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, he stopped 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 chump enough 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--"
CHAPTER XXVI. A CLASS IN ENGINEERING AND OMELETS
The one 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 grind who 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 manner of 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.