Part 42 (1/2)
And Jeff seemed to adore him in turn. He solicitously led Milt to the hat-checking counter. He showed Milt the lounge and the billiard room, through which Milt crept with erect shoulders and easy eyes and a heart simply paralyzed with fear that one of these grizzled clubmen with clipped mustaches would look at him. He coaxed Milt into a grill that was a cross between the Chinese throne-room and a Viennese Weinstube, and he implored his friend Milt to do him the favor of trying the ”very fair” English mutton chops and potatoes _au gratin_.
”I did want to see you again before we go East, Daggett,” he said pleasantly.
”Th-thanks. When do you go?”
”I'm trying to get Miss Boltwood to start soon now. The season is opening in the East. She does like your fine st.u.r.dy West, as I do, but still, when we think of the exciting new shows opening, and the dances, and the touch with the great world---- Oh, it does make one eager to get back.”
”That's so,” risked Milt.
”We, uh---- Daggett---- In fact, I'm going to call you Milt, as Claire does. You don't know what a pleasure it has been to have encountered you. There's a fine keen courage about you Western chaps that makes a cautious old fogy like me envious. I shall remember meeting you with a great deal of pleasure.”
”Th-thanks. Been pleasure meet you.”
”And I know Claire will, too.”
Milt felt that he was being dealt with foully. He wanted to object to Saxton's acting as agent for Claire as incompetent, irrelevant, immaterial, and no foundation laid. But he could not see just where he was being led, and with Saxton glowing at him as warmly and greasily as the mutton chops, Milt could only smile wanly, and reflectively feel the table leg to see if it was loose enough to jerk out in case of need.
Saxton was being optimistic:
”In fact, Claire and I both hope that some day when you've finished your engineering course, we'll see you in the East. I wonder---- As I say, my dear fellow, I've taken the greatest fancy to you, and I do hope you won't think I'm too intimate if I say that I imagine that even in your charming friends.h.i.+p with Miss Boltwood, you've probably never learned what important people the Boltwoods are. I thought I'd tell you so that you could realize the privilege both you and I have in knowing them.
Henry B. is--while not a man of any enormous wealth--regarded as one of the keenest intellects in New York wholesale circles. But beyond that, he is a scholar, and a man of the broadest interests. Of course the Boltwoods are too modest to speak of it, but he was chiefly instrumental in the establishment of the famous Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra. And his ancestors clear through--his father was a federal judge, and his mother's brother was a general in the Civil War, and afterwards an amba.s.sador. So you can guess something of the position Claire holds in that fine, quiet, solid old Brooklyn set. Henry Ward Beecher himself was complimented at being asked to dine with the Boltwoods of his day, and----”
No, the table leg wouldn't come loose, so it was only verbally that the suddenly recovered Milt attacked:
”Certainly is nice to have one of those old families. It's something like---- As you say, you and I have gotten pretty well acquainted along the line, so I guess I can say it to you---- My father and his folks came from that same kind of family. Father's dad was a judge, back in Maine, and in the war, grand-dad was quite friendly with Grant.”
This tribute of Milt to his grandsire was loyal but inaccurate. Judge Daggett, who wasn't a judge at all, but a J. P., had seen General Grant only once, and at the time the judge had been in company with all the other privates in the Fourteenth Maine.
”Dad was a pioneer. He was a doctor. He had to give up all this easy-going stuff in order to help open up the West to civilization, but I guess it was worth it. He used to do the hardest kind of operations, on kitchen tables, with his driver giving the chloroform. I'm mighty proud of him. As you say, it's kind of what you might call inspiring to belong to the old Pilgrim aristocracy.”
Never before had Milt claimed relation to a group regarding which his only knowledge was the information derived from the red school-history to the effect that they all carried blunderbusses, put people in the stocks for whistling, and frequently said, ”Why don't you speak for yourself, John?” But he had made his boast with a clear eye and a pleasant, superior, calm smile.
”Oh! Very interesting,” grunted Saxton.
”Would you like to see grandfather's daguerreotype?”
”Oh, yes, yes, uh, thanks, that would be very interesting---- Do let me see it, when---- Uh, as I was saying, Claire doubtless has a tremendous social career before her. So many people expecting her to marry well. Of course she has a rather unusual combination of charm and intelligence and---- In fact I think we may both be glad that----”
”Yes. That's right. And the best thing about her is the way she can shake off all the social stuff and go camping and be a regular human being,” Milt caressed.
”Um, uh, no doubt, no doubt, though---- Of course, though, that isn't an inherent part of her. I fancy she's been rather tired by this long trip, poor child. Of course she isn't very strong.”
”That's right. Real pluck. And of course she'll get stronger by hiking.
You've never seen her bucking a dangerous hill--I kind of feel that a person who hasn't seen her in the wilds doesn't know her.”
”I don't want to be contradictory, old man, but I feel on the other hand that no one who has failed to see her at the Junior League Dances, in a Poiret frock, can know her! Come, come! Don't know how we drifted into this chorus of praise of Claire! What I wanted to ask was your opinion of the Pierce-Arrow. I'm thinking of buying one. Do you think that----”
All the way home Milt exulted, ”I put it all over him. I wasn't scared by the 'Don't b.u.t.t into the aristocracy, my young friend' stuff. I lied handsome. But---- Darn it, now I'll have to live up to my New England aristocracy.... Wonder if my grand-dad's dad was a hired man or a wood-sawyer?... Ne' mine; I'm Daggett of Daggett from now on.” He bounded up to his room vaingloriously remarking, ”I'm there with the ancestors. I was brought up in the handsome city of Schoenstrom, which was founded by a colony of Vermont Yankees, headed by Herman Sk.u.mautz. I was never allowed to play with the Dutch kids, and----” He opened the door. ”--the Schoenstrom minister taught me Greek and was my bosom frien'----”
He stopped with his heart in his ankles. Lolling on the bed, grinning, waving a cigarette, was Bill McGolwey, proprietor of the Old Home Lunch, of Schoenstrom, Minnesota.