THE MORNING COAT OF MR. HUDSON B. RIGGS
Mr. Hudson B. Riggs now enters the tale--somewhat tardily, and making a
quick exit, all in a morning coat too tight about the shoulders, and a
smile of festivity too tight about the lips. He looked as improbable as
an undertaker's rubber-plant. Yet in his brief course he had a mighty
effect upon the progress of civilization as exemplified in the social
career of Mr. Milton Daggett.
Mr. Riggs had arrived at a golden position in Alaskan mining engineering
by way of the farm, the section gang, the surveyor's chain, and
prospecting; and his thick hands showed his evolution. His purpose in
life was to please Mrs. Riggs, and he wasn't ever going to achieve his
purpose in life. She wore spangles, and her corsets creaked, and she
smiled nervously, and could tell in a glance quicker than the 1/100
kodak shutter whether or not a new acquaintance was "worth cultivating."
She had made Mr. Riggs thoroughly safe and thoroughly unhappy in the
pursuit of society. He stood about keeping from doing anything he might
want to, and he was profusely polite to young cubs whom he longed to
have in his office--so that he could get even with them.
What Mr. Riggs wanted to do, at the third large tea given by Mrs. Gilson
for Miss Claire Boltwood, was to sneak out on the sun-porch and play
over the new records on the phonograph; but the things he had heard from
Mrs. Riggs the last time he'd done that had convinced him that it was
not a wise method of escape. So he stood by the fireplace--safe on one
side at least--and ate lettuce sandwiches, which he privately called
"cow feed," and listened to a shining, largely feminine crowd rapidly
uttering unintelligible epigrams from which he caught only the words,
"Ripping hand--trained nurse--whipcord--really worth seeing--lost the
ball near the second hole--most absurd person--new maid--thanks so
much." He was hoping that some one would come around and let him be
agreeable. He knew that he stood the ride home with Mrs. Riggs much
better after he had been agreeable to people he didn't like.
What Mr. Riggs did not know was that a young man in uninteresting blue,
who looked like a good tennis-player, was watching him. It wasn't
because he detected a fellow soul in purgatory but because he always was
obsequious outside of his office that Mr. Riggs bowed so profusely that
he almost lost his tea-cup, when the young man in blue drifted to him
and suggested, "I hear you're in the Alaskan mining-game, Mr. Riggs."
"Oh yes."
"Do you get up there much now?"
"No, not much."
"I hope to hit Alaska some day--I'm taking engineering at the U."
"Do you? Straight?" Mr. Riggs violently set his cup down on a
table--Mrs. Riggs would later tell him that he'd put it down in the
wrong place, but never mind. He leaned over Milt and snarled, "Offer me
a cigarette. I don't know if they smoke here, and I dassn't be the first
to try. Say, boy, Alaska---- I wish I was there now! Say, it beats all
hell how good tea can taste in a tin cup, and how wishy-washy it is in
china. Boy, I don't know anything about you, but you look all right, and
when you get ready to go to Alaska, you come to me, and I'll see if I
can't give you a chance to go up there. But don't ever come back!"
When the crowd began bubblingly to move toward the door, Milt prepared
to move--and bubble--with them. Though Claire's note had sounded as
though she was really a little lonely, at the tea she had said nothing
to him except, "So glad you came. Do you know Dolly Ransome? Dolly, this
is my nice Mr. Daggett. Take him and make him happy."
Dolly hadn't made him in the least happy. She had talked about tennis;
she had with some detail described her remarkable luck in beating one
Sally Saunders three sets. Now Milt was learning tennis. He was at the
present period giving two hours a week to tennis, two to dancing, two to
bridge. But he preferred cleaning oil-wells to any of these toilsome
accomplishments, and it must sadly be admitted that all the while he was
making his face bright at Dolly, he was wondering what would happen if
he interrupted Dolly's gurgling, galloping, giggling multitudinousness
by shouting, "Oh, shut up!"
When it seemed safe to go, and he tried to look as though he too were
oozing out to a Crane-Simplex, Claire slipped beside him, soft as a
shadow, and whispered, "Please don't go. I want to talk to you.
_Please!_" There was fluttering wistfulness in her voice, though
instantly it was gone as she hastened to the door and was to be heard
asserting that she did indeed love Seattle.
Milt looked out into the hall. He studied a console with a curious black
and white vase containing a single peacock feather, and a gold mirror
shimmering against a gray wall.
"Lovely stuff. I like that mirror. Like a slew in the evening. But it
isn't worth being a slave for. I'm not going to be a Mr. Riggs. Poor
devil, he's more of a servant than any of these maids. Certainly am
sorry for that poor fish. He'll have a chance to take his coat off and
sit down and smoke--when he's dead!"
The guests were gone; the Gilsons upstairs. Claire came running, seized
Milt's sleeve, coaxed him to the davenport in the drawing-room--then
sighed, and rubbed her forehead, and looked so tired that he could say
nothing but, "Hope you haven't been overdoing."
"No, just--just talking too much."
He got himself to say, "Miss Ransome--the one that's nuts about
tennis--she's darn nice."
"Is she?"
"Yes, she's--she's---- What do you hear from your father?"
"Oh, he's back at work."
"Trip do him good?"
"Oh, a lot."
"Did he----"
"Milt! Tell me about you. What are you doing? What are you studying? How
do you live? Do you really cook your own meals? Do you begin to get your
teeth into the engineering? Oh, do tell me everything. I want to know,
so much!"
"There isn't a whole lot to tell. Mostly I'm getting back into math.
Been out of touch with it. I find that I know more about motors than
most of the fellows. That helps. And about living--oh, I keep
conservative. Did you know I'd sold my garage?"
"Oh, I didn't, I didn't!"
