Clairedressed Dlorus, cooked a dinner of beet greens, potatoes, and trout; and by bullying and great sweetness kept Dlorus from too many trips to the gin bottle. Milt caught the trout, cut wood, locked in a log shed Pinky's forlorn mining-tools. They started for North Yakima at eight of the evening, with Dlorus, back in the spare seat, alternately sobbing and to inattentive ears announcing what she'd say to the Old Hens.
Milt was devoted to persuading the huge cat of a car to tiptoe down the slippery gouged ruts of the road, and Claire's mind was driving with him. Every time he touched the foot-brake, she could feel the strain in the tendons of her own ankle.
A mile down the main road they stopped at a store-post-office to telephone back to Mr. Boltwood and Dr. Beach. On the porch was a man in overalls and laced boots. He was lean and quick-moving. As he raised his head, and his spectacles flashed, Claire caught Milt's arm and gasped, "Oh, my dear, I'm in a beautiful state of nerves. For a moment I thought that was Jeff Saxton. I bet it is his astral body!"
"And you thought he was going to forbid yourrunning away on this fool expedition, and you were scared," chuckled Milt, as they sat in the car.
"Of course I was! And I still am! I know what he'll say afterward! Heishere, reasoning with me. Oughtn't I to be sensible? Oughtn't I to have you leave me at the Beaches' before you start—jolly jaunt to take a strange woman to her presumably homicidal husband! Why am I totally lacking in sense? Just listen to what Jeff is saying!"
"Of course you ought to go back, and let me drive alone. Absolutely insane, your——"
"But you would like me to go along, wouldn't you!"
"Like you to? It's our last ride together, and that bloomin' old Browning never thought of a ride together by midnight over the roof of the world! No, it's really our first ride together, and tomorrow—you're gone."
"No, I sha'n't be gone, but——" Addressing herself to the astounded overalled man on the porch, she declared, "You're quite right, Jeff. And Milt is wrong. Insane adventure. Only, it's wonderful to be young enough to do insane adventures. Falling down abyssy places is so much more interesting than bridge. I'm going—going—going!... Milt, you telephone."
"Don't you think you better?"
"No, siree! Father would forbid me. Try notto get him—just tell Dr. Beach where we're going, and hang up, and scoot!"
All night they drove; down the Pacific side of Blewett Pass; down the sweeping spirals to a valley. Dlorus drowsed in the extra seat. Claire's sleepy head was fantastically swaying. She was awakened by an approaching roar and, as though she sat at a play, she watched a big racing machine coming toward them, passing them with two wheels in the ditch. She had only a thunderous glimpse of the stolid driver; a dark, hooded, romantic figure, like a sailor at the helm in a storm.
Milt cried, "Golly! May be a transcontinental racer! Be in New York in five days—going night and day—take mud at fifty an hour—crack mechanic right from the factory—change tires in three minutes—people waiting up all night to give him gasoline and a sandwich! That's my idea of fun!"
Studying Milt's shadowed face, Claire considered, "He could do it, too. Sitting there at the wheel, taking danger and good road with the same steadiness. Oh, he's—well, anyway, he's a dear boy."
But what she said was:
"Less dramatic things for you, now, Milt. Trigonometry is going to be your idea of fun; blueprints and engineering books."
"Yes. I know. I'm going to do it. Do four years' work in three—or two. I'll tack pages offormulas on the wall, in my bum hallroom, and study 'em while I'm shaving. Oh, I'll be the grind! But learn to dance the fox-trot, though! If America gets into the war, I'll get into the engineering corps, and come back to school afterward."
"Will the finances——"
"I'll sell my garage, by mail. Rauskukle will take it. He won't rob me of more than a thousand dollars on price—not much more."
"You're going to love Seattle. And we'll have some good tramps while I'm there, you and I."
"Honestly? Will you want to?"
"Do you suppose for one second I'd give up my feeling of free air? If you don't come and get me, I'll call on you and make you come!"
"Warn you I'll probably be living over some beanery."
"Probably. With dirty steps leading up to it. I'll sweep the steps. I'll cook supper for you. I can do things, can't I! I did manage Dlorus, didn't I!"
He was murmuring, "Claire, dear!" when she changed her tone to the echo of Brooklyn Heights, and hurried on, "You do understand, don't you! We'll be, uh, good friends."
"Yes." He drove with much speed and silence.
Though they were devouring the dark road, though roadside rocks, caught by the headlights, seemed to fly up at them, though they went on forever, chasedby a nightmare, Claire snuggled down in security. Her head drooped against his shoulder. He put his arm about her, his hand about her waist. She sleepily wondered if she ought to let him. She heard herself muttering, "Sorry I was so rude when you were so rude," and her chilly cheek discovered that the smooth-worn shoulder of his old blue coat was warm, and she wondered some more about the questions of waists and hands and—— She was asleep.
She awoke, bewildered to find that dawn was slipping into the air. While she had slept Milt had taken his arm from about her and fished out a lap-robe for her. Behind them, Dlorus was slumbering, with her soft mouth wide open. Claire felt the luxury of the pocket of warmth under the lap-robe; she comfortably stretched her legs while she pictured Milt driving on all the night, rigid, tireless, impersonal as the engineer of a night express.
They came into North Yakima at breakfast time, and found the house of Mr. Kloh, a neat, bare, drab frame box, with tight small front and back yards. Dlorus was awake, and when she wasn't yawning, she was enjoying being hysterical.
"Miss Boltwood," she whined, "you go in and jolly him up."
Milt begged, "Better let me do it, Claire."
They looked squarely at each other. "No, I think I'd better," she decided.
"Right, Claire, but—I wish I could do more things for you."
"I know!"
He lifted her stiff, cold little body from the car. His hands under her arms, he held her on the running-board an instant, her eyes level with his. "Little sister—plucky little sister!" he sighed. He lowered her to the ground.
Claire knocked at the back door. To it came a bald, tired man, in an apron wet at the knees. The kitchen floor was soaped, and a scrubbing-brush rode amid the seas. A rather dirty child clung to his hand. "Trying to clean up, ma'am. Not very good at it. I hope you ain't the Cruelty to Children lady. Willy looks mussed, but fact is, I just can't get time to wash the clothes, but he means a terrible lot to me. What was it? Will you step in?"
Claire buttoned the child's rompers before she spoke. Then:
"Mr. Kloh, I want to be perfectly honest with you. I've had word from your wife. She's unhappy, and she loves and admires you more than any other man in the world, and I think she would come back—misses the child so."
