TOOTH-MUG TEA
"My friend Mr. McGolwey--I knew him in Schoenstrom--come on to Seattle
for a while. Bill, these are some people I met along the road," Milt
grumbled.
"Glad to meet 'em. Have a chair. Have two chairs! Say, Milt, y'ought to
have more chairs if you're going to have a bunch of swells coming to
call on you. Ha, ha, ha! Say, I guess I better pike out and give the
folks a chance to chin with you," Bill fondly offered.
"Oh, sit down," Milt snapped at him.
They all sat down, four on the bed; and Milt's inner ear heard a mute
snicker from the Gilsons and Saxton. He tried to talk. He couldn't. Bill
looked at him and, perceiving the dumbness, gallantly helped out:
"So you met the kid on the road, eh? Good scout, Milt is. We always used
to say at Schoenstrom that he was the best darn hand at fixing a flivver
in seven townships."
"So you knew Mr. Daggett at home? Now isn't that nice," said Mrs.
Gilson.
"_Knew_ him? Saaaaay, Milt and I was brung up together. Why, him and I
have bummed around together, and worked on farms, summers, and fished
for bull-heads---- Ever catch a bull-head? Damnedest slipperiest fish
you ever saw, and got horns that sting the stuffin's out of you and----
Say, I wonder if Milt's told you about the time we had at a barn-dance
once? There was a bunch of hicks there, and I says, 'Say, kid, lez
puncture their tires, and hide back of the manure pile, and watch the
fun when they come out.' I guess maybe I was kind of stewed a little,
tell the truth, but course Milt he don't drink much, hardly at all, nice
straight kid if I do say so----"
"Bill!" Milt ordered. "We must have some tea. Here's six-bits. You run
down to the corner grocery and get some tea and a little cream. Oh, you
better buy three-four cups, too. Hustle now, son!"
"Attaboy! Yours to command, ladies and gents, like the fellow says!"
Bill boomed delightedly. He winked at Jeff Saxton, airily spun his
broken hat on his dirty forefinger, and sauntered out.
"Charming fellow. A real original," crooned Mrs. Gilson.
"Did he know your friend Mr. Pinky?" asked Saxton.
Before Milt could answer, Claire rose from the bed, inspected the
Gilsons and Jeff with cold dislike, and said quietly to Milt, "The poor
dear thing--he was dreadfully embarrassed. It's so good of you to be
nice to him. I believe in being loyal to your old friends."
"Oh, so do I!" babbled Mrs. Gilson. "It's just too splendid. And _we_
must do something for him. I'm going to invite Mr. Daggett and Mr.--Mr.
McGollups, was it?--to dinner this evening. I do want to hear him tell
about your boyhood. It must have been so interesting."
"It was," mused Milt. "It was poor and miserable. We had to work
hard--we had to fight for whatever education we got--we had no one to
teach us courtesy."
"Oh now, with your fine old doctor father? Surely he was an
inspiration?" Jeff didn't, this time, trouble to hide the sneer.
"Yes. He was. He gave up the chance to be a rich loafer in order to save
farmers' babies for fees that he never got."
"I'm sure he did. I wish I'd known him. We need to know men like that in
this pink-frosting playing at living we have in cities," Claire said
sweetly--not to Milt but to Jeff.
Mrs. Gilson had ignored them, waiting with the patience of a cat at a
mouse-hole, and she went on, "But you haven't said you'd come, this
evening. Do say you will. I don't suppose Mr. McGollups will care to
dress for dinner?"
With saccharin devotion Milt yearned back, "No, Mrs. Gilson. No. Mr.
McGolwey won't care to dress. He's eccentric."
"But you'll make him come?"
Milt was tactfully beginning to refuse when Gene Gilson at last
exploded, turned purple, covered his dripping, too-red lips with his
handkerchief.
Then, abruptly, Milt hurled at Mrs. Gilson, "All right. We'll come.
Bill'll be awfully funny. He's never been out of a jerkwater burg in his
life, hardly. He's an amusing cuss. He thinks I'm smart! He loves me
like a dog. Oh, he's rich! Ha, ha, ha!"
Milt might have gone on ... if he had, Mr. and Mrs. Gilson would have
gone away, much displeased. But Bill arrived, with some of the worst tea
in the world, and four cups tastefully done in cupids' heads and much
gilt.
Milt made tea, ignoring them, while Bill entertained the Gilsons and
Saxtons with Rabelaisian stories of threshing-time when shirts prickly
with chaff and gritty with dust stuck to sweat-dripping backs; of the
"funny thing" of Milt and Bill being hired to move a garbage-pile and
"swiping" their employer's "mushmelons"; of knotting shirts at the
swimming-hole so that the bawling youngsters had to "chaw beef"; of
drinking beer in the livery-stable at Melrose; of dropping the
water-pitcher from a St. Klopstock hotel window upon the head of the
"constabule" and escaping from him across the lean-to roof.
