[Illustration]




Our Mr. Wrenn

The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man

by Sinclair Lewis

NEW YORK AND LONDON

MCMXIV




TO GRACE LIVINGSTONE HEGGER


Contents

 CHAPTER I. MR. WRENN IS LONELY
 CHAPTER II. HE WALKS WITH MISS THERESA
 CHAPTER III. HE STARTS FOR THE LAND OF ELSEWHERE
 CHAPTER IV. HE BECOMES THE GREAT LITTLE BILL WRENN
 CHAPTER V. HE FINDS MUCH QUAINT ENGLISH FLAVOR
 CHAPTER VI. HE IS AN ORPHAN
 CHAPTER VII. HE MEETS A TEMPERAMENT
 CHAPTER VIII. HE TIFFINS
 CHAPTER IX. HE ENCOUNTERS THE INTELLECTUALS
 CHAPTER X. HE GOES A-GIPSYING
 CHAPTER XI. HE BUYS AN ORANGE TIE
 CHAPTER XII. HE DISCOVERS AMERICA
 CHAPTER XIII. HE IS “OUR MR. WRENN”
 CHAPTER XIV. HE ENTERS SOCIETY
 CHAPTER XV. HE STUDIES FIVE HUNDRED, SAVOUIR FAIRE, AND LOTSA-SNAP OFFICE MOTTOES
 CHAPTER XVI. HE BECOMES MILDLY RELIGIOUS AND HIGHLY LITERARY
 CHAPTER XVII. HE IS BLOWN BY THE WHIRLWIND
 CHAPTER XVIII. AND FOLLOWS A WANDERING FLAME THROUGH PERILOUS SEAS
 CHAPTER XIX. TO A HAPPY SHORE




CHAPTER I
MR. WRENN IS LONELY


The ticket-taker of the Nickelorion Moving-Picture Show is a public
personage, who stands out on Fourteenth Street, New York, wearing a
gorgeous light-blue coat of numerous brass buttons. He nods to all the
patrons, and his nod is the most cordial in town. Mr. Wrenn used to
trot down to Fourteenth Street, passing ever so many other shows, just
to get that cordial nod, because he had a lonely furnished room for
evenings, and for daytime a tedious job that always made his head
stuffy.

He stands out in the correspondence of the Souvenir and Art Novelty
Company as “Our Mr. Wrenn,” who would be writing you directly and
explaining everything most satisfactorily. At thirty-four Mr. Wrenn was
the sales-entry clerk of the Souvenir Company. He was always bending
over bills and columns of figures at a desk behind the stock-room. He
was a meek little bachlor—a person of inconspicuous blue ready-made
suits, and a small unsuccessful mustache.

To-day—historians have established the date as April 9, 1910—there had
been some confusing mixed orders from the Wisconsin retailers, and Mr.
Wrenn had been “called down” by the office manager, Mr. Mortimer R.
Guilfogle. He needed the friendly nod of the Nickelorion ticket-taker.
He found Fourteenth Street, after office hours, swept by a dusty wind
that whisked the skirts of countless plump Jewish girls, whose V-necked
blouses showed soft throats of a warm brown. Under the elevated station
he secretly made believe that he was in Paris, for here beautiful
Italian boys swayed with trays of violets; a tramp displayed crimson
mechanical rabbits, which squeaked, on silvery leading-strings; and a
newsstand was heaped with the orange and green and gold of magazine
covers.

“Gee!” inarticulated Mr. Wrenn. “Lots of colors. Hope I see foreign
stuff like that in the moving pictures.”

He came primly up to the Nickelorion, feeling in his vest pockets for a
nickel and peering around the booth at the friendly ticket-taker. But
the latter was thinking about buying Johnny’s pants. Should he get them
at the Fourteenth Street Store, or Siegel-Cooper’s, or over at
Aronson’s, near home? So ruminating, he twiddled his wheel
mechanically, and Mr. Wrenn’s pasteboard slip was indifferently
received in the plate-glass gullet of the grinder without the taker’s
even seeing the clerk’s bow and smile.

Mr. Wrenn trembled into the door of the Nickelorion. He wanted to turn
back and rebuke this fellow, but was restrained by shyness. He _had_
liked the man’s “Fine evenin’, sir “—rain or shine—but he wouldn’t
stand for being cut. Wasn’t he making nineteen dollars a week, as
against the ticket-taker’s ten or twelve? He shook his head with the
defiance of a cornered mouse, fussed with his mustache, and regarded
the moving pictures gloomily.

They helped him. After a Selig domestic drama came a stirring Vitagraph
Western scene, “The Goat of the Rancho,” which depicted with much humor
and tumult the revolt of a ranch cook, a Chinaman. Mr. Wrenn was really
seeing, not cow-punchers and sage-brush, but himself, defying the
office manager’s surliness and revolting against the ticket-man’s
rudeness. Now he was ready for the nearly overpowering delight of
travel-pictures. He bounced slightly as a Gaumont film presented Java.

He was a connoisseur of travel-pictures, for all his life he had been
planning a great journey. Though he had done Staten Island and
patronized an excursion to Bound Brook, neither of these was his grand
tour. It was yet to be taken. In Mr. Wrenn, apparently fastened to New
York like a domestic-minded barnacle, lay the possibilities of heroic
roaming. He knew it. He, too, like the man who had taken the Gaumont
pictures, would saunter among dusky Javan natives in “markets with
tiles on the roofs and temples and—and—uh, well—places!” The scent of
Oriental spices was in his broadened nostrils as he scampered out of
the Nickelorion, without a look at the ticket-taker, and headed for
“home”—for his third-floor-front on West Sixteenth Street. He wanted to
prowl through his collection of steamship brochures for a description
of Java. But, of course, when one’s landlady has both the sciatica and
a case of Patient Suffering one stops in the basement dining-room to
inquire how she is.

Mrs. Zapp was a fat landlady. When she sat down there was a straight
line from her chin to her knees. She was usually sitting down. When she
moved she groaned, and her apparel creaked. She groaned and creaked
from bed to breakfast, and ate five griddle-cakes, two helpin’s of
scrapple, an egg, some rump steak, and three cups of coffee, slowly and
resentfully. She creaked and groaned from breakfast to her
rocking-chair, and sat about wondering why Providence had inflicted
upon her a weak digestion. Mr. Wrenn also wondered why,
sympathetically, but Mrs. Zapp was too conscientiously dolorous to be
much cheered by the sympathy of a nigger-lovin’ Yankee, who couldn’t
appreciate the subtle sorrows of a Zapp of Zapp’s Bog, allied to all
the First Families of Virginia.

Mr. Wrenn did nothing more presumptuous than sit still, in the stuffy
furniture-crowded basement room, which smelled of dead food and deader
pride in a race that had never existed. He sat still because the chair
was broken. It had been broken now for four years.

For the hundred and twenty-ninth time in those years Mrs. Zapp said, in
her rich corruption of Southern negro dialect, which can only be
indicated here, “Ah been meaning to get that chair mended, Mist’
Wrenn.” He looked gratified and gazed upon the crayon enlargements of
Lee Theresa, the older Zapp daughter (who was forewoman in a factory),
and of Godiva. Godiva Zapp was usually called “Goaty,” and many times a
day was she called by Mrs. Zapp. A tamed child drudge was Goaty, with
adenoids, which Mrs. Zapp had been meanin’ to have removed, and which
she would continue to have benevolent meanin’s about till it should be
too late, and she should discover that Providence never would let Goaty
go to school.

“Yes, Mist’ Wrenn, Ah told Goaty she was to see the man about getting
that chair fixed, but she nev’ does nothing Ah tell her.”

In the kitchen was the noise of Goaty, ungovernable Goaty, aged eight,
still snivelingly washing, though not cleaning, the incredible pile of
dinner dishes. With a trail of hesitating remarks on the sadness of
sciatica and windy evenings Mr. Wrenn sneaked forth from the august
presence of Mrs. Zapp and mounted to paradise—his third-floor-front.

It was an abjectly respectable room—the bedspread patched; no two
pieces of furniture from the same family; half-tones from the magazines
pinned on the wall. But on the old marble mantelpiece lived his
friends, books from wanderland. Other friends the room had rarely
known. It was hard enough for Mr. Wrenn to get acquainted with people,
anyway, and Mrs. Zapp did not expect her gennulman lodgers to
entertain. So Mr. Wrenn had given up asking even Charley Carpenter, the
assistant bookkeeper at the Souvenir Company, to call. That left him
the books, which he now caressed with small eager finger-tips. He
picked out a P. & O. circular, and hastily left for fairyland.

The April skies glowed with benevolence this Saturday morning. The
Metropolitan Tower was singing, bright ivory tipped with gold, uplifted
and intensely glad of the morning. The buildings walling in Madison
Square were jubilant; the honest red-brick fronts, radiant; the new
marble, witty. The sparrows in the middle of Fifth Avenue were all
talking at once, scandalously but cleverly. The polished brass of
limousines threw off teethy smiles. At least so Mr. Wrenn fancied as he
whisked up Fifth Avenue, the skirts of his small blue double-breasted
coat wagging. He was going blocks out of his way to the office; ready
to defy time and eternity, yes, and even the office manager. He had
awakened with Defiance as his bedfellow, and throughout breakfast at
the hustler Dairy Lunch sunshine had flickered over the dirty
tessellated floor.

He pranced up to the Souvenir Company’s brick building, on
Twenty-eighth Street near Sixth Avenue. In the office he chuckled at
his ink-well and the untorn blotters on his orderly desk. Though he sat
under the weary unnatural brilliance of a mercury-vapor light, he
dashed into his work, and was too keen about this business of living
merrily to be much flustered by the bustle of the lady buyer’s superior
“_Good_ morning.” Even up to ten-thirty he was still slamming down
papers on his desk. Just let any one try to stop his course, his
readiness for snapping fingers at The Job; just let them _try_ it, that
was all he wanted!

Then he was shot out of his chair and four feet along the corridor, in
reflex response to the surly “Bur-r-r-r-r” of the buzzer. Mr. Mortimer
R. Guilfogle, the manager, desired to see him. He scampered along the
corridor and slid decorously through the manager’s doorway into the
long sun-bright room, ornate with rugs and souvenirs. Seven Novelties
glittered on the desk alone, including a large rococo Shakespeare-style
glass ink-well containing cloves and a small iron Pittsburg-style one
containing ink. Mr. Wrenn blinked like a noon-roused owlet in the
brilliance. The manager dropped his fist on the desk, glared, smoothed
his flowered prairie of waistcoat, and growled, his red jowls
quivering:

“Look here, Wrenn, what’s the matter with you? The Bronx Emporium order
for May Day novelties was filled twice, they write me.”

“They ordered twice, sir. By ’phone,” smiled Mr. Wrenn, in an agony of
politeness.

“They ordered hell, sir! Twice—the same order?”

“Yes, sir; their buyer was prob—”

“They say they’ve looked it up. Anyway, they won’t pay twice. I know,
em. We’ll have to crawl down graceful, and all because you—I want to
know why you ain’t more careful!”

The announcement that Mr. Wrenn twice wriggled his head, and once
tossed it, would not half denote his wrath. At last! It was here—the
time for revolt, when he was going to be defiant. He had been careful;
old Goglefogle was only barking; but why should _he_ be barked at? With
his voice palpitating and his heart thudding so that he felt sick he
declared:

“I’m _sure_, sir, about that order. I looked it up. Their buyer was
drunk!”

It was done. And now would he be discharged? The manager was speaking:

“Probably. You looked it up, eh? Um! Send me in the two order-records.
Well. But, anyway, I want you to be more careful after this, Wrenn.
You’re pretty sloppy. Now get out. Expect me to make firms pay twice
for the same order, cause of your carelessness?”

Mr. Wrenn found himself outside in the dark corridor. The manager
hadn’t seemed much impressed by his revolt.

The manager wasn’t. He called a stenographer and dictated:

“Bronx Emporium:

“GENTLEMEN:—Our Mr. Wrenn has again (underline that ‘again,’ Miss
Blaustein), again looked up your order for May Day novelties. As we
wrote before, order certainly was duplicated by ’phone. Our Mr. Wrenn
is thoroughly reliable, and we have his records of these two orders. We
shall therefore have to push collection on both—”

After all, Mr. Wrenn was thinking, the crafty manager might be merely
concealing his hand. Perhaps he had understood the defiance. That
gladdened him till after lunch. But at three, when his head was again
foggy with work and he had forgotten whether there was still April
anywhere, he began to dread what the manager might do to him. Suppose
he lost his job; The Job! He worked unnecessarily late, hoping that the
manager would learn of it. As he wavered home, drunk with weariness,
his fear of losing The Job was almost equal to his desire to resign
from The Job.

He had worked so late that when he awoke on Sunday morning he was still
in a whirl of figures. As he went out to his breakfast of coffee and
whisked wheat at the Hustler Lunch the lines between the blocks of the
cement walk, radiant in a white flare of sunshine, irritatingly
recalled the cross-lines of order-lists, with the narrow cement blocks
at the curb standing for unfilled column-headings. Even the ridges of
the Hustler Lunch’s imitation steel ceiling, running in parallel lines,
jeered down at him that he was a prosaic man whose path was a ruler.

He went clear up to the branch post-office after breakfast to get the
Sunday mail, but the mail was a disappointment. He was awaiting a
wonderful fully illustrated guide to the Land of the Midnight Sun, a
suggestion of possible and coyly improbable trips, whereas he got only
a letter from his oldest acquaintance—Cousin John, of Parthenon, New
York, the boy-who-comes-to-play of Mr. Wrenn’s back-yard days in
Parthenon. Without opening the letter Mr. Wrenn tucked it into his
inside coat pocket, threw away his toothpick, and turned to Sunday
wayfaring.

He jogged down Twenty-third Street to the North River ferries afoot.
Trolleys took money, and of course one saves up for future great
traveling. Over him the April clouds were fetterless vagabonds whose
gaiety made him shrug with excitement and take a curb with a frisk as
gambolsome as a Central Park lamb. There was no hint of sales-lists in
the clouds, at least. And with them Mr. Wrenn’s soul swept along, while
his half-soled Cum-Fee-Best $3.80 shoes were ambling past warehouses.
Only once did he condescend to being really on Twenty-third Street. At
the Ninth Avenue corner, under the grimy Elevated, he sighted two
blocks down to the General Theological Seminary’s brick Gothic and
found in a pointed doorway suggestions of alien beauty.

But his real object was to loll on a West and South Railroad in luxury,
and go sailing out into the foam and perilous seas of North River. He
passed through the smoking-cabin. He didn’t smoke—the habit used up
travel-money. Once seated on the upper deck, he knew that at last he
was outward-bound on a liner. True, there was no great motion, but Mr.
Wrenn was inclined to let realism off easily in this feature of his
voyage. At least there were undoubted life-preservers in the white
racks overhead; and everywhere the world, to his certain witnessing,
was turned to crusading, to setting forth in great ships as if it were
again in the brisk morning of history when the joy of adventure
possessed the Argonauts.

He wasn’t excited over the liners they passed. He was so experienced in
all of travel, save the traveling, as to have gained a calm interested
knowledge. He knew the _Campagnia_ three docks away, and explained to a
Harlem grocer her fine points, speaking earnestly of stacks and sticks,
tonnage and knots.

Not excited, but—where couldn’t he go if he were pulling out for Arcady
on the _Campagnia!_ Gee! What were even the building-block towers of
the Metropolitan and Singer buildings and the _Times’s_ cream-stick
compared with some old shrine in a cathedral close that was misted with
centuries!

All this he felt and hummed to himself, though not in words. He had
never heard of Arcady, though for many years he had been a citizen of
that demesne.

Sure, he declared to himself, he was on the liner now; he was sliding
up the muddy Mersey (see the _W. S. Travel Notes_ for the source of his
visions); he was off to St. George’s Square for an organ-recital (see
the English Baedeker); then an express for London and—Gee!

The ferryboat was entering her slip. Mr. Wrenn trotted toward the bow
to thrill over the bump of the boat’s snub nose against the lofty
swaying piles and the swash of the brown waves heaped before her as she
sidled into place. He was carried by the herd on into the station.

He did not notice the individual people in his exultation as he heard
the great chords of the station’s paean. The vast roof roared as the
iron coursers stamped titanic hoofs of scorn at the little
stay-at-home.

That is a washed-out hint of how the poets might describe Mr. Wrenn’s
passion. What he said was “Gee!”

He strolled by the lists of destinations hung on the track gates.
Chicago (the plains! the Rockies! sunset over mining-camps!),
Washington, and the magic Southland—thither the iron horses would be
galloping, their swarthy smoke manes whipped back by the whirlwind,
pounding out with clamorous strong hoofs their sixty miles an hour.
Very well. In time he also would mount upon the iron coursers and
charge upon Chicago and the Southland; just as soon as he got ready.

Then he headed for Cortlandt Street; for Long Island, City. finally,
the Navy Yard. Along his way were the docks of the tramp steamers where
he might ship as steward in the all-promising Sometime. He had never
done anything so reckless as actually to ask a skipper for the chance
to go a-sailing, but he had once gone into a mission society’s free
shipping-office on West Street where a disapproving elder had grumped
at him, “Are you a sailor? No? Can’t do anything for you, my friend.
Are you saved?” He wasn’t going to risk another horror like that, yet
when the golden morning of Sometime dawned he certainly was going to go
cruising off to palm-bordered lagoons.

As he walked through Long Island City he contrived conversations with
the sailors he passed. It would have surprised a Norwegian bos’un’s
mate to learn that he was really a gun-runner, and that, as a matter of
fact, he was now telling yarns of the Spanish Main to the man who slid
deprecatingly by him.

Mr. Wrenn envied the jackies on the training-ship and carelessly went
to sea as the President’s guest in the admiral’s barge and was
frightened by the stare of a sauntering shop-girl and arrived home
before dusk, to Mrs. Zapp’s straitened approval.

Dusk made incantations in his third-floor-front. Pleasantly fagged in
those slight neat legs, after his walk, Mr. Wrenn sat in the wicker
rocker by the window, patting his scrubby tan mustache and reviewing
the day’s wandering. When the gas was lighted he yearned over pictures
in a geographical magazine for a happy hour, then yawned to himself,
“Well-l-l, Willum, guess it’s time to crawl into the downy.”

He undressed and smoothed his ready-made suit on the rocking-chair
back. Sitting on the edge of his bed, quaint in his cotton night-gown,
like a rare little bird of dull plumage, he rubbed his head sleepily.
Um-m-m-m-m! How tired he was! He went to open the window. Then his
tamed heart leaped into a waltz, and he forgot third-floor-fronts and
sleepiness.

Through the window came the chorus of fog-horns on North River.
“Boom-m-m!” That must be a giant liner, battling up through the fog.
(It was a ferry.) A liner! She’d be roaring just like that if she were
off the Banks! If he were only off the Banks! “Toot! Toot!” That was a
tug. “Whawn-n-n!” Another liner. The tumultuous chorus repeated to him
all the adventures of the day.

He dropped upon the bed again and stared absently at his clothes. Out
of the inside coat pocket stuck the unopened letter from Cousin John.

He read a paragraph of it. He sprang from the bed and danced a
tarantella, pranced in his cottony nightgown like a drunken Yaqui. The
letter announced that the flinty farm at Parthenon, left to Mr. Wrenn
by his father, had been sold. Its location on a river bluff had made it
valuable to the Parthenon Chautauqua Association. There was now to his
credit in the Parthenon National Bank nine hundred and forty dollars!

He was wealthy, then. He had enough to stalk up and down the earth for
many venturesome (but economical) months, till he should learn the
trade of wandering, and its mysterious trick of living without a job or
a salary.

He crushed his pillow with burrowing head and sobbed excitedly, with a
terrible stomach-sinking and a chill shaking. Then he laughed and
wanted to—but didn’t—rush into the adjacent hall room and tell the
total stranger there of this world-changing news. He listened in the
hall to learn whether the Zapps were up, but heard nothing; returned
and cantered up and down, gloating on a map of the world.

“Gee! It’s happened. I could travel all the time. I guess I won’t
be—very much—afraid of wrecks and stuff. . . . Things like that. . . .
Gee! If I don’t get to bed I’ll be late at the office in the morning!”

Mr. Wrenn lay awake till three o’clock. Monday morning he felt rather
ashamed of having done so eccentric a thing. But he got to the office
on time. He was worried with the cares of wealth, with having to decide
when to leave for his world-wanderings, but he was also very much aware
that office managers are disagreeable if one isn’t on time. All morning
he did nothing more reckless than balance his new fortune, plus his
savings, against steamship fares on a waste half-sheet of paper.

The noon-hour was not The Job’s, but his, for exploration of the
parlous lands of romance that lie hard by Twenty-eighth Street and
Sixth Avenue. But he had to go out to lunch with Charley Carpenter, the
assistant bookkeeper, that he might tell the news. As for Charley, He
needed frequently to have a confidant who knew personally the tyrannous
ways of the office manager, Mr. Guilfogle.

Mr. Wrenn and Charley chose (that is to say, Charley chose) a table at
Drubel’s Eating House. Mr. Wrenn timidly hinted, “I’ve got some big
news to tell you.”

But Charley interrupted, “Say, did you hear old Goglefogle light into
me this morning? I won’t stand for it. Say, did you hear him—the old—”

“What was the trouble, Charley?”

“Trouble? Nothing was the trouble. Except with old Goglefogle. I made
one little break in my accounts. Why, if old Gogie had to keep track of
seventy-’leven accounts and watch every single last movement of a fool
girl that can’t even run the adding-machine, why, he’d get green around
the gills. He’d never do anything _but_ make mistakes! Well, I guess
the old codger must have had a bum breakfast this morning. Wanted some
exercise to digest it. Me, I was the exercise—I was the goat. He calls
me in, and he calls me _down_, and me—well, just lemme tell you, Wrenn,
I calls his bluff!”

Charley Carpenter stopped his rapid tirade, delivered with quick
head-shakes like those of palsy, to raise his smelly cigarette to his
mouth. Midway in this slow gesture the memory of his wrongs again
overpowered him. He flung his right hand back on the table, scattering
cigarette ashes, jerked back his head with the irritated patience of a
nervous martyr, then waved both hands about spasmodically, while he
snarled, with his cheaply handsome smooth face more flushed than usual:

“Sure! You can just bet your bottom dollar I let him see from the way I
looked at him that I wasn’t going to stand for no more monkey business.
You bet I did!… I’ll fix him, I will. You just _watch_ me. (Hey,
Drubel, got any lemon merang? Bring me a hunk, will yuh?) Why, Wrenn,
that cross-eyed double-jointed fat old slob, I’ll slam him in the slats
so hard some day—I will, you just watch my smoke. If it wasn’t for that
messy wife of mine—I ought to desert her, and I will some day, and—”

“Yuh.” Mr. Wrenn was curt for a second…. “I know how it is, Charley.
But you’ll get over it, honest you will. Say, I’ve got some news. Some
land that my dad left me has sold for nearly a thousand plunks. By the
way, this lunch is on me. Let me pay for it, Charley.”

Charley promised to let him pay, quite readily. And, expanding, said:

“Great, Wrenn! Great! Lemme congratulate you. Don’t know anybody I’d
rather’ve had this happen to. You’re a meek little baa-lamb, but you’ve
got lots of stuff in you, old Wrennski. Oh say, by the way, could. you
let me have fifty cents till Saturday? Thanks. I’ll pay it back sure.
By golly! you’re the only man around the office that ’preciates what a
double duck-lined old fiend old Goglefogle is, the old—”

“Aw, gee, Charley, I wish you wouldn’t jump on Guilfogle so hard. He’s
always treated me square.”

“Gogie—square? Yuh, he’s square just like a hoop. You know it, too,
Wrenn. Now that you’ve got enough money so’s you don’t need to be
scared about the job you’ll realize it, and you’ll want to soak him,
same’s I do. _Say!_” The impulse of a great idea made him gleefully
shake his fist sidewise. “Say! Why _don’t_ you soak him? They bank on
you at the Souvenir Company. Darn’ sight more than you realize, lemme
tell you. Why, you do about half the stock-keeper’s work, sides your
own. Tell you what you do. You go to old Goglefogle and tell him you
want a raise to twenty-five, and want it right now. Yes, by golly,
_thirty!_ You’re worth that, or pretty darn’ near it, but ’course old
Goglefogle’ll never give it to you. He’ll threaten to fire you if you
say a thing more about it. You can tell him to go ahead, and then
where’ll he be? Guess that’ll call his bluff some!”

“Yes, but, Charley, then if Guilfogle feels he can’t pay me that
much—you know he’s responsible to the directors; he can’t do everything
he wants to—why, he’ll just have to fire me, after I’ve talked to him
like that, whether he wants to or not. And that’d leave us—that’d leave
them—without a sales clerk, right in the busy season.”

“Why, sure, Wrenn; that’s what we want to do. If you go it ’d leave ’em
without just about _two_ men. Bother ’em like the deuce. It ’d bother
Mr. Mortimer X. Y. Guglefugle most of all, thank the Lord. He wouldn’t
know where he was at—trying to break in a man right in the busy season.
Here’s your chance. Come on, kid; don’t pass it up.”

“Oh gee, Charley, I can’t do that. You wouldn’t want me to try to
_hurt_ the Souvenir Company after being there for—lemme see, it must be
seven years.”

“Well, maybe you _like_ to get your cute little nose rubbed on the
grindstone! I suppose you’d like to stay on at nineteen per for the
rest of your life.”

“Aw, Charley, don’t get sore; please don’t! I’d like to get off, all
right—like to go traveling, and stuff like that. Gee! I’d like to
wander round. But I can’t cut out right in the bus—”

“But can’t you see, you poor nut, you won’t be _leaving_ ’em—they’ll
either pay you what they ought to or lose you.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that, Charley.

“Charley was making up for some uncertainty as to his own logic by
beaming persuasiveness, and Mr. Wrenn was afraid of being hypnotized.
“No, no!” he throbbed, rising.

“Well, all right!” snarled Charley, “if you like to be Gogie’s goat….
Oh, you’re all right, Wrennski. I suppose you had ought to stay, if you
feel you got to…. Well, so long. I’ve got to beat it over and buy a
pair of socks before I go back.”

Mr. Wrenn crept out of Drubel’s behind him, very melancholy. Even
Charley admitted that he “had ought to stay,” then; and what chance was
there of persuading the dread Mr. Mortimer R. Guilfogle that he wished
to be looked upon as one resigning? Where, then, any chance of
globe-trotting; perhaps for months he would remain in slavery, and he
had hoped just that morning— One dreadful quarter-hour with Mr.
Guilfogle and he might be free. He grinned to himself as he admitted
that this was like seeing Europe after merely swimming the mid-winter
Atlantic.

Well, he had nine minutes more, by his two-dollar watch; nine minutes
of vagabondage. He gazed across at a Greek restaurant with signs in
real Greek letters like “ruins at—well, at Aythens.” A Chinese
chop-suey den with a red-and-yellow carved dragon, and at an upper
window a squat Chinaman who might easily be carrying a _kris_, “or
whatever them Chink knives are,” as he observed for the hundredth time
he had taken this journey. A rotisserie, before whose upright fender of
scarlet coals whole ducks were happily roasting to a shiny brown. In a
furrier’s window were Siberian foxes’ skins (Siberia! huts of “awful
brave convicks”; the steely Northern Sea; guards in blouses, just as
he’d seen them at an Academy of Music play) and a polar bear (meaning,
to him, the Northern Lights, the long hike, and the _igloo_ at night).
And the florists! There were orchids that (though he only half knew it,
and that all inarticulately) whispered to him of jungles where, in the
hot hush, he saw the slumbering python and—“What was it in that poem,
that, Mandalay, thing? _was_ it about jungles? Anyway:

“‘Them garlicky smells,
And the sunshine and the palms and the bells.’”


He had to hurry back to the office. He stopped only to pat the head of
a florist’s delivery horse that looked wistfully at him from the curb.
“Poor old fella. What you thinking about? Want to be a circus horse and
wander? Le’s beat it together. You can’t, eh? Poor old fella!”

At three-thirty, the time when it seems to office persons that the
day’s work never will end, even by a miracle, Mr. Wrenn was shaky about
his duty to the firm. He was more so after an electrical interview with
the manager, who spent a few minutes, which he happened to have free,
in roaring “I want to know why” at Mr. Wrenn. There was no particular
“why” that he wanted to know; he was merely getting scientific
efficiency out of employees, a phrase which Mr. Guilfogle had taken
from a business magazine that dilutes efficiency theories for
inefficient employers.

At five-twenty the manager summoned him, complimented him on nothing in
particular, and suggested that he stay late with Charley Carpenter and
the stock-keeper to inventory a line of desk-clocks which they were
closing out.

As Mr. Wrenn returned to his desk he stopped at a window on the
corridor and coveted the bright late afternoon. The cornices of lofty
buildings glistened; the sunset shone fierily through the
glass-inclosed layer-like upper floors. He wanted to be out there in
the streets with the shopping crowds. Old Goglefogle didn’t consider
him; why should he consider the firm?




CHAPTER II
HE WALKS WITH MISS THERESA


As he left the Souvenir Company building after working late at taking
inventory and roamed down toward Fourteenth Street, Mr. Wrenn felt
forlornly aimless. The worst of it all was that he could not go to the
Nickelorion for moving pictures; not after having been cut by the
ticket-taker. Then, there before him was the glaring sign of the
Nickelorion tempting him; a bill with “Great Train Robbery Film
Tonight” made his heart thump like stair-climbing—and he dashed at the
ticket-booth with a nickel doughtily extended. He felt queer about the
scalp as the cashier girl slid out a coupon. Why did she seem to be
watching him so closely? As he dropped the ticket in the chopper he
tried to glance away from the Brass-button Man. For one- nineteenth of
a second he kept his head turned. It turned back of itself; he stared
full at the man, half bowed—and received a hearty absent-minded nod and
a “Fine evenin’.” He sang to himself a monotonous song of great joy.
When he stumbled over the feet of a large German in getting to a seat,
he apologized as though he were accustomed to laugh easily with many
friends.

The train-robbery film was—well, he kept repeating “Gee!” to himself
pantingly. How the masked men did sneak, simply sneak and sneak, behind
the bushes! Mr. Wrenn shrank as one of them leered out of the picture
at him. How gallantly the train dashed toward the robbers, to the
spirit-stirring roll of the snare-drum. The rush from the bushes
followed; the battle with detectives concealed in the express-car. Mr.
Wrenn was standing sturdily and shooting coolly with the slender
hawk-faced Pinkerton man in puttees; with him he leaped to horse and
followed the robbers through the forest. He stayed through the whole
program twice to see the train robbery again.

As he started to go out he found the ticket-taker changing his long
light-blue robe of state for a highly commonplace sack-coat without
brass buttons. In his astonishment at seeing how a Highness could be
transformed into an every-day man, Mr. Wrenn stopped, and, having
stopped, spoke:

“Uh—that was quite a—quite a picture—that train robbery. Wasn’t it.”

“Yuh, I guess—Now where’s the devil and his wife flew away to with my
hat? Them guys is always swiping it. Picture, mister? Why, I didn’t see
it no more ’n—Say you, Pink Eye, say you crab-footed usher, did you
swipe my hat? Ain’t he the cut-up, mister! Ain’t both them ushers the
jingling sheepsheads, though! Being cute and hiding my hat in the
box-office. _Picture?_ I don’t get no chance to see any of ’em. Funny,
ain’t it?—me barking for ’em like I was the grandmother of the guy that
invented ’em, and not knowing whether the train robbery—Now who stole
my going-home shoes?… Why, I don’t know whether the train did any
robbing or not!”

He slapped Mr. Wrenn on the back, and the sales clerk’s heart bounded
in comradeship. He was surprised into declaring:

“Say—uh—I bowed to you the other night and you—well, honestly, you
acted like you never saw me.”

“Well, well, now, and that’s what happens to me for being the dad of
five kids and a she-girl and a tom-cat. Sure, I couldn’t ’ve seen you.
Me, I was probably that busy with fambly cares—I was probably thinking
who was it et the lemon pie on me—was it Pete or Johnny, or shall I
lick ’em both together, or just bite me wife.”

Mr. Wrenn knew that the ticket-taker had never, never really considered
biting his wife. _He_ knew! His nod and grin and “That’s the idea!”
were urbanely sophisticated. He urged:

“Oh yes, I’m sure you didn’t intend to hand me the icy mitt. Say! I’m
thirsty. Come on over to Moje’s and I’ll buy you a drink.”

He was aghast at this abyss of money-spending into which he had leaped,
and the Brass-button Man was suspiciously wondering what this person
wanted of him; but they crossed to the adjacent saloon, a New York
corner saloon, which of course “glittered” with a large mirror, heaped
glasses, and a long shining foot-rail on which, in bravado, Mr. Wrenn
placed his Cum-Fee-Best shoe.

“Uh?” said the bartender.

“Rye, Jimmy,” said the Brass-button Man.

“Uh-h-h-h-h,” said Mr. Wrenn, in a frightened diminuendo, now
that—wealthy citizen though he had become—he was in danger of exposure
as a mollycoddle who couldn’t choose his drink properly. “Stummick been
hurting me. Guess I’d better just take a lemonade.”

“You’re the brother-in-law to a wise one,” commented the Brass-button
Man. “Me, I ain’t never got the sense to do the traffic cop on the
booze. The old woman she says to me, ‘Mory,’ she says, ‘if you was in
heaven and there was a pail of beer on one side and a gold harp on the
other,’ she says, ‘and you was to have your pick, which would you
take?’ And what ’d yuh think I answers her?”

“The beer,” said the bartender. “She had your number, all right.”

“Not on your tin-type,” declared the ticket-taker.

“‘Me?’ I says to her. ‘Me? I’d pinch the harp and pawn it for ten
growlers of Dutch beer and some man-sized rum!’”

“Hee, hee hee!” grinned Mr. Wrenn.

“Ha, ha, ha!” grumbled the bartender.

“Well-l-l,” yawned the ticket-taker, “the old woman’ll be chasing me
best pants around the flat, if she don’t have me to chase, pretty soon.
Guess I’d better beat it. Much obliged for the drink, Mr. Uh. So long,
Jimmy.”

Mr. Wrenn set off for home in a high state of exhilaration which, he
noticed, exactly resembled driving an aeroplane, and went briskly up
the steps of the Zapps’ genteel but unexciting residence. He was much
nearer to heaven than West Sixteenth Street appears to be to the
outsider. For he was an explorer of the Arctic, a trusted man on the
job, an associate of witty Bohemians. He was an army lieutenant who
had, with his friend the hawk-faced Pinkerton man, stood off bandits in
an attack on a train. He opened and closed the door gaily.

He was an apologetic little Mr. Wrenn. His landlady stood on the bottom
step of the hall stairs in a bunchy Mother Hubbard, groaning:

“Mist’ Wrenn, if you got to come in so late, Ah wish you wouldn’t just
make all the noise you can. Ah don’t see why Ah should have to be kept
awake all night. Ah suppose it’s the will of the Lord that whenever Ah
go out to see Mrs. Muzzy and just drink a drop of coffee Ah must get
insomina, but Ah don’t see why anybody that tries to be a gennulman
should have to go and bang the door and just rack mah nerves.”

He slunk up-stairs behind Mrs. Zapp’s lumbering gloom.

“There’s something I wanted to tell you, Mrs. Zapp—something that’s
happened to me. That’s why I was out celebrating last evening and got
in so late.” Mr. Wrenn was diffidently sitting in the basement.

“Yes,” dryly, “Ah noticed you was out late, Mist’ Wrenn.”

“You see, Mrs. Zapp, I—uh—my father left me some land, and it’s been
sold for about one thousand plunks.”

“Ah’m awful’ glad, Mist’ Wrenn,” she said, funereally. “Maybe you’d
like to take that hall room beside yours now. The two rooms’d make a
nice apartment.” (She really said “nahs ‘pahtmun’,” you understand.)

“Why, I hadn’t thought much about that yet.” He felt guilty, and was
profusely cordial to Lee Theresa Zapp, the factory forewoman, who had
just thumped down-stairs.

Miss Theresa was a large young lady with a bust, much black hair, and a
handsome disdainful discontented face. She waited till he had finished
greeting her, then sniffed, and at her mother she snarled:

“Ma, they went and kept us late again to-night. I’m getting just about
tired of having a bunch of Jews and Yankees think I’m a nigger. Uff! I
hate them!”

“T’resa, Mist’ Wrenn’s just inherited two thousand dollars, and he’s
going to take that upper hall room.” Mrs. Zapp beamed with maternal
fondness at the timid lodger.

But the gallant friend of Pinkertons faced her—for the first time.
“Waste his travel-money?” he was inwardly exclaiming as he said:

“But I thought you had some one in that room. I heard som—”

“That fellow! Oh, he ain’t going to be perm’nent. And he promised me—So
you can have—”

“I’m _awful_ sorry, Mrs. Zapp, but I’m afraid I can’t take it. Fact is,
I may go traveling for a while.”

“Co’se you’ll keep your room if you do, Mist’ Wrenn?”

“Why, I’m afraid I’ll have to give it up, but—Oh, I may not be going
for a long long while yet; and of course I’ll be glad to come—I’ll want
to come back here when I get back to New York. I won’t be gone for more
than, oh, probably not more than a year anyway, and—”

“And Ah thought you said you was going to be perm’nent!” Mrs. Zapp
began quietly, prefatory to working herself up into hysterics. “And
here Ah’ve gone and had your room fixed up just for you, and new paper
put in, and you’ve always been talking such a lot about how you wanted
your furniture arranged, and Ah’ve gone and made all mah plans—”

Mr. Wrenn had been a shyly paying guest of the Zapps for four years.
That famous new paper had been put up two years before. So he
spluttered: “Oh, I’m _awfully_ sorry. I wish—uh—I don’t—”

“Ah’d _thank_ you, Mist’ Wrenn, if you could _conveniently_ let me
_know_ before you go running off and leaving me with empty rooms, with
the landlord after the rent, and me turning away people that ’d pay
more for the room, because Ah wanted to keep it for you. And people
always coming to see you and making me answer the door and—”

Even the rooming-house worm was making small worm-like sounds that
presaged turning. Lee Theresa snapped just in time, “Oh, cut it out,
Ma, will you!” She had been staring at the worm, for he had suddenly
become interesting and adorable and, incidentally, an heir. “I don’t
see why Mr. Wrenn ain’t giving us all the notice we can expect. He said
he mightn’t be going for a long time.”