The man wiped his reddened hands. "I don't know—— I don't wish her no harm. Trouble was, I'm kind of pokey. I guess I couldn't give her any good times. I used to try to go to dances with her,but when I'd worked late, I'd get sleepy and—— She's a beautiful woman, smart 's a whip, and I guess I was too slow for her. No, she wouldn't never come back to me."
"She's out in front of the house now—waiting!"
"Great Cæsar's ghost, and the floor not scrubbed!" With a squawk of anxiety he leaped on the scrubbing-brush, and when Milt and Dlorus appeared at the door, Mr. Kloh and Miss Claire Boltwood were wiping up the kitchen floor.
Dlorus looked at them, arms akimbo, and sighed, "Hello, Johnny, my, ain't it nice to be back, oh, you had the sink painted, oh, forgive me, Johnny, I was a bad ungrateful woman, I don't care if you don't never take me to no more dances, hardly any, Willy come here, dear, oh, he is such a sweet child, my, his mouth is so dirty, will you forgive me, Johnny, is my overcoat in the moth-balls?"
When Mr. Kloh had gone off to the mill—thrice returning from the gate to kiss Dlorus and to thank her rescuers—Claire sat down and yawningly lashed off every inch of Dlorus's fair white skin:
"You're at it already; taking advantage of that good man's forgiveness, and getting lofty with him, and rather admiring yourself as a spectacular sinner. You are a lazy, ignorant, not very clean woman, and if you succeed in making Mr. Kloh and Willy happy, it will be almost too big a job for you. Now if Icome back from Seattle and find you misbehaving again——"
Dlorus broke down. "You won't, miss! And I will raise chickens, like he wanted, honest I will!"
"Then you may let me have a room to take a nap in, and perhaps Mr. Daggett could sleep in there on the sofa, and we'll get rested before we start back."
Both Milt and Dlorus meekly followed the boss.
It was noon before Milt and Claire woke, and discovered that Dlorus had prepared for them scrambled eggs and store celery, served on an almost clean table-cloth. Mr. Kloh came home for lunch, and while Dlorus sat on his lap in the living-room, and repeated that she had been a "bad, naughty, 'ittle dirl—what did the fellows say at the mill?" Milt and Claire sat dumpily on the back porch, regarding scenery which featured of seven tin cans, a broken patent washing-machine, and a rheumatic pear tree.
"I suppose we ought to start," groaned Claire.
"I have about as much nerve as a rabbit, and as much punch as a bale of hay," Milt admitted.
"We're like two children that have been playing too long."
"But don't want to go home!"
"Quite! Though I don't think much of your idea of a playhouse—those tin cans. But it's better than having to be grown-up."
In the midst of which chatter they realized that Mr. Henry B. Boltwood and Dr. Hooker Beach had come round the corner of the house, and were gaping at them.
"I mustsay that you two have chosen a fine pastoral scene!" observed Mr. Boltwood.
"Hhhhhhhhow did you get here?" gasped Claire.
"Auto 'bus over Blewett Pass, train here from Ellensburg. That woman—everything all right?"
"Yes, everything's fine. We were just starting back, sir," implored Milt.
"Huh!"
"Awfully sorry, sir, to take Claire on such a hike——"
"I don't blame you particularly. When that young woman gets an idea into her head, the rest of us are pawns. Why, even me—she's dragged me all over the Rocky Mountains. And I will admit, Claire, that it's been good for me. But I begin to feel human again, and I think it's about time I took charge. We'll catch the afternoon train for Seattle, Claire. The trip has been extremely interesting, but I think perhaps we'll call it enough. Daggett, want to get you to drive the Gomez on to Seattle. Beach tells me your car is completely wrecked. Lose any money in it?"
"No, sir. Had my roll in the bug. I'll have to go back to it and get some clothes out of it, though."
"Well, then, will you drive my car in? Charge me anywhere up to fifty dollars, if you want to——"
"I'd rather not——"
"It's a perfectly honest job—I'd do it, too quick! Or if your confounded pride won't let you charge anything, bring the car on anyway. Come, dolly, I have a jitney here, please observe my graceful use of 'jitney,' and I have the bags. We'll hustle to the station now. No! No arguments, chick!"
On the station platform, Claire and Milt were under the surveillance of Mr. Boltwood, who was extremely irritable as every two minutes the train was reported to be two minutes later. They tramped up and down, speaking in lowered voices, very meek but in their joint naughtiness very intimate.
"That was a nice place to end a transcontinental drive—in the back yard of Mr. Johnny Kloh, with an unrestricted view of tin cans!" lamented Claire.
"Still, your drive didn't end at Kloh's; it ended way up in the mountains."
Mr. Boltwood bumbled down on them: "Another minute late! Like to know what the matter is!"
"Yes, father!"
When Mr. Boltwood's impatiently waiting back was turned, Claire gripped Milt's hand, and whispered to him, "You see, I'm captured! I thought I was father's lord and chauffeur, but he sniffs the smoke of the ticker. In his mind, he's already back in theoffice, running things. He'll probably turn me over to Jeff, for disciplining! You won't let them change me back into a pink-face, will you? Come to tea, at the Gilsons', just as soon as you reach Seattle."
"Tea—— Now we're so near your Gilsons, I begin to get scared. Wouldn't know what to do. Gee, I've heard you have to balance a tea-cup and a sandwich and a hunk o' cake and a lot of conversation all at once! I'd spill the tea, and drop crumbs, and probably have the butler set on me."
"You will not! And if you did—can't you see?—it wouldn't matter! It just wouldn't matter!"
"Honestly? Claire dear, do you know why I came on this trip? In Schoenstrom, I heard you say you were going to Seattle. That moment, I decided I would, too, and get acquainted with you, if murder would do it. But, oh, I'm clumsy."
"You've seen me clumsy, in driving. You taught me to get over it. Perhaps I can teach you some things. And we'll study—together—evenings! I'm a thoroughly ignorant parasite woman. Make me become real! A real woman!"
"Dear—dear——"
Mr. Boltwood loomed on them. "The train's coming, at last. We'll have a decent sleep for once, at the Gilsons'. I've wired them to meet us." He departed.
"Terribly glad your father keeps coming down onus, because it scares me so I get desperate," said Milt. "Golly, I think I can hear the train. I, uh, Claire, Claire dear——"
"Milt, are you proposing to me? Please hurry, because that is the train. Isn't it absurd—some day you'll have to propose all over again formally, for the benefit of people like father, when you and I already know we're partners! We've done things together, not just danced together! When you're an engineer, you'll call me, and I'll come a-running up to Alaska. And sometimes you'll come with me to Brooklyn—we'll be a couple of bombs—— There's the train. Oh, playmate, hurry with your engineering course! Hurry, hurry, hurry! Because when it's done, then—— Whither thou goest, there I go also! And you did bully me, you did, you did, and I like it, and—— Yes, father, the bags are right here. Telephone me, minute you reach Seattle, dear, and we'll have a private lesson in balancing tea-cups—— Yes, father, I have the tickets. So glad, dear, the trip smashed up like this—shocked me into reality—made me realize I've been with you every hour since I dismissed you, back in Dakota, and you looked at me, big hurt eyes, like a child, and—— Yes, father, Pullman's at the back. Yes, I'm coming!"