Mrs. Gilson encouraged him; Bill sat with almost closed eyes, glorying
in the saga of small-town life; Saxton and Gilson did not conceal their
contemptuous grins.
But Claire---- After nervously rubbing the tips of her thumbs with
flickering agitated fingers, she had paid no attention to Bill and the
revelation of Milt's rustic life; she had quietly gone to Milt, to help
him prepare the scanty tea.
She whispered, "Never mind, dear. I don't care. It was all twice as much
fun as being wheeled in lacy prams by cranky nurses, as Jeff and I were.
But I know how you feel. Are you ashamed of having been a prairie
pirate?"
"No, I'm not! We were wild kids--we raised a lot of Cain--but I'm glad
we did."
"So am I. I couldn't stand it if you were ashamed. Listen to me, and
remember little Claire's words of wisdom. These fools are trying--oh,
they're so obvious!--they're trying to make me feel that the prim Miss
Boltwood of Brooklyn Heights is a stranger to you. Well, they're
succeeding in making me a stranger--to them!"
"Claire! Dear! You don't mind Bill?"
"Yes. I do. And so do you. You've grown away from him."
"I don't know but---- Today has been quite a test."
"Yes. It has. Because if I can stand your friend Mr. McGolwey----"
"Then you do care!"
"Perhaps. And if I think that he's, oh, not much good, and I remember
that for a long time you just had him to play with, then I'm all the
more anxious to make it up to you."
"Don't be sorry for me! I can't stand that! After all, it was a good
town, and good folks----"
"No! No! I'm not sorry for you! I just mean, you couldn't have had so
terribly much fun, after you were eighteen or so. Schoenstrom must have
been a little dull, after very many years there. This stuff about the
charm of backwoods villages--the people that write it seem to take jolly
good care to stay in Long Island suburbs!"
"Claire!" He was whispering desperately, "The tea's most done. Oh, my
dear. I'm crazy with this puttering around, trying to woo you and having
to woo the entire Gilson tribe. Let's run away!"
"No; first I'm going to convince them that you are--what I know you
are."
"But you can't."
"Huh! You wait! I've thought of the most beautiful, beastly cruel plan
for the reduction of social obesity----"
Then she was jauntily announcing, "Tea, my dears. Jeff, you get the
tooth-mug. Isn't this jolly!"
"Yes. Oh yes. Very jolly!" Jeff was thoroughly patronizing, but she
didn't look offended. She made them drink the acid tea, and taste the
chalk-like bread and butter sandwiches. She coaxed Bill to go on with
his stories, and when the persistent Mrs. Gilson again asked the pariahs
to come to dinner, Claire astonished Milt, and still more astonished
Mrs. Gilson, by begging, "Oh yes, please do come, Milt."
He consented, savagely.
"But first," Claire added to Mrs. Gilson, "I want us to take the boys
to---- Oh, I have the bulliest idea. Come, everybody. We're going
riding."
"Uh, where----?" hinted Mr. Gilson.
"That's my secret. Come!"
Claire pranced to the door, herded all of them down to the limousine,
whispered an address to the chauffeur.
Milt didn't care much for that ride. Bill was somewhat too evidently not
accustomed to limousines. He wiped his shoes, caked with red mud, upon
the seat-cushions, and apologized perspiringly. He said, "Gee
whillikens, that's a dandy idee, telephone to bawl the shuffer out
with," and "Are them flowers real, the bokay in the vase?"
But the Gilsons and Jeff Saxton were happy about it all--till the car
turned from a main thoroughfare upon a muddy street of shacks that clung
like goats to the sides of a high cut, a street unchanged from the
pioneer days of Seattle.
"Good heavens, Claire, you aren't taking us to see Aunt Hatty, are you?"
wailed Mrs. Gilson.
"Oh yes, indeed. I knew the boys would like to meet her."
"No, really, I don't think----"
"Eva, my soul, Jeff and you planned our tea party today, and assured me
I'd be so interested in Milt's bachelor apartment---- By the way, I'd
been up there already, so it wasn't entirely a surprise. It's my turn to
lead." She confided to Milt, "Dear old Aunt Hatty is related to all of
us. She's Gene's aunt, and my fourth cousin, and I think she's distantly
related to Jeff. She came West early, and had a hard time, but she's
real Brooklyn Heights--and she belongs to Gramercy Park and North
Washington Square and Rittenhouse Square and Back Bay, too, though she
has got out of touch a little. So I wanted you to meet her."
Milt wondered what unperceived bag of cement had hardened the faces of
Saxton and the Gilsons.