“Oh!” grunted Mrs. Zapp. “So mah own flesh and blood is going to turn
against me!”

She rose. Her appearance of majesty was somewhat lessened by the creak
of stays, but her instinct for unpleasantness was always good. She said
nothing as she left them, and she plodded up-stairs with a train of
sighs.

Mr. Wrenn looked as though sudden illness had overpowered him. But
Theresa laughed, and remarked: “You don’t want to let Ma get on her
high horse, Mr. Wrenn. She’s a bluff.”

With much billowing of the lower, less stiff part of her garments, she
sailed to the cloudy mirror over the magazine-filled bookcase and
inspected her cap of false curls, with many prods of her large firm
hands which flashed with Brazilian diamonds. Though he had heard the
word “puffs,” he did not know that half her hair was false. He stared
at it. Though in disgrace, he felt the honor of knowing so ample and
rustling a woman as Miss Lee Theresa.

“But, say, I wish I could ’ve let her know I was going earlier, Miss
Zapp. I didn’t know it myself, but it does seem like a mean trick. I
s’pose I ought to pay her something extra.”

“Why, child, you won’t do anything of the sort. Ma hasn’t got a bit of
kick coming. You’ve always been awful nice, far as I can see.” She
smiled lavishly. “I went for a walk to-night…. I wish all those men
wouldn’t stare at a girl so. I’m sure I don’t see why they should stare
at me.”

Mr. Wrenn nodded, but that didn’t seem to be the right comment, so he
shook his head, then looked frightfully embarrassed.

“I went by that Armenian restaurant you were telling me about, Mr.
Wrenn. Some time I believe I’ll go dine there.” Again she paused.

He said only, “Yes, it is a nice place.”

Remarking to herself that there was no question about it, after all, he
_was_ a little fool, Theresa continued the siege. “Do you dine there
often?”

“Oh yes. It is a nice place.”

“Could a lady go there?”

“Why, yes, I—”

“Yes!”

“I should think so,” he finished.

“Oh!… I do get so awfully tired of the greasy stuff Ma and Goaty dish
up. They think a big stew that tastes like dish-water is a dinner, and
if they do have anything I like they keep on having the same thing
every day till I throw it in the sink. I wish I could go to a
restaurant once in a while for a change, but of course—I dunno’s it
would be proper for a lady to go alone even there. What do you think?
Oh dear!” She sat brooding sadly.

He had an inspiration. Perhaps Miss Theresa could be persuaded to go
out to dinner with him some time. He begged:

“Gee, I wish you’d let me take you up there some evening, Miss Zapp.”

“Now, didn’t I tell you to call me ‘Miss Theresa’? Well, I suppose you
just don’t want to be friends with me. Nobody does.” She brooded again.

“Oh, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Honest I didn’t. I’ve always
thought you’d think I was fresh if I called you ‘Miss Theresa,’ and so
I—”

“Why, I guess I could go up to the Armenian with you, perhaps. When
would you like to go? You know I’ve always got lots of dates but
I—um—let’s see, I think I could go to-morrow evening.”

“Let’s do it! Shall I call for you, Miss—uh—Theresa?”

“Yes, you may if you’ll be a good boy. Good night.” She departed with
an air of intimacy.

Mr. Wrenn scuttled to the Nickelorion, and admitted to the Brass-button
Man that he was “feeling pretty good ’s evening.”

He had never supposed that a handsome creature like Miss Theresa could
ever endure such a “slow fellow” as himself. For about one minute he
considered with a chill the question of whether she was agreeable
because of his new wealth, but reproved the fiend who was making the
suggestion; for had he not heard her mention with great scorn a second
cousin who had married an old Yankee for his money? That just settled
_that_, he assured himself, and scowled at a passing messenger-boy for
having thus hinted, but hastily grimaced as the youngster showed signs
of loud displeasure.

The Armenian restaurant is peculiar, for it has foreign food at low
prices, and is below Thirtieth Street, yet it has not become Bohemian.
Consequently it has no bad music and no crowd of persons from Missouri
whose women risk salvation for an evening by smoking cigarettes. Here
prosperous Oriental merchants, of mild natures and bandit faces, drink
semi-liquid Turkish coffee and discuss rugs and revolutions.

In fact, the place seemed so unartificial that Theresa, facing Mr.
Wrenn, was bored. And the menu was foreign without being Society
viands. It suggested rats’ tails and birds’ nests, she was quite sure.
She would gladly have experimented with _paté de foie gras_ or
alligator-pears, but what social prestige was there to be gained at the
factory by remarking that she “always did like _pahklava_”? Mr. Wrenn
did not see that she was glancing about discontentedly, for he was
delightedly listening to a lanky young man at the next table who was
remarking to his _vis-à-vis_, a pale slithey lady in black, with the
lines of a torpedo-boat: “Try some of the stuffed vine-leaves, child of
the angels, and some wheat _pilaf_ and some _bourma_. Your wheat
_pilaf_ is a comfortable food and cheering to the stomach of man.
Simply _won_-derful. As for the _bourma_, he is a merry beast, a brown
rose of pastry with honey cunningly secreted between his petals
and—Here! Waiter! Stuffed vine-leaves, wheat _p’laf, bourm’_—twice on
the order and hustle it.”

“When you get through listening to that man—he talks like a bar of
soap—tell me what there is on this bill of fare that’s safe to eat,”
snorted Theresa.

“I thought he was real funny,” insisted Mr. Wrenn…. “I’m sure you’ll
like _shish kebab_ and s—”

“_Shish kibub!_ Who ever heard of such a thing! Haven’t they any—oh, I
thought they’d have stuff they call ‘Turkish Delight’ and things like
that.”

“‘Turkish Delights’ is cigarettes, I think.”

“Well, I know it isn’t, because I read about it in a story in a
magazine. And they were eating it. On the terrace…. What is that _shish
kibub_?”

“_Kebab_…. It’s lamb roasted on skewers. I know you’ll like it.”

“Well, I’m not going to trust any heathens to cook my meat. I’ll take
some eggs and some of that—what was it the idiot was talking
about—_berma_?”

“_Bourma_…. That’s awful nice. With honey. And do try some of the
stuffed peppers and rice.”

“All right,” said Theresa, gloomily.

Somehow Mr. Wrenn wasn’t vastly transformed even by the possession of
the two thousand dollars her mother had reported. He was still “funny
and sort of scary,” not like the overpowering Southern gentlemen she
supposed she remembered. Also, she was hungry. She listened with stolid
glumness to Mr. Wrenn’s observation that that was “an awful big hat the
lady with the funny guy had on.”

He was chilled into quietness till Papa Gouroff, the owner of the
restaurant, arrived from above-stairs. Papa Gouroff was a Russian Jew
who had been a police spy in Poland and a hotel proprietor in Mogador,
where he called himself Turkish and married a renegade Armenian. He had
a nose like a sickle and a neck like a blue-gum nigger. He hoped that
the place would degenerate into a Bohemian restaurant where liberal
clergymen would think they were slumming, and barbers would think they
were entering society, so he always wore a _fez_ and talked bad Arabic.
He was local color, atmosphere, Bohemian flavor. Mr. Wrenn murmured to
Theresa:

“Say, do you see that man? He’s Signor Gouroff, the owner. I’ve talked
to him a lot of times. Ain’t he great! Golly! look at that beak of his.
Don’t he make you think of _kiosks_ and _hyrems_ and stuff? Gee! What
does he make you think—”

“He’s got on a dirty collar…. That waiter’s awful slow…. Would you
please be so kind and pour me another glass of water?”

But when she reached the honied _bourma_ she grew tolerant toward Mr.
Wrenn. She had two cups of cocoa and felt fat about the eyes and
affectionate. She had mentioned that there were good shows in town. Now
she resumed:

“Have you been to ‘The Gold Brick’ yet?”

“No, I—uh—I don’t go to the theater much.”

“Gwendolyn Muzzy was telling me that this was the funniest show she’d
ever seen. Tells how two confidence men fooled one of those terrible
little jay towns. Shows all the funny people, you know, like they have
in jay towns…. I wish I could go to it, but of course I have to help
out the folks at home, so— Well…. Oh dear.”

“Say! I’d like to take you, if I could. Let’s go—this evening!” He
quivered with the adventure of it.

“Why, I don’t know; I didn’t tell Ma I was going to be out. But—oh, I
guess it would be all right if I was with you.”

“Let’s go right up and get some tickets.”

“All right.” Her assent was too eager, but she immediately corrected
that error by yawning, “I don’t suppose I’d ought to go, but if you
want to—”

They were a very lively couple as they walked up. He trickled sympathy
when she told of the selfishness of the factory girls under her and the
meanness of the superintendent over her, and he laughed several times
as she remarked that the superintendent “ought to be boiled
alive—that’s what _all_ lobsters ought to be,” so she repeated the
epigram with such increased jollity that they swung up to the theater
in a gale; and, once facing the ennuied ticket-seller, he demanded
dollar seats just as though he had not been doing sums all the way up
to prove that seventy-five-cent seats were the best he could afford.

The play was a glorification of Yankee smartness. Mr. Wrenn was
disturbed by the fact that the swindler heroes robbed quite all the
others, but he was stirred by the brisk romance of money-making. The
swindlers were supermen—blonde beasts with card indices and options
instead of clubs. Not that Mr. Wrenn made any observations regarding
supermen. But when, by way of commercial genius, the swindler robbed a
young night clerk Mr. Wrenn whispered to Theresa, “Gee! he certainly
does know how to jolly them, heh?”

“Sh-h-h-h-h-h!” said Theresa.

Every one made millions, victims and all, in the last act, as a proof
of the social value of being a live American business man. As they
oozed along with the departing audience Mr. Wrenn gurgled:

“That makes me feel just like I’d been making a million dollars.”
Masterfully, he proposed, “Say, let’s go some place and have something
to eat.”

“All right.”

“Let’s—I almost feel as if I could afford Rector’s, after that play;
but, anyway, let’s go to Allaire’s.”

Though he was ashamed of himself for it afterward, he was almost
haughty toward his waiter, and ordered Welsh rabbits and beer quite as
though he usually breakfasted on them. He may even have strutted a
little as he hailed a car with an imaginary walking-stick. His parting
with Miss Theresa was intimate; he shook her hand warmly.

As he undressed he hoped that he had not been too abrupt with the
waiter, “poor cuss.” But he lay awake to think of Theresa’s hair and
hand-clasp; of polished desks and florid gentlemen who curtly summoned
bank-presidents and who had—he tossed the bedclothes about in his
struggle to get the word—who had a _punch!_

He would do that Great Traveling of his in the land of Big Business!

The five thousand princes of New York to protect themselves against the
four million ungrateful slaves had devised the sacred symbols of
dress-coats, large houses, and automobiles as the outward and visible
signs of the virtue of making money, to lure rebels into respectability
and teach them the social value of getting a dollar away from that
inhuman, socially injurious fiend, Some One Else. That Our Mr. Wrenn
should dream for dreaming’s sake was catastrophic; he might do things
because he wanted to, not because they were fashionable; whereupon,
police forces and the clergy would disband, Wall Street and Fifth
Avenue would go thundering down. Hence, for him were provided those Y.
M. C. A. night bookkeeping classes administered by solemn earnest men
of thirty for solemn credulous youths of twenty-nine; those sermons on
content; articles on “building up the rundown store by live
advertising”; Kiplingesque stories about playing the game; and
correspondence-school advertisements that shrieked, “Mount the ladder
to thorough knowledge—the path to power and to the fuller
pay-envelope.”

To all these Mr. Wrenn had been indifferent, for they showed no
imagination. But when he saw Big Business glorified by a humorous
melodrama, then The Job appeared to him as picaresque adventure, and he
was in peril of his imagination.

The eight-o’clock sun, which usually found a wildly shaving Mr. Wrenn,
discovered him dreaming that he was the manager of the Souvenir
Company. But that was a complete misunderstanding of the case. The
manager of the Souvenir Company was Mr. Mortimer R. Guilfogle, and he
called Mr. Wrenn in to acquaint him with that fact when the new magnate
started his career in Big Business by arriving at the office one hour
late.

What made it worse, considered Mr. Guilfogle, was that this Wrenn had a
higher average of punctuality than any one else in the office, which
proved that he knew better. Worst of all, the Guilfogle family eggs had
not been scrambled right at breakfast; they had been anemic. Mr.
Guilfogle punched the buzzer and set his face toward the door, with a
scowl prepared.

Mr. Wrenn seemed weary, and not so intimidated as usual.

“Look here, Wrenn; you were just about two hours late this morning.
What do you think this office is? A club or a reading-room for hoboes?
Ever occur to you we’d like to have you favor us with a call now and
then so’s we can learn how you’re getting along at golf or whatever
you’re doing these days?”

There was a sample baby-shoe office pin-cushion on the manager’s desk.
Mr. Wrenn eyed this, and said nothing. The manager:

“Hear what I said? D’yuh think I’m talking to give my throat exercise?”

Mr. Wrenn was stubborn. “I couldn’t help it.”

“Couldn’t help—! And you call that an explanation! I know just exactly
what you’re thinking, Wrenn; you’re thinking that because I’ve let you
have a lot of chances to really work into the business lately you’re
necessary to us, and not simply an expense—”

“Oh no, Mr. Guilfogle; honest, I didn’t think—”

“Well, hang it, man, you _want_ to think. What do you suppose we pay
you a salary for? And just let me tell you, Wrenn, right here and now,
that if you can’t condescend to spare us some of your valuable time,
now and then, we can good and plenty get along without you.”

An old tale, oft told and never believed; but it interested Mr. Wrenn
just now.

“I’m real glad you can get along without me. I’ve just inherited a big
wad of money! I think I’ll resign! Right now!”

Whether he or Mr. Mortimer R. Guilfogle was the more aghast at hearing
him bawl this no one knows. The manager was so worried at the thought
of breaking in a new man that his eye-glasses slipped off his poor
perspiring nose. He begged, in sudden tones of old friendship:

“Why, you can’t be thinking of leaving us! Why, we expect to make a big
man of you, Wrenn. I was joking about firing you. You ought to know
that, after the talk we had at Mouquin’s the other night. You can’t be
thinking of leaving us! There’s no end of possibilities here.”

“Sorry,” said the dogged soldier of dreams.

“Why—” wailed that hurt and astonished victim of ingratitude, Mr.
Guilfogle.

“I’ll leave the middle of June. That’s plenty of notice,” chirruped Mr.
Wrenn.

At five that evening Mr. Wrenn dashed up to the Brass-button Man at his
station before the Nickelorion, crying:

“Say! You come from Ireland, don’t you?”

“Now what would you think? Me—oh no; I’m a Chinaman from Oshkosh!”

“No, honest, straight, tell me. I’ve got a chance to travel. What d’yuh
think of that? Ain’t it great! And I’m going right away. What I wanted
to ask you was, what’s the best place in Ireland to see?”

“Donegal, o’ course. I was born there.”

Hauling from his pocket a pencil and a worn envelope, Mr. Wrenn
joyously added the new point of interest to a list ranging from Delagoa
Bay to Denver.

He skipped up-town, looking at the stars. He shouted as he saw the
stacks of a big Cunarder bulking up at the end of Fourteenth Street. He
stopped to chuckle over a lithograph of the Parthenon at the window of
a Greek bootblack’s stand. Stars—steamer—temples, all these were his.
He owned them now. He was free.

Lee Theresa sat waiting for him in the basement livingroom till
ten-thirty while he was flirting with trainboards at the Grand Central.
Then she went to bed, and, though he knew it not, that prince of
wealthy suitors, Mr. Wrenn, had entirely lost the heart and hand of
Miss Zapp of the F. F. V.

He stood before the manager’s god-like desk on June 14, 1910. Sadly:

“Good-by, Mr. Guilfogle. Leaving to-day. I wish—Gee! I wish I could
tell you, you know—about how much I appreciate—”

The manager moved a wire basket of carbon copies of letters from the
left side of his desk to the right, staring at them thoughtfully;
rearranged his pencils in a pile before his ink-well; glanced at the
point of an indelible pencil with a manner of startled examination;
tapped his desk-blotter with his knuckles; then raised his eyes. He
studied Mr. Wrenn, smiled, put on the look he used when inviting him
out for a drink. Mr. Guilfogle was essentially an honest fellow,
harshened by The Job; a well-satisfied victim, with the imagination
clean gone out of him, so that he took follow-up letters and the
celerity of office-boys as the only serious things in the world. He was
strong, alive, not at all a bad chap, merely efficient.

“Well, Wrenn, I suppose there’s no use of rubbing it in. Course you
know what I think about the whole thing. It strikes me you’re a fool to
leave a good job. But, after all, that’s your business, not ours. We
like you, and when you get tired of being just a bum, why, come back;
we’ll always try to have a job open for you. Meanwhile I hope you’ll
have a mighty good time, old man. Where you going? When d’yuh start
out?”

“Why, first I’m going to just kind of wander round generally. Lots of
things I’d like to do. I think I’ll get away real soon now…. Thank you
awfully, Mr. Guilfogle, for keeping a place open for me. Course I
prob’ly won’t need it, but gee! I sure do appreciate it.”

“Say, I don’t believe you’re so plumb crazy about leaving us, after
all, now that the cards are all dole out. Straight now, are you?”

“Yes, sir, it does make me feel a little blue—been here so long. But
it’ll be awful good to get out at sea.”

“Yuh, I know, Wrenn. I’d like to go traveling myself—I suppose you
fellows think I wouldn’t care to go bumming around like you do and
never have to worry about how the firm’s going to break even. But—Well,
good-by, old man, and don’t forget us. Drop me a line now and then and
let me know how you’re getting along. Oh say, if you happen to see any
novelties that look good let us hear about them. But drop me a line,
anyway. We’ll always be glad to hear from you. Well, good-by and good
luck. Sure and drop me a line.”

In the corner which had been his home for eight years Mr. Wrenn could
not devise any new and yet more improved arrangement of the wire
baskets and clips and desk reminders, so he cleaned a pen, blew some
gray eraser-dust from under his iron ink-well standard, and decided
that his desk was in order; reflecting:

He’d been there a long time. Now he could never come back to it, no
matter how much he wanted to…. How good the manager had been to him.
Gee! he hadn’t appreciated how considerut Guilfogle was!

He started down the corridor on a round of farewells to the boys. “Too
bad he hadn’t never got better acquainted with them, but it was too
late now. Anyway, they were such fine jolly sports; they’d never miss a
stupid guy like him.”

Just then he met them in the corridor, all of them except Guilfogle,
headed by Rabin, the traveling salesman, and Charley Carpenter, who was
bearing a box of handkerchiefs with a large green-and-crimson-paper
label.

“Gov’nor Wrenn,” orated Charley, “upon this suspicious occasion we have
the pleasure of showing by this small token of our esteem our
’preciation of your untiring efforts in the investigation of Mortimer
R. Gugglegiggle of the Graft Trust and—

“Say, old man, joking aside, we’re mighty sorry you’re going
and—uh—well, we’d like to give you something to show we’re—uh—mighty
sorry you’re going. We thought of a box of cigars, but you don’t smoke
much; anyway, these han’k’chiefs’ll help to show—Three cheers for
Wrenn, fellows!”

Afterward, by his desk, alone, holding the box of handkerchiefs with
the resplendent red-and-green label, Mr. Wrenn began to cry.

He was lying abed at eight-thirty on a morning of late June, two weeks
after leaving the Souvenir Company, deliberately hunting over his
pillow for cool spots, very hot and restless in the legs and enormously
depressed in the soul. He would have got up had there been anything to
get up for. There was nothing, yet he felt uneasily guilty. For two
weeks he had been afraid of losing, by neglect, the job he had already
voluntarily given up. So there are men whom the fear of death has
driven to suicide.

Nearly every morning he had driven himself from bed and had finished
shaving before he was quite satisfied that he didn’t have to get to the
office on time. As he wandered about during the day he remarked with
frequency, “I’m scared as teacher’s pet playing hookey for the first
time, like what we used to do in Parthenon.” All proper persons were at
work of a week-day afternoon. What, then, was he doing walking along
the street when all morality demanded his sitting at a desk at the
Souvenir Company, being a little more careful, to win the divine favor
of Mortimer R. Guilfogle?

He was sure that if he were already out on the Great Traveling he would
be able to “push the buzzer on himself and get up his nerve.” But he
did not know where to go. He had planned so many trips these years that
now he couldn’t keep any one of them finally decided on for more than
an hour. It rather stretched his short arms to embrace at once a gay
old dream of seeing Venice and the stern civic duty of hunting
abominably dangerous beasts in the Guatemala bush.

The expense bothered him, too. He had through many years so
persistently saved money for the Great Traveling that he begrudged
money for that Traveling itself. Indeed, he planned to spend not more
than $300 of the $1,235.80 he had now accumulated, on his first
venture, during which he hoped to learn the trade of wandering.

He was always influenced by a sentence he had read somewhere about “one
of those globe-trotters you meet carrying a monkey-wrench in Calcutta,
then in raiment and a monocle at the Athenaeum.” He would learn some
Kiplingy trade that would teach him the use of astonishingly technical
tools, also daring and the location of smugglers’ haunts, copra
islands, and whaling-stations with curious names.

He pictured himself shipping as third engineer at the Manihiki Islands
or engaged for taking moving pictures of an aeroplane flight in
Algiers. He _had_ to get away from Zappism. He had to be out on the
iron seas, where the battle-ships and liners went by like a marching
military band. But he couldn’t get started.

Once beyond Sandy Hook, he would immediately know all about engines and
fighting. It would help, he was certain, to be shanghaied. But no
matter how wistfully, no matter how late at night he timorously forced
himself to loiter among unwashed English stokers on West Street, he
couldn’t get himself molested except by glib persons wishing ten cents
“for a place to sleep.”

When he had dallied through breakfast that particular morning he sat
about. Once he had pictured sitting about reading travel-books as a
perfect occupation. But it concealed no exciting little surprises when
he could be a Sunday loafer on any plain Monday. Furthermore, Goaty
never made his bed till noon, and the gray-and-brown-patched coverlet
seemed to trail all about the disordered room.

Midway in a paragraph he rose, threw _One Hundred Ways to See
California_ on the tumbled bed, and ran away from Our Mr. Wrenn. But
Our Mr. Wrenn pursued him along the wharves, where the sun glared on
oily water. He had seen the wharves twelve times that fortnight. In
fact, he even cried viciously that “he had seen too blame much of the
blame wharves.”

Early in the afternoon he went to a moving-picture show, but the first
sight of the white giant figures bulking against the gray background
was wearily unreal; and when the inevitable large-eyed black-braided
Indian maiden met the canonical cow-puncher he threshed about in his
seat, was irritated by the nervous click of the machine and the hot
stuffiness of the room, and ran away just at the exciting moment when
the Indian chief dashed into camp and summoned his braves to the
war-path.

Perhaps he could hide from thought at home.

As he came into his room he stood at gaze like a kitten of good family
beholding a mangy mongrel asleep in its pink basket. For on his bed was
Mrs. Zapp, her rotund curves stretching behind her large flat feet,
whose soles were toward him. She was noisily somnolent; her stays
creaked regularly as she breathed, except when she moved slightly and
groaned.

Guiltily he tiptoed down-stairs and went snuffling along the dusty
unvaried brick side streets, wondering where in all New York he could
go. He read minutely a placard advertising an excursion to the
Catskills, to start that evening. For an exhilarated moment he resolved
to go, but—” oh, there was a lot of them rich society folks up there.”
He bought a morning _American_ and, sitting in Union Square, gravely
studied the humorous drawings.

He casually noticed the “Help Wanted” advertisements.

They suggested an uninteresting idea that somehow he might find it
economical to go venturing as a waiter or farm-hand.

And so he came to the gate of paradise:

MEN WANTED. Free passage on cattle-boats to Liverpool feeding cattle.
Low fee. Easy work. Fast boats. Apply International and Atlantic
Employment Bureau,—Greenwich Street.


“Gee!” he cried, “I guess Providence has picked out my first hike for
me.”




CHAPTER III
HE STARTS FOR THE LAND OF ELSEWHERE


The International and Atlantic Employment Bureau is a long dirty room
with the plaster cracked like the outlines on a map, hung with
steamship posters and the laws of New York regarding employment
offices, which are regarded as humorous by the proprietor, M. Baraieff,
a short slender ejaculatory person with a nervous black beard, lively
blandness, and a knowledge of all the incorrect usages of nine
languages. Mr. Wrenn edged into this junk-heap of nationalities with
interested wonder. M. Baraieff rubbed his smooth wicked hands together
and bowed a number of times.

Confidentially leaning across the counter, Mr. Wrenn murmured: “Say, I
read your ad. about wanting cattlemen. I want to make a trip to Europe.
How—?”

“Yes, yes, yes, yes, Mistaire. I feex you up right away. Ten dollars
pleas-s-s-s.”

“Well, what does that entitle me to?”

“I tole you I feex you up. Ha! Ha! I know it; you are a gentleman; you
want a nice leetle trip on Europe. Sure. I feex you right up. I send
you off on a nice easy cattleboat where you won’t have to work much
hardly any. Right away it goes. Ten dollars pleas-s-s-s.”

“But when does the boat start? Where does it start from?” Mr. Wrenn was
a bit confused. He had never met a man who grimaced so politely and so
rapidly.

“Next Tuesday I send you right off.”

Mr. Wrenn regretfully exchanged ten dollars for a card informing
Trubiggs, Atlantic Avenue, Boston, that Mr. “Ren” was to be “ship 1st
poss. catel boat right away and charge my acct. fee paid Baraieff.”
Brightly declaring “I geef you a fine ship,” M. Baraieff added, on the
margin of the card, in copper-plate script, “Best ship, easy work.” He
caroled, “Come early next Tuesday morning, “and bowed out Mr. Wrenn
like a Parisian shopkeeper. The row of waiting servant-girls curtsied
as though they were a hedge swayed by the wind, while Mr. Wrenn
self-consciously hurried to get past them.

He was too excited to worry over the patient and quiet suffering with
which Mrs. Zapp heard the announcement that he was going. That Theresa
laughed at him for a cattleman, while Goaty, in the kitchen, audibly
observed that “nobody but a Yankee would travel in a pig-pen, “merely
increased his joy in moving his belongings to a storage warehouse.

Tuesday morning, clad in a sweater-jacket, tennis-shoes, an old felt
hat, a khaki shirt and corduroys, carrying a suit-case packed to
bursting with clothes and Baedekers, with one hundred and fifty dollars
in express-company drafts craftily concealed, he dashed down to
Baraieff’s hole. Though it was only eight-thirty, he was afraid he was
going to be late.

Till 2 P.M. he sat waiting, then was sent to the Joy Steamship Line
wharf with a ticket to Boston and a letter to Trubiggs’s
shipping-office: “Give bearer Ren as per inclosed receet one trip
England catel boat charge my acct. SYLVESTRE BARAIEFF, N. Y.”

Standing on the hurricane-deck of the Joy Line boat, with his suit-case
guardedly beside him, he crooned to himself tuneless chants with the
refrain, “Free, free, out to sea. Free, free, that’s _me!_” He had
persuaded himself that there was practically no danger of the boat’s
sinking or catching fire. Anyway, he just wasn’t going to be scared. As
the steamer trudged up East River he watched the late afternoon sun
brighten the Manhattan factories and make soft the stretches of
Westchester fields. (Of course, he “thrilled.”)

He had no state-room, but was entitled to a place in a twelve-berth
room in the hold. Here large farmers without their shoes were grumpily
talking all at once, so he returned to the deck; and the rest of the
night, while the other passengers snored, he sat modestly on a canvas
stool, unblinkingly gloating over a sea-fabric of frosty blue that was
shot through with golden threads when they passed lighthouses or ships.
At dawn he was weary, peppery-eyed, but he viewed the flooding light
with approval.

At last, Boston.

The front part of the shipping-office on Atlantic Avenue was a
glass-inclosed room littered with chairs, piles of circulars, old
pictures of Cunarders, older calendars, and directories to be ranked as
antiques. In the midst of these remains a red-headed Yankee of forty,
smoking a Pittsburg stogie, sat tilted back in a kitchen chair, reading
the Boston _American_. Mr. Wrenn delivered M. Baraieff’s letter and
stood waiting, holding his suit-case, ready to skip out and go aboard a
cattle-boat immediately.

The shipping-agent glanced through the letter, then snapped:

“Bryff’s crazy. Always sends ’em too early. Wrenn, you ought to come to
me first. What j’yuh go to that Jew first for? Here he goes and sends
you a day late—or couple days too early. ’F you’d got here last night I
could ’ve sent you off this morning on a Dominion Line boat. All I got
now is a Leyland boat that starts from Portland Saturday. Le’s see;
this is Wednesday. Thursday, Friday—you’ll have to wait three days. Now
you want me to fix you up, don’t you? I might not be able to get you
off till a week from now, but you’d like to get off on a good boat
Saturday instead, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh yes; I _would_. I—”

“Well, I’ll try to fix it. You can see for yourself; boats ain’t
leaving every minute just to please Bryff. And it’s the busy season.
Bunches of rah-rah boys wanting to cross, and Canadians wanting to get
back to England, and Jews beating it to Poland—to sling bombs at the
Czar, I guess. And lemme tell you, them Jews is all right. They’re
willing to pay for a man’s time and trouble in getting ’em fixed up,
and so—”

With dignity Mr. William Wrenn stated, “Of course I’ll be glad
to—uh—make it worth your while.”

“I _thought_ you was a gentleman. Hey, Al! _Al!_” An underfed boy with
few teeth, dusty and grown out of his trousers, appeared. “Clear off a
chair for the gentleman. Stick that valise on top my desk…. Sit down,
Mr. Wrenn. You see, it’s like this: I’ll tell you in confidence, you
understand. This letter from Bryff ain’t worth the paper it’s written
on. He ain’t got any right to be sending out men for cattle-boats. Me,
I’m running that. I deal direct with all the Boston and Portland lines.
If you don’t believe it just go out in the back room and ask any of the
cattlemen out there.”

“Yes, I see,” Mr. Wrenn observed, as though he were ill, and toed an
old almanac about the floor. “Uh—Mr.—Trubiggs, is it?”

“Yump. Yump, my boy. Trubiggs. Tru by name and true by nature. Heh?”

This last was said quite without conviction. It was evidently a joke
which had come down from earlier years. Mr. Wrenn ignored it and
declared, as stoutly as he could:

“You see, Mr. Trubiggs, I’d be willing to pay you—”

“I’ll tell you just how it is, Mr. Wrenn. I ain’t one of these Sheeny
employment bureaus; I’m an American; I like to look out for Americans.
Even if you _didn’t_ come to me first I’ll watch out for your
interests, same’s if they was mine. Now, do you want to get fixed up
with a nice fast boat that leaves Portland next Saturday, just a couple
of days’ wait?”

“Oh yes, I _do_, Mr. Trubiggs.”

“Well, my list is really full—men waiting, too—but if it ’d be worth
five dollars to you to—”

“Here’s the five dollars.”

The shipping-agent was disgusted. He had estimated from Mr. Wrenn’s
cheap sweater-jacket and tennis-shoes that he would be able to squeeze
out only three or four dollars, and here he might have made ten. More
in sorrow than in anger:

“Of course you understand I may have a lot of trouble working you in on
the _next_ boat, you coming as late as this. Course five dollars is
less ’n what I usually get.” He contemptuously tossed the bill on his
desk. “If you want me to slip a little something extra to the agents—”

Mr. Wrenn was too head-achy to be customarily timid. “Let’s see that.
Did I give you only five dollars?” Receiving the bill, he folded it
with much primness, tucked it into the pocket of his shirt, and
remarked:

“Now, you said you’d fix me up for five dollars. Besides, that letter
from Baraieff is a form with your name printed on it; so I know you do
business with him right along. If five dollars ain’t enough, why, then
you can just go to hell, Mr. Trubiggs; yes, sir, that’s what you can
do. I’m just getting tired of monkeying around. If five _is_ enough
I’ll give this back to you Friday, when you send me off to Portland, if
you give me a receipt. There!” He almost snarled, so weary and
discouraged was he.

Now, Trubiggs was a warm-hearted rogue, and he liked the society of
what he called “white people.” He laughed, poked a Pittsburg stogie at
Mr. Wrenn, and consented:

“All right. I’ll fix you up. Have a smoke. Pay me the five Friday, or
pay it to my foreman when he puts you on the cattle-boat. I don’t care
a rap which. You’re all right. Can’t bluff you, eh?”

And, further bluffing Mr. Wrenn, he suggested to him a lodging-house
for his two nights in Boston. “Tell the clerk that red-headed Trubiggs
sent you, and he’ll give you the best in the house. Tell him you’re a
friend of mine.”

When Mr. Wrenn had gone Mr. Trubiggs remarked to some one, by
telephone, “’Nother sucker coming, Blaugeld. Now don’t try to do me out
of my bit or I’ll cap for some other joint, understand? Huh? Yuh, stick
him for a thirty-five-cent bed. S’ long.”

The caravan of Trubiggs’s cattlemen who left for Portland by night
steamer, Friday, was headed by a bulky-shouldered boss, who wore no
coat and whose corduroy vest swung cheerfully open. A motley troupe
were the cattlemen—Jews with small trunks, large imitation-leather
valises and assorted bundles, a stolid prophet-bearded procession of
weary men in tattered derbies and sweat-shop clothes.

There were Englishmen with rope-bound pine chests. A lewd-mouthed
American named Tim, who said he was a hatter out of work, and a
loud-talking tough called Pete mingled with a straggle of hoboes.

The boss counted the group and selected his confidants for the trip to
Portland—Mr. Wrenn and a youth named Morton.

Morton was a square heavy-fleshed young man with stubby hands, who, up
to his eyes, was stolid and solid as a granite monument, but merry of
eye and hinting friendliness in his tousled soft-brown hair. He was
always wielding a pipe and artfully blowing smoke through his nostrils.

Mr. Wrenn and he smiled at each other searchingly as the Portland boat
pulled out, and a wind swept straight from the Land of Elsewhere.

After dinner Morton, smoking a pipe shaped somewhat like a golf-stick
head and somewhat like a toad, at the rail of the steamer, turned to
Mr. Wrenn with:

“Classy bunch of cattlemen we’ve got to go with. Not!… My name’s
Morton.”

“I’m awful glad to meet you, Mr. Morton. My name’s Wrenn.”

“Glad to be off at last, ain’t you?”

“Golly! I should say I _am!_”

“So’m I. Been waiting for this for years. I’m a clerk for the P. R. R.
in N’ York.”

“I come from New York, too.”

“So? Lived there long?”

“Uh-huh, I—” began Mr. Wrenn.

“Well, I been working for the Penn. for seven years now. Now I’ve got a
vacation of three months. On me. Gives me a chance to travel a little.
Got ten plunks and a second-class ticket back from Glasgow. But I’m
going to see England and France just the same. Prob’ly Germany, too.”

“Second class? Why don’t you go steerage, and save?”

“Oh, got to come back like a gentleman. You know. You’re from New York,
too, eh?”

“Yes, I’m with an art-novelty company on Twenty-eighth Street. I been
wanting to get away for quite some time, too…. How are you going to
travel on ten dollars?”

“Oh, work m’ way. Cinch. Always land on my feet. Not on my uppers, at
that. I’m only twenty-eight, but I’ve been on my own, like the English
fellow says, since I was twelve…. Well, how about you? Traveling or
going somewhere?”

“Just traveling. I’m glad we’re going together, Mr. Morton. I don’t
think most of these cattlemen are very nice. Except for the old Jews.
They seem to be fine old coots. They make you think of—oh—you
know—prophets and stuff. Watch ’em, over there, making tea. I suppose
the steamer grub ain’t kosher. I seen one on the Joy Line saying his
prayers—I suppose he was—in a kind of shawl.”

“Well, well! You don’t say so!”

Distinctly, Mr. Wrenn felt that he was one of the gentlemen who, in
Kipling, stand at steamer rails exchanging observations on strange
lands. He uttered, cosmopolitanly:

“Gee! Look at that sunset. Ain’t that grand!”

“Holy smoke! it sure is. I don’t see how anybody could believe in
religion after looking at that.”

Shocked and confused at such a theory, yet excited at finding that
Morton apparently had thoughts, Mr. Wrenn piped: “Honestly, I don’t see
that at _all_. I don’t see how anybody could disbelieve anything after
a sunset like that. Makes me believe all sorts of thing—gets me going—I
imagine I’m all sorts of places—on the Nile and so on.”

“Sure! That’s just it. Everything’s so peaceful and natural. Just _is_.
Gives the imagination enough to do, even by itself, without having to
have religion.”

“Well,” reflected Mr. Wrenn, “I don’t hardly ever go to church. I don’t
believe much in all them highbrow sermons that don’t come down to brass
tacks—ain’t got nothing to do with real folks. But just the same, I
love to go up to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Why, I get real _thrilled_—I
hope you won’t think I’m trying to get high-browed, Mr. Morton.”

“Why, no. Cer’nly not. I understand. Gwan.”