"W-wait! D-did you know I was going to propose?"
"Yes. Ever since the Yellowstone. Been trying tothink of a nice way to refuse you. But there isn't any. You're like Pinky—can't get rid of you—have t' adopt you. Besides, I've found out——"
"You love me?"
"I don't know! How can I tell? But I do like to drive with my head on your shoulder and—— Yesssss, father, coming!"
Mr. Henry B. Boltwoodwas decorously asleep in a chair in the observation car, and Claire, on the wide back platform, sat unmoving, apparently devoted to agriculture and mountain scenery. But it might have been noted that her hand clenched one of the wooden supports of her camp-stool, and that her hunched back did not move.
When she had turned to follow her father into the train, Milt had caught her shoulders and kissed her.
For half an hour that kiss had remained, a perceptible warm pressure on her lips. And for half an hour she had felt the relief of gliding through the mountains without the strain of piloting, the comfort of having the unseen, mysterious engineer up ahead automatically drive for her. She had caroled to her father about nearing the Pacific. Her nervousness had expressed itself in jerky gaiety.
But when he had sneaked away for a nap, and Claire could no longer hide from herself by a veil of chatter the big decision she had made on the station platform, then she was lonely and frightened—and very anxious to undecide the decision. She could not think clearly. She could see Milt Daggett only as asolemn young man in an inferior sweater, standing by the track in a melancholy autumnal light, waving to her as the train pulled out, disappearing in a dun obscurity, less significant than the station, the receding ties, or the porter who was, in places known only to his secretive self, concealing her baggage.
She could only mutter in growing panic, "I'm crazy. In-sane! Pledging myself to this boy before I know how he will turn out. Will he learn anything besides engineering? I know it—I do want to stroke his cheek and—his kiss frightened me, but—— Will I hate him when I see him with nice people? Can I introduce him to the Gilsons? Oh, I was mad; so wrought up by that idiotic chase with Dlorus, and so sure I was a romantic heroine and—— And I'm simply an indecisive girl in a realistic muddle!"
Threatened by darkness and the sinister evening chill of the mountains, with the train no longer cheerfully climbing the rocky ridge but rumbling and snorting in the defiles, and startling her with agitating forward leaps as though the brakes had let go, she could not endure the bleak platform, and even less could she endure sitting in the chair car, eyed by the smug tourists—people as empty of her romance as they were incapable of her sharp tragedy. She balanced forward to the vestibule. She stood in that cold, swaying, darkling place that was filled with the smell of rubber and metal and grease and the thunderousclash of steel on steel; she tried to look out into the fleeing darkness; she tried to imagine that the train was carrying her away from the pursuing enemy—from her own weak self.
Her father came puffing and lip-pursing and jolly, to take her to dinner. Mr. Boltwood had no tearing meditations; he had a healthy interest in soup. But he glanced at her, across the bright, sleek dining-table; he seemed to study her; and suddenly Claire saw that he was a very wise man. His look hinted, "You're worried, my dear," but his voice ventured nothing beyond comfortable drawling stories to which she had only, from the depth of her gloomy brooding, to nod mechanically.
She got a great deal of satisfaction and horror out of watching two traveling-men after dinner. Milt had praised the race, and one of the two traveling-men, a slender, clear-faced youngster, was rather like Milt, despite plastered hair, a watch-chain slung diagonally across his waistcoat, maroon silk socks, and shoes of pearl buttons, gray tops, and patent-leather bottoms. The other man was a butter-ball. Both of them had harshly pompous voices—the proudly unlettered voices of the smoking compartment. The slender man was roaring:
"Yes, sir, he's got a great proposition there—believe me, he's got a great proposition—he's got one great little factory there, take it from me. He canturn out toothpicks to compete with Michigan. He's simply piling up the shekels—why say, he's got a house with eighteen rooms—every room done different."
Claire wondered whether Milt, when the sting and faith of romance were blunted, would engage in Great Propositions, and fight for the recognition of his—toothpicks. Would his creations be favorites in the best lunch rooms? Would he pile up shekels?
Then her fretting was lost in the excitement of approaching Seattle and their host—Claire's cousin, Eugene Gilson, an outrageously prosperous owner of shingle-mills. He came from an old Brooklyn Heights family. He had married Eva Gontz of Englewood. He liked music and wrote jokey little letters and knew the addresses of all the best New York shops. He was of Her Own People, and she was near now to the security of his friendship, the long journey done.
Lights thicker and thicker—a factory illuminated by arc-lamps,—the baggage—the porter—the eager trail of people in the aisle—climbing down to the platform—red caps—passing the puffing engine which had brought them in—the procession to the gate—faces behind a grill—Eugene Gilson and Eva waving—kisses, cries of "How was the trip?" and "Oh! Had won-derful drive!"—the huge station, and curious waiting passengers, Jap coolies in a gang, lumbermen in corks—the Gilsons' quiet car, and baggage stowed away by the chauffeur instead of by their own tiredhands—streets strangely silent after the tumult of the train—Seattle and the sunset coast at last attained.
Claire had forgotten how many charming, most desirable things there were in the world. The Gilsons drove up Queen Anne Hill to a bay-fronting house on a breezy knob—a Georgian house of holly hedge, French windows, a terrace that suggested tea, and a great hall of mahogany and white enamel with the hint of roses somewhere, and a fire kindled in the paneled drawing-room to be seen beyond the hall. Warmth and softness and the Gilsons' confident affection wrapped her around; and in contented weariness she mounted to a bedroom of Bakst sketches, a four-poster, and a bedside table with a black and orange electric lamp and a collection of Arthur Symons' essays.
She sank by the bed, pitifully rubbed her cheek against the silk comforter that was primly awaiting her commands at the foot of the bed, and cried, "Oh, four-postersarenecessary! I can't give them up! I won't! They—— No one has a right to ask me." She mentally stamped her foot. "I simply won't live in a shack and take in washing. It isn't worth it."
A bath, faintly scented, in a built-in tub in her own marble bathroom. A preposterously and delightfully enormous Turkish towel. One of Eva Gilson's foamy negligées. Slow exquisite dressing—not the scratchy hopping over ingrown dirt, among ingrown smells, ofa filthy small-hotel bedroom, but luxurious wandering over rugs velvety to her bare feet. A languid inspection of the frivolous colors and curves in the drawings by Bakst and George Plank and Helen Dryden. A glance at the richness of the toilet-table, at the velvet curtains that shut out the common world.