Silent save for polite observations of Claire upon tight skirts and
lumbering, the merry company reached the foot of a lurching flight of
steps that scrambled up a clay bank to a cottage like a hen that has set
too long. Milt noticed that Mrs. Gilson made efforts to remain in the
limousine when it stopped, and he caught Gilson's mutter to his wife,
"No, it's Claire's turn. Be a sport, Eva."
Claire led them up the badly listed steps to an unpainted porch on which
sat a little old lady, very neat, very respectable, very interested, and
reflectively holding in one ivory hand a dainty handkerchief and a black
clay pipe.
"Hello, Claire, my dear. You've broken the relatives' record--you've
called twice in less than a year," said the little old lady.
"How do you do, Aunt Harriet," remarked Mrs. Gilson, with great lack of
warmth.
"Hello, Eva. Sit down on the edge of the porch. Those chickens have made
it awful dirty, though, haven't they? Bring out some chairs. There's two
chairs that don't go down under you--often." Aunt Harriet was very
cheerful.
The group lugubriously settled in a circle upon an assemblage of
wind-broken red velvet chairs and wooden stools. They resembled the
aftermath of a funeral on a damp day.
Claire was the cheerful undertaker, Mrs. Gilson the grief-stricken
widow.
Claire waved at Milt and conversed with Aunt Hatty in a high brisk
voice: "This is the nice boy I met on the road that I think I told you
about, Cousin Hatty."
The little old lady screwed up the delicate skin about her eyes,
examined Milt, and cackled, "Boy, there's something wrong here. You
don't belong with my family. Why, you look like an American. You
haven't got an imitation monocle, and I bet you can't talk with a New
York-London accent. Why, Claire, I'm ashamed of you for bringing a human
being into the Boltwood-Gilson-Saxton tomb and expecting----"
Then was the smile of Mrs. Gilson lost forever. It was simultaneously
torpedoed, mined, scuttled, and bombed. It went to the bottom without a
ripple, while Mrs. Gilson snapped, "Aunt Hatty, please don't be vulgar."
"Me?" croaked the little old lady. She puffed at her pipe, and dropped
her elbows on her knees. "My, ain't it hard to please some folks."
"Cousin Hatty, I want Milt to know about our families. I love the dear
old stories," Claire begged prettily.
Mrs. Gilson snarled. "Claire, really----"
"Oh, do shut up, Eva, and don't be so bossy!" yelped the dear little old
lady, in sudden and dismaying rage. "I'll talk if I want to. Have they
been bullying you, Claire? Or your boy? I tell you, boy, these families
are fierce. I was brought up in Brooklyn--went through all the
schools--used to be able to misplay the piano and mispronounce French
with the best of 'em. Then Gene's pa and I came West together--he had an
idea he'd get rich robbing the Injuns of their land. And we went broke.
I took in washing. I learned a lot. I learned a Gilson was just the
same common stuff as a red-shirt miner, when he was up against it. But
Gene's pa succeeded--there was something about practically stealing a
fur schooner--but I never was one to tattle on my kin. Anyway, by the
time Gene come along, his pa was rich, and that means aristocratic.
"This aristocracy west of Pittsburgh is just twice as bad as the
snobbery in Boston or New York, because back there, the families have
had their wealth long enough--some of 'em got it by stealing real estate
in 1820, and some by selling Jamaica rum and niggers way back before the
Revolutionary War--they've been respectable so long that they know
mighty well and good that nobody except a Britisher is going to question
their blue blood--and oh my, what good blueing third-generation money
does make. But out here in God's Country, the marquises of milling and
the barons of beef are still uneasy. Even their pretty women, after
going to the best hair-dressers and patronizing the best charities,
sometimes get scared lest somebody think they haven't either brains or
breeding.
"So they're nasty to all low pussons like you and me, to make sure we
understand how important they are. But lands, I know 'em, boy. I'm kept
pensioned up here, out of the way, but I read the social notes in the
papers and I chuckle---- When there's a big reception and I read about
Mrs. Vogeland's pearls, and her beautiful daughter-in-law, I remember
how she used to run a boarding-house for miners----
"Well, I guess it's just as shoddy in the East if you go far enough
back. Claire, you're a nice comforting body, and I hate to say it, but
the truth is, your great-grandfather was an hostler, and made his first
money betting on horses. Now, my, I oughtn't to tell that. Do you mind,
dearie?"
"Not a bit. Isn't it delightful that this is such a democratic country,
with no castes," said Claire.
At this, the first break in the little old lady's undammable flood, Mrs.
Gilson sprang up, yammering, "The rest of you may stay as long as you
like, but if I'm to be home in time to dress for dinner----"
"Yes, and I must be going," babbled Saxton.
Milt noted that his lower lip showed white tooth-marks.
It must be admitted that all of them rather ignored the little old lady
for a moment. Milt was apologetically hinting, "I don't really think
Bill and I'd better come to dinner this evening, Mrs. Gilson. Thanks a
lot but---- It's kind of sudden."