“It gets me going when I look down the aisle at the altar and see the
arches and so on. And the priests in their robes—they look so—so way
up—oh, I dunno just how to say it—so kind of _uplifted_.”

“Sure, I know. Just the esthetic end of the game. Esthetic, you
know—the beauty part of it.”

“Yuh, sure, that’s the word. ’Sthetic, that’s what it is. Yes,
’sthetic. But, just the same, it makes me feel’s though I believed in
all sorts of things.”

“Tell you what I believe may happen, though,” exulted Morton. “This
socialism, and maybe even these here International Workers of the
World, may pan out as a new kind of religion. I don’t know much about
it, I got to admit. But looks as though it might be that way. It’s dead
certain the old political parties are just gangs—don’t stand for
anything except the name. But this comrade business—good stunt.
Brotherhood of man—real brotherhood. My idea of religion. One that is
because it’s got to be, not just because it always has been. Yessir, me
for a religion of guys working together to make things easier for each
other.”

“You bet!” commented Mr. Wrenn, and they smote each other upon the
shoulder and laughed together in a fine flame of shared hope.

“I wish I knew something about this socialism stuff,” mused Mr. Wrenn,
with tilted head, examining the burnt-umber edges of the sunset.

“Great stuff. Not working for some lazy cuss that’s inherited the right
to boss you. And _international_ brotherhood, not just neighborhoods.
New thing.”

“Gee! I surely would like that, awfully,” sighed Mr. Wrenn.

He saw the processional of world brotherhood tramp steadily through the
paling sunset; saffron-vestured Mandarin marching by flax-faced
Norseman and languid South Sea Islander—the diverse peoples toward whom
he had always yearned.

“But I don’t care so much for some of these ranting street-corner
socialists, though,” mused Morton. “The kind that holler ‘Come get
saved _our_ way or go to hell! Keep off scab guides to prosperity.’”

“Yuh, sure. Ha! ha! ha!”

“Huh! huh!”

Morton soon had another thought. “Still, same time, us guys that do the
work have got to work out something for ourselves. We can’t bank on the
rah-rah boys that wear eye-glasses and condescend to like us, cause
they think we ain’t entirely too dirty for ’em to associate with, and
all these writer guys and so on. That’s where you got to hand it to the
street-corner shouters.”

“Yes, that’s _so_. Y’ right there, I guess, all right.”

They looked at each other and laughed again; initiated friends; tasting
each other’s souls. They shared sandwiches and confessions. When the
other passengers had gone to bed and the sailors on watch seemed lonely
the two men were still declaring, shyly but delightedly, that “things
is curious.”

In the damp discomfort of early morning the cattlemen shuffled from the
steamer at Portland and were herded to a lunch-room by the boss, who
cheerfully smoked his corn-cob and ejaculated to Mr. Wrenn and Morton
such interesting facts as:

“Trubiggs is a lobster. You don’t want to let the bosses bluff you
aboard the _Merian_. They’ll try to chase you in where the steers’ll
gore you. The grub’ll be—”

“What grub do you get?”

“Scouse and bread. And water.”

“What’s scouse?”

“Beef stew without the beef. Oh, the grub’ll be rotten. Trubiggs is a
lobster. He wouldn’t be nowhere if ’t wa’n’t for me.”

Mr. Wrenn appreciated England’s need of roast beef, but he timidly
desired not to be gored by steers, which seemed imminent, before
breakfast coffee. The streets were coldly empty, and he was sleepy, and
Morton was silent. At the restaurant, sitting on a high stool before a
pine counter, he choked over an egg sandwich made with thick crumby
slices of a bread that had no personality to it. He roved forlornly
about Portland, beside the gloomy pipe-valiant Morton, fighting two
fears: the company might not need all of them this trip, and he might
have to wait; secondly, if he incredibly did get shipped and started
for England the steers might prove dreadfully dangerous. After intense
thinking he ejaculated, “Gee! it’s be bored or get gored.” Which was
much too good not to tell Morton, so they laughed very much, and at ten
o’clock were signed on for the trip and led, whooping, to the deck of
the S.S. _Merian_.

Cattle were still struggling down the chutes from the dock. The dirty
decks were confusingly littered with cordage and the cattlemen’s
luggage. The Jewish elders stared sepulchrally at the wilderness of
open hatches and rude passageways, as though they were prophesying
death.

But Mr. Wrenn, standing sturdily beside his suit-case to guard it,
fawned with romantic love upon the rusty iron sides of their pilgrims’
caravel; and as the _Merian_ left the wharf with no more
handkerchief-waving or tears than attends a ferry’s leaving he mumbled:

“Free, free, out to sea. Free, free, that’s _me!_”

Then, “Gee!… Gee whittakers!”




CHAPTER IV
HE BECOMES THE GREAT LITTLE BILL WRENN


When the _Merian_ was three days out from Portland the frightened
cattleman stiff known as “Wrennie” wanted to die, for he was now sure
that the smell of the fo’c’sle, in which he was lying on a thin
mattress of straw covered with damp gunny-sacking, both could and would
become daily a thicker smell, a stronger smell, a smell increasingly
diverse and deadly.

Though it was so late as eight bells of the evening, Pete, the tough
factory hand, and Tim, the down-and-out hatter, were still playing
seven-up at the dirty fo’c’sle table, while McGarver, under-boss of the
Morris cattle gang, lay in his berth, heavily studying the game and
blowing sulphurous fumes of Lunch Pail Plug Cut tobacco up toward
Wrennie.

Pete, the tough, was very evil. He sneered. He stole. He bullied. He
was a drunkard and a person without cleanliness of speech. Tim, the
hatter, was a loud-talking weakling, under Pete’s domination. Tim wore
a dirty rubber collar without a tie, and his soul was like his
neckware.

McGarver, the under-boss, was a good shepherd among the men, though he
had recently lost the head foremanship by a spree complicated with
language and violence. He looked like one of the _Merian_ bulls, with
broad short neck and short curly hair above a thick-skinned deeply
wrinkled low forehead. He never undressed, but was always seen, as now,
in heavy shoes and blue-gray woolen socks tucked over the bottoms of
his overalls. He was gruff and kind and tyrannical and honest.

Wrennie shook and drew his breath sharply as the foghorn yawped out its
“Whawn-n-n-n” again, reminding him that they were still in the Bank
fog; that at any moment they were likely to be stunned by a
heart-stopping crash as some liner’s bow burst through the fo’c’sle’s
walls in a collision. Bow-plates buckling in and shredding, the
in-thrust of an enormous black bow, water flooding in, cries
and—However, the horn did at least show that They were awake up there
on the bridge to steer him through the fog; and weren’t They
experienced seamen? Hadn’t They made this trip ever so many times and
never got killed? Wouldn’t They take all sorts of pains on Their own
account as well as on his?

But—just the same, would he really ever get to England alive? And if he
did, would he have to go on holding his breath in terror for nine more
days? Would the fo’c’sle always keep heaving up—up—up, like this, then
down—down—down, as though it were going to sink?

“How do yuh like de fog-horn, Wrennie?”

Pete, the tough, spit the question up at him from a corner of his
mouth. “Hope we don’t run into no ships.”

He winked at Tim, the weakling hatter, who took the cue and mourned:

“I’m kinda afraid we’re going to, ain’t you, Pete? The mate was telling
me he was scared we would.”

“Sures’ t’ing you know. Hey, Wrennie, wait till youse have to beat it
down-stairs and tie up a bull in a storm. Hully gee! Youse’ll last
quick on de game, Birdie!”

“Oh, shut up,” snapped Wrennie’s friend Morton.

But Morton was seasick; and Pete, not heeding him, outlined other
dangers which he was happily sure were threatening them. Wrennie
shivered to hear that the “grub ’d git worse.” He writhed under Pete’s
loud questions about his loss, in some cattle-pen, of the
gray-and-scarlet sweater-jacket which he had proudly and gaily
purchased in New York for his work on the ship. And the card-players
assured him that his suit-case, which he had intrusted to the Croac
ship’s carpenter, would probably be stolen by “Satan.”

Satan! Wrennie shuddered still more. For Satan, the gaunt-jawed
hook-nosed rail-faced head foreman, diabolically smiling when angry,
sardonically sneering when calm, was a lean human whip-lash. Pete
sniggered. He dilated upon Satan’s wrath at Wrennie for not “coming
across” with ten dollars for a bribe as he, Pete, had done.

(He lied, of course. And his words have not been given literally. They
were not beautiful words.)

McGarver, the straw-boss, would always lie awake to enjoy a good brisk
indecent story, but he liked Wrennie’s admiration of him, so, lunging
with his bull-like head out of his berth, he snorted:

“Hey, you, Pete, it’s time to pound your ear. Cut it out.”

Wrennie called down, sternly, “I ain’t no theological student, Pete,
and I don’t mind profanity, but I wish you wouldn’t talk like a
garbage-scow.”

“Hey, Poicy, did yuh bring your dictionary?” Pete bellowed to Tim, two
feet distant from him. To Wrennie, “Say, Gladys, ain’t you afraid one
of them long woids like, t’eological, will turn around and bite you
right on the wrist?”

“Dry up!” irritatedly snapped a Canadian.

“Aw, cut it out, you—,” groaned another.

“Shut up,” added McGarver, the straw-boss. “Both of you.” Raging: “Gwan
to bed, Pete, or I’ll beat your block clean off. I mean it, see? _Hear
me?_”

Yes, Pete heard him. Doubtless the first officer on the bridge heard,
too, and perhaps the inhabitants of Newfoundland. But Pete took his
time in scratching the back of his neck and stretching before he
crawled into his berth. For half an hour he talked softly to Tim, for
Wrennie’s benefit, stating his belief that Satan, the head boss, had
once thrown overboard a Jew much like Wrennie, and was likely thus to
serve Wrennie, too. Tim pictured the result when, after the capsizing
of the steamer which would undoubtedly occur if this long sickening
motion kept up, Wrennie had to take to a boat with Satan.

The fingers of Wrennie curled into shape for strangling some one.

When Pete was asleep he worried off into thin slumber.

Then, there was Satan, the head boss, jerking him out of his berth,
stirring his cramped joints to another dawn of drudgery—two hours of
work and two of waiting before the daily eight-o’clock insult called
breakfast. He tugged on his shoes, marveling at Mr. Wrenn’s really
being there, at his sitting in cramped stoop on the side of a berth in
a dark filthy place that went up and down like a freight elevator,
subject to the orders of persons whom he did not in the least like.

Through the damp gray sea-air he staggered hungrily along the gangway
to the hatch amidships, and trembled down the iron ladder to McGarver’s
crew ’tween-decks.

First, watering the steers. Sickened by walking backward with pails of
water he carried till he could see and think of nothing in the world
save the water-butt, the puddle in front of it, and the cattlemen
mercilessly dipping out pails there, through centuries that would never
end. How those steers did drink!

McGarver’s favorite bull, which he called “the Grenadier,” took ten
pails and still persisted in leering with dripping gray mouth beyond
the headboard, trying to reach more. As Wrennie was carrying a pail to
the heifers beyond, the Grenadier’s horn caught and tore his overalls.
The boat lurched. The pail whirled out of his hand. He grasped an iron
stanchion and kicked the Grenadier in the jaw till the steer backed
off, a reformed character.

McGarver cheered, for such kicks were a rule of the game.

“Good work,” ironically remarked Tim, the weakling hatter.

“You go to hell,” snapped Wrennie, and Tim looked much more respectful.

But Wrennie lost this credit before they had finished feeding out the
hay, for he grew too dizzy to resent Tim’s remarks.

Straining to pitch forkfuls into the pens while the boat rolled,
slopping along the wet gangway, down by the bunkers of coal, where the
heat seemed a close-wound choking shroud and the darkness was made only
a little pale by light coming through dust-caked port-holes, he sneezed
and coughed and grunted till he was exhausted. The floating bits of
hay-dust were a thousand impish hands with poisoned nails scratching at
the roof of his mouth. His skin prickled all over. He constantly
discovered new and aching muscles. But he wabbled on until he finished
the work, fifteen minutes after Tim had given out.

He crawled up to the main deck and huddled in the shelter of a pile of
hay-bales where Pete was declaring to Tim and the rest that Satan
“couldn’t never get nothing on him.”

Morton broke into Pete’s publicity with the question, “Say, is it
straight what they say, Pete, that you’re the guy that owns the Leyland
Line and that’s why you know so much more than the rest of us poor
lollops? Watson, the needle, quick!” [Applause and laughter.]

Wrennie felt personally grateful to Morton for this, but he went up to
the aft top deck, where he could lie alone on a pile of tarpaulins. He
made himself observe the sea which, as Kipling and Jack London had
specifically promised him in their stories, surrounded him, everywhere
shining free; but he glanced at it only once. To the north was a liner
bound for home.

Home! Gee! That _was_ rubbing it in! While at work, whether he was sick
or not, he could forget—things. But the liner, fleeting on with bright
ease, made the cattle-boat seem about as romantic as Mrs. Zapp’s
kitchen sink.

Why, he wondered—“why had he been a chump? Him a wanderer? No; he was a
hired man on a sea-going dairy-farm. Well, he’d get onto this
confounded job before he was through with it, but then—gee! back to
God’s Country!”

While the _Merian_, eleven days out, pleasantly rocked through the
Irish Sea, with the moon revealing the coast of Anglesey, one Bill
Wrenn lay on the after-deck, condescending to the heavens. It was so
warm that they did not need to sleep below, and half a dozen of the
cattlemen had brought their mattresses up on deck. Beside Bill Wrenn
lay the man who had given him that name—Tim, the hatter, who had become
weakly alarmed and admiring as Wrennie learned to rise feeling like a
boy in early vacation-time, and to find shouting exhilaration in
sending a forkful of hay fifteen good feet.

Morton, who lay near by, had also adopted the name “Bill Wrenn.” Most
of the trip Morton had discussed Pete and Tim instead of the fact that
“things is curious.” Mr. Wrenn had been jealous at first, but when he
learned from Morton the theory that even a Pete was a “victim of
’vironment” he went out for knowing him quite systematically.

To McGarver he had been “Bill Wrenn” since the fifth day, when he had
kept a hay-bale from slipping back into the hold on the boss’s head.
Satan and Pete still called him “Wrennie,” but he was not thinking
about them just now with Tim listening admiringly to his observations
on socialism.

Tim fell asleep. Bill Wrenn lay quiet and let memory color the sky
above him. He recalled the gardens of water which had flowered in foam
for him, strange ships and nomadic gulls, and the schools of sleekly
black porpoises that, for him, had whisked through violet waves. Most
of all, he brought back the yesterday’s long excitement and delight of
seeing the Irish coast hills—his first foreign land—whose faint sky
fresco had seemed magical with the elfin lore of Ireland, a country
that had ever been to him the haunt not of potatoes and politicians,
but of fays. He had wanted fays. They were not common on the asphalt of
West Sixteenth Street. But now he had seen them beckoning in
Wanderland.

He was falling asleep under the dancing dome of the sky, a happy Mr.
Wrenn, when he was aroused as a furious Bill, the cattleman. Pete was
clogging near by, singing hoarsely, “Dey was a skoit and ’er name was
Goity.”

“You shut up!” commanded Bill Wrenn.

“Say, be careful!” the awakened Tim implored of him. Pete snorted: “Who
says to ‘shut up,’ hey? Who was it, Satan?”

From the capstan, where he was still smoking, the head foreman
muttered: “What’s the odds? The little man won’t say it again.”

Pete stood by Bill Wrenn’s mattress. “Who said ‘shut up’?” sounded
ominously.

Bill popped out of bed with what he regarded as a vicious
fighting-crouch. For he was too sleepy to be afraid. “I did! What you
going to do about it?” More mildly, as a fear of his own courage began
to form, “I want to sleep.”

“Oh! You want to sleep. Little mollycoddle wants to sleep, does he?
Come here!”

The tough grabbed at Bill’s shirt-collar across the mattress. Bill
ducked, stuck out his arm wildly, and struck Pete, half by accident.
Roaring, Pete bunted him, and he went down, with Pete kneeling on his
stomach and pounding him.

Morton and honest McGarver, the straw-boss, sprang to drag off Pete,
while Satan, the panther, with the first interest they had ever seen in
his eyes, snarled: “Let ’em fight fair. Rounds. You’re a’ right, Bill.”

“Right,” commended Morton.

Armored with Satan’s praise, firm but fearful in his rubber sneakers,
surprised and shocked to find himself here doing this, Bill Wrenn
squared at the rowdy. The moon touched sadly the lightly sketched
Anglesey coast and the rippling wake, but Bill Wrenn, oblivious of
dream moon and headland, faced his fellow-bruiser.

They circled. Pete stuck out his foot gently. Morton sprang in, bawling
furiously, “None o’ them rough-and-tumble tricks.”

“Right-o,” added McGarver.

Pete scowled. He was left powerless. He puffed and grew dizzy as Bill
Wrenn danced delicately about him, for he could do nothing without
back-street tactics. He did bloody the nose of Bill and pummel his
ribs, but many cigarettes and much whisky told, and he was ready to
laugh foolishly and make peace when, at the end of the sixth round, he
felt Bill’s neat little fist in a straight—and entirely accidental—rip
to the point of his jaw.

Pete sent his opponent spinning with a back-hander which awoke all the
cruelty of the terrible Bill. Silently Bill Wrenn plunged in with a
smash! smash! smash! like a murderous savage, using every grain of his
strength.

Let us turn from the lamentable luck of Pete. He had now got the idea
that his supposed victim could really fight. Dismayed, shocked,
disgusted, he stumbled and sought to flee, and was sent flat.

This time it was the great little Bill who had to be dragged off.
McGarver held him, kicking and yammering, his mild mustache bristling
like a battling cat’s, till the next round, when Pete was knocked out
by a clumsy whirlwind of fists.

He lay on the deck, with Bill standing over him and demanding, “What’s
my name, _heh?_”

“I t’ink it’s Bill now, all right, Wrennie, old hoss—Bill, old hoss,”
groaned Pete.

He was permitted to sneak off into oblivion.

Bill Wrenn went below. In the dark passage by the fidley he fell to
tremorous weeping. But the brackish hydrant water that stopped his
nose-bleed saved him from hysterics. He climbed to the top deck, and
now he could again see his brother pilgrim, the moon.

The stiffs and bosses were talking excitedly of the fight. Tim rushed
up to gurgle: “Great, Bill, old man! You done just what I’d ’a’ done if
he’d cussed me. I told you Pete was a bluffer.”

“Git out,” said Satan.

Tim fled.

Morton came up, looked at Bill Wrenn, pounded him on the shoulder, and
went off to his mattress. The other stiffs slouched away, but McGarver
and Satan were still discussing the fight.

Snuggling on the hard black pile of tarpaulins, Bill talked to them,
warmed to them, and became Mr. Wrenn. He announced his determination to
wander adown every shining road of Europe.

“Nice work.” “Sure.” “You’ll make a snappy little ole globe-trotter.”
“Sure; ought to be able to get the slickest kind of grub for four bits
a day.” “Nice work,” Satan interjected from time to time, with smooth
irony. “Sure. Go ahead. Like to hear your plans.”

McGarver broke in: “Cut that out, Marvin. You’re a ‘Satan’ all right.
Quit your kidding the little man. He’s all right. And he done fine on
the job last three-four days.”

Lying on his mattress, Bill stared at the network of the ratlines
against the brilliant sky. The crisscross lines made him think of the
ruled order-blanks of the Souvenir Company.

“Gee!” he mused, “I’d like to know if Jake is handling my work the way
we—they—like it. I’d like to see the old office again, and Charley
Carpenter, just for a couple of minutes. Gee! I wish they could have
seen me put it all over Pete to-night! That’s what I’m going to do to
the blooming Englishmen if they don’t like me.”

The S.S. _Merian_ panted softly beside the landing-stage at Birkenhead,
Liverpool’s Jersey City, resting in the sunshine after her voyage,
while the cattle were unloaded. They had encountered fog-banks at the
mouth of the Mersey River. Mr. Wrenn had ecstatically watched the
shores of England—_England!_—ride at him through the fog, and had
panted over the lines of English villas among the dunes. It was like a
dream, yet the shore had such amazingly safe solid colors, real red and
green and yellow, when contrasted with the fog-wet deck unearthily
glancing with mist-lights.

Now he was seeing his first foreign city, and to Morton, stolidly
curious beside him, he could say nothing save “Gee!” With church-tower
and swarthy dome behind dome, Liverpool lay across the Mersey. Up
through the Liverpool streets that ran down to the river, as though
through peep-holes slashed straight back into the Middle Ages, his
vision plunged, and it wandered unchecked through each street while he
hummed:

“Free, free, in Eu-ro-pee, that’s _me!_”

The cattlemen were called to help unload the remaining hay. They made a
game of it. Even Satan smiled, even the Jewish elders were lightly
affable as they made pretendedly fierce gestures at the squat patient
hay-bales. Tim, the hatter, danced a limber foolish jig upon the deck,
and McGarver bellowed, “The bon-nee bon-nee banks of Loch
Lo-o-o-o-mond.”

The crowd bawled: “Come on, Bill Wrenn; your turn. Hustle up with that
bale, Pete, or we’ll sic Bill on you.”

Bill Wrenn, standing very dignified, piped: “I’m Colonel Armour. I own
all these cattle, ’cept the Morris uns, see? Gotta do what I say,
savvy? Tim, walk on your ear.”

The hatter laid his head on the deck and waved his anemic legs in
accordance with directions from Colonel Armour (late Wrenn).

The hay was off. The _Merian_ tooted and headed across the Mersey to
the Huskinson Dock, in Liverpool, while the cattlemen played tag about
the deck. Whooping and laughing, they made last splashy toilets at the
water-butts, dragged out their luggage, and descended to the
dock-house.

As the cattlemen passed Bill Wrenn and Morton, shouting affectionate
good-bys in English or courteous Yiddish, Bill commented profanely to
Morton on the fact that the solid stone floor of the great shed seemed
to have enough sea-motion to “make a guy sick.” It was nearly his last
utterance as Bill Wrenn. He became Mr. Wrenn, absolute Mr. Wrenn, on
the street, as he saw a real English bobby, a real English carter, and
the sign, “Cocoa House. Tea _Id_.”

England!

“Now for some real grub!” cried Morton. “No more scouse and willow-leaf
tea.”

Stretching out their legs under a table glorified with toasted Sally
Lunns and Melton Mowbrays, served by a waitress who said “Thank _you_”
with a rising inflection, they gazed at the line of mirrors running
Britishly all around the room over the long lounge seat, and smiled
with the triumphant content which comes to him whose hunger for dreams
and hunger for meat-pies are satisfied together.




CHAPTER V
HE FINDS MUCH QUAINT ENGLISH FLAVOR


Big wharves, all right. England sure is queen of the sea, heh? Busy
town, Liverpool. But, say, there is a quaint English flavor to these
shops…. Look at that: ‘Red Lion Inn.’… ‘Overhead trams’ they call the
elevated. Real flavor, all right. English as can be…. I sure like to
wander around these little shops. Street crowd. That’s where you get
the real quaint flavor.”

Thus Morton, to the glowing Mr. Wrenn, as they turned into St. George’s
Square, noting the Lipton’s Tea establishment. _Sir_ Thomas
Lipton—wasn’t he a friend of the king? Anyway, he was some kind of a
lord, and he owned big society racing-yachts.

In the grandiose square Mr. Wrenn prayerfully remarked, “Gee!”

“Greek temple. Fine,” agreed Morton.

“That’s St. George’s Hall, where they have big organ concerts,”
explained Mr. Wrenn. “And there’s the art-gallery across the Square,
and here’s the Lime Street Station.” He had studied his Baedeker as
club women study the cyclopedia. “Let’s go over and look at the
trains.”

“Funny little boxes, ain’t they, Wrenn, them cars! Quaint things. What
is it they call ’em—carriages? First, second, third class….”

“Just like in books.”

“Booking-office. That’s tickets…. Funny, eh?”

Mr. Wrenn insisted on paying for both their high teas at the cheap
restaurant, timidly but earnestly. Morton was troubled. As they sat on
a park bench, smoking those most Anglican cigarettes, “Dainty Bits,”
Mr. Wrenn begged:

“What’s the matter, old man?”

“Oh, nothing. Just thinking.” Morton smiled artificially. He added,
presently: “Well, old Bill, got to make the break. Can’t go on living
on you this way.”

“Aw, thunder! You ain’t living on me. Besides, I want you to. Honest I
do. We can have a whole lot better time together, Morty.”

“Yes, but—Nope; I can’t do it. Nice of you. Can’t do it, though. Got to
go on my own, like the fellow says.”

“Aw, come on. Look here; it’s my money, ain’t it? I got a right to
spend it the way I want to, haven’t I? Aw, come on. We’ll bum along
together, and then when the money is gone we’ll get some kind of job
together. Honest, I want you to.”

“Hunka. Don’t believe you’d care for the kind of knockabout jobs I’ll
have to get.”

“Sure I would. Aw, come on, Morty. I—”

“You’re too level-headed to like to bum around like a fool hobo. You’d
dam soon get tired of it.”

“What if I did? Morty, look here. I’ve been learning something on this
trip. I’ve always wanted to just do one thing—see foreign places. Well,
I want to do that just as much as ever. But there’s something that’s a
whole lot more important. Somehow, I ain’t ever had many friends. Some
ways you’re about the best friend I’ve ever had—you ain’t neither too
highbrow or too lowbrow. And this friendship business—it means such an
awful lot. It’s like what I was reading about—something by Elbert
Hubbard or—thunder, I can’t remember his name, but, anyway, it’s one of
those poet guys that writes for the back page of the
_Journal_—something about a _joyous adventure_. That’s what being
friends is. Course you understand I wouldn’t want to say this to most
people, but you’ll understand how I mean. It’s—this friendship business
is just like those old crusaders— you know—they’d start out on a fine
morning—you know; armor shining, all that stuff. It wouldn’t make any
dif. what they met as long as they was fighting together. Rainy nights
with folks sneaking through the rain to get at ’em, and all sorts of
things— ready for anything, long as they just stuck together. That’s
the way this friendship business is, I b’lieve. Just like it said in
the _Journal_. Yump, sure is. Gee! it’s—Chance to tell folks what you
think and really get some fun out of seeing places together. And I
ain’t ever done it much. Course I don’t mean to say I’ve been living
off on any blooming desert island all my life, but, just the same, I’ve
always been kind of alone—not knowing many folks. You know how it is in
a New York rooming-house. So now—Aw, don’t slip up on me, Morty.
Honestly, I don’t care what kind of work we do as long as we can stick
together; I don’t care a hang if we don’t get anything better to do
than scrub floors!”

Morton patted his arm and did not answer for a while. Then:

“Yuh, I know how you mean. And it’s good of you to like beating it
around with me. But you sure got the exaggerated idee of me. And you’d
get sick of the holes I’m likely to land in.”

There was a certain pride which seemed dreadfully to shut Mr. Wrenn out
as Morton added:

“Why, man, I’m going to do all of Europe. From the Turkish jails to—oh,
St. Petersburg…. You made good on the _Merian_, all right. But you do
like things shipshape.”

“Oh, I’d—”

“We might stay friends if we busted up now and met in New York again.
But not if you get into all sorts of bum places w—”

“Why, look here, Morty—”

“—with me…. However, I’ll think it over. Let’s not talk about it till
to-morrow.”

“Oh, please do think it over, Morty, old man, won’t you? And to-night
you’ll let me take you to a music-hall, won’t you?”

“Uh—yes,” Morton hesitated.

A music-hall—not mere vaudeville! Mr. Wrenn could hardly keep his feet
on the pavement as they scampered to it and got ninepenny seats. He
would have thought it absurd to pay eighteen cents for a ticket, but
pence—They were out at nine-thirty. Happily tired, Mr. Wrenn suggested
that they go to a temperance hotel at his expense, for he had read in
Baedeker that temperance hotels were respectable—also cheap.

“No, no!” frowned Morton. “Tell you what you do, Bill. You go to a
hotel, and I’ll beat it down to a lodging-house on Duke Street…. Juke
Street!… Remember how I ran onto Pete on the street? He told me you
could get a cot down there for fourpence.”

“Aw, come on to a hotel. Please do! It ’d just hurt me to think of you
sleeping in one of them holes. I wouldn’t sleep a bit if—”

“Say, for the love of Mike, Wrenn, get wise! Get wise, son! I’m not
going to sponge on you, and that’s all there is to it.”

Bill Wrenn strode into their company for a minute, and quoth the
terrible Bill:

“Well, you don’t need to get so sore about it. I don’t go around asking
folks can I give ’em a meal ticket all the time, let me tell you, and
when I do—Oh rats! Say, I didn’t mean to get huffy, Morty. But, doggone
you, old man, you can’t shake me this easy. I sye, old top, I’m peeved;
yessir. We’ll go Dutch to a lodging-house, or even walk the streets.”

“All right, sir; all right. I’ll take you up on that. We’ll sleep in an
areaway some place.”

They walked to the outskirts of Liverpool, questing the desirable dark
alley. Awed by the solid quietude and semigrandeur of the large private
estates, through narrow streets where dim trees leaned over high walls
whose long silent stretches were broken only by mysterious little
doors, they tramped bashfully, inspecting, but always rejecting, nooks
by lodge gates.

They came to a stone church with a porch easily reached from the
street, a large and airy stone porch, just suited, Morton declared, “to
a couple of hoboes like us. If a bobby butts in, why, we’ll just slide
under them seats. Then the bobby can go soak his head.”

Mr. Wrenn had never so far defied society as to steal a place for
sleeping. He felt very uneasy, like a man left naked on the street by
robbers, as he rolled up his coat for a pillow and removed his shoes in
a place that was perfectly open to the street. The paved floor was cold
to his bare feet, and, as he tried to go to sleep, it kept getting
colder and colder to his back. Reaching out his hand, he fretfully
rubbed the cracks between stones. He scowled up at the ceiling of the
porch. He couldn’t bear to look out through the door, for it framed the
vicar’s house, with lamplight bodying forth latticed windows,
suggesting soft beds and laughter and comfortable books. All the while
his chilled back was aching in new places.

He sprang up, put on his shoes, and paced the churchyard. It seemed a
great waste of educational advantages not to study the tower of this
foreign church, but he thought much more about his aching
shoulder-blades.

Morton came from the porch stiff but grinning. “Didn’t like it much,
eh, Bill? Afraid you wouldn’t. Must say I didn’t either, though. Well,
come on. Let’s beat it around and see if we can’t find a better place.”

In a vacant lot they discovered a pile of hay. Mr. Wrenn hardly winced
at the hearty slap Morton gave his back, and he pronounced, “Some
Waldorf-Astoria, that stack!” as they sneaked into the lot. They had
laid loving hands upon the hay, remarking, “Well, I _guess!_” when they
heard from a low stable at the very back of the lot:

“I say, you chaps, what are you doing there?”

A reflective carter, who had been twisting two straws, ambled out of
the shadow of the stable and prepared to do battle.

“Say, old man, can’t we sleep in your hay just to-night?” argued
Morton. “We’re Americans. Came over on a cattle-boat. We ain’t got only
enough money to last us for food,” while Mr. Wrenn begged, “Aw, please
let us.”

“Oh! You’re Americans, are you? You seem decent enough. I’ve got a
brother in the States. He used to own this stable with me. In St.
Cloud, Minnesota, he is, you know. Minnesota’s some kind of a shire.
Either of you chaps been in Minnesota?”

“Sure,” lied Morton; “I’ve hunted bear there.”

“Oh, I say, bear now! My brother’s never written m—”

“Oh, that was way up in the northern part, in the Big Woods. I’ve had
some narrow escapes.”

Then Morton, who had never been west of Pittsburg, sang somewhat in
this wise the epic of the hunting he had never done:

Alone. Among the pines. Dead o’ winter. Only one shell in his rifle.
Cold of winter. Snow—deep snow. Snow-shoes. Hiking along—reg’lar
mushing—packing grub to the lumber-camp. Way up near the Canadian
border. Cold, terrible cold. Stars looked like little bits of steel.

Mr. Wrenn thought he remembered the story. He had read it in a
magazine. Morton was continuing:

Snow stretched out among the pines. He was wearing a Mackinaw and
shoe-packs. Saw a bear loping along. He had—Morton had—a .44-.40
Marlin, but only one shell. Thrust the muzzle of his rifle right into
the bear’s mouth. Scared for a minute. Almost fell off his snow-shoes.
Hardest thing he ever did, to pull that trigger. Fired. Bear sort of
jumped at him, then rolled over, clawing. Great place, those Minnesota
Big—

“What’s a shoe-pack?” the Englishman stolidly interjected.

“Kind of a moccasin…. Great place, those woods. Hope your brother gets
the chance to get up there.”

“I say, I wonder did you ever meet him? Scrabble is his name, Jock
Scrabble.”

“Jock Scrabble—no, but _say!_ By golly, there was a fellow up in the
Big Woods that came from St. Cl—St. Cloud? Yes, that was it. He was
telling us about the town. I remember he said your brother had great
chances there.”

The Englishman meditatively accepted a bad cigar from Mr. Wrenn.
Suddenly: “You chaps can sleep in the stable-loft if you’d like. But
you must blooming well stop smoking.”

So in the dark odorous hay-mow Mr. Wrenn stretched out his legs with an
affectionate “good night” to Morton. He slept nine hours. When he
awoke, at the sound of a chain clanking in the stable below, Morton was
gone. This note was pinned to his sleeve:

DEAR OLD MAN,—I still feel sure that you will not enjoy the hiking.
Bumming is not much fun for most people, I don’t think, even if they
say it is. I do not want to live on you. I always did hate to graft on
people. So I am going to beat it off alone. But I hope I will see you
in N Y & we will enjoy many a good laugh together over our trip. If you
will phone the P. R. R. you can find out when I get back & so on. As I
do not know what your address will be. Please look me up & I hope you
will have a good trip.


Yours truly,
HARRY P. MORTON.


Mr. Wrenn lay listening to the unfriendly rattling of the chain harness
below for a long time. When he crawled languidly down from the hay-loft
he glowered in a manner which was decidedly surly even for Bill Wrenn
at a middle-aged English stranger who was stooping over a cow’s hoof in
a stall facing the ladder.

“Wot you doing here?” asked the Englishman, raising his head and
regarding Mr. Wrenn as a housewife does a cockroach in the salad-bowl.

Mr. Wrenn was bored. This seemed a very poor sort of man; a bloated
Cockney, with a dirty neck-cloth, vile cuffs of grayish black, and a
waistcoat cut foolishly high.

“The owner said I could sleep here,” he snapped.

“Ow. ’E did, did ’e? ’E ayn’t been giving you any of the perishin’
’osses, too, ’as ’e?”

It was sturdy old Bill Wrenn who snarled, “Oh, shut up!” Bill didn’t
feel like standing much just then. He’d punch this fellow as he’d
punched Pete, as soon as not—or even sooner.

“Ow…. It’s shut up, is it?… I’ve ’arf a mind to set the ’tecs on you,
but I’m lyte. I’ll just ’it you on the bloody nowse.”

Bill Wrenn stepped off the ladder and squared at him. He was sorry that
the Cockney was smaller than Pete.

The Cockney came over, feinted in an absent-minded manner, made swift
and confusing circles with his left hand, and hit Bill Wrenn on the
aforesaid bloody nose, which immediately became a bleeding nose. Bill
Wrenn felt dizzy and, sitting on a grain-sack, listened amazedly to the
Cockney’s apologetic:

“I’m sorry I ayn’t got time to ’ave the law on you, but I could spare
time to ’it you again.”

Bill shook the blood from his nose and staggered at the Cockney, who
seized his collar, set him down outside the stable with a jarring bump,
and walked away, whistling:

“Come, oh come to our Sunday-school,
Ev-v-v-v-v-v-ry Sunday morn-ing.”


“Gee!” mourned Mr. William Wrenn, “and I thought I was getting this
hobo business down pat…. Gee! I wonder if Pete _was_ so hard to lick?”




CHAPTER VI
HE IS AN ORPHAN


Sadly clinging to the plan of the walking-trip he was to have made with
Morton, Mr. Wrenn crossed by ferry to Birkenhead, quite unhappily, for
he wanted to be discussing with Morton the quaintness of the uniformed
functionaries. He looked for the _Merian_ half the way over. As he
walked through Birkenhead, bound for Chester, he pricked himself on to
note red-brick house-rows, almost shocking in their lack of high front
stoops. Along the country road he reflected: “Wouldn’t Morty enjoy
this! Farm-yard all paved. Haystack with a little roof on it. Kitchen
stove stuck in a kind of fireplace. Foreign as the deuce.”

But Morton was off some place, in a darkness where there weren’t things
to enjoy. Mr. Wrenn had lost him forever. Once he heard himself wishing
that even Tim, the hatter, or “good old McGarver” were along. A scene
so British that it seemed proper to enjoy it alone he did find in a
real garden-party, with what appeared to be a real curate, out of a
story in _The Strand_, passing teacups; but he passed out of that hot
glow into a cold plodding that led him to Chester and a dull hotel
which might as well have been in Bridgeport or Hoboken.

He somewhat timidly enjoyed Chester the early part of the next day,
docilely following a guide about the walls, gaping at the mill on the
Dee and asking the guide two intelligent questions about Roman remains.
He snooped through the galleried streets, peering up dark stairways set
in heavy masonry that spoke of historic sieges, and imagined that he
was historically besieging. For a time Mr. Wrenn’s fancies contented
him.

He smiled as he addressed glossy red and green postcards to Lee Theresa
and Goaty, Cousin John and Mr. Guilfogle, writing on each a variation
of “Having a splendid trip. This is a very interesting old town. Wish
you were here.” Pantingly, he found a panorama showing the hotel where
he was staying—or at least two of its chimneys—and, marking it with a
heavy cross and the announcement “This is my hotel where I am staying,”
he sent it to Charley Carpenter.