Expanding to the comfort as an orchid to cloying tropic airs, she drew on her sheerest chemise, her most frivolous silk stockings. In a dreaming enervated joy she saw how smooth were her arms and legs; she sleepily resented the redness of her wrists and the callouses of the texture of corduroy that scored her palms from holding the steering wheel.
Yes, she was glad that she had made the experiment—but gladder that she was safely in from the long dust-whitened way, back in her own world of beauty; and she couldn't imagine ever trying it again. To think of clumping out into that world of deliberate and brawling crudeness——
Of one Milt Daggett she didn't think at all.
Gorgeously sleepy—and gorgeously certain that by and by she would go, not to a stingy hotel bed, with hound-dog ribs to cut into her tired back, but to a feathery softness of slumber—she wavered down to the drawing-room, and on the davenport, by the fire, with Victoria chocolates by her elbow, and pillows behind her shoulders, she gossiped of her adventure, and asked for news of friends and kin back East.
Eugene and Eva Gilson asked with pyrotechnic merriness about the "funny people she must have met along the road." With a subdued, hidden unhappiness, Claire found that she could not mention Milt—that she was afraid her father would mention Milt—to these people who took it for granted that all persons who did not live in large houses and play good games of bridge were either "queer" or "common"; who believed that their West was desirable in proportion as it became like the East; and that they, though Westerners, were as superior to workmen with hard hands as was Brooklyn Heights itself.
Claire tried to wriggle out from under the thought of Milt while, with the Gilsons as the perfect audience, she improvised on the theme of wandering. With certain unintended exaggerations, and certain not quite accurate groupings of events, she described the farmers and cowpunchers, the incredible hotels and garages. Indeed they had become incredible to her own self. Obviously this silken girl couldn't possibly take seriously a Dlorus Kloh—or a young garage man who said "ain't."
Eva Gilson had been in Brooklyn within the month, and in a passion of remembrance of home, Claire cried, "Oh, do tell me about everybody."
"I had such a good time with Amy Dorrance," said Mrs. Gilson. "Of course Amy is a little dull, but she's such an awfully good sort and—— We did have thejolliest party one afternoon. We went to lunch at the Ritz, and a matinée, and we saw such an interesting man—Gene is frightfully jealous when I rave about him—I'm sure he was a violinist—simply an exquisite thing he was—I wanted to kiss him. Gene will now say, 'Why didn't you?'"
And Gene said, "Well, whydidn'tyou?" and Claire laughed, and her toes felt warm and pink and good, and she was perfectly happy, and she murmured, "It would be good to hear a decent violinist again. Oh! What had George Worlicht been doing, when you were home?"
"Don't you think Georgie is wonderful?" fluttered Mrs. Gilson. "He makes me rue my thirty-six sad years. I think I'll adopt him. You know, he almost won the tennis cup at Long Branch."
Georgie had a little mustache and an income, just enough income to support the little mustache, and he sang inoffensively, and was always winning tennis cups—almost—and he always said, at least once at every party, "The basis ofsavoir faireis knowing how to be rude to the right people." Fire-enamored and gliding into a perfumed haze of exquisite drowsiness, Claire saw Georgie as heroic and wise. But the firelight got into her eyes, and her lids wouldn't stay open, and in her ears was a soft humming as of a million bees in a distant meadow golden-spangled—and Gene was helping her upstairs; sleepiness submerged her likebathing in sweet waters; she fumbled at buttons and hooks and stays, let things lie where they fell—and of all that luxury nothing was more pleasant than the knowledge that she did not have to take precautions against the rats, mice, cockroaches, and all their obscene little brothers which—on some far-off fantastic voyaging when she had been young and foolish—she seemed to remember having found in her own room. Then she was sinking into a bed like a tide of rainbow-colored foam, sinking deep, deep, deep——
And it was morning, and she perceived that the purpose of morning light was to pick out surfaces of mahogany and orange velvet and glass, and that only an idiot would ever leave this place and go about begging dirty garage men to fill her car with stinking gasoline and oil.
The children were at breakfast—children surely not of the same species as the smeary-cheeked brats she had seen tumbling by roadsides along the way—sturdy Mason, with his cap of curls, and Virginia, with bobbed ash-blond hair prim about her delicate face. They curtsied, and in voices that actually had intonations they besought her, "Oh, Cousin Claire, would you pleasssssse tell us about drive-to-the-coast?"
After breakfast, she went out on the terrace for the View.
In Seattle, even millionaires, and the I. W. W., andmen with red garters on their exposed shirt-sleeves who want to give you real estate, all talk about the View. The View is to Seattle what the car-service, the auditorium, the flivver-factory, or the price of coal is to other cities. At parties in Seattle, you discuss the question of whether the View of Lake Union or the View of the Olympics is the better, and polite office-managers say to their stenographers as they enter, "How's your View this morning?" All real-estate deeds include a patent on the View, and every native son has it as his soundest belief that no one in Tacoma gets a View of Mount Rainier.
Mrs. Gilson informed Claire that they had the finest View in Seattle.
Below Claire was the harbor, with docks thrust far out into the water, and steamers alive with smoke. Mrs. Gilson said they were Blue Funnel Liners, loading for Vladivostok and Japan. The names, just the names, shot into Claire's heart a wistful unexpressed desire that was somehow vaguely connected with a Milt Daggett who, back in the Middlewestern mud and rain, had longed for purple mountains and cherry blossoms and the sea. But she cast out the wish, and lifted her eyes to mountains across the sound—not purple mountains, but sheer silver streaked with black, like frozen surf on a desolate northern shore—the Olympics, two-score miles away.
Up there, one could camp, with a boy in a deterioratedsweater singing as he watched the coffee——
Hastily she looked to the left, across the city, with its bright new skyscrapers, its shining cornices and masses of ranked windows, and the exclamation-point of the "tallest building outside of New York"—far livelier than her own rusty Brooklyn. Beyond the city was a dun cloud, but as she stared, far up in the cloud something crept out of the vapor, and hung there like a dull full moon, aloof, majestic, overwhelming, and she realized that she was beholding the peak of Mount Rainier, with the city at its foot like white quartz pebbles at the base of a tower.
A landing-stage for angels, she reflected.
It did seem larger than dressing-tables and velvet hangings and scented baths.