He wondered why she said it with such stooping shame, but he went on
mildly, "Well, I got a pretty good price, but of course I don't want to
take any chances on running short of coin, so I'm not splurging much.
And----" He looked at his nails, and whistled a bar or two, and turned
his head away, and looked back with a shy, "And I'm learning to play
bridge and tennis and stuff!"
"Oh, my dear!" It was a cry of pain. She beat her hands for a moment
before she murmured, "When are we going to have our lessons in
dancing--and in making an impression on sun-specks like Dolly Ransome?"
"I don't know," he parried. Then, looking at her honestly, he confessed,
"I don't believe we're ever going to. Claire, I can't do it. I'm no good
for this tea game. You know how clumsy I was. I spilled some tea, and I
darn near tripped over some woman's dress and---- Oh, I'm not afraid of
them. Now that I get a good close look at this bunch, they seem pretty
much like other folks, except maybe that one old dame says 'cawn't.' But
I can't do the manners stunt. I can't get myself to give enough thought
to how you ought to hold a tea-cup."
"Oh, those things don't matter--they don't _matter_! Besides, everybody
likes you--only you're so terribly cautious that you never let them see
the force and courage and all that wonderful sweet dear goodness that's
in you. And as for your manners--heaven knows I'm no P. G. Wodehouse
valet. But I'll teach you all I know."
"Claire, I appreciate it a lot but---- I'm not so darn sure I want to
learn. I'm getting scared. I watched that bird named Riggs here today.
He's a regular fellow, or he was, but now he's simply lost in the
shuffle. I don't want to be one of the million ghosts in a city. Seattle
is bad enough--it's so big that I feel like a no-see-um in a Norway pine
reserve. But New York would be a lot worse. I don't want to be a Mr.
Riggs."
"Yes, but--I'm not a Mrs. Riggs!"
"What do you----"
He did not finish asking her what she meant. She was in his arms; she
was whispering, "My heart is so lonely;" and the room was still. The low
sun flooded the windows, swam in the mirror in the hall, but they did
not heed, did not see its gliding glory.
Not till there was a sound of footsteps did she burst from his arms,
spring to her reflection in the glass of a picture, and shamefacedly
murmur to him over her shoulder, "My hair--it's a terrible giveaway!"
He had followed her; he stood with his arm circling her shoulder.
She begged, "No. Please no. I'm frightened. Let's--oh, let's have a walk
or something before you scamper home."
"Look! My dear! Let's run away, and explore the town, and not come back
till late evening."
"Yes. Let's."
They walked from Queen Anne Hill through the city to the docks. There
was nothing in their excited, childish, "Oh, see that!" and "There's a
dandy car!" and "Ohhhhh, that's a Minnesota license--wonder who it is?"
to confess that they had been so closely, so hungrily together.
They swung along a high walk overlooking the city wharf. They saw a
steamer loading rails and food for the government railroad in Alaska.
They exclaimed over a nest of little, tarry fishing-boats. They watched
men working late to unload Alaska salmon.
They crossed the city to Jap Town and its writhing streets, its dark
alleys and stairways lost up the hillsides. They smiled at black-eyed
children, and found a Japanese restaurant, and tried to dine on raw fish
and huge shrimps and roots soaked in a very fair grade of light-medium
motor oil.
With Milt for guide, Claire discovered a Christianity that was not of
candles and shifting lights and insinuating music, nor of carpets and
large pews and sound oratory, but of hoboes blinking in rows, and girls
in gospel bonnets, and little silver and crimson placards of Bible
texts. They stopped on a corner to listen to a Pentecostal brother, to
an I. W. W. speaker, to a magnificent negro who boomed in an operatic
baritone that the Day of Judgment was coming on April 11, 1923, at three
in the morning.
In the streets of Jap Town, in cheap motion-picture theaters, in hotels
for transient workmen, she found life, running swift and eager and
many-colored; and it seemed to her that back in the house of
four-posters and walls of subdued gray, life was smothered in the very
best pink cotton-batting. Milt's delight in every picturesque dark
corner, and the colloquial eloquence of the street-orators, stirred her.
And when she saw a shopgirl caress the hand of a slouching beau in
threadbare brown, her own hand slipped into Milt's and clung there.
But they came shyly up to the Gilson hedge, and when Milt chuckled,
"Bully walk; let's do it again," she said only, "Oh, yes, I did like it.
Very much."
He had abruptly dropped his beautiful new felt hat. He was clutching her
arms, demanding, "Can you like me? Oh my God, Claire, I can't play at
love. I'm mad--I just live in you. You're my blood and soul. Can I
become--the kind of man you like?"
"My dear!" She was fiercely addressing not him alone but the Betzes and
Coreys and Gilsons and Jeff Saxtons, "don't you forget for one moment
that all these people--here or Brooklyn either--that seem so aloof and
amused, are secretly just plain people with enamel on, and you're to
have the very best enamel, if it's worth while. I'm not sure that it
is----"
"You're going to kiss me!"
"No! Please no! I don't--I don't understand us, even now. Can't we be
just playmates a while yet? But--I do like you!"
She fled. When she reached the hall she found her eyelids wet.
It was the next afternoon----
Claire was curled on the embroidered linen counterpane of her bed,
thinking about chocolates and Brooklyn and driving through Yellowstone
Park and corn fritters and satin petticoats versus _crepe de chine_ and
Mount Rainier and Milt and spiritualism and manicuring, when Mrs. Gilson
prowled into her room and demanded "Busy?" so casually that Claire was
suspicious.
"No. Not very. Something up?"
"A nice party. Come down and meet an amusing man from Alaska."
Claire took her time powdering her nose, and ambled downstairs and into
the drawing-room, to find----
Jeff Saxton, Mr. Geoffrey Saxton, who is the height of Brooklyn Heights,
standing by the fireplace, smiling at her.