He was at his nearest to greatness at Chester Cathedral. He chuckled
aloud as he passed the remains of a refectory of monastic days, in the
close, where knights had tied their romantically pawing chargers, “just
like he’d read about in a story about the olden times.” He was really
there. He glanced about and assured himself of it. He wasn’t in the
office. He was in an English cathedral close!

But shortly thereafter he was in an English temperance hotel, sitting
still, almost weeping with the longing to see Morton. He walked abroad,
feeling like an intruder on the lively night crowd; in a tap-room he
drank a glass of English porter and tried to make himself believe that
he was acquainted with the others in the room, to which theory they
gave but little support. All this while his loneliness shadowed him.

Of that loneliness one could make many books; how it sat down with him;
how he crouched in his chair, be-spelled by it, till he violently rose
and fled, with loneliness for companion in his flight. He was lonely.
He sighed that he was “lonely as fits.” Lonely—the word obsessed him.
Doubtless he was a bit mad, as are all the isolated men who sit in
distant lands longing for the voices of friendship.

Next morning he hastened to take the train for Oxford to get away from
his loneliness, which lolled evilly beside him in the compartment. He
tried to convey to a stodgy North Countryman his interest in the way
the seats faced each other. The man said “Oh aye?” insultingly and
returned to his Manchester newspaper.

Feeling that he was so offensive that it was a matter of honor for him
to keep his eyes away, Mr. Wrenn dutifully stared out of the door till
they reached Oxford.

There is a calm beauty to New College gardens. There is, Mr. Wrenn
observed, “something simply _slick_ about all these old quatrangleses,”
crossed by summering students in short flappy gowns. But he always
returned to his exile’s room, where he now began to hear the new voice
of shapeless nameless Fear—fear of all this alien world that didn’t
care whether he loved it or not.

He sat thinking of the cattle-boat as a home which he had loved but
which he would never see again. He had to use force on himself to keep
from hurrying back to Liverpool while there still was time to return on
the same boat.

No! He was going to “stick it out somehow, and get onto the hang of all
this highbrow business.”

Then he said: “Oh, darn it all. I feel rotten. I wish I was dead!”

“Those, sir, are the windows of the apartment once occupied by Walter
Pater,” said the cultured American after whom he was trailing. Mr.
Wrenn viewed them attentively, and with shame remembered that he didn’t
know who Walter Pater was. But—oh yes, now he remembered; Walter was
the guy that ’d murdered his whole family. So, aloud, “Well, I guess
Oxford’s sorry Walt ever come here, all right.”

“My dear sir, Mr. Pater was the most immaculate genius of the
nineteenth century,” lectured Dr. Mittyford, the cultured American,
severely.

Mr. Wrenn had met Mittyford, Ph.D., near the barges; had, upon polite
request, still more politely lent him a match, and seized the chance to
confide in somebody. Mittyford had a bald head, neat eye-glasses, a
fair family income, a chatty good-fellowship at the Faculty Club, and a
chilly contemptuousness in his rhetoric class-room at Leland Stanford,
Jr., University. He wrote poetry, which he filed away under the letter
“P” in his letter-file.

Dr. Mittyford grudgingly took Mr. Wrenn about, to teach him what not to
enjoy. He pointed at Shelley’s rooms as at a certificated angel’s
feather, but Mr. Wrenn writhingly admitted that he had never heard of
Shelley, whose name he confused with Max O’Rell’s, which Dr. Mittyford
deemed an error. Then, Pater’s window. The doctor shrugged. Oh well,
what could you expect of the proletariat! Swinging his stick aloofly,
he stalked to the Bodleian and vouchsafed, “That, sir, is the
_AEschylus_ Shelley had in his pocket when he was drowned.”

Though he heard with sincere regret the news that his new idol was
drowned, Mr. Wrenn found that _AEschylus_ left him cold. It seemed to
be printed in a foreign language. But perhaps it was merely a very old
book.

Standing before a case in which was an exquisite book in a queer
wrigglesome language, bearing the legend that from this volume
Fitzgerald had translated the _Rubaiyat_, Dr. Mittyford waved his hand
and looked for thanks.

“Pretty book,” said Mr. Wrenn.

“And did you note who used it?”

“Uh—yes.” He hastily glanced at the placard. “Mr. Fitzgerald. Say, I
think I read some of that Rubaiyat. It was something about a Persian
kitten—I don’t remember exactly.”

Dr. Mittyford walked bitterly to the other end of the room.

About eight in the evening Mr. Wrenn’s landlady knocked with, “There’s
a gentleman below to see you, sir.”

“Me?” blurted Mr. Wrenn.

He galloped down-stairs, panting to himself that Morton had at last
found him. He peered out and was overwhelmed by a motor-car, with Dr.
Mittyford waiting in awesome fur coat, goggles, and gauntlets, centered
in the car-lamplight that loomed in the shivery evening fog.

“Gee! just like a hero in a novel!” reflected Mr. Wrenn.

“Get on your things,” said the pedagogue. “I’m going to give you the
time of your life.”

Mr. Wrenn obediently went up and put on his cap. He was excited, yet
frightened and resentful at being “dragged into all this highbrow
business” which he had resolutely been putting away the past two hours.

As he stole into the car Dr. Mittyford seemed comparatively human,
remarking: “I feel bored this evening. I thought I would give you a
_nuit blanche_. How would you like to go to the Red Unicorn at
Brempton—one of the few untouched old inns?”

“That would be nice,” said Mr. Wrenn, unenthusiastically.

His chilliness impressed Dr. Mittyford, who promptly told one of the
best of his well-known whimsical yet scholarly stories.

“Ha! ha!” remarked Mr. Wrenn.

He had been saying to himself: “By golly! I ain’t going to even try to
be a society guy with him no more. I’m just going to be _me_, and if he
don’t like it he can go to the dickens.”

So he was gentle and sympathetic and talked West Sixteenth Street
slang, to the rhetorician’s lofty amusement.

The tap-room of the Red Unicorn was lighted by candles and a fireplace.
That is a simple thing to say, but it was not a simple thing for Mr.
Wrenn to see. As he observed the trembling shadows on the sanded floor
he wriggled and excitedly murmured, “Gee!… Gee whittakers!”

The shadows slipped in arabesques over the dust-gray floor and
scampered as bravely among the rafters as though they were in such a
tale as men told in believing days. Rustics in smocks drank ale from
tankards; and in a corner was snoring an ear-ringed peddler with his
beetle-black head propped on an oilcloth pack.

Stamping in, chilly from the ride, Mr. Wrenn laughed aloud. With a
comfortable feeling on the side toward the fire he stuck his slight
legs straight out before the old-time settle, looked devil-may-care,
made delightful ridges on the sanded floor with his toe, and clapped a
pewter pot on his knee with a small emphatic “Wop!” After about two and
a quarter tankards he broke out, “Say, that peddler guy there, don’t he
look like he was a gipsy—you know—sneaking through the hedges around
the manner-house to steal the earl’s daughter, huh?”

“Yes…. You’re a romanticist, then, I take it?”

“Yes, I guess I am. Kind of. Like to read romances and stuff.” He
stared at Mittyford beseechingly. “But, say—say, I wonder why—Somehow,
I haven’t enjoyed Oxford and the rest of the places like I ought to.
See, I’d always thought I’d be simply nutty about the quatrangles and
stuff, but I’m afraid they’re too highbrow for me. I hate to own up,
but sometimes I wonder if I can get away with this traveling stunt.”

Mittyford, the magnificent, had mixed ale and whisky punch. He was
mellowly instructive:

“Do you know, I’ve been wondering just what you _would_ get out of all
this. You really have a very fine imagination of a sort, you know, but
of course you’re lacking in certain factual bases. As I see it, your
_metier_ would be to travel with a pleasant wife, the two of you hand
in hand, so to speak, looking at the more obvious public buildings and
plesaunces—avenues and plesuances. There must be a certain portion of
the tripper class which really has the ability ‘for to admire and for
to see.’”

Dr. Mittyford finished his second toddy and with a wave of his hand
presented to Mr. Wrenn the world and all the plesaunces thereof, for to
see, though not, of course, to admire Mittyfordianly.

“But—what are you to do now about Oxford? Well, I’m afraid you’re taken
into captivity a bit late to be trained for that sort of thing. Do
about Oxford? Why, go back, master the world you understand. By the
way, have you seen my book on _Saxon Derivatives?_ Not that I’m
prejudiced in its favor, but it might give you a glimmering of what
this difficile thing ‘culture’ really is.”

The rustics were droning a church anthem. The glow of the ale was in
Mr. Wrenn. He leaned back, entirely happy, and it seemed confusedly to
him that what little he had heard of his learned and affectionate
friend’s advice gratefully confirmed his own theory that what one
wanted was friends—a “nice wife”—folks. “Yes, sir, by golly! It was
awfully nice of the Doc.” He pictured a tender girl in golden brown
back in the New York he so much desired to see who would await him
evenings with a smile that was kept for him. Homey—that was what _he_
was going to be! He happily and thoughtfully ran his finger about the
rim of his glass ten times.

“Time to go, I’ m afraid,” Dr. Mittyford was saying. Through the
exquisite haze that now filled the room Mr. Wrenn saw him dimly, as a
triangle of shirt-front and two gleaming ellipses for eyes…. His dear
friend, the Doc!… As he walked through the room chairs got humorously
in his way, but he good-naturedly picked a path among them, and fell
asleep in the motor-car. All the ride back he made soft mouse-like
sounds of snoring.

When he awoke in the morning with a headache and surveyed his
unchangeably dingy room he realized slowly, after smothering his head
in the pillow to shut off the light from his scorching eyeballs, that
Dr. Mittyford had called him a fool for trying to wander. He protested,
but not for long, for he hated to venture out there among the
dreadfully learned colleges and try to understand stuff written in
letters that look like crow-tracks.

He packed his suit-case slowly, feeling that he was very wicked in
leaving Oxford’s opportunities.

Mr. Wrenn rode down on a Tottenham Court Road bus, viewing the
quaintness of London. Life was a rosy ringing valiant pursuit, for he
was about to ship on a Mediterranean steamer laden chiefly with
adventurous friends. The bus passed a victoria containing a man with a
real monocle. A newsboy smiled up at him. The Strand roared with lively
traffic.

But the gray stonework and curtained windows of the Anglo-Southern
Steamship Company’s office did not invite any Mr. Wrenns to come in and
ship, nor did the hall porter, a beefy person with a huge collar and
sparse painfully sleek hair, whose eyes were like cold boiled mackerel
as Mr. Wrenn yearned:

“Please—uh—please will you be so kind and tell me where I can ship as a
steward for the Med—”

“None needed.”

“Or Spain? I just want to get any kind of a job at first. Peeling
potatoes or—It don’t make any difference—”

“None needed, I said, my man.” The porter examined the hall clock
extensively.

Bill Wrenn suddenly popped into being and demanded: “Look here, you; I
want to see somebody in authority. I want to know what I _can_ ship
as.”

The porter turned round and started. All his faith in mankind was
destroyed by the shock of finding the fellow still there. “Nothing, I
told you. No one needed.”

“Look here; can I see somebody in authority or not?”

The porter was privately esteemed a wit at his motherin-law’s. Waddling
away, he answered, “Or not.”

Mr. Wrenn drooped out of the corridor. He had planned to see the Tate
Gallery, but now he hadn’t the courage to face the difficulties of
enjoying pictures. He zig-zagged home, mourning: “What’s the use. And
I’ll be hung if I’ll try any other offices, either. The icy mitt,
that’s what they hand you here. Some day I’ll go down to the docks and
try to ship there. Prob’ly. Gee! I feel rotten!”

Out of all this fog of unfriendliness appeared the waitress at the St.
Brasten Cocoa House; first, as a human being to whom he could talk,
second, as a woman. She was ignorant and vulgar; she misused English
cruelly; she wore greasy cotton garments, planted her large feet on the
floor with firm clumsiness, and always laughed at the wrong cue in his
diffident jests. But she did laugh; she did listen while he stammered
his ideas of meat-pies and St. Paul’s and aeroplanes and Shelley and
fog and tan shoes. In fact, she supposed him to be a gentleman and
scholar, not an American.

He went to the cocoa-house daily.

She let him know that he was a man and she a woman, young and kindly,
clear-skinned and joyous-eyed. She touched him with warm elbow and
plump hip, leaning against his chair as he gave his order. To that he
looked forward from meal to meal, though he never ceased harrowing over
what he considered a shameful intrigue.

That opinion of his actions did not keep him from tingling one
lunch-time when he suddenly understood that she was expecting to be
tempted. He tempted her without the slightest delay, muttering, “Let’s
take a walk this evening?”

She accepted. He was shivery and short of breath while he was trying to
smile at her during the rest of the meal, and so he remained all
afternoon at the Tower of London, though he very well knew that all
this history—“kings and gwillotines and stuff”—demanded real Wrenn
thrills.

They were to meet on a street-corner at eight. At seven-thirty he was
waiting for her. At eight-thirty he indignantly walked away, but he
hastily returned, and stood there another half-hour. She did not come.

When he finally fled home he was glad to have escaped the great mystery
of life, then distressingly angry at the waitress, and desolate in the
desert stillness of his room.

He sat in his cold hygienic uncomfortable room on Tavistock Place
trying to keep his attention on the “tick, tick, tick, tick” of his
two-dollar watch, but really cowering before the vast shadowy presences
that slunk in from the hostile city.

He didn’t in the least know what he was afraid of. The actual
Englishman whom he passed on the streets did not seem to threaten his
life, yet his friendly watch and familiar suit-case seemed the only
things he could trust in all the menacing world as he sat there, so
vividly conscious of his fear and loneliness that he dared not move his
cramped legs.

The tension could not last. For a time he was able to laugh at himself,
and he made pleasant pictures—Charley Carpenter telling him a story at
Drubel’s; Morton companionably smoking on the top deck; Lee Theresa
flattering him during an evening walk. Most of all he pictured the
brown-eyed sweetheart he was going to meet somewhere, sometime. He
thought with sophomoric shame of his futile affair with the waitress,
then forgot her as he seemed almost to touch the comforting hand of the
brown-eyed girl.

“Friends, that’s what I want. You bet!” That was the work he was going
to do—make acquaintances. A girl who would understand him, with whom he
could trot about, seeing department-store windows and moving-picture
shows.

It was then, probably, hunched up in the dowdy chair of faded
upholstery, that he created the two phrases which became his formula
for happiness. He desired “somebody to go home to evenings”; still
more, “some one to work with and work for.”

It seemed to him that he had mapped out his whole life. He sat back,
satisfied, and caught the sound of emptiness in his room, emphasized by
the stilly tick of his watch.

“Oh—Morton—” he cried.

He leaped up and raised the window. It was raining, but through the
slow splash came the night rattle of hostile London. Staring down, he
studied the desolate circle of light a street-lamp cast on the wet
pavement. A cat gray as dish-water, its fur worn off in spots, lean and
horrible, sneaked through the circle of light like the spirit of
unhappiness, like London’s sneer at solitary Americans in Russell
Square rooms.

Mr. Wrenn gulped. Through the light skipped a man and a girl, so little
aware of him that they stopped, laughingly, wrestling for an umbrella,
then disappeared, and the street was like a forgotten tomb. A hansom
swung by, the hoofbeats sharp and cheerless. The rain dripped. Nothing
else. Mr. Wrenn slammed down the window.

He smoothed the sides of his suit-case and reckoned the number of miles
it had traveled with him. He spun his watch about on the table, and
listened to its rapid mocking speech, “Friends, friends; friends,
friends.”

Sobbing, he began to undress, laying down each garment as though he
were going to the scaffold. When the room was dark the great shadowy
forms of fear thronged unchecked about his narrow dingy bed.

Once during the night he woke. Some sound was threatening him. It was
London, coming to get him and torture him. The light in his room was
dusty, mottled, gray, lifeless. He saw his door, half ajar, and for
some moments lay motionless, watching stark and bodiless heads thrust
themselves through the opening and withdraw with sinister alertness
till he sprang up and opened the door wide.

But he did not even stop to glance down the hall for the crowd of
phantoms that had gathered there. Some hidden manful scorn of weakness
made him sneer aloud, “Don’t be a baby even if you _are_ lonely.”

His voice was deeper than usual, and he went to bed to sleep, throwing
himself down with a coarse wholesome scorn of his nervousness.

He awoke after dawn, and for a moment curled in happy wriggles of
satisfaction over a good sleep. Then he remembered that he was in the
cold and friendless prison of England, and lay there panting with
desire to get away, to get back to America, where he would be safe.

He wanted to leap out of bed, dash for the Liverpool train, and take
passage for America on the first boat. But perhaps the officials in
charge of the emigrants and the steerage (and of course a fellow would
go steerage to save money) would want to know his religion and the
color of his hair—as bad as trying to ship. They might hold him up for
a couple of days. There were quarantines and customs and things, of
which he had heard. Perhaps for two or even three days more he would
have to stay in this nauseating prison-land.

This was the morning of August 3, 1910, two weeks after his arrival in
London, and twenty-two days after victoriously reaching England, the
land of romance.




CHAPTER VII
HE MEETS A TEMPERAMENT


Mr. Wrenn was sulkily breakfasting at Mrs. Cattermole’s Tea House,
which Mrs. Cattermole kept in a genteel fashion in a basement three
doors from his rooming-house on Tavistock Place. After his night of
fear and tragic portents he resented the general flowered-paper-napkin
aspect of Mrs. Cattermole’s establishment. “Hungh!” he grunted, as he
jabbed at the fringed doily under the silly pink-and-white tea-cup on
the green-and-white lacquered tray brought him by a fat waitress in a
frilly apron which must have been made for a Christmas pantomime fairy
who was not fat. “Hurump!” he snorted at the pictures of lambs and
radishes and cathedrals and little duckies on Mrs. Cattermole’s
pink-and-white wall.

He wished it were possible—which, of course, it was not—to go back to
the St. Brasten Cocoa House, where he could talk to the honest
flat-footed galumping waitress, and cross his feet under his chair. For
here he was daintily, yes, daintily, studied by the tea-room
habitues—two bouncing and talkative daughters of an American tourist, a
slender pale-haired English girl student of Assyriology with large
top-barred eye-glasses over her protesting eyes, and a sprinkling of
people living along Tavistock Place, who looked as though they wanted
to know if your opinions on the National Gallery and abstinence were
sound.

His disapproval of the lambiness of Mrs. Cattermole’s was turned to a
feeling of comradeship with the other patrons as he turned, with the
rest, to stare hostilely at a girl just entering. The talk in the room
halted, startled.

Mr. Wrenn gasped. With his head solemnly revolving, his eyes followed
the young woman about his table to a table opposite. “A freak! Gee,
what red hair!” was his private comment.

A slender girl of twenty-eight or twenty-nine, clad in a one-piece gown
of sage-green, its lines unbroken by either belt or collar-brooch,
fitting her as though it had been pasted on, and showing the long
beautiful sweep of her fragile thighs and long-curving breast. Her
collar, of the material of the dress, was so high that it touched her
delicate jaw, and it was set off only by a fine silver chain, with a La
Vallière of silver and carved Burmese jade. Her red hair, red as a
poinsettia, parted and drawn severely back, made a sweep about the fair
dead-white skin of her bored sensitive face. Bored blue-gray eyes, with
pathetic crescents of faintly violet-hued wrinkles beneath them, and a
scarce noticeable web of tinier wrinkles at the side. Thin long cheeks,
a delicate nose, and a straight strong mouth of thin but startlingly
red lips.

Such was the new patron of Mrs. Cattermole.

She stared about the tea-room like an officer inspecting raw recruits,
sniffed at the stare of the thin girl student, ordered breakfast in a
low voice, then languidly considered her toast and marmalade. Once she
glanced about the room. Her heavy brows were drawn close for a second,
making a deep-cleft wrinkle of ennui over her nose, and two little
indentations, like the impressions of a box corner, in her forehead
over her brows.

Mr. Wrenn’s gaze ran down the line of her bosom again, and he wondered
at her hands, which touched the heavy bread-and-butter knife as though
it were a fine-point pen. Long hands, colored like ivory; the joint
wrinkles etched into her skin; orange cigarette stains on the second
finger; the nails—

He stared at them. To himself he commented, “Gee! I never did see such
freak finger-nails in my life.” Instead of such smoothly rounded nails
as Theresa Zapp displayed, the new young lady had nails narrow and
sharp-pointed, the ends like little triangles of stiff white
writing-paper.

As she breakfasted she scanned Mr. Wrenn for a second. He was too
obviously caught staring to be able to drop his eyes. She studied him
all out, with almost as much interest as a policeman gives to a passing
trolley-car, yawned delicately, and forgot him.

Though you should penetrate Greenland or talk anarchism to the daughter
of a millionaire grocer, never shall you feel a more devouring chill
than enveloped Mr. Wrenn as the new young lady glanced away from him,
paid her check, rose slithily from her table, and departed. She rounded
his table; not stalking out of its way, as Theresa would have done, but
bending from the hips. Thus was it revealed to Mr. Wrenn that—

He was almost too horrified to put it into words…. He had noticed that
there was something kind of funny in regard to her waist; he had had an
impression of remarkably smooth waist curves and an unjagged sweep of
back. Now he saw that—It was unheard of; not at all like Lee Theresa
Zapp or ladies in the Subway. For—the freak girl wasn’t wearing
corsets!

When she had passed him he again studied her back, swiftly and
covertly. No, sir. No question about it. It couldn’t be denied by any
one now that the girl was a freak, for, charitable though Our Mr. Wrenn
was, he had to admit that there was no sign of the midback ridge and
little rounded knobbinesses of corseted respectability. And he had a
closer view of the texture of her sage-green crash gown.

“Golly!” he said to himself; “of all the doggone cloth for a dress!
Reg’lar gunny-sacking. She’s skinny, too. Bright-red hair. She sure is
the prize freak. Kind of good-looking, but—get a brick!”

He hated to rule so clever-seeming a woman quite out of court. But he
remembered her scissors glance at him, and his soft little heart became
very hard.

How brittle are our steel resolves! When Mr. Wrenn walked out of Mrs.
Cattermole’s excellent establishment and heavily inspected the quiet
Bloomsbury Street, with a cat’s-meat-man stolidly clopping along the
pavement, as loneliness rushed on him and he wondered what in the world
he could do, he mused, “Gee! I bet that red-headed lady would be
interestin’ to know.”

A day of furtive darts out from his room to do London, which glumly
declined to be done. He went back to the Zoological Gardens and made
friends with a tiger which, though it presumably came from an English
colony, was the friendliest thing he had seen for a week. It did yawn,
but it let him talk to it for a long while. He stood before the bars,
peering in, and whenever no one else was about he murmured: “Poor
fella, they won’t let you go, heh? You got a worse boss ’n Goglefogle,
heh? Poor old fella.”

He didn’t at all mind the disorder and rancid smell of the cage; he had
no fear of the tiger’s sleek murderous power. But he was somewhat
afraid of the sound of his own tremorous voice. He had spoken aloud so
little lately.

A man came, an Englishman in a high offensively well-fitting waistcoat,
and stood before the cage. Mr. Wrenn slunk away, robbed of his new
friend, the tiger, the forlornest person in all London, kicking at
pebbles in the path.

As half-dusk made the quiet street even more detached, he sat on the
steps of his rooming-house on Tavistock Place, keeping himself from the
one definite thing he wanted to do—the thing he keenly imagined a happy
Mr. Wrenn doing—dashing over to the Euston Station to find out how soon
and where he could get a train for Liverpool and a boat for America.

A girl was approaching the house. He viewed her carelessly, then
intently. It was the freak lady of Mrs. Cattermole’s Tea House—the
corsetless young woman of the tight-fitting crash gown and
flame-colored hair. She was coming up the steps of his house.

He made room for her with feverish courtesy. She lived in the same
house—He instantly, without a bit of encouragement from the
uninterested way in which she snipped the door to, made up a whole
novel about her. Gee! She was a French countess, who lived in a reg’lar
chateau, and she was staying in Bloomsbury incognito, seeing the
sights. She was a noble. She was—

Above him a window opened. He glanced up. The countess incog. was
leaning out, scanning the street uncaringly. Why—her windows were next
to his! He was living next room to an unusual person—as unusual as Dr.
Mittyford.

He hurried up-stairs with a fervid but vague plan to meet her. Maybe
she really was a French countess or somepun’. All evening, sitting by
the window, he was comforted as he heard her move about her room. He
had a friend. He had started that great work of making friends—well,
not started, but started starting—then he got confused, but the idea
was a flame to warm the fog-chilled spaces of the London street.

At his Cattermole breakfast he waited long. She did not come. Another
day—but why paint another day that was but a smear of flat dull slate?
Yet another breakfast, and the lady of mystery came. Before he knew he
was doing it he had bowed to her, a slight uneasy bend of his neck. She
peered at him, unseeing, and sat down with her back to him.

He got much good healthy human vindictive satisfaction in evicting her
violently from the French chateau he had given her, and remembering
that, of course, she was just a “fool freak Englishwoman—prob’ly a
bloomin’ stoodent” he scorned, and so settled _her!_ Also he told her,
by telepathy, that her new gown was freakier than ever—a pale-green
thing, with large white buttons.

As he was coming in that evening he passed her in the hall. She was
clad in what he called a bathrobe, and what she called an Arabian
_burnoose_, of black embroidered with dull-gold crescents and stars,
showing a V of exquisite flesh at her throat. A shred of tenuous lace
straggled loose at the opening of the _burnoose_. Her radiant hair,
tangled over her forehead, shone with a thousand various gleams from
the gas-light over her head as she moved back against the wall and
stood waiting for him to pass. She smiled very doubtfully,
distantly—the smile, he felt, of a great lady from Mayfair. He bobbed
his head, lowered his eyes abashedly, and noticed that along the shelf
of her forearm, held against her waist, she bore many silver toilet
articles, and such a huge heavy fringed Turkish bath-towel as he had
never seen before.

He lay awake to picture her brilliant throat and shining hair. He
rebuked himself for the lack of dignity in “thinking of that freak,
when she wouldn’t even return a fellow’s bow.” But her shimmering hair
was the star of his dreams.

Napping in his room in the afternoon, Mr. Wrenn heard slight active
sounds from her, next room. He hurried down to the stoop.

She stood behind him on the door-step, glaring up and down the street,
as bored and as ready to spring as the Zoo tiger. Mr. Wrenn heard
himself saying to the girl, “Please, miss, do you mind telling me—I’m
an American; I’m a stranger in London—I want to go to a good play or
something and what would I—what would be good—”

“I don’t know, reahlly,” she said, with much hauteur. “Everything’s
rather rotten this season, I fancy.” Her voice ran fluting up and down
the scale. Her a’s were very broad.

“Oh—oh—y-you _are_ English, then?”

“Yes!”

“Why—uh—”

“_Yes!_”

“Oh, I just had a fool idea maybe you might be French.”

“Perhaps I am, y’ know. I’m not reahlly English,” she said, blandly.

“Why—uh—”

“What made you think I was French? Tell me; I’m interested.”

“Oh, I guess I was just—well, it was almost make-b’lieve—how you had a
castle in France—just a kind of a fool game.”

“Oh, _don’t_ be ashamed of imagination,” she demanded, stamping her
foot, while her voice fluttered, low and beautifully controlled,
through half a dozen notes. “Tell me the rest of your story about me.”

She was sitting on the rail above him now. As he spoke she cupped her
chin with the palm of her delicate hand and observed him curiously.

“Oh, nothing much more. You were a countess—”

“Please! Not just ‘were.’ Please, sir, mayn’t I be a countess now?”

“Oh yes, of course you are!” he cried, delight submerging timidity.
“And your father was sick with somepun’ mysterious, and all the docs
shook their heads and said ‘Gee! we dunno what it is,’ and so you
sneaked down to the treasure-chamber—you see, your dad—your father, I
should say—he was a cranky old Frenchman—just in the story, you know.
He didn’t think you could do anything yourself about him being
mysteriously sick. So one night you—”

“Oh, was it dark? Very _very_ dark? And silent? And my footsteps rang
on the hollow flagstones? And I swiped the gold and went forth into the
night?”

“Yes, _yes!_ That’s it.”

“But why did I swipe it?”

“I’m just coming to that,” he said, sternly.

“Oh, please, sir, I’m awful sorry I interrupted.”

“It was like this: You wanted to come over here and study medicine so’s
you could cure your father.”

“But please, sir,” said the girl, with immense gravity, “mayn’t I let
him die, and not find out what’s ailing him, so I can marry the
_maire?_”

“Nope,” firmly, “you got to—Say, _gee!_ I didn’t expect to tell you all
this make-b’lieve…. I’m afraid you’ll think it’s awful fresh of me.”

“Oh, I loved it—really I did—because you liked to make it up about poor
Istra. (My name is Istra Nash.) I’m sorry to say I’m not reahlly”—her
two “reallys” were quite different—“a countess, you know. Tell me—you
live in this same house, don’t you? Please tell me that you’re not an
interesting Person. Please!”

“I—gee! I guess I don’t quite get you.”

“Why, stupid, an Interesting Person is a writer or an artist or an
editor or a girl who’s been in Holloway Jail or Canongate for
suffraging, or any one else who depends on an accident to be
tolerable.”

“No, I’m afraid not; I’m just a kind of clerk.”

“Good! Good! My dear sir—whom I’ve never seen before—have I? By the
way, please don’t think I usually pick up stray gentlemen and talk to
them about my pure white soul. But you, you know, made stories about
me…. I was saying: If you could only know how I loathe and hate and
despise Interesting People just now! I’ve seen so much of them. They
talk and talk and talk—they’re just like Kipling’s bandar-log—What is
it?

“See us rise in a flung festoon
Half-way up to the jealous moon.
Don’t you wish you—


could know all about art and economics as we do?’ That’s what they say.
Umph!”

Then she wriggled her fingers in the air like white butterflies,
shrugged her shoulders elaborately, rose from the rail, and sat down
beside him on the steps, quite matter-of-factly.

He could feel his temple-pulses beat with excitement.

She turned her pale sensitive vivid face slowly toward him.

“When did you see me—to make up the story?”

“Breakfasts. At Mrs. Cattermole’s.”

“Oh yes…. How is it you aren’t out sight-seeing? Or is it blessedly
possible that you aren’t a tripper—a tourist?”

“Why, I dunno.” He hunted uneasily for the right answer. “Not exactly.
I tried a stunt—coming over on a cattle-boat.”

“That’s good. Much better.”

She sat silent while, with enormous and self-betraying pains to avoid
detection, he studied her firm thin brilliantly red lips. At last he
tried:

“Please tell me something about London. Some of you English— Oh, I
dunno. I can’t get acquainted easily.”

“My dear child, I’m not English! I’m quite as American as yourself. I
was born in California. I never saw England till two years ago, on my
way to Paris. I’m an art student…. That’s why my accent is so perishin’
English—I can’t afford to be just _ordinary_ British, y’ know.”

Her laugh had an October tang of bitterness in it.

“Well, I’ll—say, what do you know about that!” he said, weakly.

“Tell me about yourself—since apparently we’re now acquainted…. Unless
you want to go to that music-hall?”

“Oh no, no, no! Gee, I was just _crazy_ to have somebody to talk
to—somebody nice—I was just about nutty, I was so lonely,” all in a
burst. He finished, hesitatingly, “I guess the English are kinda hard
to get acquainted with.”

“Lonely, eh?” she mused, abrupt and bluffly kind as a man, for all her
modulating woman’s voice. “You don’t know any of the people here in the
house?”

“No’m. Say, I guess we got rooms next to each other.”

“How romantic!” she mocked.

“Wrenn’s my name; William Wrenn. I work for—I used to work for the
Souvenir and Art Novelty Company. In New York.”

“Oh. I see. Novelties? Nice little ash-trays with ‘Love from the Erie
Station’? And woggly pin-cushions?”

“Yes! And fat pug-dogs with black eyes.”

“Oh no-o-o! Please not black! Pale sympathetic blue eyes—nice honest
blue eyes!”

“Nope. Black. Awful black…. Say, gee, I ain’t talking too nutty, am I?”

“‘Nutty’? You mean ‘idiotically’? The slang’s changed since—Oh yes, of
course; you’ve succeeded in talking quite nice and ‘idiotic.’”

“Oh, say, gee, I didn’t mean to—When you been so nice and all to me—”

“Don’t apologize!” Istra Nash demanded, savagely. “Haven’t they taught
you that?”

“Yes’m,” he mumbled, apologetically.

She sat silent again, apparently not at all satisfied with the
architecture of the opposite side of Tavistock Place. Diffidently he
edged into speech:

“Honest, I did think you was English. You came from California? Oh,
say, I wonder if you’ve ever heard of Dr. Mittyford. He’s some kind of
school-teacher. I think he teaches in Leland Stamford College.”

“Leland Stanford? You know him?” She dropped into interested
familiarity.

“I met him at Oxford.”

“Really?… My brother was at Stanford. I think I’ve heard him speak
of—Oh yes. He said that Mittyford was a cultural climber, if you know
what I mean; rather—oh, how shall I express it?—oh, shall we put it,
finicky about things people have just told him to be finicky about.”

“Yes!” glowed Mr. Wrenn.

To the luxury of feeling that he knew the unusual Miss Istra Nash he
sacrificed Dr. Mittyford, scholarship and eye-glasses and Shelley and
all, without mercy.

“Yes, he was awfully funny. Gee! I didn’t care much for him.”

“Of course you know he’s a great man, however?” Istra was as bland as
though she had meant that all along, which left Mr. Wrenn nowhere at
all when it came to deciding what she meant.

Without warning she rose from the steps, flung at him “G’ night,” and
was off down the street.

Sitting alone, all excited happiness, Mr. Wrenn muttered: “Ain’t she a
wonder! Gee! she’s striking-lookin’! Gee whittakers!”

Some hours later he said aloud, tossing about in bed: “I wonder if I
was too fresh. I hope I wasn’t. I ought to be careful.”

He was so worried about it that he got up and smoked a cigarette,
remembered that he was breaking still another rule by smoking too much,
then got angry and snapped defiantly at his suit-case: “Well, what do I
care if I _am_ smoking too much? And I’ll be as fresh as I want to.” He
threw a newspaper at the censorious suit-case and, much relieved, went
to bed to dream that he was a rabbit making enormously amusing jests,
at which he laughed rollickingly in half-dream, till he realized that
he was being awakened by the sound of long sobs from the room of Istra
Nash.

Afternoon; Mr. Wrenn in his room. Miss Nash was back from tea, but
there was not a sound to be heard from her room, though he listened
with mouth open, bent forward in his chair, his hands clutching the
wooden seat, his finger-tips rubbing nervously back and forth over the
rough under-surface of the wood. He wanted to help her—the wonderful
lady who had been sobbing in the night. He had a plan, in which he
really believed, to say to her, “Please let me help you, princess, jus’
like I was a knight.”

At last he heard her moving about. He rushed downstairs and waited on
the stoop.

When she came out she glanced down and smiled contentedly. He was
flutteringly sure that she expected to see him there. But all his plan
of proffering assistance vanished as he saw her impatient eyes and her
splendors of dress—another tight-fitting gown, of smoky gray, with
faint silvery lights gliding along the fabric.

She sat on the rail above him, immediately, unhesitatingly, and
answered his “Evenin’” cheerfully.

He wanted so much to sit beside her, to be friends with her. But, he
felt, it took courage to sit beside her. She was likely to stare
haughtily at him. However, he did go up to the rail and sit, shyly
kicking his feet, beside her, and she did not stare haughtily. Instead
she moved over an inch or two, glanced at him almost as though they
were sharing a secret, and said, quietly:

“I thought quite a bit about you last evening. I believe you really
have an imagination, even though you are a salesman—I mean so many
don’t; you know how it is.”

“Oh yes.”

You see, Mr. Wrenn didn’t know he was commonplace.

“After I left here last night I went over to Olympia Johns’, and she
dragged me off to a play. I thought of you at it because there was an
imaginative butler in it. You don’t mind my comparing you to a butler,
do you? He was really quite the nicest person in the play, y’ know.
Most of it was gorgeously rotten. It used to be a French farce, but
they sent it to Sunday-school and gave it a nice fresh frock. It seemed
that a gentleman-tabby had been trying to make a match between his
nephew and his ward. The ward arted. Personally I think it was by
tonsorial art. But, anyway, the uncle knew that nothing brings people
together so well as hating the same person. You know, like hating the
cousin, when you’re a kiddy, hating the cousin that always keeps her
nails clean?”

“Yes! That’s _so!_”

“So he turned nasty, and of course the nephew and ward clinched till
death did them part—which, I’m very sorry to have to tell you, death
wasn’t decent enough to do on the stage. If the play could only have
ended with everybody’s funeral I should have called it a real happy
ending.”

Mr. Wrenn laughed gratefully, though uncertainly. He knew that she had
made jokes for him, but he didn’t exactly know what they were.

“The imaginative butler, he was rather good. But the rest—Ugh!”

“That must have been a funny play,” he said, politely.

She looked at him sidewise and confided, “Will you do me a favor?”

“Oh yes, I—”

“Ever been married?”

He was frightfully startled. His “No” sounded as though he couldn’t
quite remember.

She seemed much amused. You wouldn’t have believed that this superior
quizzical woman who tapped her fingers carelessly on her slim exquisite
knee had ever sobbed in the night.

“Oh, that wasn’t a personal question,” she said. “I just wanted to know
what you’re like. Don’t you ever collect people? I do—chloroform ’em
quite cruelly and pin their poor little corpses out on nice clean
corks…. You live alone in New York, do you?”

“Y-yes.”

“Who do you play with—know?”

“Not—not much of anybody. Except maybe Charley Carpenter. He’s
assistant bookkeeper for the Souvenir Company. “He had wanted to, and
immediately decided not to, invent _grandes mondes_ whereof he was an
intimate.

