Free Air Part 17

"None! Honest! None! Not one! Never fell in love----"

"You're unfortunate. I have, lots of times. I remember quite enjoying being kissed once, at a dance."

When he answered, his voice was strange: "I suppose you're engaged to somebody."

"No. And I don't know that I shall be. Once, I thought I liked a man, rather. He has nice eyes and the most correct spectacles, and he is polite to his mother at breakfast, and his name is Jeff, and he will undoubtedly be worth five or six hundred thousand dollars, some day, and his opinions on George Moore and commercial paper are equally sound and unoriginal---- Oh, I ought not to speak of him, and I certainly ought not to be spiteful. I'm not at all reticent and ladylike, am I! But---- Somehow I can't see him out here, against a mountain of jagged rock."

"Only you won't always be out here against mountains. Some day you'll be back in--where is it in New York State?"

"I confess it's Brooklyn--but not what you'd mean by Brooklyn. Your remark shows you to have subtlety. I must remember that, mustn't I! I won't always be driving through this big land. But---- Will I get all fussy and ribbon-tied again, when I go back?"

"No. You won't. You drive like a man."

"What has that----"

"It has a lot to do with it. A garage man can trail along behind another car and figger out, figure out, just about what kind of a person the driver is from the way he handles his boat. Now you bite into the job.

You drive pretty neat--neatly. You don't either scoot too far out of the road in pa.s.sing a car, or take corners too wide. You won't be fussy. But still, I suppose you'll be glad to be back among your own folks and you'll forget the wild Milt that tagged along----"

"Milt--or Mr. Daggett--no, Milt! I shall never, in my oldest grayest year, in a ducky cap by the fireplace, forget the half-second when your hand came flashing along, and caught that man on the running-board. But it wasn't just that melodrama. If that hadn't happened, something else would have, to symbolize you. It's that you--oh, you took me in, a stranger, and watched over me, and taught me the customs of the country, and were never impatient. No, I shan't forget that; neither of the Boltwoods will."

In the rose-haze of firelight he straightened up and stared at her, but he settled into shyness again as she added:

"Perhaps others would have done the same thing. I don't know. If they had, I should have remembered them too. But it happened that it was you, and I, uh, my father and I, will always be grateful. We both hope we may see you in Seattle. What are you planning to do there? What is your ambition? Or is that a rude question?"

"Why, uh----"

"What I mean---- I mean, how did you happen to want to go there, with a garage at home? You still control it?"

"Oh yes. Left my mechanic in charge. Why, I just kind of decided suddenly. I guess it was what they call an inspiration. Always wanted a long trip, anyway, and I thought maybe in Seattle I could hook up with something a little peppier than Schoenstrom. Maybe something in Alaska.

Always wished I were a mechanical or civil engineer so----"

"Then why don't you become one? You're young---- How old are you?"

"Twenty-five."

"We're both children, compared with Je--compared with some men who are my friends. You're quite young enough to go to engineering school. And take some academic courses on the side--English, so on. Why don't you?

Have you ever thought of it?"

"N-no, I hadn't thought of doing it, but---- All right. I will! In Seattle! B'lieve the University of Washington is there."

"You mean it?"

"Yes. I do. You're the boss."

"That's--that's flattering, but---- Do you always make up your mind as quickly as this?"

"When the boss gives orders!"

He smiled, and she smiled back, but this time it was she who was embarra.s.sed. "You're rather overwhelming. You change your life--if you really do mean it--because a _jeune fille_ from Brooklyn is so impertinent, from her Olympian height of finishing-school learning, as to suggest that you do so."

"I don't know what a _jeune fille_ is, but I do know----" He sprang up.

He did not look at her. He paraded back and forth, three steps to the right, three to the left, his hands in his pockets, his voice impersonal. "I know you're the finest person I ever met. You're the kind--I knew there must be people like you, because I knew the Joneses.

They're the only friends I've got that have, oh, I suppose it's what they call culture."

In a long monologue, uninterrupted by Claire, he told of his affection for the Schoenstrom "prof" and his wife. The practical, slangy Milt of the garage was lost in the enthusiastic undergraduate adoring his instructor in the university that exists as veritably in a teacher's or a doctor's sitting-room in every Schoenstrom as it does in certain lugubrious stone hulks recognized by a state legislature as magically empowered to paste on sacred labels lettered "Bachelor of Arts."

He broke from his revelations to plump down on the bench beside her, to slap his palm with his fist, and sigh, "Lord, I've been ga.s.sing on!

Guess I bored you!"

"Oh, please, Milt, please! I see it all so---- It must have been wonderful, the evening when Mrs. Jones read Noyes's 'Highwayman' aloud.

Tell me--long before that--were you terribly lonely as a little boy?"

Now Milt had not been a terribly lonely little boy. He had been a leader in a gang devoted to fighting, swimming, pickerel-spearing, beggie-stealing, and catching rides on freights.

But he believed that he was accurately presenting every afternoon of his childhood, as he mused, "Yes, I guess I was, pretty much. I remember I used to sit on dad's doorstep, all those long sleepy summer afternoons, and I'd think, 'Aw, geeeeee, I--wisht--I--had--somebody--to--play--with!'

I always wanted to make-b'lieve Robin Hood, but none of the other kids--so many of them were German; they didn't know about Robin Hood; so I used to scout off alone."

"If I could only have been there, to be Maid Marian for you! We'd have learned archery! Lonely little boy on the doorstep!" Her fingers just touched his sleeve. In her gesture, the ember-light caught the crystal of her wrist watch. She stooped to peer at it, and her pitying tenderness broke off in an agitated: "Heavings! Is it that late? To bed!

Good night, Milt."

"Good night, Cl---- Miss Boltwood."

"No. 'Claire,' of course. I'm not normally a first-name-s.n.a.t.c.her, but I do seem to have fallen into saying 'Milt.' Night!"

As she undressed, in her tent, Claire reflected, "He won't take advantage of my being friendly, will he? Only thing is---- I sha'n't dare to look at Henry B. when Milt calls me 'Claire' in that sedate Brooklyn Heights presence. The dear lamb! Lonely afternoons----!"

CHAPTER XIV

THE BEAST OF THE CORRAL

They met in the frost-shimmering mountain morning, on their way to the corral, to get their cars ready before breakfast. They were shy, hence they were boisterous, and tremendously unreferential to campfire confidences, and informative about distilled water for batteries, and the price of gas in the Park. On Milt's shoulder rode Vere de Vere who, in her original way, relieved one pause by observing "Mrwr."

They came in through the corral gate before any of the other motor tourists had appeared--and they stupidly halted to watch a bear, a large, black, adipose and extremely unchained bear, stalk along the line of cars, sniff, c.o.c.k an ear at the Gomez, lumber up on its running-board, and bundle into the seat. His stern filled the s.p.a.ce between side and top, and he was to be heard snuffing.

"Oh! Look! Milt! Left box of candy on seat---- Oh, please drive him away!"

"Me? Drive--that?"

"Frighten him away. Aren't animals afraid human eye----"

"Not in this park. Guns forbidden. Animals protected by U. S. Army, President, Congress, Supreme Court, Department of Interior, Monroe Doctrine, W. C. T. U. But I'll try--cautiously."

"Don't you want me think you're hero?"

"Ye-es, providin' I don't have to go and be one."