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.