“What do—oh, you know—people in New York who don’t go to parties or
read much—what do they do for amusement? I’m so interested in types.”

“Well—” said he.

That was all he could say till he had digested a pair of thoughts: Just
what did she mean by “types”? Had it something to do with printing
stories? And what could he say about the people, anyway? He observed:

“Oh, I don’t know—just talk about—oh, cards and jobs and folks and
things and—oh, you know; go to moving pictures and vaudeville and go to
Coney Island and—oh, sleep.”

“But you—?”

“Well, I read a good deal. Quite a little. Shakespeare and geography
and a lot of stuff. I like reading.”

“And how do you place Nietzsche?” she gravely desired to know.

“?”

“Nietzsche. You know—the German humorist.”

“Oh yes—uh—let me see now; he’s—uh—”

“Why, you remember, don’t you? Haeckel and he wrote the great musical
comedy of the century. And Matisse did the music—Matisse and Rodin.”

“I haven’t been to it,” he said, vaguely. “…I don’t know much German.
Course I know a few words, like _Spricken Sie Dutch_ and _Bitty, sir_,
that Rabin at the Souvenir Company—he’s a German Jew, I guess—learnt
me…. But, say, isn’t Kipling great! Gee! when I read _Kim_ I can
imagine I’m hiking along one of those roads in India just like I was
there—you know, all those magicians and so on…. Readin’s wonderful,
ain’t it!”

“Um. Yes.”

“I bet you read an awful lot.”

“Very little. Oh—D’Annunzio and some Turgenev and a little
Tourgenieff…. That last was a joke, you know.”

“Oh yes,” disconcertedly.

“What sorts of plays do you go to, Mr. Wrenn?”

“Moving pictures mostly,” he said, easily, then bitterly wished he
hadn’t confessed so low-life a habit.

“Well—tell me, my dear—Oh, I didn’t mean that; artists use it a good
deal; it just means ‘old chap.’ You _don’t_ mind my asking such beastly
personal questions, do you? I’m interested in people…. And now I must
go up and write a letter. I was going over to Olympia’s—she’s one of
the Interesting People I spoke of—but you see you have been much more
amusing. Good night. You’re lonely in London, aren’t you? We’ll have to
go sightseeing some day.”

“Yes, I am lonely!” he exploded. Then, meekly: “Oh, thank you! I sh’d
be awful pleased to…. Have you seen the Tower, Miss Nash?”

“No. Never. Have you?”

“No. You see, I thought it ’d be kind of a gloomy thing to see all
alone. Is that why you haven’t never been there, too?”

“My dear man, I see I shall have to educate you. Shall I? I’ve been
taken in hand by so many people—it would be a pleasure to pass on the
implied slur. Shall I?”

“Please do.”

“One simply doesn’t go and see the Tower, because that’s what trippers
do. Don’t you understand, my dear? (Pardon the ‘my dear’ again.) The
Tower is the sort of thing school superintendents see and then go back
and lecture on in school assembly-room and the G. A. R. hall. I’ll take
you to the Tate Gallery.” Then, very abruptly, “G’ night,” and she was
gone.

He stared after her smooth back, thinking: “Gee! I wonder if she got
sore at something I said. I don’t think I was fresh this time. But she
beat it so quick…. Them lips of hers—I never knew there was such red
lips. And an artist—paints pictures!… Read a lot—Nitchy—German musical
comedy. Wonder if that’s that ‘Merry Widow’ thing?… That gray dress of
hers makes me think of fog. Cur’ous.”

In her room Istra Nash inspected her nose in a mirror, powdered, and
sat down to write, on thick creamy paper:

Skilly dear, I’m in a fierce Bloomsbury boarding-house—bores —except
for a Phe-nomenon—little man of 35 or 40 with embryonic imagination & a
virgin soul. I’ll try to keep from planting radical thoughts in the
virgin soul, but I’m tempted.

Oh Skilly dear I’m lonely as the devil. Would it be too bromid. to say
I wish you were here? I put out my hand in the darkness, & yours wasn’t
there. My dear, my dear, how desolate—Oh you understand it only too
well with your supercilious grin & your superior eye-glasses & your
beatific Oxonian ignorance of poor eager America.

I suppose I _am_ just a barbarous Californian kiddy. It’s just as Pere
Dureon said at the atelier, “You haf a’ onderstanding of the ’igher
immorality, but I ’ope you can cook—paint you cannot.”

He wins. I can’t sell a single thing to the art editors here or get one
single order. One horrid eye-glassed earnest youth who Sees People at a
magazine, he vouchsafed that they “didn’t use any Outsiders.”
Outsiders! And his hair was nearly as red as my wretched mop. So I came
home & howled & burned Milan tapers before your picture. I did. Though
you don’t deserve it.

Oh damn it, am I getting sentimental? You’ll read this at Petit Monsard
over your drip & grin at your poor unnietzschean barbarian.

I. N.




CHAPTER VIII
HE TIFFINS


Mr. Wrenn, chewing and chewing and chewing the cud of thought in his
room next evening, after an hour had proved two things; thus:

(a) The only thing he wanted to do was to go back to America at once,
because England was a country where every one—native or American—was so
unfriendly and so vastly wise that he could never understand them.

(b) The one thing in the world that he wanted to do was to be right
here, for the most miraculous event of which he had ever heard was
meeting Miss Nash. First one, then the other, these thoughts swashed
back and forth like the swinging tides. He got away from them only long
enough to rejoice that somehow—he didn’t know how—he was going to be
her most intimate friend, because they were both Americans in a strange
land and because they both could make-believe.

Then he was proving that Istra would, and would not, be the perfect
comrade among women when some one knocked at his door.

Electrified, his cramped body shot up from its crouch, and he darted to
the door.

Istra Nash stood there, tapping her foot on the sill with apologetic
haste in her manner. Abruptly she said:

“So sorry to bother you. I just wondered if you could let me have a
match? I’m all out.”

“Oh _yes!_ Here’s a whole box. Please take ’em. I got plenty more.”
[Which was absolutely untrue.]

“Thank you. S’ good o’ you,” she said, hurriedly. “G’ night.”

She turned away, but he followed her into the hall, bashfully urging:
“Have you been to another show? Gee! I hope you draw a better one next
time ’n the one about the guy with the nephew.”

“Thank you.”

She glanced back in the half dark hall from her door—some fifteen feet
from his. He was scratching at the wall-paper with a diffident finger,
hopeful for a talk.

“Won’t you come in?” she said, hesitatingly.

“Oh, thank you, but I guess I hadn’t better.”

Suddenly she flashed out the humanest of smiles, her blue-gray eyes
crinkling with cheery friendship. “Come in, come in, child.” As he
hesitatingly entered she warbled: “Needn’t both be so lonely all the
time, after all, need we? Even if you _don’t_ like poor Istra. You
don’t—do you?” Seemingly she didn’t expect an answer to her question,
for she was busy lighting a Russian cigarette. It was the first time in
his life that he had seen a woman smoke.

With embarrassed politeness he glanced away from her as she threw back
her head and inhaled deeply. He blushingly scrutinized the room.

In the farther corner two trunks stood open. One had the tray removed,
and out of the lower part hung a confusion of lacey things from which
he turned away uncomfortable eyes. He recognized the black-and-gold
burnoose, which was tumbled on the bed, with a nightgown of lace
insertions and soft wrinkles in the lawn, a green book with a paper
label bearing the title _Three Plays for Puritans_, a red slipper, and
an open box of chocolates.

On the plain kitchen-ware table was spread a cloth of Reseda green,
like a dull old leaf in color. On it lay a gold-mounted fountain-pen,
huge and stub-pointed; a medley of papers and torn envelopes, a bottle
of Creme Yvette, and a silver-framed portrait of a lean smiling man
with a single eye-glass.

Mr. Wrenn did not really see all these details, but he had an
impression of luxury and high artistic success. He considered the
Yvette flask the largest bottle of perfume he’d ever seen; and remarked
that there was “some guy’s picture on the table.” He had but a moment
to reconnoiter, for she was astonishingly saying:

“So you were lonely when I knocked?”

“Why, how—”

“Oh, I could see it. We all get lonely, don’t we? I do, of course. Just
now I’m getting sorer and sorer on Interesting People. I think I’ll go
back to Paris. There even the Interesting People are—why, they’re
interesting. Savvy—you see I _am_ an American—savvy?”

“Why—uh—uh—uh—I d-don’t exactly get what you mean. How do you mean
about ‘Interesting People’?”

“My dear child, of course you don’t get me.” She went to the mirror and
patted her hair, then curled on the bed, with an offhand “Won’t you sit
down?” and smoked elaborately, blowing the blue tendrils toward the
ceiling as she continued: “Of course you don’t get it. You’re a nice
sensible clerk who’ve had enough real work to do to keep you from being
afraid that other people will think you’re commonplace. You don’t have
to coddle yourself into working enough to earn a living by talking
about temperament.

“Why, these Interesting People—You find ’em in London and New York and
San Francisco just the same. They’re convinced they’re the wisest
people on earth. There’s a few artists and a bum novelist or two
always, and some social workers. The particular bunch that it amuses me
to hate just now—and that I apparently can’t do without—they gather
around Olympia Johns, who makes a kind of salon out of her rooms on
Great James Street, off Theobald’s Road…. They might just as well be in
New York; but they’re even stodgier. They don’t get sick of the game of
being on intellectual heights as soon as New-Yorkers do.

“I’ll have to take you there. It’s a cheery sensation, you know, to
find a man who has some imagination, but who has been unspoiled by
Interesting People, and take him to hear them wamble. They sit around
and growl and rush the growler—I hope you know growler-rushing—and
rejoice that they’re free spirits. Being Free, of course, they’re not
allowed to go and play with nice people, for when a person is Free, you
know, he is never free to be anything but Free. That may seem
confusing, but they understand it at Olympia’s.

“Of course there’s different sorts of intellectuals, and each cult
despises all the others. Mostly, each cult consists of one person, but
sometimes there’s two—a talker and an audience—or even three. For
instance, you may be a militant and a vegetarian, but if some one is a
militant and has a good figure, why then—oof!… That’s what I mean by
‘Interesting People.’ I loathe them! So, of course, being one of them,
I go from one bunch to another, and, upon my honor, every single time I
think that the new bunch _is_ interesting!”

Then she smoked in gloomy silence, while Mr. Wrenn remarked, after some
mental labor, “I guess they’re like cattlemen—the cattle-ier they are,
the more romantic they look, and then when you get to know them the
chief trouble with them is that they’re cattlemen.”

“Yes, that’s it. They’re—why, they’re—Oh, poor dear, there, there,
there! It _sha’n’t_ have so much intellekchool discussion, _shall_ it!…
I think you’re a very nice person, and I’ll tell you what we’ll do.
We’ll have a small fire, shall we? In the fireplace.”

“Yes!”

She pulled the old-fashioned bell-cord, and the old-fashioned North
Country landlady came—tall, thin, parchment-faced, musty-looking as
though she had been dressed up in Victorian garments in 1880 and left
to stand in an unaired parlor ever since. She glowered silent
disapproval at the presence of Mr. Wrenn in Istra’s room, but sent a
slavey to make the fire—“saxpence uxtry.” Mr. Wrenn felt guilty till
the coming of the slavey, a perfect Christmas-story-book slavey, a
small and merry lump of soot, who sang out, “Chilly t’-night, ayn’t
it?” and made a fire that was soon singing “Chilly t’-night,” like the
slavey.

Istra sat on the floor before the fire, Turk-wise, her quick delicate
fingers drumming excitedly on her knees.

“Come sit by me. You, with your sense of the romantic, ought to
appreciate sitting by the fire. You know it’s always done.”

He slumped down by her, clasping his knees and trying to appear the
dignified American business man in his country-house.

She smiled at him intimately, and quizzed:

“Tell me about the last time you sat with a girl by the fire. Tell poor
Istra the dark secret. Was she the perfect among pink faces?”

“I’ve—never—sat—before—any—fireplace—with —any—one! Except when I was
about nine—one Hallowe’en—at a party in Parthenon—little town up York
State.”

“Really? Poor kiddy!”

She reached out her hand and took his. He was terrifically conscious of
the warm smoothness of her fingers playing a soft tattoo on the back of
his hand, while she said:

“But you have been in love? Drefful in love?”

“I never have.”

“Dear child, you’ve missed so much of the tea and cakes of life,
haven’t you? And you have an interest in life. Do you know, when I
think of the jaded Interesting People I’ve met—Why do I leave you to be
spoiled by some shop-girl in a flowered hat? She’d drag you to
moving-picture shows…. Oh! You didn’t tell me that you went to moving
pictures, did you?”

“No!” he lied, fervently, then, feeling guilty, “I used to, but no
more.”

“It _shall_ go to the nice moving pictures if it wants to! It shall
take me, too. We’ll forget there are any syndicalists or
broken-colorists for a while, won’t we? We’ll let the robins cover us
with leaves.”

“You mean like the babes in the woods? But, say, I’m afraid you ain’t
just a babe in the woods! You’re the first person with brains I ever
met, ’cept, maybe, Dr. Mittyford; and the Doc never would play games, I
don’t believe. The very first one, really.”

“Thank you!” Her warm pressure on his hand tightened. His heart was
making the maddest gladdest leaps, and timidly, with a feeling of
historic daring, he ventured to explore with his thumb-tip the fine
lines of the side of her hand…. It actually was he, sitting here with a
princess, and he actually did feel the softness of her hand, he
pantingly assured himself.

Suddenly she gave his hand a parting pressure and sprang up.

“Come. We’ll have tiffin, and then I’ll send you away, and to-morrow
we’ll go see the Tate Gallery.”

While Istra was sending the slavey for cakes and a pint of light wine
Mr. Wrenn sat in a chair—just sat in it; he wanted to show that he
could be dignified and not take advantage of Miss Nash’s kindness by
slouchin’ round. Having read much Kipling, he had an idea that tiffin
was some kind of lunch in the afternoon, but of course if Miss Nash
used the word for evening supper, then he had been wrong.

Istra whisked the writing-table with the Reseda-green cover over before
the fire, chucked its papers on the bed, and placed a bunch of roses on
one end, moving the small blue vase two inches to the right, then two
inches forward.

The wine she poured into a decanter. Wine was distinctly a problem to
him. He was excited over his sudden rise into a society where one took
wine as a matter of course. Mrs. Zapp wouldn’t take it as a matter of
course. He rejoiced that he wasn’t narrow-minded, like Mrs. Zapp. He
worked so hard at not being narrow-minded like Mrs. Zapp that he
started when he was called out of his day-dream by a mocking voice:

“But you might look at the cakes. Just once, anyway. They are very nice
cakes.”

“Uh—”

“Yes, I know the wine is wine. Beastly of it.”

“Say, Miss Nash, I did get you this time.”

“Oh, don’t tell me that my presiding goddessship is over already.”

“Uh—sure! Now I’m going to be a cruel boss.”

“Dee-lighted! Are you going to be a caveman?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t quite get you on that.”

“That’s too bad, isn’t it. I think I’d rather like to meet a caveman.”

“Oh say, I know about that caveman—Jack London’s guys. I’m afraid I
ain’t one. Still—on the cattle-boat—Say, I wish you could of seen it
when the gang were tying up the bulls, before starting. Dark close
place ’tween-decks, with the steers bellowin’ and all packed tight
together, and the stiffs gettin’ seasick—so seasick we just kind of
staggered around; and we’d get hold of a head rope and yank and then
let go, and the bosses’d yell, ‘Pull, or I’ll brain you.’ And then the
fo’c’sle—men packed in like herrings.”

She was leaning over the table, making a labyrinth with the currants
from a cake and listening intently. He stopped politely, feeling that
he was talking too much. But, “Go on, please do,” she commanded, and he
told simply, seeing it more and more, of Satan and the Grenadier, of
the fairies who had beckoned to him from the Irish coast hills, and the
comradeship of Morton.

She interrupted only once, murmuring, “My dear, it’s a good thing
you’re articulate, anyway—” which didn’t seem to have any bearing on
hay-bales.

She sent him away with a light “It’s been a good party, hasn’t it,
caveman? (If you _are_ a caveman.) Call for me tomorrow at three. We’ll
go to the Tate Gallery.”

She touched his hand in the fleetingest of grasps.

“Yes. Good night, Miss Nash,” he quavered.

A morning of planning his conduct so that in accompanying Istra Nash to
the Tate Gallery he might be the faithful shadow and beautiful
transcript of Mittyford, Ph.D. As a result, when he stood before the
large canvases of Mr. Watts at the Tate he was so heavy and correctly
appreciative, so ready not to enjoy the stories in the pictures of
Millais, that Istra suddenly demanded:

“Oh, my dear child, I have taken a great deal on my hands. You’ve got
to learn to play. You don’t know how to play. Come. I shall teach you.
I don’t know why I should, either. But—come.”

She explained as they left the gallery: “First, the art of riding on
the buses. Oh, it is an art, you know. You must appreciate the
flower-girls and the gr-r-rand young bobbies. You must learn to watch
for the blossoms on the restaurant terraces and roll on the grass in
the parks. You’re much too respectable to roll on the grass, aren’t
you? I’ll try ever so hard to teach you not to be. And we’ll go to tea.
How many kinds of tea are there?”

“Oh, Ceylon and English Breakfast and—oh—Chinese.”

“B—”

“And golf tees!” he added, excitedly, as they took a seat in front atop
the bus.

“Puns are a beginning at least,” she reflected.

“But how many kinds of tea _are_ there, Istra?… Oh say, I hadn’t ought
to—”

“Course; call me Istra or anything else. Only, you mustn’t call my
bluff. What do I know about tea? All of us who play are bluffers, more
or less, and we are ever so polite in pretending not to know the others
are bluffing…. There’s lots of kinds of tea. In the New York Chinatown
I saw once—Do you know Chinatown? Being a New-Yorker, I don’t suppose
you do.”

“Oh yes. And Italiantown. I used to wander round there.”

“Well, down at the Seven Flowery Kingdoms Chop Suey and American
Cooking there’s tea at five dollars a cup that they advertise is grown
on ‘cloud-covered mountain-tops.’ I suppose when the tops aren’t
cloud-covered they only charge three dollars a cup…. But, serious-like,
there’s really only two kinds of teas—those you go to to meet the man
you love and ought to hate, and those you give to spite the women you
hate but ought to—hate! Isn’t that lovely and complicated? That’s
playing. With words. My aged parent calls it ‘talking too much and not
saying anything.’ Note that last—not saying _anything!_ It’s one of the
rules in playing that mustn’t be broken.”

He understood that better than most of the things she said. “Why,” he
exclaimed, “it’s kind of talking sideways.”

“Why, yes. Of course. Talking sideways. Don’t you see now?”

Gallant gentleman as he was, he let her think she had invented the
phrase.

She said many other things; things implying such vast learning that he
made gigantic resolves to “read like thunder.”

Her great lesson was the art of taking tea. He found, surprisedly, that
they weren’t really going to endanger their clothes by rolling on park
grass. Instead, she led him to a tea-room behind a candy-shop on
Tottenham Court Road, a low room with white wicker chairs, colored
tiles set in the wall, and green Sedji-ware jugs with irregular bunches
of white roses. A waitress with wild-rose cheeks and a busy step
brought Orange Pekoe and lemon for her, Ceylon and Russian Caravan tea
and a jug of clotted cream for him, with a pile of cinnamon buns.

“But—” said Istra. “Isn’t this like Alice in Wonderland! But you must
learn the buttering of English muffins most of all. If you get to be
very good at it the flunkies will let you take tea at the Carleton.
They are such hypercritical flunkies, and the one that brings the gold
butter-measuring rod to test your skill, why, he always wears
knee-breeches of silver gray. So you can see, Billy, how careful you
have to be. And eat them without buttering your nose. For if you butter
your nose they’ll think you’re a Greek professor. And you wouldn’t like
that, would you, honey?” He learned how to pat the butter into the
comfortable brown insides of the muffins that looked so cold and floury
without. But Istra seemed to have lost interest; and he didn’t in the
least follow her when she observed:

“Doubtless it _was_ the best butter. But where, where, dear dormouse,
are the hatter and hare? Especially the sweet bunny rabbit that
wriggled his ears and loved Gralice, the _princesse d’outre-mer._

“Where, where are the hatter and hare,
And where is the best butter gone?”


Presently: “Come on. Let’s beat it down to Soho for dinner. Or—no! Now
you shall lead me. Show me where you’d go for dinner. And you shall
take me to a music-hall, and make me enjoy it. Now _you_ teach _me_ to
play.”

“Gee! I’m afraid I don’t know a single thing to teach you.”

“Yes, but—See here! We are two lonely Western barbarians in a strange
land. We’ll play together for a little while. We’re not used to each
other’s sort of play, but that will break up the monotony of life all
the more. I don’t know how long we’ll play or—Shall we?”

“Oh yes!”

“Now show me how you play.”

“I don’t believe I ever did much, really.”

“Well, you shall take me to your kind of a restaurant.”

“I don’t believe you’d care much for penny meat-pies.”

“Little meat-pies?”

“Um-huh.”

“Little _crispy_ ones? With flaky covers?”

“Um-huh.”

“Why, course I would! And ha’p’ny tea? Lead me to it, O brave knight!
And to a vaudeville.”

He found that this devoted attendant of theaters had never seen the
beautiful Italians who pounce upon protesting zylophones with small
clubs, or the side-splitting juggler’s assistant who breaks up piles
and piles of plates. And as to the top hat that turns into an accordion
and produces much melody, she was ecstatic.

At after-theater supper he talked of Theresa and South Beach, of
Charley Carpenter and Morton—Morton—Morton.

They sat, at midnight, on the steps of the house in Tavistock Place.

“I do know you now, “she mused. “It’s curious how any two babes in a
strange-enough woods get acquainted. You _are_ a lonely child, aren’t
you?” Her voice was mother-soft. “We will play just a little—”

“I wish I had some games to teach. But you know so much.”

“And I’m a perfect beauty, too, aren’t I?” she said, gravely.

“Yes, you are!” stoutly.

“You would be loyal…. And I need some one’s admiration…. Mostly, Paris
and London hold their sides laughing at poor Istra.”

He caught her hand. “Oh, don’t! They _must_ ’preciate you. I’d like to
kill anybody that didn’t!”

“Thanks.” She gave his hand a return pressure and hastily withdrew her
own. “You’ll be good to some sweet pink face…. And I’ll go on being
discontented. Oh, isn ’t life the fiercest proposition!… We seem
different, you and I, but maybe it’s mostly surface—down deep we’re
alike in being desperately unhappy because we never know what we’re
unhappy about. Well—”

He wanted to put his head down on her knees and rest there. But he sat
still, and presently their cold hands snuggled together.

After a silence, in which they were talking of themselves, he burst
out: “But I don’t see how Paris could help ’preciating you. I’ll bet
you’re one of the best artists they ever saw…. The way you made up a
picture in your mind about that juggler!”

“Nope. Sorry. Can’t paint at all.”

“Ah, stuff!” with a rudeness quite masterful. “I’ll bet your pictures
are corkers.”

“Um.”

“Please, would you let me see some of them some time. I suppose it
would bother—”

“Come up-stairs. I feel inspired. You are about to hear some great
though nasty criticisms on the works of the unfortunate Miss Nash.”

She led the way, laughing to herself over something. She gave him no
time to blush and hesitate over the impropriety of entering a lady’s
room at midnight, but stalked ahead with a brief “Come in.”

She opened a large portfolio covered with green-veined black paper and
yanked out a dozen unframed pastels and wash-drawings which she
scornfully tossed on the bed, saying, as she pointed to a mass of
Marseilles roofs:

“Do you see this sketch? The only good thing about it is the thing that
last art editor, that red-headed youth, probably didn’t like. Don’t you
hate red hair? You see these ridiculous glaring purple shadows under
the _clocher?_”

She stared down at the picture interestedly, forgetting him, pinching
her chin thoughtfully, while she murmured: “They’re rather nice. Rather
good. Rather good.”

Then, quickly twisting her shoulders about, she poured out:

“But look at this. Consider this arch. It’s miserably out of drawing.
And see how I’ve faked this figure? It isn’t a real person at all.
Don’t you notice how I’ve juggled with this stairway? Why, my dear man,
every bit of the drawing in this thing would disgrace a seventh-grade
drawing-class in Dos Puentes. And regard the bunch of lombardies in
this other picture. They look like umbrellas upside down in a silly
wash-basin. Uff! It’s terrible. _Affreux!_ Don’t act as though you
liked them. You really needn’t, you know. Can’t you see now that
they’re hideously out of drawing?”

Mr. Wrenn’s fancy was walking down a green lane of old France toward a
white cottage with orange-trees gleaming against its walls. In her
pictures he had found the land of all his forsaken dreams.

“I—I—I—” was all he could say, but admiration pulsed in it.

“Thank you…. Yes, we _will_ play. Good night. To-morrow!”




CHAPTER IX
HE ENCOUNTERS THE INTELLECTUALS


He wanted to find a cable office, stalk in, and nonchalantly send to
his bank for more money. He could see himself doing it. Maybe the cable
clerk would think he was a rich American. What did he care if he spent
all he had? A guy, he admonished himself, just had to have coin when he
was goin’ with a girl like Miss Istra. At least seven times he darted
up from the door-step, where he was on watch for her, and briskly
trotted as far as the corner. Each time his courage melted, and he
slumped back to the door-step. Sending for money—gee, he groaned, that
was pretty dangerous.

Besides, he didn’t wish to go away. Istra might come down and play with
him.

For three hours he writhed on that door-step, till he came to hate it;
it was as much a prison as his room at the Zapps’ had been. He hated
the areaway grill, and a big brown spot on the pavement, and, as a
truck-driver hates a motorman, so did he hate a pudgy woman across the
street who peeped out from a second-story window and watched him with
cynical interest. He finally could endure no longer the world’s
criticism, as expressed by the woman opposite. He started as though he
were going to go right now to some place he had been intending to go to
all the time, and stalked away, ignoring the woman.

He caught a bus, then another, then walked a while. Now that he was
moving, he was agonizedly considering his problem: What was Istra to
him, really? What could he be to her? He _was_ just a clerk. She could
never love him. “And of course,” he explained to himself, “you hadn’t
oughta love a person without you expected to marry them; you oughtn’t
never even touch her hand.” Yet he did want to touch hers. He suddenly
threw his chin back, high and firm, in defiance. He didn’t care if he
was wicked, he declared. He wanted to shout to Istra across all the
city: Let us be great lovers! Let us be mad! Let us stride over the
hilltops. Though that was not at all the way he phrased it.

Then he bumped into a knot of people standing on the walk, and came
down from the hilltops in one swoop.

A crowd was collecting before Rothsey Hall, which bore the sign:

GLORY—GLORY—GLORY

SPECIAL SALVATION ARMY JUBILEE MEETING

EXPERIENCES OF ADJUTANT CRABBENTHWAITE IN AFRICA


He gaped at the sign. A Salvationist in the crowd, trim and well set
up, his red-ribboned Salvation Army cap at a jaunty angle, said, “Won’t
you come in, brother?”

Mr. Wrenn meekly followed into the hall. Bill Wrenn was nowhere in
sight.

Now it chanced that Adjutant Crabbenthwaite told much of Houssas and
the N’Gombi, of saraweks and week-long treks, but Mr. Wrenn’s
imagination was not for a second drawn to Africa, nor did he even
glance at the sun-bonneted Salvationist women packed in the hall. He
was going over and over the Adjutant’s denunciations of the Englishmen
and Englishwomen who flirt on the mail-boats.

Suppose it had been himself and his madness over Istra—at the moment he
quite called it madness—that the Adjutant had denounced!

A Salvationist near by was staring at him most accusingly….

He walked away from the jubilee reflectively. He ate his dinner with a
grave courtesy toward the food and the waiter. He was positively
courtly to his fork. For he was just reformed. He was going to “steer
clear” of mad artist women—of all but nice good girls whom you could
marry. He remembered the Adjutant’s thundered words:

“Flirting you call it—flirting! Look into your hearts. God Himself hath
looked into them and found flirtation the gateway to hell. And I tell
you that these army officers and the bedizened women, with their wine
and cigarettes, with their devil’s calling-cards and their jewels, with
their hell-lighted talk of the sacrilegious follies of socialism and
art and horse-racing, O my brothers, it was all but a cloak for looking
upon one another to lust after one another. Rotten is this empire, and
shall fall when our soldiers seek flirtation instead of kneeling in
prayer like the iron men of Cromwell.”

Istra…. Card-playing…. Talk of socialism and art. Mr. Wrenn felt very
guilty. Istra…. Smoking and drinking wine…. But his moral reflections
brought the picture of Istra the more clearly before him—the persuasive
warmth of her perfect fingers; the curve of her backward-bent throat as
she talked in her melodious voice of all the beautiful things made by
the wise hands of great men.

He dashed out of the restaurant. No matter what happened, good or bad,
he had to see her. While he was climbing to the upper deck of a bus he
was trying to invent an excuse for seeing her…. Of course one couldn’t
“go and call on ladies in their rooms without havin’ some special
excuse; they would think that was awful fresh.”

He left the bus midway, at the sign of a periodical shop, and purchased
a _Blackwood’s_ and a _Nineteenth Century_. Morton had told him these
were the chief English “highbrow magazines.”

He carried them to his room, rubbed his thumb in the lampblack on the
gas-fixture, and smeared the magazine covers, then cut the leaves and
ruffled the margins to make the magazines look dog-eared with much
reading; not because he wanted to appear to have read them, but because
he felt that Istra would not permit him to buy things just for her.

All this business with details so calmed him that he wondered if he
really cared to see her at all. Besides, it was so late—after half-past
eight.

“Rats! Hang it all! I wish I was dead. I don’t know what I do want to
do,” he groaned, and cast himself upon his bed. He was sure of nothing
but the fact that he was unhappy. He considered suicide in a dignified
manner, but not for long enough to get much frightened about it.

He did not know that he was the toy of forces which, working on him
through the strangeness of passionate womanhood, could have made him a
great cad or a petty hero as easily as they did make him confusedly
sorry for himself. That he wasn’t very much of a cad or anything of a
hero is a detail, an accident resulting from his thirty-five or
thirty-six years of stodgy environment. Cad or hero, filling scandal
columns or histories, he would have been the same William Wrenn.

He was thinking of Istra as he lay on his bed. In a few minutes he
dashed to his bureau and brushed his thinning hair so nervously that he
had to try three times for a straight parting. While brushing his
eyebrows and mustache he solemnly contemplated himself in the mirror.

“I look like a damn rabbit,” he scorned, and marched half-way to
Istra’s room. He went back to change his tie to a navy-blue bow which
made him appear younger. He was feeling rather resentful at everything,
including Istra, as he finally knocked and heard her “Yes? Come in.”

There was in her room a wonderful being lolling in a wing-chair, one
leg over the chair-arm; a young young man, with broken brown teeth,
always seen in his perpetual grin, but a godlike Grecian nose, a high
forehead, and bristly yellow hair. The being wore large round
tortoise-shell spectacles, a soft shirt with a gold-plated collar-pin,
and delicately gray garments.

Istra was curled on the bed in a leaf-green silk kimono with a great
gold-mounted medallion pinned at her breast. Mr. Wrenn tried not to be
shocked at the kimono.

She had been frowning as he came in and fingering a long thin green
book of verses, but she glowed at Mr. Wrenn as though he were her most
familiar friend, murmuring, “Mouse dear, I’m _so_ glad you could come
in.”

Mr. Wrenn stood there awkwardly. He hadn’t expected to find another
visitor. He seemed to have heard her call him “Mouse.” Yes, but what
did Mouse mean? It wasn’t his name at all. This was all very confusing.
But how awful glad she was to see him!

“Mouse dear, this is one of our best little indecent poets, Mr. Carson
Haggerty. From America—California—too. Mr. Hag’ty, Mr. Wrenn.”

“Pleased meet you,” said both men in the same tone of annoyance.

Mr. Wrenn implored: “I—uh—I thought you might like to look at these
magazines. Just dropped in to give them to you.” He was ready to go.

“Thank you—so good of you. _Please_ sit down. Carson and I were only
fighting—he’s going pretty soon. We knew each other at art school in
Berkeley. Now he knows all the toffs in London.”

“Mr. Wrenn,” said the best little poet, “I hope you’ll back up my
contention. Izzy says th—”

“Carson, I have told you just about enough times that I do not intend
to stand for ‘Izzy’ any more! I should think that even _you_ would be
able to outgrow the standard of wit that obtains in first-year art
class at Berkeley.”

Mr. Haggerty showed quite all of his ragged teeth in a noisy joyous
grin and went on, unperturbed: “Miss Nash says that the best European
thought, personally gathered in the best salons, shows that the Rodin
vogue is getting the pickle-eye from all the real yearners. What is
your opinion?”

Mr. Wrenn turned to Istra for protection. She promptly announced: “Mr.
Wrenn absolutely agrees with me. By the way, he’s doing a big book on
the recrudescence of Kipling, after his slump, and—”

“Oh, come off, now! Kipling! Blatant imperialist, anti-Stirner!” cried
Carson Haggerty, kicking out each word with the assistance of his
swinging left foot.

Much relieved that the storm-center had passed over him, Mr. Wrenn sat
on the front edge of a cane-seated chair, with the magazines between
his hands, and his hands pressed between his forward-cocked knees.
Always, in the hundreds of times he went over the scene in that room
afterward, he remembered how cool and smooth the magazine covers felt
to the palms of his flattened hands. For he associated the papery
surfaces with the apprehension he then had that Istra might give him up
to the jag-toothed grin of Carson Haggerty, who would laugh him out of
the room and out of Istra’s world.

He hated the poetic youth, and would gladly have broken all of Carson’s
teeth short off. Yet the dread of having to try the feat himself made
him admire the manner in which Carson tossed about long creepy-sounding
words, like a bush-ape playing with scarlet spiders. He talked
insultingly of Yeats and the commutation of sex-energy and Isadora
Duncan and the poetry of Carson Haggerty.

Istra yawned openly on the bed, kicking a pillow, but she was surprised
into energetic discussion now and then, till Haggerty intentionally
called her Izzy again, when she sat up and remarked to Mr. Wrenn: “Oh,
don’t go yet. You can tell me about the article when Carson goes. Dear
Carson said he was only going to stay till ten.”

Mr. Wrenn hadn’t had any intention of going, so he merely smiled and
bobbed his head to the room in general, and stammered “Y-yes,” while he
tried to remember what he had told her about some article. Article.
Perhaps it was a Souvenir Company novelty article. Great idea! Perhaps
she wanted to design a motto for them. He decidedly hoped that he could
fix it up for her—he’d sure do his best. He’d be glad to write over to
Mr. Guilfogle about it. Anyway, she seemed willing to have him stick
here.

Yet when dear Carson had jauntily departed, leaving the room still loud
with the smack of his grin, Istra seemed to have forgotten that Mr.
Wrenn was alive. She was scowling at a book on the bed as though it had
said things to her. So he sat quiet and crushed the magazine covers
more closely till the silence choked him, and he dared, “Mr. Carson is
an awful well-educated man.”

“He’s a bounder,” she snapped. She softened her voice as she continued:
“He was in the art school in California when I was there, and he
presumes on that…. It was good of you to stay and help me get rid of
him…. I’m getting—I’m sorry I’m so dull to-night. I suppose I’ll get
sent off to bed right now, if I can’t be more entertaining. It was
sweet of you to come in, Mouse…. You don’t mind my calling you ‘Mouse,’
do you? I won’t, if you do mind.”

He awkwardly walked over and laid the magazines on the bed. “Why, it’s
all right…. What was it about some novelty—some article? If there’s
anything I could do—anything—”

“Article?”

“Why, yes. That you wanted to see me about.”

“Oh! Oh, that was just to get rid of Carson…. His _insufferable_
familiarity! The penalty for my having been a naive kiddy, hungry for
friendship, once. And now, good n—. Oh, Mouse, he says my eyes—even
with this green kimono on— Come here, dear. tell me what color my eyes
are.”

She moved with a quick swing to the side of her bed. Thrusting out her
two arms, she laid ivory hands clutchingly on his shoulder. He stood
quaking, forgetting every one of the Wrennish rules by which he had
edged a shy polite way through life. He fearfully reached out his hands
toward her shoulders in turn, but his arms were shorter than hers, and
his hands rested on the sensitive warmth of her upper arms. He peered
at those dear gray-blue eyes of hers, but he could not calm himself
enough to tell whether they were china-blue or basalt-black.

“Tell me,” she demanded; “_aren’t_ they green?”

“Yes,” he quavered.

“You’re sweet,” she said.

Leaning out from the side of her bed, she kissed him. She sprang up,
and hastened to the window, laughing nervously, and deploring: “I
shouldn’t have done that! I shouldn’t! Forgive me!” Plaintively, like a
child: “Istra was so bad, so bad. Now you must go.” As she turned back
to him her eyes had the peace of an old friend’s.

Because he had wished to be kind to people, because he had been pitiful
toward Goaty Zapp, Mr. Wrenn was able to understand that she was trying
to be a kindly big sister to him, and he said “Good night, Istra,” and
smiled in a lively way and walked out. He got out the smile by
wrenching his nerves, for which he paid in agony as he knelt by his
bed, acknowledging that Istra would never love him and that therefore
he was not to love, would be a fool to love, never would love her—and
seeing again her white arms softly shadowed by her green kimono
sleeves.

No sight of Istra, no scent of her hair, no sound of her
always-changing voice for two days. Twice, seeing a sliver of light
under her door as he came up the darkened stairs, he knocked, but there
was no answer, and he marched into his room with the dignity of fury.