But she dragged herself from the enticing path of that thought, and sighed wretchedly, "Oh, yes, he would appreciate Rainier, but how—how would he manage a grape-fruit? I mustn't be a fool! I mustn't!" She saw that Mrs. Gilson was peeping at her, and she made herself say adequate things about the View before she fled inside—fled from her sputtering inquiring self.
In the afternoon they drove to Capitol Hill; they dropped in at various pretty houses and met the sort of people Claire knew back home. Between people they had Views; and the sensible Miss Boltwood, making a philosophic discovery, announced to herself,"After all, I've seen just as much from this limousine as I would from a bone-breaking Teal bug. Silly to make yourself miserable to see things. Oh yes, I will go wandering some more, but not like a hobo. But—— What can I say to him? Good heavens, he may be here any time now, with our car. Oh, why—why—why was I insane on that station platform?"
Snoqualmie Passlies among mountains prickly with rocks and burnt stumps, but the road is velvet, with broad saucer curves; and to Milt it was pure beauty, it was release from life, to soar up coaxing inclines and slip down easy grades in the powerful car. "No more Teals for me," he cried, in the ecstasy of handling an engine that slowed to a demure whisper, then, at a touch of the accelerator, floated up a rise, effortless, joyous, humming the booming song of the joy in speed. He suddenly hated the bucking tediousness of the Teal. The Gomez-Dep symbolized his own new life.
So he came to Lake Washington, and just across it was the city of his long dreams, the city of the Pacific—and of Claire. There was no ferry in sight, and he rounded the lake, struck a brick pavement, rolled through rough woods, suburban villas, and petty business streets, to a region of factories and mills, with the funnels of ships beyond.
And every minute he drove more slowly and became more uneasy.
The pavement—the miles of it; the ruthless lumbermills, with their thousands of workmen quite likehimself; the agitation of realizing that every three minutes he was passing a settlement larger than Schoenstrom; the strangeness of ships and all the cynical ways of the sea—the whole scene depressed him as he perceived how little of the world he knew, and how big and contemptuous of Milt Daggetts that world must be.
"Huh!" he growled. "Quite some folks living here. Don't suppose they spend such a whale of a lot of time thinking about Milt Daggett and Bill McGolwey and Prof Jones. I guess most of these people wouldn't think Heinie Rauskukle's store was so gosh-awful big. I wasn't scared of Minneapolis—much—but there they didn't ring in mountains and an ocean on you. And I didn't have to go up on the hill and meet folks like Claire's relations, and figure out whether you shake hands catch-as-catch-can or Corinthian. Look at that sawmill chimney—isn't it nice of 'em to put the fly-screen over it so the flies won't get down into the flames. No, they haven't got much more than a million feet of lumber in that one pile. And here's a bum little furniture store—it wouldn't cost more 'n about ten times all I've got to buy one of those Morris chairs. Oh Gooooooosh, won't these houses ever stop? Say, that must be a jitney. The driver snickered at me. Will the whole town be onto me? Milt, you're a kind young fellow, and you know what's the matter with Heinie's differential,but they don't need you here. Quite a few folks to carry on the business. Gosh, look at that building ahead—nine stories!"
He had planned to stop at a hotel, to wash up, and to gallop to Claire. But—well—wouldn't it maybe be better to leave the car at a public garage, so the Boltwoods could get it when they wanted to? He'd better "just kind of look around before he tackled the watch-dog."
It was the public garage which finally crushed him. It was a garage of enameled brick and colored tiles, with a plate-glass-enclosed office in which worked young men clad as the angels. One of them wore a carnation, Milt noted.
"Huh! I'll write back and tell Ben Sittka that hereafter he's to wear his best-Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes and a milkweed blossom when he comes down to work at the Red Trail Garage!"
Milt drove up the brick incline into a room thousands of miles long, with millions of new and recently polished cars standing in lines as straight as a running-board. He begged of a high-nosed colored functionary—not in khaki overalls but in maroon livery—"Where'll I put this boat?"
The Abyssinian prince gave him a check, and in a tone of extreme lack of personal interest snapped, "Take it down the aisle to the elevator."
Milt had followed the natural lines of traffic intothe city; he had spoken to no one; the prince's snort was his welcome to Seattle.
Meekly he drove past the cars so ebon and silvery, so smug and strong, that they would have regarded a Teal bug as an insult. Another attendant waved him into the elevator, and Milt tried not to look surprised when the car started, not forward, but upward, as though it had turned into an aeroplane.
When these adventures were over, when he had had a shave and a shine, and washed his hands, and looked into a department-store window that contained ten billion yards of silk draped against polished satinwood, when he had felt unhappy over a movie theater large enough to contain ten times the population of Schoenstrom, and been cursed by a policeman for jaywalking, and had passed a hotel entirely full of diplomats and marble and caviare—then he could no longer put off telephoning to Claire, and humbly, in a booth meant for an umbrella-stand, he got the Eugene Gilson house, and to a female who said "Yes?" in a tone which made it mean "No!" he ventured, "May I speak to Miss Boltwood?"
Miss Boltwood, it seemed, was out.
He was not sorry. He was relieved. He ducked out of the telephone-booth with a sensation of escape.
Milt was in love with Claire; she was to him the purpose of life; he thought of her deeply and tenderly and longingly. All the way into Seattle he hadbrooded about her; remembered her every word and gesture; recalled the curve of her chin, and the fresh feeling of her hands. But Claire had suddenly become too big. In her were all these stores, these office buildings for clever lawyers and surgeons, these contemptuous trolley cars, these careless people in beautiful clothes. They were too much for him. Desperately he was pushing them back—back—fighting for breath. And she belonged with them.
He mailed the check for the stored car to her, with a note—written standing before a hacked wall-desk in a branch post-office—which said only, "Here's check for the boat. Did not know whether you would have room for it at house. Tried to get you on phone, phone again just as soon as rent room etc. Hope having happy time, M.D."
He went out to the university. On the trolley he relaxed. But he did not exultantly feel that he had won to the Pacific; he could not regard Seattle now as a magic city, the Bagdad of modern caravans, with Alaska and the Orient on one hand, the forests to the north, and eastward the spacious Inland Empire of the wheat. He saw it as a place where you had to work hard just to live; where busy policemen despised you because you didn't know which trolley to take; where it was incredibly hard to remember even the names of the unceasing streets; where the conductors said "Step lively!" and there was no room to whistle,no time to swap stories with a Bill McGolwey at an Old Home lunch-counter.
He found the university; he talked with the authorities about entering the engineering school; the Y. M. C. A. gave him a list of rooms; and, because it was cheap, he chose a cubbyhole in a flat over a candy store—a low room, which would probably keep out the rain, but had no other virtues. It had one bed, one table, one dissipated bureau, two straight bare chairs, and one venerable lithograph depicting a girl with ringlets shaking her irritating forefinger at a high-church kitten.
The landlady consented to his importing an oil-stove for cooking his meals. He bought the stove, with a box of oatmeal, a jar of bacon, and half a dozen eggs. He bought a plane and solid geometry, and an algebra. At dinner time he laid the algebra beside his plate of anemic bacon and leaking eggs. The eggs grew cold. He did not stir. He was reviewing his high-school algebra. He went down the pages, word by word, steadily, quickly, absolutely concentrated—as concentrated as he would recently have been in a new problem of disordered transmission. Not once did he stop to consider how glorious it would be to marry Claire—or how terrifying it would be to marry Miss Boltwood.
Three hours went by before he started up, bewildered, rubbed his eyes, picked at the chill baconand altogether disgusting eggs, and rambled out into the street.
Again he risked the scorn of conductors and jitney drivers. He found Queen Anne Hill, found the residence of Mr. Eugene Gilson. He sneaked about it, slipped into the gate, prowled toward the house. Flabby from the intensity of study, he longed for the stimulus of Claire's smile. But as he stared up at the great squares of the clear windows, at the flare of white columns in the porch-lights, that smile seemed unreachable. He felt like a rustic at court. From the shelter of the prickly holly hedge he watched the house. It was "some kind of a party?—or what would folks like these call a party?" Limousines were arriving; he had a glimpse of silken ankles, frothy underskirts; heard easy laughter; saw people moving through a big blue and silver room; caught a drifting tremor of music.
At last he saw Claire. She was dancing with a young man as decorative as "that confounded Saxton fellow" he had met at Flathead Lake, but younger than Saxton, a laughing young man, with curly black hair. For the first time in his life Milt wanted to kill. He muttered, "Damn—damn—DAMN!" as he saw the young man carelessly embracing Claire.
His fingers tingling, his whole body yearning till every cell seemed a beating hammer, Milt longed just once to slip his hand about Claire's waist like that.He could feel the satin of her bodice and its warmth.
Then it seemed to him, as Claire again passed the window, that he did not know her at all. He had once talked to a girl who resembled her, but that was long ago. He could understand a Gomez-Dep and appreciate a brisk sports-suit, but this girl was of a world unintelligible to him. Her hair, in its dips and convolutions, was altogether a puzzle. "How did she ever fix it like that?" Her low evening dress—"what was it made of—some white stuff, but was it silk or muslin or what?" Her shoulders were startling in their bare powdery smoothness—"how dare that young pup dance with her?" And her face, that had seemed so jolly and friendly, floated past the window as pale and illusive as a wisp of fog. His longing for her passed into clumsy awe. He remembered, without resentment, that once on a hilltop in Dakota she had coldly forbidden him to follow her.
With all the pleasure of martyrdom—to make quite sure that he should realize how complete a fool he had been to intrude on Miss Boltwood—he studied the other guests. He gave them, perhaps, a glory they did not have. There were girls sleek as ivory. There was a lean stooped man, very distinguished. There was a bulky man in a dinner coat, with a semi-circle of mustache, and eyes that even at a distance seemed to give impatient orders. He would be a big banker, or a lumberman.
It was the easy friendliness of all of them that most made Milt feel like an outsider. If a servant had come out and ordered him away, he would have gone meekly ... he fancied.
He straggled off, too solidly unhappy to think how unhappy he was. In his clammy room he picked up the algebra. For a quarter-hour he could not gather enough vigor to open it. In his lassitude, his elbows felt feeble, his fingers were ready to drop off. He slowly scratched the book open——
At one o'clock he was reading algebra, his face still and grim. But already it seemed less heartily brick-red.
He listlessly telephoned to Claire, in the morning.
"Hello? Oh! Miss Boltwood? This is Milt Daggett."
"Oh! Oh, how are you?"
"Why, why I'm—I've got settled. I can get into the engineering school all right."
"I'm glad."
"Uh, enjoying Seattle?"
"Oh! Oh yes. The mountains—— Do you like it?"
"Oh! Oh yes. Sea and all—— Great town."
"Uh, w-when are we going to see you? Daddy had to go East, left you his regards. W-when——?"
"Why—why I suppose you're awful—awfully busy, meeting people and all——"
"Yes, I am, rather, but——" Her hedging uncomfortable tone changed to a cry of distress. "Milt! I must see you. Come up at four this afternoon."
"Yes!"
He rushed to a small, hot tailor-shop. He panted "Press m' suit while I wait?" They gave him a pair of temporary trousers, an undesirable pair of trousers belonging to a short fat man with no taste in fabrics, and with these flapping about his lean legs, he sat behind a calico curtain, readingThe War Cryand looking at a "fashion-plate" depicting nine gentlemen yachtsmen each nine feet tall, while the Jugoslav in charge unfeelingly sprinkled and ironed and patted his suit.
He spent ten minutes in blacking his shoes, in his room—and twenty minutes in getting the blacking off his fingers.
He was walking through the gate in the Gilson hedge at one minute to four.
But he had reached Queen Anne Hill at three. For an hour he had walked the crest road, staring at the steamers below, alternately gripping his hands with desire of Claire, and timorously finally deciding that he wouldn't go to her house—wouldn't ever see her again.
He came into the hall tremblingly expecting some great thing, some rending scene, and she met him witha cool, "Oh, this is nice. Eva had some little white cakes made for us." He felt like a man who has asked for a drink of cold charged water and found it warm and flat.
"How—— Dandy house," he muttered, limply shaking her limp hand.
"Yes, isn't it a darling. They do themselves awfully well here. I'm afraid your bluff, plain, democratic Westerners are a fraud. I hear a lot more about 'society' here than I ever did in the East. The sets seem frightfully complicated." She was drifting into the drawing-room, to a tapestry stool, and Milt was awkwardly stalking a large wing chair, while she fidgeted:
"Everybody tells me about how one poor dear soul, a charming lady who used to take in washing or salt gold-mines or something, and she came here a little while ago with billions and billions of dollars, and tried to buy her way in by shopping for all the charities in town, and apparently she's just as out of it here as she would be in London. You and I aren't exclusive like that, are we!"
Somehow——
Her "you and I" was too kindly, as though she was trying to put him at ease, as though she knew he couldn't possibly be at ease. With a horribly elaborate politeness, with a smile that felt hot on his twitchingcheeks, he murmured, "Oh no. No, we—— No, I guess——"
If he knew what it was he guessed, he couldn't get it out. While he was trying to find out what had become of all the things there were to say in the world, a maid came in with an astonishing object—a small, red, shelved table on wheels, laden with silver vessels, and cake, and sandwiches that were amazingly small and thin.
