out were things of the past. Captain Lote and Albert, seated in the train, were on their way down the Cape, bound home. Home!

The word had a significance now which it never had before. Home!

Albert drew a long breath. "By George!" he exclaimed. "By George, Grandfather, this looks good to me!"

It might not have looked as good to another person. It was raining, the long stretches of salt marsh were windswept and brown and bleak. In the distance Cape Cod Bay showed gray and white against a leaden sky. The drops ran down the dingy car windows.

Captain Zelotes understood, however. He nodded.

"It used to look good to me when I was bound home after a v'yage," he observed. "Well, son, I cal'late your grandma and Rachel are up to the depot by this time waitin' for you. We ain't due for pretty nigh an hour yet, but I'd be willin' to bet they're there."

Albert smiled. "My, I do want to see them!" he said.

"Shouldn't wonder a mite if they wanted to see you, boy. Well, I'm kind of glad I shooed that reception committee out of the way. I presumed likely you'd rather have your first day home to yourself--and us."

"I should say so! Newspaper reporters are a lot of mighty good fellows, but I hope I never see another one... . That's rather ungrateful, I know," he added, with a smile, "but I mean it--just now."

He had some excuse for meaning it. The death of Albert Speranza, poet and warrior, had made a newspaper sensation. His resurrection and return furnished material for another. Captain Zelotes was not the only person to meet the transport at the pier; a delegation of reporters was there also. Photographs of Sergeant Speranza appeared once more in print. This time, however, they were snapshots showing him in uniform, likenesses of a still handsome, but less boyish young man, thinner, a scar upon his right cheek, and the look in his eyes more serious, and infinitely older, the look of one who had borne much and seen more. The reporters found it difficult to get a story from the returned hero. He seemed to shun the limelight and to be almost unduly modest and retiring, which was of itself, had they but known it, a transformation sufficiently marvelous to have warranted a special "Sunday special."

"Will not talk about himself," so one writer headed his article. Gertie Kendrick, with a brand-new ring upon her engagement finger, sniffed as she read that headline to Sam Thatcher, who had purchased the ring. "Al Speranza won't talk about himself!" exclaimed Gertie. "Well, it's the FIRST time, then. No wonder they put it in the paper."

But Albert would not talk, claiming that he had done nothing worth talking about, except to get himself taken prisoner in almost his first engagement. "Go and ask some of the other fellows aboard here," he urged. "They have been all through it." As he would not talk the newspaper men were obliged to talk for him, which they did by describing his appearance and his manner, and by rehas.h.i.+ng the story of the fight in the French village. Also, of course, they republished some of his verses. The Lances of Dawn appeared in a special edition in honor of its author's reappearance on this earth.

"Yes sir," continued Captain Zelotes, "the reception committee was consider'ble disappointed. They'd have met you with the Orham band if they'd had their way. I told 'em you'd heard all the band music you wanted in camp, I guessed likely, and you'd rather come home quiet.

There was goin' to be some speeches, too, but I had them put off."

"Thanks, Grandfather."

"Um-hm. I had a notion you wouldn't hanker for speeches. If you do Issy'll make one for you 'most any time. Ever since you got into the papers Issy's been swellin' up like a hot pop-over with pride because you and he was what he calls chummies. All last summer Issachar spent his evenin's hangin' around the hotel waitin' for the next boarder to mention your name. Sure as one did Is was ready for him. 'Know him?'

he'd sing out. 'Did I know Al Speranza? ME? Well, now say!--' And so on, long as the feller would listen. I asked him once if he ever told any of 'em how you ducked him with the bucket of water. He didn't think I knew about that and it kind of surprised him, I judged."

Albert smiled. "Laban told you about it, I suppose," he said. "What a kid trick that was, wasn't it?"

The captain turned his head and regarded him for an instant. The old twinkle was in his eye when he spoke.

"Wouldn't do a thing like that now, Al, I presume likely?" he said.

"Feel a good deal older now, eh?"

Albert's answer was seriously given.

"Sometimes I feel at least a hundred and fifty," he replied.

"Humph! ... Well, I wouldn't feel like that. If you're a hundred and fifty I must be a little older than Methuselah was in his last years.

I'm feelin' younger to-day, younger than I have for quite a spell. Yes, for quite a spell."

His grandson put a hand on his knee. "Good for you, Grandfather," he said. "Now tell me more about Labe. Do you know I think the old chap's sticking by his pledge is the bulliest thing I've heard since I've been home."

So they talked of Laban and of Rachel and of South Harniss happenings until the train drew up at the platform of that station. And upon that platform stepped Albert to feel his grandmother's arms about him and her voice, tremulous with happiness, at his ear. And behind her loomed Mrs.

Ellis, her ample face a combination of smiles and tears, "all suns.h.i.+ne and fair weather down below but rainin' steady up aloft," as Captain Lote described it afterwards. And behind her, like a foothill in the shadow of a mountain, was Laban. And behind Laban--No, that is a mistake--in front of Laban and beside Laban and in front of and beside everyone else when opportunity presented was Issachar. And Issachar's expression and bearings were wonderful to see. A stranger, and there were several strangers amid the group at the station, might have gained the impression that Mr. Price, with of course a very little help from the Almighty, was responsible for everything.

"Why, Issy!" exclaimed Albert, when they shook hands. "You're here, too, eh?"

Mr. Price's already protuberant chest swelled still further. His reply had the calmness of finality.

"Yes, sir," said Issy, "I'm here. 'Who's goin' to look out for Z. Snow and Co. if all hands walks out and leaves 'em?' Labe says. 'I don't know,' says I, 'and I don't care. I'm goin' to that depot to meet Al Speranzy and if Z. Snow and Co. goes to pot while I'm gone I can't help it. I have sacrificed,' I says, 'and I stand ready to sacrifice pretty nigh everything for my business, but there's limits and this is one of 'em. I'm goin' acrost to that depot to meet him,' says I, 'and don't you try to stop me, Labe Keeler.'"

"Great stuff, Is!" said Albert, with a laugh. "What did Labe say to that?"

"What was there for him to say? He could see I meant it. Course he hove out some of his cheap talk, but it didn't amount to nothin'. Asked if I wan't goin' to put up a sign sayin' when I'd be back, so's to ease the customers' minds. 'I don't know when I'll be back,' I says. 'All right,'

says he, 'put that on the sign. That'll ease 'em still more.' Just cheap talk 'twas. He thinks he's funny, but I don't pay no attention to him."