Numbers of times he quite gave her up, decided he wanted never to see
her again. But after one of the savagest of these renunciations, while
he was stamping defiantly down Tottenham Court Road, he saw in a window
a walking-stick that he was sure she would like his carrying. And it
cost only two-and-six. Hastily, before he changed his mind, he rushed
in and slammed down his money. It was a very beautiful stick indeed,
and of a modesty to commend itself to Istra, just a plain straight
stick with a cap of metal curiously like silver. He was conscious that
the whole world was leering at him, demanding “What’re _you_ carrying a
cane for?” but he—the misunderstood—was willing to wait for the reward
of this martyrdom in Istra’s approval.

The third night, as he stood at the window watching two children
playing in the dusk, there was a knock. It was Istra. She stood at his
door, smart and inconspicuous in a black suit with a small toque that
hid the flare of her red hair.

“Come,” she said, abruptly. “I want you to take me to Olympia’s—Olympia
Johns’ flat. I’ve been reading all the Balzac there is. I want to talk.
Can you come?”

“Oh, of course—”

“Hurry, then!”

He seized his small foolishly round hat, and he tucked his new
walking-stick under his arm without displaying it too proudly, waiting
for her comment.

She led the way down-stairs and across the quiet streets and squares of
Bloomsbury to Great James Street. She did not even see the stick.

She said scarce a word beyond:

“I’m sick of Olympia’s bunch—I never want to dine in Soho with an
inhibition and a varietistic sex instinct again—_jamais de la vie._ But
one has to play with somebody.”

Then he was so cheered that he tapped the pavements boldly with his
stick and delicately touched her arm as they crossed the street. For
she added:

“We’ll just run in and see them for a little while, and then you can
take me out and buy me a Rhine wine and seltzer…. Poor Mouse, it shall
have its play!”

Olympia Johns’ residence consisted of four small rooms. When Istra
opened the door, after tapping, the living-room was occupied by seven
people, all interrupting one another and drinking fourpenny ale; seven
people and a fog of cigarette smoke and a tangle of papers and books
and hats. A swamp of unwashed dishes appeared on a large table in the
room just beyond, divided off from the living-room by a burlap curtain
to which were pinned suffrage buttons and medallions. This last he
remembered afterward, thinking over the room, for the medals’
glittering points of light relieved his eyes from the intolerable
glances of the people as he was hastily introduced to them. He was
afraid that he would be dragged into a discussion, and sat looking away
from them to the medals, and to the walls, on which were posters,
showing mighty fists with hammers and flaming torches, or hog-like men
lolling on the chests of workmen, which they seemed to enjoy more than
the workmen. By and by he ventured to scan the group.

Carson Haggerty, the American poet, was there. But the center of them
all was Olympia Johns herself—spinster, thirty-four, as small and
active and excitedly energetic as an ant trying to get around a match.
She had much of the ant’s brownness and slimness, too. Her pale hair
was always falling from under her fillet of worn black velvet (with the
dingy under side of the velvet showing curled up at the edges). A lock
would tangle in front of her eyes, and she would impatiently shove it
back with a jab of her thin rough hands, never stopping in her
machine-gun volley of words.

“Yes, yes, yes, yes,” she would pour out. “Don’t you _see?_ We must do
something. I tell you the conditions are intolerable, simply
intolerable. We must _do_ something.”

The conditions were, it seemed, intolerable in the several branches of
education of female infants, water rates in Bloomsbury, the cutlery
industry, and ballad-singing.

And mostly she was right. Only her rightness was so demanding, so
restless, that it left Mr. Wrenn gasping.

Olympia depended on Carson Haggerty for most of the “Yes, that’s so’s,”
though he seemed to be trying to steal glances at another woman, a
young woman, a lazy smiling pretty girl of twenty, who, Istra told Mr.
Wrenn, studied Greek archaeology at the Museum. No one knew why she
studied it. She seemed peacefully ignorant of everything but her
kissable lips, and she adorably poked at things with lazy graceful
fingers, and talked the Little Language to Carson Haggerty, at which
Olympia shrugged her shoulders and turned to the others.

There were a Mr. and Mrs. Stettinius—she a poet; he a bleached man,
with goatish whiskers and a sanctimonious white neck-cloth, who was
Puritanically, ethically, gloomily, religiously atheistic. Items in the
room were a young man who taught in Mr. Jeney’s Select School and an
Established Church mission worker from Whitechapel, who loved to be
shocked.

It was Mr. Wrenn who was really shocked, however, not by the noise and
odor; not by the smoking of the women; not by the demand that “we” tear
down the state; no, not by these was Our Mr. Wrenn of the Souvenir
Company shocked, but by his own fascinated interest in the frank talk
of sex. He had always had a quite undefined supposition that it was
wicked to talk of sex unless one made a joke of it.

Then came the superradicals, to confuse the radicals who confused Mr.
Wrenn.

For always there is a greater rebellion; and though you sell your
prayer-book to buy Bakunine, and esteem yourself revolutionary to a
point of madness, you shall find one who calls you reactionary. The
scorners came in together—Moe Tchatzsky, the syndicalist and direct
actionist, and Jane Schott, the writer of impressionistic prose—and
they sat silently sneering on a couch.

Istra rose, nodded at Mr. Wrenn, and departed, despite Olympia’s
hospitable shrieks after them of “Oh stay! It’s only a little after
ten. Do stay and have something to eat.”

Istra shut the door resolutely. The hall was dark. It was gratefully
quiet. She snatched up Mr. Wrenn’s hand and held it to her breast.

“Oh, Mouse dear, I’m so bored! I want some real things. They talk and
talk in there, and every night they settle all the fate of all the
nations, always the same way. I don’t suppose there’s ever been a bunch
that knew more things incorrectly. You hated them, didn’t you?”

“Why, I don’t think you ought to talk about them so severe,” he
implored, as they started down-stairs. “I don’t mean they’re like you.
They don’t savvy like you do. I mean it! But I was awful int’rested in
what that Miss Johns said about kids in school getting crushed into a
mold. Gee! that’s so; ain’t it? Never thought of it before. And that
Mrs. Stettinius talked about Yeats so beautiful.”

“Oh, my dear, you make my task so much harder. I want you to be
different. Can’t you see your cattle-boat experience is realer than any
of the things those half-baked thinkers have done? I _know_. I’m
half-baked myself.”

“Oh, I’ve never done nothing.”

“But you’re ready to. Oh, I don’t know. I want—I wish Jock Seton—the
filibuster I met in San Francisco—I wish he were here. Mouse, maybe I
can make a filibuster of you. I’ve got to create something. Oh, those
people! If you just knew them! That fool Mary Stettinius is mad about
that Tchatzsky person, and her husband invites him to teas. Stettinius
is mad about Olympia, who’ll probably take Carson out and marry him,
and he’ll keep on hanging about the Greek girl. Ungh!”

“I don’t know—I don’t know—”

But as he didn’t know what he didn’t know she merely patted his arm and
said, soothingly: “I won’t criticize your first specimens of radicals
any more. They are trying to do something, anyway.” Then she added, in
an irrelevant tone, “You’re exactly as tall as I am. Mouse dear, you
ought to be taller.”

They were entering the drab stretch of Tavistock Place, after a silence
as drab, when she exclaimed: “Mouse, I am _so_ sick of everything. I
want to get out, away, anywhere, and do something, anything, just so’s
it’s different. Even the country. I’d like—Why couldn’t we?”

“Let’s go out on a picnic to-morrow, Istra.”

“A picnic picnic? With pickles and a pillow cushion and several kinds
of cake?… I’m afraid the Bois Boulogne has spoiled me for that…. Let me
think.”

She drooped down on the steps of their house. Her head back, her supple
strong throat arched with the passion of hating boredom, she devoured
the starlight dim over the stale old roofs across the way.

“Stars,” she said. “Out on the moors they would come down by you…. What
is _your_ adventure—your formula for it?… Let’s see; you take common
roadside things seriously; you’d be dear and excited over a Red Lion
Inn.”

“Are there more than one Red Li—”

“My dear Mouse, England is a menagerie of Red Lions and White Lions and
fuzzy Green Unicorns…. Why not, why not, _why not!_ Let’s walk to
Aengusmere. It’s a fool colony of artists and so on, up in Suffolk; but
they _have_ got some beautiful cottages, and they’re more Celt than
Dublin…. Start right now; take a train to Chelmsford, say, and tramp
all night. Take a couple of days or so to get there. Think of it!
Tramping through dawn, past English fields. Think of it, Yankee. And
not caring what anybody in the world thinks. Gipsies. Shall we?”

“Wh-h-h-h-y—” He was sure she was mad. Tramping all night! He couldn’t
let her do this.

She sprang up. She stared down at him in revulsion, her hands clenched.
Her voice was hostile as she demanded:

“What? Don’t you want to? With _me?_”

He was up beside her, angry, dignified; a man.

“Look here. You know I want to. You’re the elegantest—I mean you’re—Oh,
you ought to know! Can’t you see how I feel about you? Why, I’d rather
do this than anything I ever heard of in my life. I just don’t want to
do anything that would get people to talking about you.”

“Who would know? Besides, my dear man, I don’t regard it as exactly
wicked to walk decently along a country road.”

“Oh, it isn’t that. Oh, please, Istra, don’t look at me like that—like
you hated me.”

She calmed at once, drummed on his arm, sat down on the railing, and
drew him to a seat beside her.

“Of course, Mouse. It’s silly to be angry. Yes, I do believe you want
to take care of me. But don’t worry…. Come! Shall we go?”

“But wouldn’t you rather wait till to-morrow?”

“No. The whole thing’s so mad that if I wait till then I’ll never want
to do it. And you’ve got to come, so that I’ll have some one to quarrel
with…. I hate the smugness of London, especially the smugness of the
anti-smug anti-bourgeois radicals, so that I have the finest mad mood!
Come. We’ll go.”

Even this logical exposition had not convinced him, but he did not
gainsay as they entered the hall and Istra rang for the landlady. His
knees grew sick and old and quavery as he heard the landlady’s voice
loud below-stairs: “Now wot do they want? It’s eleven o’clock. Aren’t
they ever done a-ringing and a-ringing?”

The landlady, the tired thin parchment-faced North Countrywoman, whose
god was Respectability of Lodgings, listened in a frightened way to
Istra’s blandly superior statement: “Mr. Wrenn and I have been invited
to join an excursion out of town that leaves to-night. We’ll pay our
rent and leave our things here.”

“Going off together—”

“My good woman, we are going to Aengusmere. Here’s two pound. Don’t
allow any one in my room. And I may send for my things from out of
town. Be ready to pack them in my trunks and send them to me. Do you
understand?”

“Yes, miss, but—”

“My good woman, do you realize that your ‘buts’ are insulting?”

“Oh, I didn’t go to be insulting—”

“Then that’s all…. Hurry now, Mouse!”

On the stairs, ascending, she whispered, with the excitement not of a
tired woman, but of a tennis-and-dancing-mad girl: “We’re off! Just
take a tooth-brush. Put on an outing suit—any old thing—and an old
cap.”

She darted into her room.

Now Mr. Wrenn had, for any old thing, as well as for afternoon and
evening dress, only the sturdy undistinguished clothes he was wearing,
so he put on a cap, and hoped she wouldn’t notice. She didn’t. She came
knocking in fifteen minutes, trim in a khaki suit, with low thick boots
and a jolly tousled blue tam-o’-shanter.

“Come on. There’s a train for Chelmsford in half an hour, my time-table
confided to me. I feel like singing.”




CHAPTER X
HE GOES A-GIPSYING


They rode out of London in a third-class compartment, opposite a curate
and two stodgy people who were just people and defied you (Istra
cheerfully explained to Mr. Wrenn) to make anything of them but just
people.

“Wouldn’t they stare if they knew what idiocy we’re up to!” she
suggested.

Mr. Wrenn bobbed his head in entire agreement. He was trying, without
any slightest success, to make himself believe that Mr. William Wrenn,
Our Mr. Wrenn, late of the Souvenir Company, was starting out for a
country tramp at midnight with an artist girl.

The night foreman of the station, a person of bedizenment and pride,
stared at them as they alighted at Chelmsford and glanced around like
strangers. Mr. Wrenn stared back defiantly and marched with Istra from
the station, through the sleeping town, past its ragged edges, into the
country.

They tramped on, a bit wearily. Mr. Wrenn was beginning to wonder if
they’d better go back to Chelmsford. Mist was dripping and blind and
silent about them, weaving its heavy gray with the night. Suddenly
Istra caught his arm at the gate to a farm-yard, and cried, “Look!”

“Gee!… Gee! we’re in England. We’re abroad!”

“Yes—abroad.”

A paved courtyard with farm outbuildings thatched and ancient was lit
faintly by a lantern hung from a post that was thumbed to a soft
smoothness by centuries.

“That couldn’t be America,” he exulted. “Gee! I’m just gettin’ it! I’m
so darn glad we came…. Here’s real England. No tourists. It’s what I’ve
always wanted—a country that’s old. And different…. Thatched houses!…
And pretty soon it’ll be dawn, summer dawn; with you, with Istra!
_Gee!_ It’s the darndest adventure.”

“Yes…. Come on. Let’s walk fast or we’ll get sleepy, and then your
romantic heroine will be a grouchy Interesting People!… Listen! There’s
a sleepy dog barking, a million miles away…. I feel like telling you
about myself. You don’t know me. Or do you?”

“I dunno just how you mean.”

“Oh, it shall have its romance! But some time I’ll tell you—perhaps I
will—how I’m not really a clever person at all, but just a savage from
outer darkness, who pretends to understand London and Paris and Munich,
and gets frightfully scared of them…. Wait! Listen! Hear the mist drip
from that tree. Are you nice and drowned?”

“Uh—kind of. But I been worrying about you being soaked.”

“Let me see. Why, your sleeve is wet clear through. This khaki of mine
keeps out the water better…. But I don’t mind getting wet. All I mind
is being bored. I’d like to run up this hill without a thing on—just
feeling the good healthy real mist on my skin. But I’m afraid it isn’t
done.”

Mile after mile. Mostly she talked of the boulevards and Pere Dureon,
of Debussy and artichokes, in little laughing sentences that sprang
like fire out of the dimness of the mist.

Dawn came. From a hilltop they made out the roofs of a town and stopped
to wonder at its silence, as though through long ages past no happy
footstep had echoed there. The fog lifted. The morning was new-born and
clean, and they fairly sang as they clattered up to an old coaching inn
and demanded breakfast of an amazed rustic pottering about the inn yard
in a smock. He did not know that to a “thrilling” Mr. Wrenn he—or
perhaps it was his smock—was the hero in an English melodrama. Nor,
doubtless, did the English crisp bacon and eggs which a sleepy
housemaid prepared know that they were theater properties. Why, they
were English eggs, served at dawn in an English inn—a stone-floored
raftered room with a starling hanging in a little cage of withes
outside the latticed window. And there were no trippers to bother them!
(Mr. Wrenn really used the word “trippers” in his cogitations; he had
it from Istra.)

When he informed her of this occult fact she laughed, “You know mighty
well, Mouse, that you have a sneaking wish there were one Yankee
stranger here to see our glory.”

“I guess that’s right.”

“But maybe I’m just as bad.”

For once their tones had not been those of teacher and pupil, but of
comrades. They set out from the inn through the brightening morning
like lively boys on a vacation tramp.

The sun crept out, with the warmth and the dust, and Istra’s steps
lagged. As they passed the outlying corner of a farm where a
straw-stack was secluded in a clump of willows Istra smiled and sighed:
“I’m pretty tired, dear. I’m going to sleep in that straw-stack. I’ve
always wanted to sleep in a straw-stack. It’s _comme il faut_ for
vagabonds in the best set, you know. And one can burrow. Exciting, eh?”

She made a pillow of her khaki jacket, while he dug down to a dry place
for her. He found another den on the other side of the stack.

It was afternoon when he awoke. He sprang up and rushed around the
stack. Istra was still asleep, curled in a pathetically small childish
heap, her tired face in repose against the brown-yellow of her khaki
jacket. Her red hair had come down and shone about her shoulders.

She looked so frail that he was frightened. Surely, too, she’d be very
angry with him for letting her come on this jaunt.

He scribbled on a leaf from his address-book—religiously carried for
six years, but containing only four addresses—this note:

Gone to get stuff for bxfst be right back.—W. W.


and, softly crawling up the straw, left the note by her head. He
hastened to a farm-house. The farm-wife was inclined to be curious. O
curious farm-wife, you of the cream-thick Essex speech and the
shuffling feet, you were brave indeed to face Bill Wrenn the Great,
with his curt self-possession, for he was on a mission for Istra, and
he cared not for the goggling eyes of all England. What though he was a
bunny-faced man with an innocuous mustache? Istra would be awakening
hungry. That was why he bullied you into selling him a stew-pan and a
bundle of faggots along with the tea and eggs and a bread loaf and a
jar of the marmalade your husband’s farm had been making these two
hundred years. And you should have had coffee for him, not tea, woman
of Essex.

When he returned to their outdoor inn the late afternoon glow lay along
the rich fields that sloped down from their well-concealed nook. Istra
was still asleep, but her cheek now lay wistfully on the crook of her
thin arm. He looked at the auburn-framed paleness of her face, its
lines of thought and ambition, unmasked, unprotected by the swift
changes of expression which defended her while she was awake. He
sobbed. If he could only make her happy! But he was afraid of her
moods.

He built a fire by a brooklet beyond the willows, boiled the eggs and
toasted the bread and made the tea, with cream ready in a jar. He
remembered boyhood camping days in Parthenon and old camp lore. He
returned to the stack and called, “Istra—oh, Is-tra!”

She shook her head, nestled closer into the straw, then sat up, her
hair about her shoulders. She smiled and called down: “Good morning.
Why, it’s afternoon! Did you sleep well, dear?”

“Yes. Did you? Gee, I hope you did!”

“Never better in my life. I’m so sleepy yet. But comfy. I needed a
quiet sleep outdoors, and it’s so peaceful here. Breakfast! I roar for
breakfast! Where’s the nearest house?”

“Got breakfast all ready.”

“You’re a dear!”

She went to wash in the brook, and came back with eyes dancing and hair
trim, and they laughed over breakfast, glancing down the slope of
golden hazy fields. Only once did Istra pass out of the land of their
intimacy into some hinterland of analysis—when she looked at him as he
drank his tea aloud out of the stew-pan, and wondered: “Is this really
you here with me? But you _aren’t_ a boulevardier. I must say I don’t
understand what you’re doing here at all…. Nor a caveman, either. I
don’t understand it…. But you _sha’n’t_ be worried by bad Istra. Let’s
see; we went to grammar-school together.”

“Yes, and we were in college. Don’t you remember when I was baseball
captain? You don’t? Gee, you got a bad memory!”

At which she smiled properly, and they were away for Suffolk again.

“I suppose now it’ll go and rain,” said Istra, viciously, at dusk. It
was the first time she had spoken for a mile. Then, after another
quarter-mile: “Please don’t mind my being silent. I’m sort of stiff,
and my feet hurt most unromantically. You won’t mind, will you?”

Of course he did mind, and of course he said he didn’t. He artfully
skirted the field of conversation by very West Sixteenth Street
observations on a town through which they passed, while she merely
smiled wearily, and at best remarked “Yes, that’s so,” whether it was
so or not.

He was reflecting: “Istra’s terrible tired. I ought to take care of
her.” He stopped at the wood-pillared entrance of a temperance inn and
commanded: “Come! We’ll have something to eat here.” To the
astonishment of both of them, she meekly obeyed with “If you wish.”

It cannot be truthfully said that Mr. Wrenn proved himself a person of
_savoir faire_ in choosing a temperance hotel for their dinner. Istra
didn’t seem so much to mind the fact that the table-cloth was coarse
and the water-glasses thick, and that everywhere the elbow ran into a
superfluity of greasy pepper and salt castors. But when she raised her
head wearily to peer around the room she started, glared at Mr. Wrenn,
and accused: “Are you by any chance aware of the fact that this place
is crowded with tourists? There are two family parties from Davenport
or Omaha; I _know_ they are!”

“Oh, they ain’t such bad-looking people,” protested Mr. Wrenn…. Just
because he had induced her to stop for dinner the poor man thought his
masculine superiority had been recognized.

“Oh, they’re _terrible!_ Can’t you _see_ it? Oh, you’re _hopeless_.”

“Why, that big guy—that big man with the rimless spectacles looks like
he might be a good civil engineer, and I think that lady opposite him—”

“They’re Americans.”

“So’re we!”

“I’m not.”

“I thought—why—”

“Of course I was born there, but—”

“Well, just the same, I think they’re nice people.”

“Now see here. Must I argue with you? Can I have no peace, tired as I
am? Those trippers are speaking of ‘quaint English flavor.’ Can you
want anything more than that to damn them? And they’ve been touring by
motor—seeing every inn on the road.”

“Maybe it’s fun for—”

“Now _don’t_ argue with me. I know what I’m talking about. Why do I
have to explain everything? They’re hopeless!”

Mr. Wrenn felt a good wholesome desire to spank her, but he said, most
politely: “You’re awful tired. Don’t you want to stay here tonight? Or
maybe some other hotel; and I’ll stay here.”

“No. Don’t want to stay any place. Want to get away from myself,” she
said, exactly like a naughty child.

So they tramped on again.

Darkness was near. They had plunged into a country which in the night
seemed to be a stretch of desolate moorlands. As they were silently
plodding up a hill the rain came. It came with a roar, a pitiless
drenching against which they fought uselessly, soaking them, slapping
their faces, blinding their eyes. He caught her arm and dragged her
ahead. She would be furious with him because it rained, of course, but
this was no time to think of that; he had to get her to a dry place.

Istra laughed: “Oh, isn’t this great! We’re real vagabonds now.”

“Why! Doesn’t that khaki soak through? Aren’t you wet?”

“To the skin!” she shouted, gleefully. “And I don’t care! We’re _doing_
something. Poor dear, is it worried? I’ll race you to the top of the
hill.”

The dark bulk of a building struck their sight at the top, and they ran
to it. Just now Mr. Wrenn was ready to devour alive any irate
householder who might try to turn them out. He found the building to be
a ruined stable—the door off the hinges, the desolate thatch falling
in. He struck a match and, holding it up, standing straight, the
master, all unconscious for once in his deprecating life of the
Wrennishness of Mr. Wrenn, he discovered that the thatch above the
horse-manger was fairly waterproof.

“Come on! Up on the edge of the manger, Istra,” he ordered.

“This is a perfectly good place for a murder,” she grinned, as they sat
swinging their legs.

He could fancy her grinning. He was sure about it, and well content.

“Have I been so very grouchy, Mouse? Don’t you want to murder me? I’ll
try to find you a long pin.”

“Nope; I don’t think so, much. I guess we can get along without it this
time.”

“Oh dear, dear! This is very dreadful. You’re so used to me now that
you aren’t even scared of me any more.”

“Gee! I guess I’ll be scared of you all right as soon as I get you into
a dry place, but I ain’t got time now. Sitting on a manger! Ain’t this
the funniest place!… Now I must beat it out and find a house. There
ought to be one somewheres near here.”

“And leave me here in the darknesses and wetnesses? Not a chance. The
rain’ll soon be over, anyway. Really, I don’t mind a bit. I think it’s
rather fun.”

Her voice was natural again, natural and companionable and brave. She
laughed as she stroked her wet shoulder and held his hand, sitting
quietly and bidding him listen to the soft forlorn sound of the rain on
the thatch.

But the rain was not soon over, and their dangling position was very
much like riding a rail.

“I’m so uncomfortable!” fretted Istra.

“See here, Istra, please, I think I’d better go see if I can’t find a
house for you to get dry in.”

“I feel too wretched to go any place. Too wretched to move.”

“Well, then, I’ll make a fire here. There ain’t much danger.”

“The place will catch fire,” she began, querulously.

But he interrupted her. “Oh, _let_ the darn place catch fire! I’m going
to make a fire, I tell you!”

“I don’t want to move. It’ll just be another kind of discomfort, that’s
all. Why couldn’t you try and take a little bit of care of me, anyway?”

“Oh, hon-ey!” he wailed, in youthful bewilderment. “I did try to get
you to stay at that hotel in town and get some rest.”

“Well, you ought to have made me. Don’t you realize that I took you
along to take care of me?”

“Uh—”

“Now don’t argue about it. I can’t stand argument all the time.”

He thought instantly of Lee Theresa Zapp quarreling with her mother,
but he said nothing. He gathered the driest bits of thatch and wood he
could find in the litter on the stable floor and kindled a fire, while
she sat sullenly glaring at him, her face wrinkled and tired in the wan
firelight. When the blaze was going steadily, a compact and safe little
fire, he spread his coat as a seat for her, and called, cheerily, “Come
on now, honey; here’s a regular home and hearthstone for you.”

She slipped down from the manger edge and stood in front of him,
looking into his eyes—which were level with her own.

“You _are_ good to me,” she half whispered, and smoothed his cheek,
then slipped down on the outspread coat, and murmured, “Come; sit here
by me, and we’ll both get warm.”

All night the rain dribbled, but no one came to drive them away from
the fire, and they dozed side by side, their hands close and their
garments steaming. Istra fell asleep, and her head drooped on his
shoulder. He straightened to bear its weight, though his back twinged
with stiffness, and there he sat unmoving, through an hour of pain and
happiness and confused meditation, studying the curious background—the
dark roof of broken thatch, the age-corroded walls, the littered
earthen floor. His hand pressed lightly the clammy smoothness of the
wet khaki of her shoulder; his wet sleeve stuck to his arm, and he
wanted to pull it free. His eyes stung. But he sat tight, while his
mind ran round in circles, considering that he loved Istra, and that he
would not be entirely sorry when he was no longer the slave to her
moods; that this adventure was the strangest and most romantic, also
the most idiotic and useless, in history.

Toward dawn she stirred, and, slipping stiffly from his position, he
moved her so that her back, which was still wet, faced the fire. He
built up the fire again, and sat brooding beside her, dozing and
starting awake, till morning. Then his head bobbed, and he was dimly
awake again, to find her sitting up straight, looking at him in
amazement.

“It simply can’t be, that’s all…. Did you curl me up? I’m nice and dry
all over now. It was very good of you. You’ve been a most commendable
person…. But I think we’ll take a train for the rest of our pilgrimage.
It hasn’t been entirely successful, I’m afraid.”

“Perhaps we’d better.”

For a moment he hated her, with her smooth politeness, after a night
when she had been unbearable and human by turns. He hated her
bedraggled hair and tired face. Then he could have wept, so deeply did
he desire to pull her head down on his shoulder and smooth the wrinkles
of weariness out of her dear face, the dearer because they had endured
the weariness together. But he said, “Well, let’s try to get some
breakfast first, Istra.”

With their garments wrinkled from rain, half asleep and rather cross,
they arrived at the esthetic but respectable colony of Aengusmere by
the noon train.




CHAPTER XI
HE BUYS AN ORANGE TIE


The Aengusmere Caravanserai is so unyieldingly cheerful and artistic
that it makes the ordinary person long for a dingy old-fashioned room
in which he can play solitaire and chew gum without being rebuked with
exasperating patience by the wall stencils and clever etchings and
polished brasses. It is adjectiferous. The common room (which is
uncommon for hotel parlor) is all in superlatives and chintzes.

Istra had gone up to her room to sleep, bidding Mr. Wrenn do likewise
and avoid the wrong bunch at the Caravanserai; for besides the wrong
bunch of Interesting People there were, she explained, a right bunch,
of working artists. But he wanted to get some new clothes, to replace
his rain-wrinkled ready-mades. He was tottering through the common
room, wondering whether he could find a clothing-shop in Aengusmere,
when a shrill gurgle from a wing-chair by the rough-brick fireplace
halted him.

“Oh-h-h-h, _Mister_ Wrenn; Mr. _Wrenn!_” There sat Mrs. Stettinius, the
poet-lady of Olympia’s rooms on Great James Street.

“Oh-h-h-h, Mr. Wrenn, you _bad_ man, _do_ come sit down and tell me all
_about_ your _wonderful_ trek with Istra Nash. I _just_ met _dear_
Istra in the upper hall. Poor dear, she was _so_ crumpled, but her hair
was like a sunset over mountain peaks—you know, as Yeats says:

“A stormy sunset were her lips,
A stormy sunset on doomed ships,


only of course this was her _hair_ and not her _lips_—and she told me
that you had tramped all the _way_ from London. I’ve never heard of
anything so romantic—or no, I won’t say ‘romantic’—I _do_ agree with
dear Olympia—_isn’t_ she a mag_nifi_cent woman—_so_ fearless and
progressive—didn’t you _adore_ meeting her?—she is our modern Joan of
Arc—such a _noble_ figure—I _do_ agree with her that _romantic_ love is
_passé_, that we have entered the era of glorious companionship that
regards varietism as _exactly_ as romantic as monogamy. But—but—where
was I?—I think your gipsying down from London was _most_ exciting. Now
_do_ tell us all about it, Mr. Wrenn. First, I want you to meet Miss
Saxonby and Mr. Gutch and _dear_ Yilyena Dourschetsky and Mr. Howard
Bancock Binch—of course you know his poetry.”

And then she drew a breath and flopped back into the wing-chair’s
muffling depths.

During all this Mr. Wrenn had stood, frightened and unprotected and
rain-wrinkled, before the gathering by the fireless fireplace,
wondering how Mrs. Stettinius could get her nose so blue and yet so
powdery. Despite her encouragement he gave no fuller account of the
“gipsying” than, “Why—uh—we just tramped down,” till Russian-Jewish
Yilyena rolled her ebony eyes at him and insisted, “Yez, you mus’ tale
us about it.”

Now, Yilyena had a pretty neck, colored like a cigar of mild flavor,
and a trick of smiling. She was accustomed to having men obey her. Mr.
Wrenn stammered:

“Why—uh—we just walked, and we got caught in the rain. Say, Miss Nash
was a wonder. She never peeped when she got soaked through—she just
laughed and beat it like everything. And we saw a lot of quaint English
places along the road—got away from all them tourists—trippers—you
know.”

A perfectly strange person, a heavy old man with horn spectacles and a
soft shirt, who had joined the group unbidden, cleared his throat and
interrupted:

“Is it not a strange paradox that in traveling, the most observant of
all pursuits, one should have to encounter the eternal bourgeoisie!”

From the Cockney Greek chorus about the unlighted fire:

“Yes!”

“Everywhere.”

“Uh—” began Mr. Gutch. He apparently had something to say. But the
chorus went on:

“And just as swelteringly monogamic in Port Said as in Brum.”

“Yes, that’s so.”

“Mr. Wr-r-renn,” thrilled Mrs. Stettinius, the lady poet, “didn’t you
notice that they were perfectly oblivious of all economic movements;
that their observations never post-dated ruins?”

“I guess they wanted to make sure they were admirin’ the right things,”
ventured Mr. Wrenn, with secret terror.

“Yes, that’s so,” came so approvingly from the Greek chorus that the
personal pupil of Mittyford, Ph.D., made his first epigram:

“It isn’t so much what you like as what you don’t like that shows if
you’re wise.”

“Yes,” they gurgled; and Mr. Wrenn, much pleased with himself, smiled
_au prince_ upon his new friends.

Mrs. Stettinius was getting into her stride for a few remarks upon the
poetry of industrialism when Mr. Gutch, who had been “Uh—”ing for some
moments, trying to get in his remark, winked with sly rudeness at Miss
Saxonby and observed:

“I fancy romance isn’t quite dead yet, y’ know. Our friends here seem
to have had quite a ro-mantic little journey.” Then he winked again.

“Say, what do you mean?” demanded Bill Wrenn, hot-eyed, fists clenched,
but very quiet.

“Oh, I’m not _blaming_ you and Miss Nash—quite the reverse!” tittered
the Gutch person, wagging his head sagely.

Then Bill Wrenn, with his fist at Mr. Gutch’s nose, spoke his mind:

“Say, you white-faced unhealthy dirty-minded lump, I ain’t much of a
fighter, but I’m going to muss you up so’s you can’t find your ears if
you don’t apologize for those insinuations.”

“Oh, Mr. Wrenn—”

“He didn’t mean—”

“I didn’t mean—”

“He was just spoofing—”

“I was just spoofing—”

Bill Wrenn, watching the dramatization of himself as hero, was enjoying
the drama. “You apologize, then?”

“Why certainly, Mr. Wrenn. Let me explain—”

“Oh, don’t explain,” snortled Miss Saxonby.

“Yes!” from Mr. Bancock Binch, “explanations are _so_ conventional, old
chap.”

Do you see them?—Mr. Wrenn, self-conscious and ready to turn into a
blind belligerent Bill Wrenn at the first disrespect; the talkers
sitting about and assassinating all the princes and proprieties and,
poor things, taking Mr. Wrenn quite seriously because he had uncovered
the great truth that the important thing in sight-seeing is not to see
sights. He was most unhappy, Mr. Wrenn was, and wanted to be away from
there. He darted as from a spring when he heard Istra’s voice, from the
edge of the group, calling, “Come here a sec’, Billy.”

She was standing with a chair-back for support, tired but smiling.

“I can’t get to sleep yet. Don’t you want me to show you some of the
buildings here?”

“Oh _yes!_”

“If Mrs. Stettinius can spare you!”

This by way of remarking on the fact that the female poet was staring
volubly.

“G-g-g-g-g-g—” said Mrs. Stettinius, which seemed to imply perfect
consent.

Istra took him to the belvedere on a little slope overlooking the lawns
of Aengusmere, scattered with low bungalows and rose-gardens.

“It is beautiful, isn’t it? Perhaps one could be happy here—if one
could kill all the people except the architect,” she mused.

“Oh, it is,” he glowed.

Standing there beside her, happiness enveloping them, looking across
the marvelous sward, Bill Wrenn was at the climax of his comedy of
triumph. Admitted to a world of lawns and bungalows and big studio
windows, standing in a belvedere beside Istra Nash as her friend—

“Mouse dear,” she said, hesitatingly, “the reason why I wanted to have
you come out here, why I couldn’t sleep, I wanted to tell you how
ashamed I am for having been peevish, being petulant, last night. I’m
so sorry, because you were very patient with me, you were very good to
me. I don’t want you to think of me just as a crochety woman who didn’t
appreciate you. You are very kind, and when I hear that you’re married
to some nice girl I’ll be as happy as can be.”

“Oh, Istra,” he cried, grasping her arm, “I don’t want any girl in the
world—I mean—oh, I just want to be let go ’round with you when you’ll
let me—”

“No, no, dear. You must have seen last night; that’s impossible. Please
don’t argue about it now; I’m too tired. I just wanted to tell you I
appreciated—And when you get back to America you won’t be any the worse
for playing around with poor Istra because she told you about different
things from what you’ve played with, about rearing children as
individuals and painting in _tempera_ and all those things? And—and I
don’t want you to get too fond of me, because we’re—different…. But we
have had an adventure, even if it was a little moist.” She paused;
then, cheerily: “Well, I’m going to beat it back and try to sleep
again. Good-by, Mouse dear. No, don’t come back to the
Cara-advanced-serai. Play around and see the animiles. G’-by.”

He watched her straight swaying figure swing across the lawn and up the
steps of the half-timbered inn. He watched her enter the door before he
hastened to the shops which clustered about the railway- station,
outside of the poetic preserves of the colony proper.

He noticed, as he went, that the men crossing the green were mostly
clad in Norfolk jackets and knickers, so he purchased the first pair of
unrespectable un-ankle-concealing trousers he had owned since small
boyhood, and a jacket of rough serge, with a gaudy buckle on the belt.
Also, he actually dared an orange tie!

He wanted something for Istra at dinner—“a s’prise,” he whispered under
his breath, with fond babying. For the first time in his life he
entered a florist’s shop…. Normally, you know, the poor of the city
cannot afford flowers till they are dead, and then for but one day…. He
came out with a bunch of orchids, and remembered the days when he had
envied the people he had seen in florists’ shops actually buying
flowers. When he was almost at the Caravanserai he wanted to go back
and change the orchids for simpler flowers, roses or carnations, but he
got himself not to.

The linen and glassware and silver of the Caravanserai were almost as
coarse as those of a temperance hotel, for all the raftered ceiling and
the etchings in the dining-room. Hunting up the stewardess of the inn,
a bustling young woman who was reading Keats energetically at an
office-like desk, Mr. Wrenn begged: “I wonder could I get some special
cups and plates and stuff for high tea tonight. I got a kind of party—”

“How many?” The stewardess issued the words as though he had put a
penny in the slot.

“Just two. Kind of a birthday party.” Mendacious Mr. Wrenn!

“Certainly. Of course there’s a small extra charge. I have a Royal
Satsuma tea-service—practically Royal Satsuma, at least—and some
special Limoges.”

“I think Royal Sats’ma would be nice. And some silverware?”

“Surely.”

“And could we get some special stuff to eat?”

“What would you like?”

“Why—”

Mendacious Mr. Wrenn! as we have commented. He put his head on one
side, rubbed his chin with nice consideration, and condescended, “What
would you suggest?”

“For a party high tea? Why, perhaps consomme and omelet Bergerac and a
salad and a sweet and _cafe diable_. We have a chef who does French
eggs rather remarkably. That would be simple, but—”

“Yes, that would be very good,” gravely granted the patron of cuisine.
“At six; for two.”

As he walked away he grinned within. “Gee! I talked to that omelet
Berg’ rac like I’d known it all my life!”

Other s’prises for Istra’s party he sought. Let’s see; suppose it
really were her birthday, wouldn’t she like to have a letter from some
important guy? he queried of himself. He’d write her a make-b’lieve
letter from a duke. Which he did. Purchasing a stamp, he humped over a
desk in the common room and with infinite pains he inked the stamp in
imitation of a postmark and addressed the letter to “Lady Istra Nash,
Mouse Castle, Suffolk.”