The maid was so starched that she creaked. She glanced at Milt—— Claire didn't make him so nervous that he thought of his clothes, but the maid did. He was certain that she knew that he had blacked his own shoes, knew how old were his clothes. He was urging himself, "Must get new suit tomorrow—ready-made—mustn't forget, now—be sure—get suit tomorrow." He wanted to apologize to the maid for existing.... He wouldn't dare to fall in love with the maid.... And he'd kill the man who said he could be fool enough to fall in love with Miss Boltwood.
He sipped his tea, and dropped sandwich crumbs, and ached, and panted, and peeped at the crushing quantities of pictures and sconces and tables and chairs in the room, and wondered what they did with all of them, while Claire chattered:
"Yes, we weren't exclusive out on the road. Didn't we meet funny people though! Oh, somehow that'funny people' sounds familiar. But—— What fun that morning was at—Pellago, was it? Heavens, I'm forgetting those beastly little towns already—that place where we hazed the poor landlady who overcharged me."
"Yes." He was thinking of how much Claire would forget, now. "Yes. We certainly fixed her, all right. Uh—did you get the storage check for your car?"
"Oh yes, thank you. So nice of you to bother with it."
"Oh, nothing at all, nothing—— Nothing at all. Uh—— Do you like Seattle?"
"Oh yes. Such views—the mountains—— Do you like it?"
"Oh yes. Always wanted to see the sea."
"Yes, and—— Such a well-built town."
"Yes, and—— They must do a lot of business here."
"Yes, they—— Oh yes, I do like Seat——"
He had darted from his chair, brushed by the tea-wagon, ignoring its rattle and the perilous tipping of cups. He put his hand on her shoulder, snorted, "Look here. We're both sparring for time. Stop it. It's—it's all right, Claire. I want you to like me, but I'm not—I'm not like that woman you were telling about that's trying to butt in. I know, Lord I know so well what you're thinking! You're thinkingI'm not up to the people you've been seeing last couple of days—not up to 'em yet, anyway. Well—— We'll be good friends."
Fearless, now, his awe gone in tenderness, he lifted her chin, looked straight into her eyes, smiled. But his courage was slipping. He wanted to run and hide.
He turned abruptly, grumbling, "Well, better get back to work now, I guess."
Her cry was hungry: "Oh, please don't go." She was beside him, shyly picking at his sleeve. "I know what you mean. I like you for being so understanding. But—— I do like you. You were the perfect companion. Let's—— Oh, let's have a walk—and try to laugh again."
He definitely did not want to stay. At this moment he did not love her. He regarded her as an estimable young woman who, for a person so idiotically reared, had really shown a good deal of pluck out on the road—where he wanted to be. He stood in the hall disliking his old cap while she ran up to put on a top coat.
Mute, casual, they tramped out of the house together, and down the hill to a region of shabby old brown houses like blisters on the hillside. They had little to say, and that little was a polite reminiscence of incidents in which neither was interested.
When they came back to the Gilson hedge, hestopped at the gate, with terrific respectableness removed his cap.
"Good night," she said cheerily. "Call me up soon again."
He did not answer "Good night." He said "Good-by"; and he meant it to be his last farewell. He caught her hand, hastily dropped it, fled down the hill.
He was, he told himself, going to leave Seattle that evening.
That, doubtless, is the reason why he ran to a trolley, to get to a department-store before it closed; and why, precipitating himself upon a startled clerk, he purchased a new suit of chaste blue serge, a new pair of tan boots (curiously like some he had seen on the university campus that morning) and a new hat so gray and conservative and felty that it might have been worn by Woodrow Wilson.
He spent the evening in reading algebra and geometry, and in telling himself that he was beautifully not thinking about Claire.
In the midst of it, he caught himself at it, and laughed.
"What you're doing, my friend, is pretending you don't like Claire, so that you can hide from your fool self the fact that you're going to sneak back to see her the first chance you get—first time the watch-dog is out. Seriously now, son, Claire is impossible for you. No can do. Now that you've been chumpenough to leave home—— Oh Lord, I wish I hadn't promised to take this room for all winter. Wish I hadn't matriculated at the U. But I'm here now, and I'll stick it out. I'll stay here one year anyway, and go back home. Oh! And to—— By Golly! She liked me!"
He was thinking of the wild-rose teacher to whom he had given a lift back in Dakota. He was remembering her daintiness, her admiration.
"Now there's somebody who'd make me keep climbing, but wouldn't think I was a poor hick. If I were to drive back next spring, I could find her——"
Theone thing of which Milt Daggett was certain was that now he had managed to crawl into the engineering school, he must get his degree in mechanical engineering. He was older than most of his classmates. He must hurry. He must do four years' work in two.
There has never been a Freshman, not the most goggle-eyed and earnest of them, who has seen less of classmates, thought less about "outside activities," more grimly centered the universe about his work.
Milt had sold his garage, by mail, to Ben Sittka and Heinie Rauskukle. He had enough money to get through two years, with economy. His life was as simple and dull as it had been in Schoenstrom. He studied while he cooked his scrappy meals; he pinned mathematical formulæ and mechanical diagrams on the wall, and pored over them while he was dressing—or while he was trying to break in the new shoes, which were beautiful, squeaky, and confoundedly tight.
He was taking French and English and "composition-writing" in addition to engineering, and he made out a schedule of life as humorlessly as a girl grindwho intends to be a Latin teacher. When he was not at work, or furiously running and yanking chest-weights in the gymnasium, he was attending concerts, lectures.
Studying the life about him, he had discovered that the best way to save time was to avoid the lazy friendships of college; the pipe-smoking, yawning, comfortable, rather heavy, altogether pleasant wondering about "what'll we do next?" which occupies at least four hours a day for the average man in college. He would have liked it, as he had liked long talks about nothing with Bill McGolwey at the Old Home Lunch. But he couldn't afford it. He had to be ready to——
That was the point at which his reflections always came up with a jolt. He was quite clear about the method of getting ready, but he hadn't the slightest idea of what he was getting ready for. The moment he had redecided to marry Claire, he saw that his only possible future would be celibate machinery-installing in Alaska; and the moment he was content with the prospect of an engineer's camp in Alaskan wilds, his thoughts went crazily fluttering after Claire.
Despite his aloofness, Milt was not unpopular in his class. The engineers had few of them the interest in dances, athletics, college journalism, which distinguished the men in the academic course. They were older, and more conscious of a living to earn. And Milt's cheerful, "How's the boy?" his mannerof waving his hand—as though to a good customer leaving the Red Trail Garage with the generator at last tamed—indicated that he was a "good fellow."
