He felt even more out of place when the family forgot him and talked about people of whom he had never heard.
He sat alone on an extremely distant desert isle and ate cold ham and wished he were in Schoenstrom.
Claire had recovered her power of speech. She seemed to be trying to bring him into the conversation, so that the family might appreciate him.
She hesitated, and thought with creased brows, and brought out, "Uh, uh, oh--Oh Milt: How much is gas selling at now?"...
* * * * *
Milt left that charming and intimate supper-party at nine. He said, "Got to work on-on my analytical geometry," as though it was a lie; and he threw "Good night" at Saxton as though he hated his kind, good benefactor; and when he tried to be gracious to Mrs. Gilson the best he could get out was, "Thanks f' inviting me." They expansively saw him to the door. Just as he thought that he had escaped, Saxton begged, "Oh, Daggett, I was arguing with a chap--What color are Holstein-Friesian cattle? Red?"
"Black and white," Milt said eagerly.
He heard Mrs. Gilson giggle.
He stood on the terrace wiping his forehead and, without the least struggle, finally and irretrievably admitting that he would never see Claire Boltwood or any of her friends again. Not-never!
* * * * *
He had received from Mrs. Gilson a note inviting him to share their box at the first night of a three-night Opera Season. He had spent half a day in trying to think of a courteously rude way of declining.
A straggly little girl came up from the candy-shop below his room, demanding, "Say, are you Mr. Daggett? Say, there's some woman wants to talk to you on our telephone. Say, tell them we ain't supposed to be no messenger-office. You ain't supposed to call no upstairs people on our telephone. We ain't supposed to leave the store and go trotting all over town to--Gee, a nickel, gee, thank you, don't mind what ma says, she's always kicking."
On the telephone, he heard Claire's voice in an agitated, "Milt! Meet me down-town, at the Imperial Motion Picture Theater, right away. Something I've got to tell you. I'll be in the lobby. Hurry!"
When he bolted in she was already in the lobby, agitatedly looking over a frame of "stills." She ran to him, hooked her fingers in his lapel, poured out, "They've invited you to the opera? I want you to come and put it all over them. I'm almost sure there's a plot. They want to show me that you aren't used to tiaras and saxophones and creaking dowagers and tulle. Beat 'em! Beat 'em! Come to the opera and be awf'ly aloof and supercilious. You can! Yes, you can! And be sure-wear evening clothes. Now I've got to hurry."
"B-but--"
"Don't disappoint me. I depend on you. Oh, say you will!"
"I will!"
She was gone, whisking into the Gilson limousine. He was in a glow at her loyalty, in a tremor of anger at the meddlers.
But he had never worn evening clothes.
He called it "a dress-suit," and before the complications of that exotic garb, he was flabby with anxiety. To Milt and to Schoenstrom-to Bill McGolwey, even to Prof Jones and the greasily prosperous Heinie Rauskukle-the dress-suit was the symbol and proof, the indication and manner, of sophisticated wealth. In Schoenstrom even waiters do not wear dress-suits. For one thing there aren't any waiters. There is one waitress at the Leipzig House, Miss Annie Schweigenblat, but you wouldn't expect Miss Schweigenblat to deal them off the arm in black trousers with braid down the side.
No; a dress-suit was what the hero wore in the movies; and the hero in the movies, when he wasn't a cowpuncher, was an ex-captain of the Yale football team, and had chambers and a valet. You could tell him from the valet because he wasn't so bald. It is true that Milt had heard that in St. Cloud there were people who wore dress-suits at parties, but then St. Cloud was a city, fifteen or sixteen thousand.
"How could he get away with a dress-suit? How could he keep from feeling foolish in a low-cut vest, and what the deuce would he do with the tails? Did you part 'em or roll 'em up, when you sat down? And wouldn't everybody be able to tell from his foolish look that he didn't belong in one?" He could hear A.D.T. boys and loafers in front of pool rooms whispering, "Look at the piker in the rented soup and fish!"
For of course he'd rent one. Nobody bought them-except plutes like Henry B. Boltwood.
He agitatedly walked up and down for an hour, peering into haberdashery windows, looking for a kind-faced young man. He found him, in Ye Pall Mall Toggery Shoppe &Shoes; an open-faced young man who was gazing through the window as sparklingly as though he was thinking of going as a missionary to India-and liked curry. Milt ironed out his worried face, clumped in, demanded fraternally, "Say, old man, don't some of these gents' furnishings stores have kind of little charts that tell just what you wear with dress-suits and Prince Alberts and everything?"
"You bet," said the kind-faced young man.
West of Chicago, "You bet" means "Rather," and "Yes indeed," and "On the whole I should be inclined to fancy that there may be some vestiges of accuracy in your curious opinion," and "You're a liar but I can't afford to say so."
The kind-faced young man brought from behind the counter a beautiful brochure illustrated with photographs of Phoebus Apollo in what were described as "American Beauty Garments-neat, natty, nobby, new." The center pages faithfully catalogued the ties, shirts, cuff-links, spats, boots, hats, to wear with evening clothes, morning clothes, riding clothes, tennis costumes, polite mourning.
As he looked it over Milt felt that his wardrobe already contained all these gentlemanly possessions.
With the aid of the clerk and the chart he purchased a tradition-haunted garment with a plate-armor bosom and an opening as crooked as the Missouri River; a white tie which in his strong red hands looked as silly as a dead fish; waistcoat, pearl links, and studs. For the first time, except for seizures of madness during two or three visits to Minneapolis motor accessory stores, he caught the shopping-fever. The long shining counter, the trim red-stained shelves, the glittering cases, the racks of flaunting ties, were beautiful to him and beckoning. He revolved a pleasantly clicking rack of ties, then turned and fought his way out.
He bought pumps-which cost exactly twice as much as the largest sum which he had allowed himself. He bought a newspaper, and in the want-columns found the advertisement:
Silberfarb the Society Tailor
DRESS SUITS TO RENT
Snappiest in the City
Despite the superlative snappiness of Mr. Silberfarb's dress-suits his establishment was a loft over a delicatessen, approached by a splintery stairway along which hung shabby signs announcing the upstairs offices of "J. L. &T. J. O'Regan, Private Detectives," "The Zenith Spiritualist Church, Messages by Rev. Lulu Paughouse," "The International Order of Live Ones, Seattle Wigwam," and "Mme. Lavourie, Sulphur Baths." The dead air of the hallway suggested petty crookedness. Milt felt that he ought to fight somebody but, there being no one to fight, he banged along the flapping boards of the second-floor hallway to the ground-glass door of Silberfarb the Society Tailor, who was also, as an afterthought on a straggly placard, "Pressng &Cleang While U Wait."
He belligerently shouldered into a low room. The light from the one window was almost obscured by racks of musty-smelling black clothes which stretched away from him in two dismal aisles that resembled a morgue of unhappy dead men indecently hung up on hooks. On a long, clumsily carpentered table, a small Jew, collarless, sweaty, unshaven, was darning trousers under an evil mantle gaslight. The Jew wrung out his hands and tried to look benevolent.