He mailed the check for the stored car to her, with a note--written

standing before a hacked wall-desk in a branch post-office--which said

only, "Here's check for the boat. Did not know whether you would have

room for it at house. Tried to get you on phone, phone again just as

soon as rent room etc. Hope having happy time, M.D."

He went out to the university. On the trolley he relaxed. But he did not

exultantly feel that he had won to the Pacific; he could not regard

Seattle now as a magic city, the Bagdad of modern caravans, with Alaska

and the Orient on one hand, the forests to the north, and eastward the

spacious Inland Empire of the wheat. He saw it as a place where you had

to work hard just to live; where busy policemen despised you because you

didn't know which trolley to take; where it was incredibly hard to

remember even the names of the unceasing streets; where the conductors

said "Step lively!" and there was no room to whistle, no time to swap

stories with a Bill McGolwey at an Old Home lunch-counter.

He found the university; he talked with the authorities about entering

the engineering school; the Y. M. C. A. gave him a list of rooms; and,

because it was cheap, he chose a cubbyhole in a flat over a candy

store--a low room, which would probably keep out the rain, but had no

other virtues. It had one bed, one table, one dissipated bureau, two

straight bare chairs, and one venerable lithograph depicting a girl with

ringlets shaking her irritating forefinger at a high-church kitten.

The landlady consented to his importing an oil-stove for cooking his

meals. He bought the stove, with a box of oatmeal, a jar of bacon, and

half a dozen eggs. He bought a plane and solid geometry, and an algebra.

At dinner time he laid the algebra beside his plate of anemic bacon and

leaking eggs. The eggs grew cold. He did not stir. He was reviewing his

high-school algebra. He went down the pages, word by word, steadily,

quickly, absolutely concentrated--as concentrated as he would recently

have been in a new problem of disordered transmission. Not once did he

stop to consider how glorious it would be to marry Claire--or how

terrifying it would be to marry Miss Boltwood.

Three hours went by before he started up, bewildered, rubbed his eyes,

picked at the chill bacon and altogether disgusting eggs, and rambled

out into the street.

Again he risked the scorn of conductors and jitney drivers. He found

Queen Anne Hill, found the residence of Mr. Eugene Gilson. He sneaked

about it, slipped into the gate, prowled toward the house. Flabby from

the intensity of study, he longed for the stimulus of Claire's smile.

But as he stared up at the great squares of the clear windows, at the

flare of white columns in the porch-lights, that smile seemed

unreachable. He felt like a rustic at court. From the shelter of the

prickly holly hedge he watched the house. It was "some kind of a

party?--or what would folks like these call a party?" Limousines were

arriving; he had a glimpse of silken ankles, frothy underskirts; heard

easy laughter; saw people moving through a big blue and silver room;

caught a drifting tremor of music.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024