第99章

In a way the night was similar to that upon which he had first entered that room.It had ceased raining, but the wind, as on that first night, was howling and whining about the eaves, the shutters rattled and the old house creaked and groaned rheumatically.It was not as cold as on that occasion, though by no means warm.He remembered how bare and comfortless he had thought the room.Now it looked almost luxurious.And he had been homesick, or fancied himself in that condition.Compared to the homesickness he had known during the past eighteen months that youthful seizure seemed contemptible and quite without excuse.He looked about the room again, looked long and lovingly.Then, with a sigh of content, drew from his pocket the two letters which had lain upon the sitting-room table when he arrived, opened them and began to read.

Madeline wrote, as always, vivaciously and at length.The maternal censorship having been removed, she wrote exactly as she felt.She could scarcely believe he was really going to be at home when he received this, at home in dear, quaint, queer old South Harniss.

Just think, she had not seen the place for ever and ever so long, not for over two years.How were all the funny, odd people who lived there all the time? Did he remember how he and she used to go to church every Sunday and sit through those dreadful, DREADFULsermons by that prosy old minister just as an excuse for meeting each other afterward? She was SO sorry she could not have been there to welcome her hero when he stepped from the train.If it hadn't been for Mother's poor nerves she surely would have been.

He knew it, didn't he? Of course he did.But she should see him soon "because Mother is planning already to come back to New York in a few weeks and then you are to run over immediately and make us a LONG visit.And I shall be so PROUD of you.There are lots of Army fellows down here now, officers for the most part.So we dance and are very gay--that is, the other girls are; I, being an engaged young lady, am very circumspect and demure, of course.

Mother carries The Lances about with her wherever she goes, to teas and such things, and reads aloud from it often.Captain Blanchard, he is one of the family's officer friends, is crazy about your poetry, dear.He thinks it WONDERFUL.You know what _I_ think of it, don't you, and when I think that _I_ actually helped you, or played at helping you write some of it!

"And I am WILD to see your war cross.Some of the officers here have them--the crosses, I mean--but not many.Captain Blanchard has the military medal, and he is almost as modest about it as you are about your decoration.I don't see how you CAN be so modest.

If _I_ had a Croix de Guerre I should want EVERY ONE to know about it.At the tea dance the other afternoon there was a British major who--"And so on.The second letter was really a continuation of the first.Albert read them both and, after the reading was finished, sat for some time in the rocking chair, quite regardless of the time and the cold, thinking.He took from his pocketbook a photograph, one which Madeline had sent him months before, which had reached him while he lay in the French hospital after his removal from the German camp.He looked at the pretty face in the photograph.She looked just as he remembered her, almost exactly as she had looked more than two years before, smiling, charming, carefree.She had not, apparently, grown older, those age-long months had not changed her.He rose and regarded his own reflection in the mirror of the bureau.He was surprised, as he was constantly being surprised, to see that he, too, had not changed greatly in personal appearance.

He walked about the room.His grandmother had told him that his room was just as he had left it."I wouldn't change it, Albert,"she said, "even when we thought you--you wasn't comin' back.Icouldn't touch it, somehow.I kept thinkin', 'Some day I will.

Pretty soon I MUST.' But I never did, and now I'm so glad."He wandered back to the bureau and pulled open the upper drawers.