Claire again took charge. "Not at all, Milt. Of course you're coming. It
was Eva herself who invited you. I'm sure she'll be delighted."
"Charmed," said Mrs. Gilson, with the expression of one who has
swallowed castor oil and doubts the unity of the universe.
There was a lack of ease about the farewells to Aunt Harriet. As they
all turned away she beckoned Milt and murmured, "Did I raise the
dickens? I tried to. It's the only solace besides smoking that a moral
old lady can allow herself, after she gets to be eighty-two and begins
to doubt everything they used to teach her. Come and see me, boy. Now
get out, and, boy, beat up Gene Gilson. Don't be scared of his wife's
hoity-toity ways. Just sail in."
"I will," said Milt.
He had one more surprise before he reached the limousine.
Bill McGolwey, who had sat listening to everything and scratching his
cheek in a puzzled way, seized Milt's sleeve and rumbled:
"Good-by, old hoss. I'm not going to butt in on your game and get you in
Dutch. Gosh, I never supposed you had enough class to mingle with
elittys like this gang, but I know when I'm in wrong. You were too darn
decent to kick me out. Do it myself. You're best friend I ever had
and---- Good luck, old man! God bless you!"
Bill was gone, running, stumbling, fleeing past Aunt Harriet's cottage,
off into a sandy hilltop vacancy. The last Milt saw of him was when, on
the skyline, Bill stopped for a glance back, and seemed to be digging
his knuckles into his eyes.
Then Milt turned resolutely, marched down the stairs, said to his hosts
with a curious quietness, "Thank you for asking me to dinner, but I'm
afraid I can't come. Claire, will you walk a few blocks with me?"
During the half minute it had taken to descend the steps, Milt had
reflected, with an intensity which forgot Bill, that he had been
selfish; that he had thought only of the opinion of these "nice people"
regarding himself, instead of understanding that it was his duty to save
Claire from their enervating niceness. Not that he phrased it quite in
this way. What he had been muttering was:
"Rotten shame--me so scared of folks' clothes that I don't stand up to
'em and keep 'em from smothering Claire. Lord, it would be awful if she
settled down to being a Mrs. Jeff Saxton. Got to save her--not for
myself--for her."
It may have been Aunt Harriet, it may have been Milt's resolution, but
Mrs. Gilson answered almost meekly, "Well, if you think---- Would you
like to walk, Claire?"
As he tramped off with Claire, Milt demanded, "Glad to escape?"
"Yes, and I'm glad you refused dinner. It really has been wearing, this
trial by food."
"This is the last time I'll dare to meet the Gilsons."
"And I'll have to be going back East. I hope the Gilsons will forgive
me, some day."
"I'm afraid you didn't win them over by Aunt Hatty!"
"No. They're probably off me for life. Oh, these horrible social
complications--worse than any real danger--fire or earthquake----"
"Oh, these complications--they don't exist! We just make 'em, like we
make rules for a card game. What the deuce do we care about the opinions
of people we don't like? And who appointed these people to a fixed
social position? Did the president make Saxton High Cockalorum of
Dress-Suits or something? Why, these are just folks, the same as kings
and coal-heavers. There's no army we've got to fight. There's just you
and me--you and I--and if we stick together, then we have all society,
we _are_ all society!"
"Ye-es, but, Milt dear, I don't want to be an outcast."
"You won't be. In the long run, if you don't take these aristocrats
seriously, they'll be all the more impressed by you."
"No. That sounds cheering, in stories and these optimistic editorials in
the magazines, but it isn't true. And you don't know how pleasant it is
to be In. I've always been more or less on the inside, and thought
outsiders dreadful. But---- Oh, I don't care! I don't care! With
you--I'm happy. That's all I know and all I want to know. I've just
grown up. I've just learned the greatest wisdom--to know when I'm
happy. But, Milt dear---- I say this because I love you. Yes, I do love
you. No, don't kiss me. Yes, it is too---- It's _far_ too public. And I
want to talk seriously. You can't have any idea how strong social
distinctions are. Don't despise them just because you don't know them."
"No. I won't. I'll learn. Probably America will get into the war. I'll
be an engineering officer. I'll learn this social dope from the
college-boy officers. And I'll come to Brooklyn with shoulder-straps and
bells on and---- Will you be waiting?"
"Oh--yes---- But, Milt! If the war comes, you must be very careful not
to get shot!"
"All right, if, you insist. Good Lord, Claire. I don't know what put it
into my head but---- Do you realize that a miracle has happened? We're
no longer Miss Boltwood and a fellow named Daggett. We have been, even
when we've liked each other, up to today. Always there's been a kind of
fence between us. We had to explain and defend ourselves and scrap----
But now we're _us_, and the rest of the world has disappeared, and----"
"And nothing else matters," said Claire.