She rose and went out of the room. She looked as if she were on the verge of tears. He felt obliged to accept the gift, but he disliked the principle of the things as much as ever. When she returned she was very talkative and gay and chatted all through luncheon. The subject of the ties was not mentioned again by either of them. He was glad he had not told her that his new dress suit was ready-made.
While in France, awaiting his return home, he had purchased a ring and sent it to her. She was wearing it, of course. Compared with other articles of jewelry which she wore from time to time, his ring made an extremely modest showing. She seemed quite unaware of the discrepancy, but he was aware of it.
On an evening later in the week Mrs. Fosdick gave a reception. “Quite an informal affair,” she said, in announcing her intention. “Just a few intimate friends to meet Mr. Speranza, that is all. Mostly lovers of literature—discerning people, if I may say so.”
The quite informal affair looked quite formidably formal to Albert. The few intimate friends were many, so it seemed to him. There was still enough of the former Albert Speranza left in his make-up to prevent his appearing in the least distressed or ill at ease. He was, as he had always been when in the public eye, even as far back as the school dancing-classes with the Misses Bradshaw's young ladies, perfectly self-possessed, charmingly polite, absolutely self-assured. And his good looks had not suffered during his years of imprisonment and suffering. He was no longer a handsome boy, but he was an extraordinarily attractive and distinguished man.
Mrs. Fosdick marked his manner and appearance and breathed a sigh of satisfaction. Madeline noted them. Her young friends of the sex noted them and whispered and looked approval. What the young men thought does not matter so much, perhaps. One of these was the Captain Blanchard, of whom Madeline had written and spoken. He was a tall, athletic chap, who looked well in his uniform, and whose face was that of a healthy, clean-living and clean-thinking young American. He and Albert shook hands and looked each other over. Albert decided he should like Blanchard if he knew him better. The captain was not talkative; in fact, he seemed rather taciturn. Maids and matrons gushed when presented to the lion of the evening. It scarcely seemed possible that they were actually meeting the author of The Lances of Dawn. That wonderful book! Those wonderful poems! “How CAN you write them, Mr. Speranza?” “When do your best inspirations come, Mr. Speranza?” “Oh, if I could write as you do I should walk on air.” The matron who breathed the last-quoted ecstasy was distinctly weighty; the mental picture of her pedestrian trip through the atmosphere was interesting. Albert's hand was patted by the elderly spinsters, young women's eyes lifted soulful glances to his.
It was the sort of thing he would have revelled in three or four years earlier. Exactly the sort of thing he had dreamed of when the majority of the poems they gushed over were written. It was much the same thing he remembered having seen his father undergo in the days when he and the opera singer were together. And his father had, apparently, rather enjoyed it. He realized all this—and he realized, too, with a queer feeling that it should be so, that he did not like it at all. It was silly. Nothing he had written warranted such extravagances. Hadn't these people any sense of proportion? They bored him to desperation. The sole relief was the behavior of the men, particularly the middle-aged or elderly men, obviously present through feminine compulsion. They seized his hand, moved it up and down with a pumping motion, uttered some stereotyped prevarications about their pleasure at meeting him and their having enjoyed his poems very much, and then slid on in the direction of the refreshment room.
And Albert, as he shook hands, bowed and smiled and was charmingly affable, found his thoughts wandering until they settled upon Private Mike Kelly and the picturesque language of the latter when he, as sergeant, routed him out for guard duty. Mike had not gushed over him nor called him a genius. He had called him many things, but not that.
He was glad indeed when he could slip away for a dance with Madeline. He found her chatting gaily with Captain Blanchard, who had been her most recent partner. He claimed her from the captain and as he led her out to the dance floor she whispered that she was very proud of him. “But I DO wish YOU could wear your war cross,” she added.
The quite informal affair was the first of many quite as informally formal. Also Mrs. Fosdick's satellites and friends of the literary clubs and the war work societies seized the opportunity to make much of the heroic author of The Lances of Dawn. His society was requested at teas, at afternoon as well as evening gatherings. He would have refused most of these invitations, but Madeline and her mother seemed to take his acceptance for granted; in fact, they accepted for him. A ghastly habit developed of asking him to read a few of his own poems on these occasions. “PLEASE, Mr. Speranza. It will be such a treat, and such an HONOR.” Usually a particular request was made that he read “The Greater Love.” Now “The Greater Love” was the poem which, written in those rapturous days when he and Madeline first became aware of their mutual adoration, was refused by one editor as a “trifle too syrupy.” To read that sticky effusion over and over again became a torment. There were occasions when if a man had referred to “The Greater Love,” its author might have howled profanely and offered bodily violence. But no men ever did refer to “The Greater Love.”
On one occasion when a sentimental matron and her gushing daughter had begged to know if he did not himself adore that poem, if he did not consider it the best he had ever written, he had answered frankly. He was satiated with cake and tea and compliments that evening and recklessly truthful. “You really wish to know my opinion of that poem?” he asked. Indeed and indeed they really wished to knew just that thing. “Well, then, I think it's rot,” he declared. “I loathe it.”