Sinclair Lewis - The Collected Works of Sinclair Lewis

"No, sir. Had my roll in the bug. I'll have to go back to it and get some clothes out of it, though."

"Well, then, will you drive my car in? Charge me anywhere up to fifty dollars, if you want to —— "

"I'd rather not —— "

"It's a perfectly honest job — I'd do it, too quick! Or if your confounded pride won't let you charge anything, bring the car on anyway. Come, dolly, I have a jitney here, please observe my graceful use of 'jitney,' and I have the bags. We'll hustle to the station now. No! No arguments, chick!"

On the station platform, Claire and Milt were under the surveillance of Mr. Boltwood, who was extremely irritable as every two minutes the train was reported to be two minutes later. They tramped up and down, speaking in lowered voices, very meek but in their joint naughtiness very intimate.

"That was a nice place to end a transcontinental drive — in the back yard of Mr. Johnny Kloh, with an unrestricted view of tin cans!" lamented Claire.

"Still, your drive didn't end at Kloh's; it ended way up in the mountains."

Mr. Boltwood bumbled down on them: "Another minute late! Like to know what the matter is!"

"Yes, father!"

When Mr. Boltwood's impatiently waiting back was turned, Claire gripped Milt's hand, and whispered to him, "You see, I'm captured! I thought I was father's lord and chauffeur, but he sniffs the smoke of the ticker. In his mind, he's already back in the office, running things. He'll probably turn me over to Jeff, for disciplining! You won't let them change me back into a pink-face, will you? Come to tea, at the Gilsons', just as soon as you reach Seattle."

"Tea —— Now we're so near your Gilsons, I begin to get scared. Wouldn't know what to do. Gee, I've heard you have to balance a tea-cup and a sandwich and a hunk o' cake and a lot of conversation all at once! I'd spill the tea, and drop crumbs, and probably have the butler set on me."

"You will not! And if you did — can't you see? — it wouldn't matter! It just wouldn't matter!"

"Honestly? Claire dear, do you know why I came on this trip? In Schoenstrom, I heard you say you were going to Seattle. That moment, I decided I would, too, and get acquainted with you, if murder would do it. But, oh, I'm clumsy."

"You've seen me clumsy, in driving. You taught me to get over it. Perhaps I can teach you some things. And we'll study — together — evenings! I'm a thoroughly ignorant parasite woman. Make me become real! A real woman!"

"Dear — dear —— "

Mr. Boltwood loomed on them. "The train's coming, at last. We'll have a decent sleep for once, at the Gilsons'. I've wired them to meet us." He departed.

"Terribly glad your father keeps coming down on us, because it scares me so I get desperate," said Milt. "Golly, I think I can hear the train. I, uh, Claire, Claire dear —— "

"Milt, are you proposing to me? Please hurry, because that is the train. Isn't it absurd — some day you'll have to propose all over again formally, for the benefit of people like father, when you and I already know we're partners! We've done things together, not just danced together! When you're an engineer, you'll call me, and I'll come a-running up to Alaska. And sometimes you'll come with me to Brooklyn — we'll be a couple of bombs —— There's the train. Oh, playmate, hurry with your engineering course! Hurry, hurry, hurry! Because when it's done, then —— Whither thou goest, there I go also! And you did bully me, you did, you did, and I like it, and —— Yes, father, the bags are right here. Telephone me, minute you reach Seattle, dear, and we'll have a private lesson in balancing tea-cups —— Yes, father, I have the tickets. So glad, dear, the trip smashed up like this — shocked me into reality — made me realize I've been with you every hour since I dismissed you, back in Dakota, and you looked at me, big hurt eyes, like a child, and —— Yes, father, Pullman's at the back. Yes, I'm coming!"

"W-wait! D-did you know I was going to propose?"

"Yes. Ever since the Yellowstone. Been trying to think of a nice way to refuse you. But there isn't any. You're like Pinky — can't get rid of you — have t' adopt you. Besides, I've found out —— "

"You love me?"

"I don't know! How can I tell? But I do like to drive with my head on your shoulder and —— Yesssss, father, coming!"

Table of Contents

Mr. Henry B. Boltwood was decorously asleep in a chair in the observation car, and Claire, on the wide back platform, sat unmoving, apparently devoted to agriculture and mountain scenery. But it might have been noted that her hand clenched one of the wooden supports of her camp-stool, and that her hunched back did not move.

When she had turned to follow her father into the train, Milt had caught her shoulders and kissed her.

For half an hour that kiss had remained, a perceptible warm pressure on her lips. And for half an hour she had felt the relief of gliding through the mountains without the strain of piloting, the comfort of having the unseen, mysterious engineer up ahead automatically drive for her. She had caroled to her father about nearing the Pacific. Her nervousness had expressed itself in jerky gaiety.

But when he had sneaked away for a nap, and Claire could no longer hide from herself by a veil of chatter the big decision she had made on the station platform, then she was lonely and frightened — and very anxious to undecide the decision. She could not think clearly. She could see Milt Daggett only as a solemn young man in an inferior sweater, standing by the track in a melancholy autumnal light, waving to her as the train pulled out, disappearing in a dun obscurity, less significant than the station, the receding ties, or the porter who was, in places known only to his secretive self, concealing her baggage.

She could only mutter in growing panic, "I'm crazy. In-sane! Pledging myself to this boy before I know how he will turn out. Will he learn anything besides engineering? I know it — I do want to stroke his cheek and — his kiss frightened me, but —— Will I hate him when I see him with nice people? Can I introduce him to the Gilsons? Oh, I was mad; so wrought up by that idiotic chase with Dlorus, and so sure I was a romantic heroine and —— And I'm simply an indecisive girl in a realistic muddle!"

Threatened by darkness and the sinister evening chill of the mountains, with the train no longer cheerfully climbing the rocky ridge but rumbling and snorting in the defiles, and startling her with agitating forward leaps as though the brakes had let go, she could not endure the bleak platform, and even less could she endure sitting in the chair car, eyed by the smug tourists — people as empty of her romance as they were incapable of her sharp tragedy. She balanced forward to the vestibule. She stood in that cold, swaying, darkling place that was filled with the smell of rubber and metal and grease and the thunderous clash of steel on steel; she tried to look out into the fleeing darkness; she tried to imagine that the train was carrying her away from the pursuing enemy — from her own weak self.

Her father came puffing and lip-pursing and jolly, to take her to dinner. Mr. Boltwood had no tearing meditations; he had a healthy interest in soup. But he glanced at her, across the bright, sleek dining-table; he seemed to study her; and suddenly Claire saw that he was a very wise man. His look hinted, "You're worried, my dear," but his voice ventured nothing beyond comfortable drawling stories to which she had only, from the depth of her gloomy brooding, to nod mechanically.

She got a great deal of satisfaction and horror out of watching two traveling-men after dinner. Milt had praised the race, and one of the two traveling-men, a slender, clear-faced youngster, was rather like Milt, despite plastered hair, a watch-chain slung diagonally across his waistcoat, maroon silk socks, and shoes of pearl buttons, gray tops, and patent-leather bottoms. The other man was a butter-ball. Both of them had harshly pompous voices — the proudly unlettered voices of the smoking compartment. The slender man was roaring: