Part 41 (2/2)
Milt ceased to smile. While all of them regarded him with interest he said clearly, ”I haven't got the slightest idea. I don't know anything about music. Some day I hope I can get a clever woman like you to help me, Mrs. Corey. It must be great to know all about all these arts, the way you do. I wish you'd explain that--overture they call it, don't they?”
For some reason, Mr. Gilson was snickering, Mrs. Corey flus.h.i.+ng, Claire looking well pleased. Milt had tried to be insulting, but had got lost in the intricacies of the insult. He felt that he'd better leave it in its apparently safe state, and he leaned back, and smiled again, as though he was waiting. Mrs. Corey did not explain the overture. She hastily explained her second maid, to Mrs. Gilson.
The opera was _Il Amore dei Tre Re_. Milt was bewildered. To him, who had never seen an opera, the convention that a girl cannot hear a man who is bellowing ten feet away from her, was absurd; and he wished that the singers would do something besides making their arms swim.
He discovered that by moving his chair forward, he could get within a foot of Claire. His hand slipped across, touched hers. She darted a startled backward glance. Her fingers closed tight about his, then restlessly snuggled inside his palm--and Milt was lost in enchantment.
Stately kings of blood-red cloaks and chrysoberyls malevolent in crowns of ancient and ma.s.sy gold--the quick dismaying roll of drums and the shadow of pa.s.sing banners below a tower--a woman tall and misty-veiled and pale with dreams--a world of spirit where the soul had power over unseen dominions--this he saw and heard and tasted in the music. What the actual plot was, or the technique of the singing, he did not know, but it bore him beyond all reality save the sweet, sure happiness of Claire's nestling hand.
He held her fingers so firmly that he could feel the pulse beat in them.
In the clamminess of his room, when the enchantment was gone, he said gravely:
”How much longer can I keep this up? Sooner or later I bust loose and smash little Jeff one in the snoot, and he takes the count, and I'm never allowed to see Claire again. Turn the roughneck out on his ear. I s'pose I'm vulgar. I s'pose that fellow Michael in _Youth's Encounter_ wouldn't talk about snoots. I don't care, I'll---- If I poke Saxton one---- I'm not afraid of the kid-glove precinct any more. My brain's as good as theirs, give it a chance. But oh, they're all against me. And they bust the Athletic Union's wrestling rule that 'striking, kicking, gouging, hair-pulling, b.u.t.ting, and strangling will not be allowed.' How long can I go on being good-natured? When I do break loose----”
Slowly, beneath the moral cuff of his dress-s.h.i.+rt, Milt's fist closed in a brown, broad-knuckled lump, and came up in the gesture of a right to the jaw. But it came up only a foot. The hand opened, climbed to Milt's face, rubbed his temples, while he sighed:
”Nope. Can't even do that. Bigger game now. Used to could--used to be able to settle things with a punch. But I've got to be more--oh, more diplomatic now. Oh Lord, how lonely I get for Bill McGolwey. No. That isn't true. I couldn't stand Bill now. Claire took all that out of me.
Where am I, where am I? Why did I ever get a car that takes a 36 6?”
CHAPTER x.x.xII
THE CORNFIELD ARISTOCRAT
It was an innocent little note from Jeff Saxton; a polite, humble little note; it said that Jeff had a card to the Astoria Club, and wouldn't Milt please have lunch with him? But Milt dropped it on the table, and he walked round it as though it were a dictagraph which he'd discovered in the table drawer after happy, happy, hidden hours at counterfeiting.
It seemed more dangerous to refuse than to go. He browned the celebrated new shoes; he pressed the distinguished new trousers, with a light and quite unsatisfactory flatiron; he re-re-retied his best spotted blue bow--it persisted in having the top flaps too short, but the retying gave him spiritual strength--and he modestly clumped into the aloof brick portal of the Astoria Club on time.
He had never been in a club before.
He looked at the red tiled floor of the entrance hall; he stared through the hall into an immense lounge with the largest and softest chairs in the world, with oil portraits of distinguished old bucks, and ninety per cent. of the wealth and power of Seattle pulling its several mustaches, reading the P.I., and ignoring the lone intruder out in the hall.
A small Zulu in blue tights and bra.s.s b.u.t.tons glared at Milt; and a large, soft, suave, insulting young man demanded, ”Yes, sir?”
”Mr. G-g-geoffrey Saxton?” ventured Milt.
”Not in, sir.” The ”sir” sounded like ”And you know it.” The flaming guardian retired behind a narrow section of a bookkeeper's desk and ignored him.
”I'm to meet him for lunch,” Milt forlornly persisted.
The young man looked up, hurt and annoyed at finding that the person was still to be dealt with.
”If you will wait in there?” he groaned.
Milt sat in there, which was a small blue tapestry room with hard chairs intended to discourage bill-collectors. He turned his hat round and round and round, till he saw Jeff Saxton, slim and straight and hard as the stick hooked over his arm, sailing into the hall. He plunged out after him, took refuge with him from the still unconvinced inspection of the hall-man. For twenty seconds, he loved Jeff Saxton.
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