One group of collegians Milt did seek. It is true that he had been genuine in scorning social climbers. But it is also true that the men whom he sought to know were the university smart set. Their satisfaction in his allegiance would have been lessened, however, had they known how little he cared for what they thought of him, and with what cruel directness he was using them as models for the one purpose of pleasing Miss Claire Boltwood.
The American state universities admit, in a pleased way, that though Yale and Harvard and Princeton may be snobbish, the state universities are the refuge of a myth called "college democracy." But there is no university near a considerable city into which the inheritors of the wealth of that city do not carry all the local social distinctions. Their family rank, their place in the unwritten peerage, determines to which fraternity they shall be elected, and the fraternity determines with whom—men and girls—they shall be intimate. The sons and daughters of Seattle and Tacoma, the scions of old families running in an unbroken line clear back to 1880, were amiable to poor outsiders from the Yakima valley and the new claims of Idaho, but they did not often invite them to their homes on the two hills and the Boulevard.
Yet it was these plutocrats whom Milt followed; they whose boots and table manners, cigarettes and lack of interest in theology, he studied. He met them in his English class. He remarked "Hello, Smith," and "Mornin', Jones," as though he liked them but didn't care a hang whether they liked him. And by and by he drifted into their fraternity dwelling-house, with a question about the next day's assignment, and met their friends. He sat pipe-smoking, silent, cheerful, and they seemed to accept him. Whenever one of them felt that Milt was intruding, and asked impertinent questions in the manner of a Pullman porter at a Darktown ball, Milt had a peculiar level look which had been known to generate courtesy even in the offspring of a million dollars. They found that he knew more about motor-cars than any of them, and as motor-cars were among their greater gods, they considered him wise. He was incomparably simple and unpretentious; they found his presence comfortable.
But there is a question as to what they would have thought had they known that, lying awake in the morning, Milt unsmilingly repeated:
"Hair always straight down at the back. Never rounded. Nix on clippers over the ears.
"Matisse is a popular nut artist. Fashionable for the swells to laugh at him, and the fellows on the college papers to rave about him.
"Blinx and Severan the swellest—the smartest haberdashery in the city.
"The one way to get in Dutch is to mention labor leaders.
"Never say 'Pleased to meet you.' Just look about halfway between bored and tol'able and say, 'How do you do?'"
All these first three weeks of his life in Seattle, he had seen Claire only on his first call. Twice he had telephoned to her. On one of these high occasions she had invited him to accompany the family to the theater—which meant to the movies—and he had wretchedly refused; the other time she had said that she might stay in Seattle all winter, and she might go any day, and they "must be sure to have that good long walk"; and he had said "oh yes," ten or twelve unhappy times, and had felt very empty as he hung up the receiver.
Then she wrote to invite him to late Sunday breakfast at the Gilsons'—they made a function of it, and called it bruncheon. The hour was given as ten-thirty; most people came at noon; but Milt arrived at ten-thirty-one, and found only a sleepy butler in sight.
He waited in the drawing-room for five minutes, feeling like a bill-collector. Into the room vaulted a medium-sized, medium-looking, amiable man, EugeneGilson, babbling, "Oh, I say, so sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Daggett. Rotten shame, do come have a bun or something, frightfully informal these bruncheons, play auction?"
"Zallright—no," said Milt.
The host profusely led him to a dining-room where—in English fashion, or something like English fashion, or anyway a close approximation to the fictional pictures of English fashion—kidneys and sausages and omelets waited in dishes on the side-board. Mr. Gilson poured coffee, and chanted:
"Do try the kidneys. They're usually very fair. Miss Boltwood tells me that you were very good to her on the trip. Must have been jolly trip. You going to be in town some time, oh yes, Claire said you were in the university, engineering, wasn't it? have you ever seen our lumbermills, do drop around some—— Try the omelet before the beastly thing gets cold, do you mind kicking that button, we'll have some more omelet in—any time at the mill and I'll be glad to have some one show you through, how did you find the roads along the Red Trail?"
"Why, pretty fair," said Milt.
Into the room precipitated Mrs. Gilson, in a smile, a super-sweater, and a sports skirt that would have been soiled by any variety of sport more violent than pinochle, and she was wailing as she came:
"We're disgraced, Gene, is this Mr. Daggett? how do you do, so good of you to come, do try the kidneys, they're usually quite decent, are the omelets warm, you might ring for some more, Gene, for heaven's sake give me some coffee, Miss Boltwood will be right down, Mr. Daggett, she told us how fortunate they were that they met you on the road, did you like the trip, how were the roads?"
"Why, they were pretty good," said Milt.
Claire arrived, fresh and serene in white taffeta, and she cried prettily, "I ought to have known that you'd be prompt even if no one else in the world is, so glad you came, have you tried the kidneys, and do have an—oh, I see you have tried the omelets, how goes the work at the university?"
"Why, fine," said Milt.
He ate stolidly, and looked pleased, and sneaked in a glance at his new (and still tight and still squeaky) tan boots to make sure that they were as well polished as they had seemed at home.
From nowhere appeared a bustling weighty woman, purring, "Hello, hello, hello, is it possible that you're all up—— Mr. Daggett. Yes, do lead me to the kidneys."
And a man with the gray hair of a grandfather and the giggle of a cash-girl bounced in clamoring, "Mornin'—expected to have bruncheon alone—do we have some bridge? Oh, good morning, Mr. Daggett,how do you like Seattle? Oh, thanks so much, yes, just two."
Then Milt ceased to keep track of the conversation, which bubbled over the omelets, and stewed over the kidneys, and foamed about the coffee, and clashed above a hastily erected bridge table, and altogether sounded curiously like four cars with four quite different things the matter with them all being tried out at once in a small garage. People flocked in, and nodded as though they knew one another too well to worry about it. They bowed to him charmingly, and instantly forgot him for the kidneys and sausages. He sat looking respectable and feeling lonely, by a cup of coffee, till Claire—dropping the highly unreal smile with which she had been listening to the elderly beau's account of a fishing-trip he hadn't quite got around to taking—slipped into a chair beside him and begged, "Are they looking out for you, Milt?"
"Oh yes, thank you."
"You haven't been to see me."
"Oh no, but—— Working so darn hard."
"What a strikingly original reason! But have you really?"
"Honest."
Suddenly he wanted—eternal man, forever playing confidential small boy to the beloved—to tell her about his classes and acquaintances; to get pity for his bare room and his home-cooking. But round them blaredthe brazen interest in kidneys, and as Claire glanced up with much brightness at another arrival, Milt lost momentum, and found that there was absolutely nothing in the world he could say to her.
He made a grateful farewell to the omelets and kidneys, and escaped.
He walked many miles that day, trying to remember how Claire looked.