Some one sat down at the desk opposite him, and he jealously carried
the task upstairs to his room. He rang for pen and ink as regally as
though he had never sat at the wrong end of a buzzer. After half an
hour of trying to visualize a duke writing a letter he produced this:

LADY ISTRA NASH,
          Mouse Castle.


DEAR MADAM,—We hear from our friend Sir William Wrenn that some folks
are saying that to-day is not your birthday & want to stop your
celebration, so if you should need somebody to make them believe to-day
is your birthday we have sent our secretary, Sir Percival Montague. Sir
William Wrenn will hide him behind his chair, and if they bother you
just call for Sir Percival and he will tell them. Permit us, dear Lady
Nash, to wish you all the greetings of the season, and in close we beg
to remain, as ever, Yours sincerely,


DUKE VERE DE VERE.


He was very tired. When he lay down for a minute, with a pillow tucked
over his head, he was almost asleep in ten seconds. But he sprang up,
washed his prickly eyes with cold water, and began to dress. He was shy
of the knickers and golf-stockings, but it was the orange tie that gave
him real alarm. He dared it, though, and went downstairs to make sure
they were setting the table with glory befitting the party.

As he went through the common room he watched the three or four groups
scattered through it. They seemed to take his clothes as a matter of
course. He was glad. He wanted so much to be a credit to Istra.

Returning from the dining-room to the common room, he passed a group
standing in a window recess and looking away from him. He overheard:

“Who is the remarkable new person with the orange tie and the rococo
buckle on his jacket belt—the one that just went through? Did you ever
_see_ anything so funny! His collar didn’t come within an inch and a
half of fitting his neck. He must be a poet. I wonder if his verses are
as jerry-built as his garments!”

Mr. Wrenn stopped.

Another voice:

“And the beautiful lack of development of his legs! It’s like the good
old cycling days, when every draper’s assistant went bank-holidaying….
I don’t know him, but I suppose he’s some tuppeny-ha’p’ny illustrator.”

“Or perhaps he has convictions about fried bananas, and dines on a bean
saute. O Aengusmere! Shades of Aengus!”

“Not at all. When they look as gentle as he they always hate the
capitalists as a militant hates a cabinet minister. He probably dines
on the left ear of a South-African millionaire every evening before
exercise at the barricades…. I say, look over there; there’s a real
artist going across the green. You can tell he’s a real artist because
he’s dressed like a navvy and—”

Mr. Wrenn was walking away, across the common room, quite sure that
every one was eying him with amusement. And it was too late to change
his clothes. It was six already.

He stuck out his jaw, and remembered that he had planned to hide the
“letter from the duke” in Istra’s napkin that it might be the greater
surprise. He sat down at their table. He tucked the letter into the
napkin folds. He moved the vase of orchids nearer the center of the
table, and the table nearer the open window giving on the green. He
rebuked himself for not being able to think of something else to
change. He forgot his clothes, and was happy.

At six-fifteen he summoned a boy and sent him up with a message that
Mr. Wrenn was waiting and high tea ready.

The boy came back muttering, “Miss Nash left this note for you, sir,
the stewardess says.”

Mr. Wrenn opened the green-and-white Caravanserai letter excitedly.
Perhaps Istra, too, was dressing for the party! He loved all s’prises
just then. He read:

Mouse dear, I’m sorrier than I can tell you, but you know I warrned you
that bad Istra was a creature of moods, and just now my mood orders me
to beat it for Paris, which I’m doing, on the 5.17 train. I won’t say
good-by—I hate good-bys, they’re so stupid, don’t you think? Write me
some time, better make it care Amer. Express Co., Paris, because I
don’t know yet just where I’ll be. And please don’t look me up in
Paris, because it’s always better to end up an affair without
explanations, don’t you think? You have been wonderfully kind to me,
and I’ll send you some good thought-forms, shall I?


I. N.


He walked to the office of the Caravanserai, blindly, quietly. He paid
his bill, and found that he had only fifty dollars left. He could not
get himself to eat the waiting high tea. There was a seven-fourteen
train for London. He took it. Meantime he wrote out a cable to his New
York bank for a hundred and fifty dollars. To keep from thinking in the
train he talked gravely and gently to an old man about the brave days
of England, when men threw quoits. He kept thinking over and over, to
the tune set by the rattling of the train trucks: “Friends… I got to
make friends, now I know what they are…. Funny some guys don’t make
friends. Mustn’t forget. Got to make lots of ’em in New York. Learn how
to make ’em.”

He arrived at his room on Tavistock Place about eleven, and tried to
think for the rest of the night of how deeply he was missing Morton of
the cattle-boat now that—now that he had no friend in all the hostile
world.

In a London A. B. C. restaurant Mr. Wrenn was talking to an American
who had a clipped mustache, brisk manners, a Knight-of-Pythias pin, and
a mind for duck-shooting, hardware-selling, and cigars.

“No more England for mine,” the American snapped, good-humoredly. “I’m
going to get out of this foggy hole and get back to God’s country just
as soon as I can. I want to find out what’s doing at the store, and I
want to sit down to a plate of flapjacks. I’m good and plenty sick of
tea and marmalade. Why, I wouldn’t take this fool country for a gift.
No, sir! Me for God’s country—Sleepy Eye, Brown County, Minnesota. You
bet!”

“You don’t like England much, then?” Mr. Wrenn carefully reasoned.

“Like it? Like this damp crowded hole, where they can’t talk English,
and have a fool coinage—Say, that’s a great system, that metric system
they’ve got over in France, but here—why, they don’t know whether
Kansas City is in Kansas or Missouri or both…. ‘Right as rain’—that’s
what a fellow said to me for ‘all right’! Ever hear such nonsense?….
And tea for breakfast! Not for me! No, sir! I’m going to take the first
steamer!”

With a gigantic smoke-puff of disgust the man from Sleepy Eye stalked
out, jingling the keys in his trousers pocket, cocking up his cigar,
and looking as though he owned the restaurant.

Mr. Wrenn, picturing him greeting the Singer Tower from an incoming
steamer, longed to see the tower.

“Gee! I’ll do it!”

He rose and, from that table in the basement of an A. B. C. restaurant,
he fled to America.

He dashed up-stairs, fidgeted while the cashier made his change, rang
for a bus, whisked into his room, slammed his things into his
suit-case, announced to it wildly that they were going home, and
scampered to the Northwestem Station. He walked nervously up and down
till the Liverpool train departed. “Suppose Istra wanted to make up,
and came back to London?” was a terrifying thought that hounded him. He
dashed into the waiting-room and wrote to her, on a souvenir post-card
showing the Abbey: “Called back to America—will write. Address care of
Souvenir Company, Twenty-eighth Street.” But he didn’t mail the card.

Once settled in a second-class compartment, with the train in motion,
he seemed already much nearer America, and, humming, to the great
annoyance of a lady with bangs, he planned his new great work—the
making of friends; the discovery, some day, if Istra should not relent,
of “somebody to go home to.” There was no end to the “societies and
lodges and stuff” he was going to join directly he landed.

At Liverpool he suddenly stopped at a post-box and mailed his card to
Istra. That ended his debate. Of course after that he had to go back to
America.

He sailed exultantly, one month and seventeen days after leaving
Portland.




CHAPTER XII
HE DISCOVERS AMERICA


In his white-painted steerage berth Mr. Wrenn lay, with a scratch-pad
on his raised knees and a small mean pillow doubled under his head,
writing sample follow-up letters to present to the Souvenir and Art
Novelty Company, interrupting his work at intervals to add to a list of
the books which, beginning about five minutes after he landed in New
York, he was going to master. He puzzled over Marie Corelli. Morton
liked Miss Corelli so much; but would her works appeal to Istra Nash?

He had worked for many hours on a letter to Istra in which he avoided
mention of such indecent matters as steerages and immigrants. He was
grateful, he told her, for “all you learned me,” and he had thought
that Aengusmere was a beautiful place, though he now saw “what you
meant about them interesting people,” and his New York address would be
the Souvenir Company.

He tore up the several pages that repeated that oldest most melancholy
cry of the lover, which rang among the deodars, from viking ships, from
the moonlit courtyards of Provence, the cry which always sounded about
Mr. Wrenn as he walked the deck: “I want you so much; I miss you so
unendingly; I am so lonely for you, dear.” For no more clearly, no more
nobly did the golden Aucassin or lean Dante word that cry in their
thoughts than did Mr. William Wrenn, Our Mr. Wrenn.

A third-class steward with a mangy mustache and setter-like tan eyes
came teetering down-stairs, each step like a nervous pencil tap on a
table, and peered over the side of Mr. Wrenn’s berth. He loved Mr.
Wrenn, who was proven a scholar by the reading of real bound books—an
English history and a second-hand copy of _Haunts of Historic English
Writers_, purchased in Liverpool—and who was willing to listen to the
steward’s serial story of how his woman, Mrs. Wargle, faithlessly
consorted with Foddle, the cat’s-meat man, when the steward was away,
and, when he was home, cooked for him lights and liver that
unquestionably were purchased from the same cat’s-meat man. He now
leered with a fond and watery gaze upon Mr. Wrenn’s scholarly pursuits,
and announced in a whisper:

“They’ve sighted land.”

“Land?”

“Oh aye.”

Mr. Wrenn sat up so vigorously that he bumped his head. He chucked his
papers beneath the pillow with his right hand, while the left was
feeling for the side of the berth. “Land!” he bellowed to drowsing
cabin-mates as he vaulted out.

The steerage promenade-deck, iron-sided, black-floored, ending in the
iron approaches to the galley at one end and the iron superstructures
about a hatch at the other, was like a grim swart oilily clean
machine-shop aisle, so inclosed, so over-roofed, that the side toward
the sea seemed merely a long factory window. But he loved it and,
except when he had guiltily remembered the books he had to read, he had
stayed on deck, worshiping the naive bright attire of immigrants and
the dark roll and glory of the sea.

Now, out there was a blue shading, made by a magic pencil; land, his
land, where he was going to become the beloved comrade of all the
friends whose likenesses he saw in the white-caps flashing before him.

Humming, he paraded down to the buffet, where small beer and smaller
tobacco were sold, to buy another pound of striped candy for the
offspring of the Russian Jews.

The children knew he was coming. “Fat rascals,” he chuckled, touching
their dark cheeks, pretending to be frightened as they pounded soft
fists against the iron side of the ship or rolled unregarded in the
scuppers. Their shawled mothers knew him, too, and as he shyly handed
about the candy the chattering stately line of Jewish elders nodded
their beards like the forest primeval in a breeze, saying words of
blessing in a strange tongue.

He smiled back and made gestures, and shouted “Land! Land!” with
several variations in key, to make it sound foreign.

But he withdrew for the sacred moment of seeing the Land of Promise he
was newly discovering—the Long Island shore; the grass-clad redouts at
Fort Wadsworth; the vast pile of New York sky-scrapers, standing in a
mist like an enormous burned forest.

“Singer Tower…. Butterick Building,” he murmured, as they proceeded
toward their dock. “That’s something like…. Let’s see; yes, sir, by
golly, right up there between the Met. Tower and the _Times_—good old
Souvenir Company office. Jiminy! ‘One Dollar to Albany’—something
_like_ a sign, that is—good old dollar! To thunder with their darn
shillings. Home!… Gee! there’s where I used to moon on a wharf!… Gosh!
the old town looks good.”

And all this was his to conquer, for friendship’s sake.

He went to a hotel. While he had to go back to the Zapps’, of course,
he did not wish, by meeting those old friends, to spoil his first day.
No, it was cheerfuler to stand at a window of his cheap hotel on
Seventh Avenue, watching the “good old American crowd”—Germans,
Irishmen, Italians, and Jews. He went to the Nickelorion and grasped
the hand of the ticket-taker, the Brass-button Man, ejaculating: “How
are you? Well, how’s things going with the old show?… I been away
couple of months.”

“Fine and dandy! Been away, uh? Well, it’s good to get back to the old
town, heh? Summer hotel?”

“Unk?”

“Why, you’re the waiter at Pat Maloney’s, ain’t you?”

Next morning Mr. Wrenn made himself go to the Souvenir and Art Novelty
Company. He wanted to get the teasing, due him for staying away so
short a time, over as soon as possible. The office girl, addressing
circulars, seemed surprised when he stepped from the elevator, and
blushed her usual shy gratitude to the men of the office for allowing
her to exist and take away six dollars weekly.

Then into the entry-room ran Rabin, one of the traveling salesmen.

“Why, hul-lo, Wrenn! Wondered if that could be you. Back so soon?
Thought you were going to Europe.”

“Just got back. Couldn’t stand it away from you, old scout!”

“You must have been learning to sass back real smart, in the Old
Country, heh? Going to be with us again? Well, see you again soon. Glad
see you back.”

He was not madly excited at seeing Rabin; still, the drummer was part
of the good old Souvenir Company, the one place in the world on which
he could absolutely depend, the one place where they always wanted him.

He had been absently staring at the sample-tables, noting new
novelties. The office girl, speaking sweetly, but as to an outsider,
inquired, “Who did you wish to see, Mr. Wrenn?”

“Why! Mr. Guilfogle.”

“He’s busy, but if you’ll sit down I think you can see him in a few
minutes.”

Mr. Wrenn felt like the prodigal son, with no calf in sight, at having
to wait on the callers’ bench, but he shook with faint excited gurgles
of mirth at the thought of the delightful surprise Mr. Mortimer R.
Guilfogle, the office manager, was going to have. He kept an eye out
for Charley Carpenter. If Charley didn’t come through the entry-room
he’d go into the bookkeeping-room, and—“talk about your surprises—”

“Mr. Guilfogle will see you now,” said the office girl.

As he entered the manager’s office Mr. Guilfogle made much of glancing
up with busy amazement.

“Well, well, Wrenn! Back so soon? Thought you were going to be gone
quite a while.”

“Couldn’t keep away from the office, Mr. Guilfogle,” with an uneasy
smile.

“Have a good trip?”

“Yes, a dandy.”

“How’d you happen to get back so soon?”

“Oh, I wanted to—Say, Mr. Guilfogle, I really wanted to get back to the
office again. I’m awfully glad to see it again.”

“Glad see _you_. Well, where did you go? I got the card you sent me
from Chesterton with the picture of the old church on it.”

“Why, I went to Liverpool and Oxford and London and—well—Kew and Ealing
and places and—And I tramped through Essex and Suffolk—all through—on
foot. Aengusmere and them places.”

“Just a moment. (Well, Rabin, what is it? Why certainly. I’ve told you
that already about five times. _Yes_, I said—that’s what I had the
samples made up for. I wish you’d be a little more careful, d’ ye
hear?) You went to London, did you, Wrenn? Say, did you notice any
novelties we could copy?”

“No, I’m afraid I didn’t, Mr. Guilfogle. I’m awfully sorry. I hunted
around, but I couldn’t find a thing we could use. I mean I couldn’t
find anything that began to come up to our line. Them English are
pretty slow.”

“Didn’t, eh? Well, what’s your plans now?”

“Why—uh—I kind of thought—Honestly, Mr. Guilfogle, I’d like to get back
on my old job. You remember—it was to be fixed so—”

“Afraid there’s nothing doing just now, Wrenn. Not a thing. Course I
can’t tell what may happen, and you want to keep in touch with us, but
we’re pretty well filled up just now. Jake is getting along better than
we thought. He’s learning—” Not one word regarding Jake’s excellence
did Mr. Wrenn hear.

Not get the job back? He sat down and stammered:

“Gee! I hadn’t thought of that. I’d kind of banked on the Souvenir
Company, Mr. Guilfogle.”

“Well, you know I told you I thought you were an idiot to go. I warned
you.”

He timidly agreed, mourning: “Yes, that so; I know you did. But
uh—well—”

“Sorry, Wrenn. That’s the way it goes in business, though. If you will
go beating it around—A rolling stone don’t gather any moss. Well, cheer
up! Possibly there may be something doing in—”

“Tr-r-r-r-r-r-r,” said the telephone.

Mr. Guilfogle remarked into it: “Hello. Yes, it’s me. Well, who did you
think it was? The cat? Yuh. Sure. No. Well, to-morrow, probably. All
right. Good-by.”

Then he glanced at his watch and up at Mr. Wrenn impatiently.

“Say, Mr. Guilfogle, you say there’ll be—when will there be likely to
be an opening?”

“Now, how can I tell, my boy? We’ll work you in if we can—you ain’t a
bad clerk; or at least you wouldn’t be if you’d be a little more
careful. By the way, of course you understand that if we try to work
you in it’ll take lots of trouble, and we’ll expect you to not go
flirting round with other firms, looking for a job. Understand that?”

“Oh yes, sir.”

“All right. We appreciate your work all right, but of course you can ’t
expect us to fire any of our present force just because you take the
notion to come back whenever you want to…. Hiking off to Europe,
leaving a good job!… You didn’t get on the Continent, did you?”

“No, I—”

“Well…. Oh, say, how’s the grub in London? Cheaper than it is here? The
wife was saying this morning we’d have to stop eating if the high cost
of living goes on going up.”

“Yes, it’s quite a little cheaper. You can get fine tea for two and
three cents a cup. Clothes is cheaper, too. But I don’t care much for
the English, though there is all sorts of quaint places with a real
flavor…. Say, Mr. Guilfogle, you know I inherited a little money, and I
can wait awhile, and you’ll kind of keep me in mind for a place if
one—”

“Didn’t I _say_ I would?”

“Yes, but—”

“You come around and see me a week from now. And leave your address
with Rosey. I don’t know, though, as we can afford to pay you quite the
same salary at first, even if we can work you in—the season’s been very
slack. But I’ll do what I can for you. Come in and see me in about a
week. Goo’ day.”

Rabin, the salesman, waylaid Mr. Wrenn in the corridor.

“You look kind of peeked, Wrenn. Old Goglefogle been lighting into you?
Say, I ought to have told you first. I forgot it. The old rat, he’s
been planning to stick the knife into you all the while. ’Bout two
weeks ago me and him had a couple of cocktails at Mouquin’s. You know
how chummy he always gets after a couple of smiles. Well, he was
talking about—I was saying you’re a good man and hoping you were having
a good time—and he said, ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘he’s a good man, but he sure
did lay himself wide open by taking this trip. I’ve got him dead to
rights,’ he says to me. ‘I’ve got a hunch he’ll be back here in three
or four months,’ he says to me. ‘And do you think he’ll walk in and get
what he wants? Not him. I’ll keep him waiting a month before I give him
back his job, and then you watch, Rabin,’ he says to me, ‘you’ll see
he’ll be tickled to death to go back to work at less salary than he was
getting, and he’ll have sense enough to not try this stunt of getting
off the job again after that. And the trip’ll be good for him,
anyway—he’ll do better work—vacation at his own expense—save us money
all round. I tell you, Rabin,’ he says to me, ‘if any of you boys think
you can get the best of the company or me you just want to try it,
that’s all.’ Yessir, that’s what the old rat told me. You want to watch
out for him.”

“Oh, I will; indeed I will—”

“Did he spring any of this fairy tale just now?”

“Well, kind of. Say, thanks, I’m awful obliged to—”

“Say, for the love of Mike, don’t let him know I told you.”

“No, no, I sure won’t.”

They parted. Eager though he was for the great moment of again seeing
his comrade, Charley Carpenter, Mr. Wrenn dribbled toward the
bookkeeping-room mournfully, planning to tell Charley of Guilfogle’s
wickedness.

The head bookkeeper shook his head at Mr. Wrenn’s inquiry:

“Charley ain’t here any longer.”

“Ain’t _here?_”

“No. He got through. He got to boozing pretty bad, and one morning
about three weeks ago, when he had a pretty bad hang-over, he told
Guilfogle what he thought of him, so of course Guilfogle fired him.”

“Oh, that’s too _bad_. Say, you don’t know his address, do you?”

“—East a Hundred and Eighteenth…. Well, I’m glad to see you back,
Wrenn. Didn’t expect to see you back so soon, but always glad to see
you. Going to be with us?”

“I ain’t sure,” said Mr. Wrenn, crabbedly, then shook hands warmly with
the bookkeeper, to show there was nothing personal in his snippishness.

For nearly a hundred blocks Mr. Wrenn scowled at an advertisement of
Corn Flakes in the Third Avenue Elevated without really seeing it….
Should he go back to the Souvenir Company at all?

Yes. He would. That was the best way to start making friends. But he
would “get our friend Guilfogle at recess,” he assured himself, with an
out-thrust of the jaw like that of the great Bill Wrenn. He knew
Guilfogle’s lead now, and he would show that gentleman that he could
play the game. He’d take that lower salary and pretend to be
frightened, but when he got the chance—

He did not proclaim even to himself what dreadful thing he was going to
do, but as he left the Elevated he said over and over, shaking his
closed fist inside his coat pocket:

“When I get the chance—when I _get_ it—”

The flat-building where Charley Carpenter lived was one of hundreds of
pressed-brick structures, apparently all turned out of the same mold.
It was filled with the smells of steamy washing and fried fish. Languid
with the heat, Mr. Wrenn crawled up an infinity of iron steps and
knocked three times at Charley’s door. No answer. He crawled down again
and sought out the janitress, who stopped watching an ice-wagon in the
street to say:

“I guess you’ll be finding him asleep up there, sir. He do be lying
there drunk most of the day. His wife’s left him. The landlord’s give
him notice to quit, end of August. Warm day, sir. Be you a
bill-collector? Mostly, it’s bill-collectors that—”

“Yes, it is hot.”

Superior in manner, but deeply dejected, Mr. Wrenn rang the down-stairs
bell long enough to wake Charley, pantingly got himself up the
interminable stairs, and kicked the door till Charley’s voice quavered
inside:

“Who zhat?”

“It’s me, Charley. Wrenn.”

“You’re in Yurp. Can’t fool me. G’ ’way from there.”

Three other doors on the same landing were now partly open and blocked
with the heads of frowsy inquisitive women. The steamy smell was
thicker in the darkness. Mr. Wrenn felt prickly, then angry at this
curiosity, and again demanded:

“Lemme in, I say.”

“Tell you it ain’t you. I know you!”

Charley Carpenter’s pale face leered out. His tousled hair was stuck to
his forehead by perspiration; his eyes were red and vaguely staring.
His clothes were badlv wrinkled. He wore a collarless shirt with a
frilled bosom of virulent pink, its cuffs grimy and limp.

“It’s ol’ Wrenn. C’m in. C’m in quick. Collectors always hanging
around. They can’t catch me. You bet.”

He closed the door and wabbled swiftly down the long drab hall of the
“railroad flat,” evidently trying to walk straight. The reeking
stifling main room at the end of the hall was terrible as Charley’s
eyes. Flies boomed everywhere. The oak table, which Charley and his
bride had once spent four happy hours in selecting, was littered with
half a dozen empty whisky-flasks, collars, torn sensational newspapers,
dirty plates and coffee-cups. The cheap brocade cover, which a bride
had once joyed to embroider with red and green roses, was half pulled
off and dragged on the floor amid the cigarette butts, Durham tobacco,
and bacon rinds which covered the green-and-yellow carpet-rug.

This much Mr. Wrenn saw. Then he set himself to the hard task of
listening to Charley, who was muttering:

“Back quick, ain’t you, ol’ Wrenn? You come up to see me, didn’t you?
You’re m’ friend, ain’t you, eh? I got an awful hang-over, ain’t I? You
don’t care, do you, ol’ Wrenn?”

Mr. Wrenn stared at him weakly, but only for a minute. Perhaps it was
his cattle-boat experience which now made him deal directly with such
drunkenness as would have nauseated him three months before; perhaps
his attendance on a weary Istra.

“Come now, Charley, you got to buck up,” he crooned.

“_All_ ri’.”

“What’s the trouble? How did you get going like this?”

“Wife left me. I was drinking. You think I’m drunk, don’t you? But I
ain’t. She went off with her sister—always hated me. She took my money
out of savings-bank—three hundred; all money I had ’cept fifty dollars.
I’ll fix her. I’ll kill her. Took to hitting the booze. Goglefogle
fired me. Don’t care. Drink all I want. Keep young fellows from getting
it! Say, go down and get me pint. Just finished up pint. Got to have
one-die of thirst. Bourbon. Get—”

“I’ll go and get you a drink, Charley—just one drink, savvy?—if you’ll
promise to get cleaned up, like I tell you, afterward.”

“_All_ ri’.”

Mr. Wrenn hastened out with a whisky-flask, muttering, feverishly,
“Gee! I got to save him.” Returning, he poured out one drink, as though
it were medicine for a refractory patient, and said, soothingly:

“Now we’ll take a cold bath, heh? and get cleaned up and sobered up.
Then we’ll talk about a job, heh?”

“Aw, don’t want a bath. Say, I feel better now. Let’s go out and have a
drink. Gimme that flask. Where j’ yuh put it?”

Mr. Wrenn went to the bathroom, turned on the cold-water tap, returned,
and undressed Charley, who struggled and laughed and let his whole
inert weight rest against Mr. Wrenn’s shoulder. Though normally Charley
could have beaten three Mr. Wrenns, he was run into the bath-room and
poked into the tub.

Instantly he began to splash, throwing up water in handfuls, singing.
The water poured over the side of the tub. Mr. Wrenn tried to hold him
still, but the wet sleek shoulders slipped through his hand like a wet
platter. Wholesomely vexed, he turned off the water and slammed the
bathroom door.

In the bedroom he found an unwrinkled winter-weight suit and one clean
shirt. In the living-room he hung up his coat, covering it with a
newspaper, pulled the broom from under the table, and prepared to
sweep.

The disorder was so great that he made one of the inevitable
discoveries of every housekeeper, and admitted to himself that he
“didn’t know where to begin.” He stumblingly lugged a heavy pile of
dishes from the center-table to the kitchen, shook and beat and folded
the table-cover, stuck the chairs atop the table, and began to sweep.

At the door a shining wet naked figure stood, bellowing:

“Hey! What d’ yuh think you’re doing? Cut it out.”

“Just sweeping, Charley,” from Mr. Wrenn, and an uninterrupted “Tuff,
tuff, tuff” from the broom.

“Cut it out, I said. Whose house _is_ this?”

“Gwan back in the bath-tub, Charley.”

“Say, d’ yuh think you can run me? Get out of this, or I’ll throw you
out. Got house way I want it.”

Bill Wrenn, the cattleman, rushed at him, smacked him with the broom,
drove him back into the tub, and waited. He laughed. It was all a good
joke; his friend Charley and he were playing a little game. Charley
also laughed and splashed some more. Then he wept and said that the
water was cold, and that he was now deserted by his only friend.

“Oh, shut up,” remarked Bill Wrenn, and swept the bathroom floor.

Charley stopped swashing about to sneer:

“Li’l ministering angel, ain’t you? You think you’re awful good, don’t
you? Come up here and bother me. When I ain’t well. Salvation Army.
You——. Aw, lemme _’lone_, will you?” Bill Wrenn kept on sweeping. “Get
out, you——.”

There was enough energy in Charley’s voice to indicate that he was
getting sober. Bill Wrenn soused him under once more, so thoroughly
that his own cuffs were reduced to a state of flabbiness. He dragged
Charley out, helped him dry himself, and drove him to bed.

He went out and bought dish-towels, soap, washing-powder, and collars
of Charley’s size, which was an inch larger than his own. He finished
sweeping and dusting and washing the dishes—all of them. He—who had
learned to comfort Istra—he really enjoyed it. His sense of order made
it a pleasure to see a plate yellow with dried egg glisten iridescently
and flash into shining whiteness; or a room corner filled with dust and
tobacco flakes become again a “nice square clean corner with the
baseboard shining, gee! just like it was new.”

An irate grocer called with a bill for fifteen dollars. Mr. Wrenn
blandly heard his threats all through, pretending to himself that this
was his home, whose honor was his honor. He paid the man eight dollars
on account and loftily dismissed him. He sat down to wait for Charley,
reading a newspaper most of the time, but rising to pursue stray flies
furiously, stumbling over chairs, and making murderous flappings with a
folded newspaper.

When Charley awoke, after three hours, clear of mind but not at all
clear as regards the roof of his mouth, Mr. Wrenn gave him a very
little whisky, with considerable coffee, toast, and bacon. The toast
was not bad.

“Now, Charley,” he said, cheerfully, “your bat’s over, ain’t it, old
man?”

“Say, you been darn’ decent to me, old man. Lord! how you’ve been
sweeping up! How was I—was I pretty soused?”

“Honest, you were fierce. You will sober up, now, won’t you?”

“Well, it’s no wonder I had a classy hang-over, Wrenn. I was at the
Amusieren Rathskeller till four this morning, and then I had a couple
of nips before breakfast, and then I didn’t have any breakfast. But
sa-a-a-ay, man, I sure did have some fiesta last night. There was a
little peroxide blonde that—”

“Now you look here, Carpenter; you listen to me. You’re sober now. Have
you tried to find another job?”

“Yes, I did. But I got down in the mouth. Didn’t feel like I had a
friend left.”

“Well, you h—”

“But I guess I have now, old Wrennski.”

“Look here, Charley, you know I don’t want to pull off no Charity
Society stunt or talk like I was a preacher. But I like you so darn
much I want to see you sober up and get another job. Honestly I do,
Charley. Are you broke?”

“Prett’ nearly. Only got about ten dollars to my name…. I _will_ take a
brace, old man. I know you ain’t no preacher. Course if you came around
with any ‘holierthan-thou’ stunt I’d have to go right out and get
soused on general principles…. Yuh—I’ll try to get a job.”

“Here’s ten dollars. Please take it—aw—please, Charley.”

“_All_ right; anything to oblige.”

“What ’ve you got in sight in the job line?”

“Well, there’s a chance at night clerking in a little hotel where I was
a bell-hop long time ago. The night clerk’s going to get through, but I
don’t know just when—prob’ly in a week or two.”

“Well, keep after it. And _please_ come down to see me—the old
place—West Sixteenth Street.”

“What about the old girl with the ingrowing grouch? What’s her name?
She ain’t stuck on me.”

“Mrs. Zapp? Oh—hope she chokes. She can just kick all she wants to. I’m
just going to have all the visitors I want to.”

“All right. Say, tell us something about your trip.”

“Oh, I had a great time. Lots of nice fellows on the cattle-boat. I
went over on one, you know. Fellow named Morton—awfully nice fellow.
Say, Charley, you ought to seen me being butler to the steers. Handing
’em hay. But say, the sea was fine; all kinds of colors. Awful dirty on
the cattle-boat, though.”

“Hard work?”

“Yuh—kind of hard. Oh, not so very.”

“What did you see in England?”

“Oh, a lot of different places. Say, I seen some great vaudeville in
Liverpool, Charley, with Morton—he’s a slick fellow; works for the
Pennsylvania, here in town. I got to look him up. Say, I wish we had an
agency for college sofa-pillows and banners and souvenir stuff in
Oxford. There’s a whole bunch of colleges there, all right in the same
town. I met a prof. there from some American college—he hired an
automobubble and took me down to a reg’lar old inn—”

“Well, well!”

“—like you read about; sanded floor!”

“Get to London?”

“Yuh. Gee! it’s a big place. Say, that Westminster Abbey’s a great
place. I was in there a couple of times. More darn tombs of kings and
stuff. And I see a bishop, with leggins on! But I got kind of lonely. I
thought of you a lot of times. Wished we could go out and get an ale
together. Maybe pick up a couple of pretty girls.”

“Oh, you sport!… Say, didn’t get over to gay Paree, did you?”

“Nope…. Well, I guess I’d better beat it now. Got to move in—I’m at a
hotel. You will come down and see me to-night, won’t you?”

“So you thought of me, eh?… Yuh—sure, old socks. I’ll be down to-night.
And I’ll get right after that job.”

It is doubtful whether Mr. Wrenn would ever have returned to the Zapps’
had he not promised to see Charley there. Even while he was carrying
his suit-case down West Sixteenth, broiling by degrees in the sunshine,
he felt like rushing up to Charley’s and telling him to come to the
hotel instead.

Lee Theresa, taking the day off with a headache, answered the bell, and
ejaculated:

“Well! So it’s you, is it?”

“I guess it is.”

“What, are you back so soon? Why, you ain’t been gone more than a month
and a half, have you?”

Beware, daughter of Southern pride! The little Yankee is regarding your
full-blown curves and empty eyes with rebellion, though he says, ever
so meekly:

“Yes, I guess it is about that, Miss Theresa.”

“Well, I just knew you couldn’t stand it away from us. I suppose you’ll
want your room back. Ma, here’s Mr. Wrenn back again—Mr. Wrenn! _Ma!_”

“Oh-h-h-h!” sounded Goaty Zapp’s voice, in impish disdain, below. “Mr.
Wrenn’s back. Hee, hee! Couldn’t stand it. Ain’t that like a Yankee!”

A slap, a wail, then Mrs. Zapp’s elephantine slowness on the stairs
from the basement. She appeared, buttoning her collar, smiling almost
pleasantly, for she disliked Mr. Wrenn less than she did any other of
her lodgers.

“Back already, Mist’ Wrenn? Ah declare, Ah was saying to Lee Theresa
just yest’day, Ah just knew you’d be wishing you was back with us.
Won’t you come in?”

He edged into the parlor with, “How is the sciatica, Mrs. Zapp?”

“Ah ain’t feeling right smart.”

“My room occupied yet?”

He was surveying the airless parlor rather heavily, and his curt manner
was not pleasing to the head of the house of Zapp, who remarked,
funereally:

“It ain’t taken just now, Mist’ Wrenn, but Ah dunno. There was a
gennulman a-looking at it just yesterday, and he said he’d be permanent
if he came. Ah declare, Mist’ Wrenn, Ah dunno’s Ah like to have my
gennulmen just get up and go without giving me notice.”

Lee Theresa scowled at her.

Mr. Wrenn retorted, “I _did_ give you notice.”

“Ah know, but—well, Ah reckon Ah can let you have it, but Ah’ll have to
have four and a half a week instead of four. Prices is all going up so,
Ah declare, Ah was just saying to Lee T’resa Ah dunno what we’re all
going to do if the dear Lord don’t look out for us. And, Mist’ Wrenn,
Ah dunno’s Ah like to have you coming in so late nights. But Ah reckon
Ah can accommodate you.”

“It’s a good deal of a favor, isn’t it, Mrs. Zapp?”

Mr. Wrenn was dangerously polite. Let gentility look out for the sharp
practices of the Yankee.

“Yes, but—”

It was our hero, our madman of the seven and seventy seas, our
revolutionist friend of Istra, who leaped straight from the
salt-incrusted decks of his laboring steamer to the musty parlor and
declared, quietly but unmovably-practically unmovably—“Well, then, I
guess I’d better not take it at all.”

“So that’s the way you’re going to treat us!” bellowed Mrs. Zapp. “You
go off and leave us with an unoccupied room and— Oh! You poor white
trash—you—”

“_Ma!_ You shut up and go down-stairs-s-s-s-s!” Theresa hissed. “Go
on.”

Mrs. Zapp wabbled regally out. Lee Theresa spoke to Mr. Wrenn:

“Ma ain’t feeling a bit well this afternoon. I’m sorry she talked like
that. You will come back, won’t you?” She showed all her teeth in a
genuine smile, and in her anxiety reached his heart. “Remember, you
promised you would.”

“Well, I will, but—”

Bill Wrenn was fading, an affrighted specter. The “but” was the last
glimpse of him, and that Theresa overlooked, as she bustlingly
chirruped: “I _knew_ you would understand. I’ll skip right up and look
at the room and put on fresh sheets.”

One month, one hot New York month, passed before the imperial Mr.
Guilfogle gave him back The Job, and then at seventeen dollars and
fifty cents a week instead of his former nineteen dollars. Mr. Wrenn
refused, upon pretexts, to go out with the manager for a drink, and
presented him with twenty suggestions for new novelties and circular
letters. He rearranged the unsystematic methods of Jake, the cub, and
two days later he was at work as though he had never in his life been
farther from the Souvenir Company than Newark.




CHAPTER XIII
HE IS “OUR MR. WRENN”


DEAR ISTRA,—I am back in New York feeling very well & hope this finds
you the same. I have been wanting to write to you for quite a while now
but there has not been much news of any kind & so I have not written to
you. But now I am back working for the Souvenir Company. I hope you are
having a good time in Paris it must be a very pretty city & I have
often wished to be there perhaps some day I shall go. I [several
erasures here] have been reading quite a few books since I got back &
think now I shall get on better with my reading. You told me so many
things about books & so on & I do appreciate it. In closing, I am yours
very sincerely,


WILLIAM WRENN.


There was nothing else he could say. But there were a terrifying number
of things he could think as he crouched by the window overlooking West
Sixteenth Street, whose dull hue had not changed during the centuries
while he had been tramping England. Her smile he remembered—and he
cried, “Oh, I want to see her so much.” Her gallant dash through the
rain—and again the cry.

At last he cursed himself, “Why don’t you _do_ something that ’d count
for her, and not sit around yammering for her like a fool?”

He worked on his plan to “bring the South into line”—the Souvenir
Company’s line. Again and again he sprang up from the writing-table in
his hot room when the presence of Istra came and stood compellingly by
his chair. But he worked.

The Souvenir Company salesmen had not been able to get from the South
the business which the company deserved if right and justice were to
prevail. On the steamer from England Mr. Wrenn had conceived the idea
that a Dixieland Ink-well, with the Confederate and Union flags draped
in graceful cast iron, would make an admirable present with which to
draw the attention of the Southem trade. The ink-well was to be
followed by a series of letters, sent on the slightest provocation, on
order or re-order, tactfully hoping the various healths of the
Southland were good and the baseball season important; all to insure a
welcome to the salesmen on the Southem route.

He drew up his letters; he sketched his ink-well; he got up the courage
to talk with the office manager…. To forget love and the beloved, men
have ascended in aeroplanes and conquered African tribes. To forget
love, a new, busy, much absorbed Mr. Wrenn, very much Ours, bustled
into Mr. Guilfogle’s office, slapped down his papers on the desk, and
demanded: “Here’s that plan about gettin’ the South interested that I
was telling you about. Say, honest, I’d like awful much to try it on.
I’d just have to have part time of one stenographer.”

“Well, you know our stenographers are pretty well crowded. But you can
leave the outline with me. I’ll look it over,” said Mr. Guilfogle.

That same afternoon the manager enthusiastically O. K.’d the plan. To
enthusiastically—O. K. is an office technology for saying, gloomily,
“Well, I don’t suppose it ’d hurt to try it, anyway, but for the love
of Mike be careful, and let me see any letters you send out.”

So Mr. Wrenn dictated a letter to each of their Southern merchants,
sending him a Dixieland Ink-well and inquiring about the crops. He had
a stenographer, an efficient intolerant young woman who wrote down his
halting words as though they were examples of bad English she wanted to
show her friends, and waited for the next word with cynical amusement.

“By gosh!” growled Bill Wrenn, the cattleman, “I’ll show her I’m
running this. I’ll show her she’s got another think coming.” But he
dictated so busily and was so hot to get results that he forgot the
girl’s air of high-class martyrdom.

He watched the Southern baseball results in the papers. He seized on
every salesman on the Southern route as he came in, and inquired about
the religion and politics of the merchants in his district. He even
forgot to worry about his next rise in salary, and found it much more
exciting to rush back for an important letter after a quick lunch than
to watch the time and make sure that he secured every minute of his
lunch-hour.

When October came—October of the vagabond, with the leaves brilliant
out on the Palisades, and Sixth Avenue moving-picture palaces cool
again and gay—Mr. Wrenn stayed late, under the mercury-vapor lights,
making card cross-files of the Southern merchants, their hobbies and
prejudices, and whistling as he worked, stopping now and then to slap
the desk and mutter, “By gosh! I’m gettin’ ’em—gettin’ ’em.”

He rarely thought of Istra till he was out on the street again, proud
of having worked so late that his eyes ached. In fact, his chief
troubles these days came when Mr. Guilfogle wouldn’t “let him put
through an idea.”

Their first battle was over Mr. Wrenn’s signing the letters personally;
for the letters, the office manager felt, were as much Ours as was Mr.
Wrenn, and should be signed by the firm. After some difficulty Mr.
Wrenn persuaded him that one of the best ways to handle a personal
letter was to make it personal. They nearly cursed each other before
Mr. Wrenn was allowed to use his own judgment.

It’s not at all certain that Mr. Guilfogle should have yielded. What’s
the use of a manager if his underlings use judgment?

The next battle Mr. Wrenn lost. He had demanded a monthly holiday for
his stenographer. Mr. Guilfogle pointed out that she’d merely be the
worse off for a holiday, that it ’d make her discontented, that it was
a kindness to her to keep her mind occupied. Mr. Wrenn was, however,
granted a new typewriter, in a manner which revealed the fact that the
Souvenir Company was filled with almost too much mercy in permitting an
employee to follow his own selfish and stubborn desires.

You cannot trust these employees. Mr. Wrenn was getting so absorbed in
his work that he didn’t even act as though it was a favor when Mr.
Guilfogle allowed him to have his letters to the trade copied by carbon
paper instead of having them blurred by the wet tissue-paper of a
copy-book. The manager did grant the request, but he was justly
indignant at the curt manner of the rascal, whereupon our bumptious
revolutionist, our friend to anarchists and red-headed artists,
demanded a “raise” and said that he didn’t care a hang if the
[qualified] letters never went out. The kindness of chiefs! For Mr.
Guilfogle apologized and raised the madman’s wage from seventeen
dollars and fifty cents a week to his former nineteen dollars. [He had
expected eighteen dollars; he had demanded twenty-two dollars and fifty
cents; he was worth on the labor market from twenty-five to thirty
dollars; while the profit to the Souvenir Company from his work was
about sixty dollars minus whatever salary he got.]

Not only that. Mr. Guilfogle slapped him on the back and said: “You’re
doing good work, old man. It’s fine. I just don’t want you to be too
reckless.”

That night Wrenn worked till eight.

After his raise he could afford to go to the theater, since he was not
saving money for travel. He wrote small letters to Istra and read the
books he believed she would approve—a Paris Baedeker and the second
volume of Tolstoi’s _War and Peace_, which he bought at a second-hand
book-stall for five cents. He became interested in popular and
inaccurate French and English histories, and secreted any amount of
footnote anecdotes about Guy Fawkes and rush-lights and the divine
right of kings. He thought almost every night about making friends,
which he intended—just as much as ever—to do as soon as Sometime
arrived.

On the day on which one of the Southern merchants wrote him about his
son—“fine young fellow, sir—has every chance of rising to a lieutenancy
on the Atlanta police force”—Mr. Wrenn’s eyes were moist. Here was a
friend already. Sure. He would make friends. Then there was the cripple
with the Capitol Corner News and Souvenir Stand in Austin, Texas. Mr.
Wrenn secreted two extra Dixieland Ink-wells and a Yale football banner
and sent them to the cripple for his brothers, who were in the
Agricultural College.

The orders—yes, they were growing larger. The Southern salesmen took
him out to dinner sometimes. But he was shy of them. They were so
knowing and had so many smoking-room stories. He still had not found
the friends he desired.

Miggleton’s restaurant, on Forty-second Street, was a romantic
discovery. Though it had “popular prices”—plain omelet, fifteen
cents—it had red and green bracket lights, mission-style tables, and
music played by a sparrowlike pianist and a violinist. Mr. Wrenn never
really heard the music, but while it was quavering he had a happier
appreciation of the Silk-Hat-Harry humorous pictures in the _Journal_,
which he always propped up against an oil-cruet. [That never caused him
inconvenience; he had no convictions in regard to salads.] He would
drop the paper to look out of the window at the Lazydays Improvement
Company’s electric sign, showing gardens of paradise on the instalment
plan, and dream of—well, he hadn’t the slightest idea what—something
distant and deliciously likely to become intimate. Once or twice he
knew that he was visioning the girl in soft brown whom he would “go
home to,” and who, in a Lazydays suburban residence, would play just
such music for him and the friends who lived near by. She would be as
clever as Istra, but “oh, more so’s you can go regular places with
her.”… Often he got good ideas about letters South, to be jotted down
on envelope backs, from that music.

At last comes the historic match-box incident.

On that October evening in 1910 he dined early at Miggleton’s. The
thirty-cent table d’hote was perfect. The cream-of-corn soup was, he
went so far as to remark to the waitress, “simply slick”; the Waldorf
salad had two whole walnuts in his portion alone.

The fat man with the white waistcoat, whom he had often noted as dining
in this same corner of the restaurant, smiled at him and said “Pleasant
evening” as he sat down opposite Mr. Wrenn and smoothed the two sleek
bangs which decorated the front of his nearly bald head.

The music included a “potpourri of airs from ‘The Merry Widow,’” which
set his foot tapping. All the while he was conscious that he’d made the
Seattle Novelty and Stationery Corner Store come through with a
five-hundred-dollar order on one of his letters.

The _Journal_ contained an editorial essay on “Friendship” which would
have been, and was, a credit to Cicero.

He laid down the paper, stirred his large cup of coffee, and stared at
the mother-of-pearl buttons on the waistcoat of the fat man, who was
now gulping down soup, opposite him. “My land!” he was thinking,
“friendship! I ain’t even begun to make all those friends I was going
to. Haven’t done a thing. Oh, I will; I must!”

“Nice night,” said the fat man.

“Yuh—it sure is,” brightly agreed Mr. Wrenn.

“Reg’lar Indian-Summer weather.”

“Yes, isn’t it! I feel like taking a walk on Riverside Drive—b’lieve I
will.”

“Wish I had time. But I gotta get down to the store—cigar-store. I’m on
nights, three times a week.”

“Yuh. I’ve seen you here most every time I eat early,” Mr. Wrenn
purred.

“Yuh. The rest of the time I eat at the boarding-house.”

Silence. But Mr. Wrenn was fighting for things to say, means of
approach, for the chance to become acquainted with a new person, for
all the friendly human ways he had desired in nights of loneliness.

“Wonder when they’ll get the Grand Central done?” asked the fat man.

“I s’pose it’ll take quite a few years,” said Mr. Wrenn,
conversationally.

“Yuh. I s’pose it will.”

Silence.

Mr. Wrenn sat trying to think of something else to say. Lonely people
in city restaurants simply do not get acquainted. Yet he did manage to
observe, “Great building that’ll be,” in the friendliest manner.

Silence.

Then the fat man went on:

“Wonder what Wolgast will do in his mill? Don’t believe he can stand
up.”

Wolgast was, Mr. Wrenn seemed to remember, a pugilist. He agreed
vaguely:

“Pretty hard, all right.”

“Go out to the areoplane meet?” asked the fat man.

“No. But I’d like to see it. Gee! there must be kind of—kind of
adventure in them things, heh?”

“Yuh—sure is. First machine I saw, though—I was just getting off the
train at Belmont Park, and there was an areoplane up in the air, and it
looked like one of them big mechanical beetles these fellows sell on
the street buzzing around up there. I was kind of disappointed. But
what do you think? It was that J. A. D. McCurdy, in a Curtiss biplane—I
think it was—and by golly! he got to circling around and racing and
tipping so’s I thought I’d loose my hat off, I was so excited. And,
say, what do you think? I see McCurdy himself, afterward, standing near
one of the—the handgars—handsome young chap, not over twenty-eight or
thirty, built like a half-miler. And then I see Ralph Johnstone and
Arch Hoxey—”

“Gee!” Mr. Wrenn was breathing.

“—dipping and doing the—what do you call it?—Dutch sausage-roll or
something like that. Yelled my head off.”

“Oh, it must have been great to see ’em, and so close, too.”

“Yuh—it sure was.”

There seemed to be no other questions to settle. Mr. Wrenn slowly
folded up his paper, pursued his check under three plates and the
menu-card to its hiding-place beyond the catsup-bottle, and left the
table with a regretful “Good night.”

At the desk of the cashier, a decorative blonde, he put a cent in the
machine which good-naturedly drops out boxes of matches. No box dropped
this time, though he worked the lever noisily.

“Out of order?” asked the cashier lady. “Here’s two boxes of matches.
Guess you’ve earned them.”

“Well, well, well, well!” sounded the voice of his friend, the fat man,
who stood at the desk paying his bill. “Pretty easy, heh? Two boxes for
one cent! Sting the restaurant.” Cocking his head, he carefully
inserted a cent in the slot and clattered the lever, turning to grin at
Mr. Wrenn, who grinned back as the machine failed to work.

“Let me try it,” caroled Mr. Wrenn, and pounded the lever with the
enthusiasm of comradeship.

“Nothing doing, lady,” crowed the fat man to the cashier.

“I guess _I_ draw two boxes, too, eh? And I’m in a cigar-store. How’s
that for stinging your competitors, heh? Ho, ho, ho!”

The cashier handed him two boxes, with an embarrassed simper, and the
fat man clapped Mr. Wrenn’s shoulder joyously.

“My turn!” shouted a young man in a fuzzy green hat and a bright-brown
suit, who had been watching with the sudden friendship which unites a
crowd brought together by an accident.

Mr. Wrenn was glowing. “No, it ain’t—it’s mine,” he achieved. “I
invented this game.” Never had he so stood forth in a crowd. He was a
Bill Wrenn with the cosmopolitan polish of a floor-walker. He stood
beside the fat man as a friend of sorts, a person to be taken perfectly
seriously.

It is true that he didn’t add to this spiritual triumph the triumph of
getting two more boxes of matches, for the cashier-girl exclaimed, “No
indeedy; it’s my turn!” and lifted the match machine to a high shelf
behind her. But Mr. Wrenn went out of the restaurant with his old
friend, the fat man, saying to him quite as would a wit, “I guess we
get stung, eh?”

“Yuh!” gurgled the fat man.

Walking down to your store?”

“Yuh—sure—won’t you walk down a piece?”

“Yes, I would like to. Which way is it?”

“Fourth Avenue and Twenty-eighth.”

“Walk down with you.”

“Fine!”

And the fat man seemed to mean it. He confided to Mr. Wrenn that the
fishing was something elegant at Trulen, New Jersey; that he was some
punkins at the casting of flies in fishing; that he wished exceedingly
to be at Trulen fishing with flies, but was prevented by the manager of
the cigar-store; that the manager was an old devil; that his (the fat
man’s own) name was Tom Poppins; that the store had a slick new brand
of Manila cigars, kept in a swell new humidor bought upon the advice of
himself (Mr. Poppins); that one of the young clerks in the store had
done fine in the Modified Marathon; that the Cubs had had a great team
this year; that he’d be glad to give Mr.—Mr. Wrenn, eh?—one of those
Manila cigars—great cigars they were, too; and that he hadn’t “laughed
so much for a month of Sundays as he had over the way they stung
Miggleton’s on them matches.”

All this in the easy, affectionate, slightly wistful manner of fat men.
Mr. Poppins’s large round friendly childish eyes were never sarcastic.
He was the man who makes of a crowd in the Pullman smoking-room old
friends in half an hour. In turn, Mr. Wrenn did not shy off; he hinted
at most of his lifelong ambitions and a fair number of his sorrows and,
when they reached the store, not only calmly accepted, but even
sneezingly ignited one of the “slick new Manila cigars.”

As he left the store he knew that the golden age had begun. He had a
friend!

He was to see Tom Poppins the coming Thursday at Miggleton’s. And now
he was going to find Morton! He laughed so loudly that the policeman at
Thirty-fourth Street looked self-conscious and felt secretively to find
out what was the matter with his uniform. Now, this evening, he’d try
to get on the track of Morton. Well, perhaps not this evening—the
Pennsylvania offices wouldn’t be open, but some time this week, anyway.

Two nights later, as he waited for Tom Poppins at Miggleton’s, he
lashed himself with the thought that he had not started to find Morton;
good old Morton of the cattle-boat. But that was forgotten in the
wonder of Tom Poppins’s account of Mrs. Arty’s, a boarding-house “where
all the folks likes each other.”

“You’ve never fed at a boarding-house, eh?” said Tom. “Well, I guess
most of ’em are pretty poor feed. And pretty sad bunch. But Mrs. Arty’s
is about as near like home as most of us poor bachelors ever gets. Nice
crowd there. If Mrs. Arty—Mrs. R. T. Ferrard is her name, but we always
call her Mrs. Arty—if she don’t take to you she don’t mind letting you
know she won’t take you in at all; but if she does she’ll worry over
the holes in your socks as if they was her husband’s. All the bunch
there drop into the parlor when they come in, pretty near any time
clear up till twelve-thirty, and talk and laugh and rush the growler
and play Five Hundred. Just like home!

“Mrs. Arty’s nearly as fat as I am, but she can be pretty spry if
there’s something she can do for you. Nice crowd there, too except that
Teddem—he’s one of these here Willy-boy actors, always out of work; I
guess Mrs. Arty is kind of sorry for him. Say, Wrenn—you seem to me
like a good fellow—why don’t you get acquainted with the bunch? Maybe
you’d like to move up there some time. You was telling me about what a
cranky old party your landlady is. Anyway, come on up there to dinner.
On me. Got anything on for next Monday evening?”

“N-no.”

“Come on up then——East Thirtieth.”

“Gee, I’d like to!”

“Well, why don’t you, then? Get there about six. Ask for me. Monday.
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I don’t have to get to the store
evenings. Come on; you’ll find out if you like the place.”

“By jiminy, I will!” Mr. Wrenn slapped the table, socially.

At last he was “through, just _through_ with loafing around and not
getting acquainted,” he told himself. He was tired of Zapps. There was
nothing to Zapps. He would go up to Mrs. Arty’s and now—he was going to
find Morton. Next morning, marveling at himself for not having done
this easy task before, he telephoned to the Pennsylvania Railroad
offices, asked for Morton, and in one-half minute heard:

“Yes? This is Harry Morton.”

“Hullo, Mr. Morton! I’ll just bet you can’t guess who this is.”

“I guess you’ve got me.”

“Well, who do you think it—”

“Jack?”

“Hunka.”

“Uncle Henry?”

“Nope.” Mr. Wrenn felt lonely at finding himself so completely outside
Morton’s own world that he was not thought of. He hastened to claim a
part in that world:

“Say, Mr. Morton, I wonder if you’ve ever heard of a cattle-boat called
the _Merian?_”

“I—Say! Is this Bill Wrenn?”

“Yes.”

“Well, well, well! Where are you? When’d you get back?”

“Oh, I been back quite a little while, Morty. Tried to get hold of
you—almost called up couple of times. I’m in my office—Souvenir
Company—now. Back on the old job. Say, I’d like to see you.”

“Well, I’d like to see _you_, old Bill!”

“Got a date for dinner this evening, Morty?”

“N-no. No, I don’t _think_ I’ve got anything on.” Morton’s voice seemed
to sound a doubt. Mr. Wrenn reflected that Morton must be a society
person; and he made his invitation highly polite:

“Well, say, old man, I’d be awful happy if you could come over and feed
on me. Can’t you come over and meet me, Morty?”

“Y-yes, I guess I can. Yes, I’ll do it. Where’ll I meet you?”

“How about Twenty-eighth and Sixth Avenue?”

“That’ll be all right, Bill. ’Bout six o’clock?”

“Fine! Be awful nice to see you again, old Morty.”

“Same here. Goo’-by.”

Gazing across the table at Miggleton’s, Mr. Wrenn saw, in the squat
familiar body and sturdy face of Morton of the cattle-boat, a stranger,
slightly uneasy and very quiet, wearing garments that had nothing
whatever to do with the cattle-boats—a crimson scarf with a
horseshoe-pin of “Brazilian diamonds,” and sleek brown ready-made
clothes with ornately curved cuffs and pocket flaps.

Morton would say nothing of his wanderings after their parting in
Liverpool beyond: “Oh, I just bummed around. Places…. Warm to-night.
For this time of year.” Thrice he explained, “I was kind of afraid
you’d be sore at me for the way I left you; that’s why I’ve never
looked you up.” Thrice Mr. Wrenn declared that he had not been “sore,”
then ceased trying to make himself understood.

Their talk wilted. Both of them played with their knives a good deal.
Morton built a set of triangles out of toothpicks while pretending to
give hushed attention to the pianist’s rendition of “Mammy’s Little
Cootsie Bootsie Coon,” while Mr. Wrenn stared out of the window as
though he expected to see the building across get afire immediately.
When either of them invented something to say they started chattering
with guilty haste, and each agreed hectically with any opinion the
other advanced.

Mr. Wrenn surprised himself in the thought that Morton hadn’t anything
very new to say, which made him feel so disloyal that he burst out,
effusively:

“Say, come on now, old man; I just got to hear about what you did after
you left Liverpool.”

“I—”

“Well—”

“I never got out of Liverpool! Worked in a restaurant…. But next time—!
I’ll go clean to Constantinople!” Morton exploded. “And I did see a lot
of English life in Liverpool.”

Mr. Wrenn talked long and rapidly of the world’s baseball series, and
Regal _vs._ Walkover shoes.

He tried to think of something they could do. Suddenly:

“Say, Morty, I know an awful nice guy down here in a cigar-store. Let’s
go down and see him.”

“All right.”

Tom Poppins was very cordial to them. He dragged brown canvas stools
out of the tobacco-scented room where cigars were made, and the three
of them squatted in the back of the store, while Tom gossiped of the
Juarez races, Taft, cigar-wrappers, and Jews. Morton was aroused to
tell the time-mellowed story of the judge and the darky. He was
cheerful and laughed much and frequently said “Ah there, cull!” in
general commendation. But he kept looking at the clock on the jog in
the wall over the watercooler. Just at ten he rose abashedly,
hesitated, and murmured, “Well, I guess I’ll have to be beating it
home.”

From Mr. Wrenn: “Oh, Morty! So early?”

Tom: “What’s the big hurry?”

“I’ve got to run clear over to Jersey City.” Morton was cordial, but
not convincing.

“Say—uh—Morton,” said Tom, kindly of face, his bald head shining behind
his twin bangs, as he rose, “I’m going to have Wrenn up to dinner at my
boarding-house next Monday. Like to have you come along. It’s a fine
place—Mrs. Arty—she’s the landlady—she’s a wonder. There’s going to be
a vacant room there—maybe you two fellows could frame it up to take it,
heh? Understand, I don’t get no rake-off on this, but we all like to do
what we can for M—”

“No, no!” said Morton. “Sorry. Couldn’t do it. Staying with my
brother-in-law—costs me only ’bout half as much as it would I don’t do
much chasing around when I’m in town…. I’m going to save up enough
money for a good long hike. I’m going clean to St. Petersburg!… But
I’ve had a good time to-night.”

“Glad. Great stuff about you fellows on the cattle-ship,” said Tom.

Morton hastened on, protectively, a bit critically: “You fellows sport
around a good deal, don’t you?… I can’t afford to…. Well, good night.
Glad to met you, Mr. Poppins. G’ night, old Wr—”

“Going to the ferry? For Jersey? I’ll walk over with you,” said Mr.
Wrenn.

Their walk was quiet and, for Mr. Wrenn, tragically sad. He saw Morton
(presumably) doing the wandering he had once planned. He felt that,
while making his vast new circle of friends, he was losing all the wild
adventurousness of Bill Wrenn. And he was parting with his first
friend.

At the ferry-house Morton pronounced his “Well, so long, old fellow”
with an affection that meant finality.

Mr. Wrenn fled back to Tom Poppins’s store. On the way he was shocked
to find himself relieved at having parted with Morton. The cigar-store
was closed.

At home Mrs. Zapp waylaid him for his rent (a day overdue), and he was
very curt. That was to keep back the “O God, how rotten I feel!” with
which, in his room, he voiced the desolation of loneliness.

The ghost of Morton, dead and forgotten, was with him all next day,
till he got home and unbelievably found on the staid black-walnut Zapp
hat-rack a letter from Paris, in a gray foreign-appearing envelope with
Istra’s intensely black scrawl on it.

He put off the luxury of opening the letter till after the rites of
brushing his teeth, putting on his slippers, pounding his rocking-chair
cushion into softness. Panting with the joy to come, he stared out of
the window at a giant and glorious figure of Istra—the laughing Istra
of breakfast camp-fire—which towered from the street below. He sighed
joyously and read:

Mouse dear, just a word to let you know I haven’t forgotten you and am
very glad indeed to get your letters. Not much to write about.
Frightfully busy with work and fool parties. You _are_ a dear good soul
and I hope you’ll keep on writing me. In haste, I. N.
    Longer letter next time.


He came to the end so soon. Istra was gone again.




CHAPTER XIV
HE ENTERS SOCIETY


England, in all its Istra-ness, scarce gave Mr. Wrenn a better thrill
for his collection than the thrill he received on the November evening
when he saw the white doorway of Mrs. R. T. Ferrard, in a decorous row
of houses on Thirtieth Street near Lexington Avenue.

It is a block where the citizens have civic pride. A newspaper has not
the least chance of lying about on the asphalt—some householder with a
frequently barbered mustache will indignantly pounce upon it inside of
an hour. No awe. is caused by the sight of vestibules floored with
marble in alternate black and white tiles, scrubbed not by landladies,
but by maids. There are dotted Swiss curtains at the basement windows
and Irish point curtains on the first floors. There are two polished
brass doorplates in a stretch of less than eight houses. Distinctly, it
is not a quarter where children fill the street with shouting and
little sticks.

Occasionally a taxicab drives up to some door without a crowd of small
boys gathering; and young men in evening clothes are not infrequently
seen to take out young ladies wearing tight-fitting gowns of black, and
light scarfs over their heads. A Middle Western college fraternity has
a club-house in the block, and four of the houses are private—one of
them belonging to a police inspector and one to a school principal who
wears spats.

It is a block that is satisfied with itself; as different from the Zapp
district, where landladies in gingham run out to squabble with
berry-venders, as the Zapp district is from the Ghetto.

Mrs. Arty Ferrard’s house is a poor relation to most of the residences
there. The black areaway rail is broken, and the basement-door grill is
rusty. But at the windows are red-and-white-figured chintz curtains,
with a $2.98 bisque figurine of an unclothed lady between them; the
door is of spotless white, with a bell-pull of polished brass.

Mr. Wrenn yanked this bell-pull with an urbane briskness which, he
hoped, would conceal his nervousness and delight in dining out. For he
was one of the lonely men in New York. He had dined out four times in
eight years.

The woman of thirty-five or thirty-eight who opened the door to him was
very fat, two-thirds as fat as Mrs. Zapp, but she had young eyes. Her
mouth was small, arched, and quivering in a grin.

“This is Mr. Wrenn, isn’t it?” she gurgled, and leaned against the
doorpost, merry, apparently indolent. “I’m Mrs. Ferrard. Mr. Poppins
told me you were coming, and he said you were a terribly nice man, and
I was to be sure and welcome you. Come right in.”

Her indolence turned to energy as she charged down the hall to the
large double door on the right and threw it open, revealing to him a
scene of splendor and revelry by night.

Several persons [they seemed dozens, in their liveliness] were singing
and shouting to piano music, in the midst of a general redness and
brightness of furnishings—red paper and worn red carpet and a high
ceiling with circular moldings tinted in pink. Hand-painted pictures of
old mills and ladies brooding over salmon sunsets, and an especially
hand-painted Christmas scene with snow of inlaid mother-of-pearl,
animated the walls. On a golden-oak center-table was a large lamp with
a mosaic shade, and through its mingled bits of green and red and pearl
glass stormed the brilliance of a mantle-light.

The room was crowded with tufted plush and imitation-leather chairs,
side-tables and corner brackets, a couch and a “lady’s desk.” Green and
red and yellow vases adorned with figures of youthful lovers crammed
the top of the piano at the farther end of the room and the polished
black-marble mantel of the fireplace. The glaring gas raced the
hearth-fire for snap and glare and excitement. The profusion of
furniture was like a tumult; the redness and oakness and polishedness
of furniture was a dizzying activity; and it was all overwhelmingly
magnified by the laughter and singing about the piano.

Tom Poppins lumbered up from a couch of terrifically new and red
leather, and Mr. Wrenn was introduced to the five new people in the
room with dismaying swiftness. There seemed to be fifty times five
unapproachable and magnificent strangers from whom he wanted to flee.
Of them all he was sure of only two—a Miss Nelly somebody and what
sounded like Horatio Hood Tem (Teddem it was).

He wished that he had caught Miss Nelly’s last name (which, at dinner,
proved to be Croubel), for he was instantly taken by her sweetness as
she smiled, held out a well-shaped hand, and said, “So pleased meet
you, Mr. Wrenn.”

She returned to the front of the room and went on talking to a lank
spinster about ruchings, but Mr. Wrenn felt that he had known her long
and as intimately as it was possible to know so clever a young woman.

Nelly Croubel gave him the impression of a delicate prettiness, a
superior sort of prettiness, like that of the daughter of the Big White
House on the Hill, the Squire’s house, at Parthenon; though Nelly was
not unusually pretty. Indeed, her mouth was too large, her hair of
somewhat ordinary brown. But her face was always changing with emotions
of kindliness and life. Her skin was perfect; her features fine, rather
Greek; her smile, quick yet sensitive. She was several inches shorter
than Mr. Wrenn, and all curves. Her blouse of white silk lay tenderly
along the adorably smooth softness of her young shoulders. A smart
patent-leather belt encircled her sleek waist. Thin black lisle
stockings showed a modestly arched and rather small foot in a black
pump.

She looked as though she were trained for business; awake,
self-reliant, self-respecting, expecting to have to get things done,
all done, yet she seemed indestructibly gentle, indestructibly good and
believing, and just a bit shy.

Nelly Croubel was twenty-four or twenty-five in years, older in
business, and far younger in love. She was born in Upton’s Grove,
Pennsylvania. There, for eighteen years, she had played Skip to Malue
at parties, hid away the notes with which the boys invited her to
picnics at Baptist Beach, read much Walter Scott, and occasionally
taught Sunday-school. Her parents died when she was beginning her
fourth year in high school, and she came to New York to work in
Wanamacy’s toy department at six dollars a week during the holiday
rush. Her patience with fussy old shoppers and her large sales-totals
had gained her a permanent place in the store.

She had loftily climbed to the position of second assistant buyer in
the lingerie department, at fourteen dollars and eighty cents a week
That was quite all of her history except that she attended a
Presbyterian church nearly every Sunday. The only person she hated was
Horatio Hood Teddem, the cheap actor who was playing the piano at Mr.
Wrenn’s entrance.

Just now Horatio was playing ragtime with amazing rapidity, stamping
his foot and turning his head to smirk at the others.

Mrs. Arty led her chattering flock to the basement dining-room, which
had pink wall-paper and a mountainous sideboard. Mr. Wrenn was placed
between Mrs. Arty and Nelly Croubel. Out of the mist of strangeness
presently emerged the personality of Miss Mary Proudfoot, a lively but
religious spinster of forty who made doilies for the Dorcas Women’s
Exchange and had two hundred dollars a year family income. To the right
of the red-glass pickle-dish were the elderly Ebbitts—Samuel Ebbitt,
Esq., also Mrs. Ebbitt. Mr. Ebbitt had come from Hartford five years
before, but he always seemed just to have come from there. He was in a
real-estate office; he was gray, ill-tempered, impatiently honest, and
addicted to rheumatism and the newspapers. Mrs. Ebbitt was addicted
only to Mr. Ebbitt.

Across the table was felt the presence of James T. Duncan, who looked
like a dignified red-mustached Sunday-school superintendent, but who
traveled for a cloak and suit house, gambled heavily on poker and
auction pinochle, and was esteemed for his straight back and knowledge
of trains.

Which is all of them.

As soon as Mrs. Arty had guided Annie, the bashful maid, in serving the
vegetable soup, and had coaxed her into bringing Mr. Wrenn a napkin,
she took charge of the conversation, a luxury which she would never
have intrusted to her flock’s amateurish efforts. Mr. Poppins, said
she, had spoken of meeting a friend of Mr. Wrenn’s; Mr. Morton, was it
not? A very nice man, she understood. Was it true that Mr. Wrenn and
Mr. Morton had gone clear across the Atlantic on a cattle-boat? It
really was?

“Oh, how interesting!” contributed pretty Nelly Croubel, beside Mr.
Wrenn, her young eyes filled with an admiration which caused him
palpitation and difficulty in swallowing his soup. He was confused by
hearing old Samuel Ebbitt state:

“Uh-h-h-h—back in 18—uh—1872 the vessel _Prissie_—no, it was 1873; no,
it must have been ’72—”

“It was 1872, father,” said Mrs. Ebbitt.

“1873. I was on a coasting-vessel, young man. But we didn’t carry
cattle.” Mr. Ebbitt inspected Horatio Hood Teddem darkly, clicked his
spectacle case sharply shut, and fell to eating, as though he had
settled all this nonsense.

With occasional witty interruptions from the actor, Mr. Wrenn told of
pitching hay, of the wit of Morton, and the wickedness of Satan, the
boss.

“But you haven’t told us about the brave things _you_ did,” cooed Mrs.
Arty. She appealed to Nelly Croubel: “I’ll bet he was a cool one. Don’t
you think he was, Nelly?”

“I’m sure he was.” Nelly’s voice was like a flute.

Mr. Wrenn knew that there was just one thing in the world that he
wanted to do; to persuade Miss Nelly Croubel that (though he was a
solid business man, indeed yes, and honorable) he was a cool one, who
had chosen, in wandering o’er this world so wide, the most perilous and
cattle-boaty places. He tried to think of something modest yet striking
to say, while Tom was arguing with Miss Mary Proudfoot, the respectable
spinster, about the ethics of giving away street-car transfers.

As they finished their floating custard Mr. Wrenn achieved, “Do you
come from New York, Miss Croubel?” and listened to the tale of
sleighing-parties in Upton’s Grove, Pennsylvania. He was absolutely
happy.

“This is like getting home,” he thought. “And they’re classy folks to
get home to—now that I can tell ’em apart. Gee! Miss Croubel is a
peach. And brains—golly!”

He had a frightened hope that after dinner he would be able to get into
a corner and talk with Nelly, but Tom Poppins conferred with Horatio
Hood Teddenm and called Mr. Wrenn aside. Teddem had been acting with a
moving-picture company for a week, and had three passes to the
celebrated Waldorf Photoplay Theater.

Mr. Wrenn had bloodthirstily disapproved Horatio Hood’s effeminate
remarks, such as “Tee _hee!_” and “Oh, you naughty man,” but when he
heard that this molly-coddle had shared in the glory of making moving
pictures he went proudly forth with him and Tom. He had no chance to
speak to Mrs. Arty about taking the room to be vacated.

He wished that Charley Carpenter or the Zapps could see him sitting
right beside an actor who was shown in the pictures miraculously there
before them, asking him how they made movies, just as friendly as
though they had known each other always.

He wanted to do something to entertain his friends beyond taking them
out for a drink. He invited them down to his room, and they came.

Teddem was in wonderful form; he mimicked every one they saw so amiably
that Tom Poppins knew the actor wanted to borrow money. The party were
lovingly humming the popular song of the time—“Any Little Girl That’s a
Nice Little Girl is the Right Little Girl for Me”—as they frisked up
the gloomy steps of the Zapps. Entering, Poppins and Teddem struck
attitudes on the inside stairs and sang aloud.

Mr. Wrenn felt enormously conscious of Mrs. Zapp down below. He kept
listening, as he led them up-stairs and lighted the gas. But Teddem so
imitated Colonel Roosevelt, with two water-glasses for eye-glasses and
a small hat-brush for mustache, that Mr. Wrenn was moved wrigglingly to
exclaim: “Say, I’m going out and get some beer. Or ’d you rather have
something else? Some cheese sandwiches? How about ’em?”

“Fine,” said Tom and Teddem together.

Not only did Mr. Wrenn buy a large newspaper-covered bundle of bottles
of beer and Swiss-cheese sandwiches, but also a small can of caviar and
salty crackers. In his room he spread a clean towel, then two clean
towels, on the bureau, and arrayed the feast, with two water-glasses
and a shaving-mug for cups.

Horatio Hood Teddem, spreading caviar on a sandwich, and loudly singing
his masterpiece, “Waal I swan,” stopped short and fixed amazed eyes on
the door of the room.

Mr. Wrenn hastily turned. The light fell—as on a cliff of crumbly gray
rock—on Mrs. Zapp, in the open door, vast in her ungirdled gray
wrapper, her arms folded, glowering speechlessly.

“Mist’ Wrenn,” she began, in a high voice that promised to burst into
passion.

But she was addressing the formidable adventurer, Bill Wrenn. He had to
protect his friends. He sprang up and walked across to her.

He said, quietly, “I didn’t hear you knock, Mrs. Zapp.”

“Ah _didn’t_ knock, and Ah want you should—”

“Then please do knock, unless you want me to give notice.”

He was quivering. His voice was shrill.

From the hall below Theresa called up, “Ma, come down here. _Ma!_”

But Mrs. Zapp was too well started. “If you think Ah’m going to stand
for a lazy sneaking little drunkard keeping the whole street awake, and
here it is prett’ nearly midnight—”

Just then Mr. William Wrenn saw and heard the most astounding thing of
his life, and became an etemal slave to Tom Poppins.

Tom’s broad face became hard, his voice businesslike. He shouted at
Mrs. Zapp:

“Beat it or I’ll run you in. Trouble with you is, you old hag, you
don’t appreciate a nice quiet little chap like Wrenn, and you try to
bully him—and him here for years. Get out or I’ll put you out. I’m no
lamb, and I won’t stand for any of your monkey-shines. Get out. This
ain’t your room; he’s rented it—he’s paid the rent—it’s his room. Get
out!”

Kindly Tom Poppins worked in a cigar-store and was accustomed to talk
back to drunken men six feet tall. His voice was tremendous, and he was
fatly immovable; he didn’t a bit mind the fact that Mrs. Zapp was still
“glaring speechless.”

But behold an ally to the forlorn lady. When Theresa, in the hall
below, heard Tom, she knew that Mr. Wrenn would room here no more. She
galloped up-stairs and screeched over her mother’s shoulder:

“You will pick on a lady, will you, you drunken scum—you—you cads—I’ll
have you arrested so quick you—”

“Look here, lady,” said Tom, gently. “I’m a plain-clothes man, a
detective.” His large voice purred like a tiger-tabby’s. “I don’t want
to run you in, but I will if you don’t get out of here and shut that
door. Or you might go down and call the cop on this block. He’ll run
you in—for breaking Code 2762 of the Penal Law! Trespass and
flotsam—that’s what it is!”

Uneasy, frightened, then horrified, Mrs. Zapp swung bulkily about and
slammed the door.

Sick, guilty, banished from home though he felt, Mr. Wrenn’s voice
quavered, with an attempt at dignity:

“I’m awful sorry she butted in while you fellows was here. I don’t know
how to apologize”

“Forget it, old man,” rolled out Tom’s bass. “Come on, let’s go up to
Mrs. Arty’s.”

“But, gee! it’s nearly a quarter to eleven.”

“That’s all right. We can get up there by a little after, and Mrs. Arty
stays up playing cards till after twelve.”

“Golly!” Mr. Wrenn agitatedly ejaculated under his breath, as they
noisily entered Mrs. Arty’s—though not noisily on his part.

The parlor door was open. Mrs. Arty’s broad back was toward them, and
she was announcing to James T. Duncan and Miss Proudfoot, with whom she
was playing three-handed Five Hundred, “Well, I’ll just bid seven on
hearts if you’re going to get so set up.” She glanced back, nodded,
said, “Come in, children,” picked up the “widow,” and discarded with
quick twitches of the cards. The frightened Mr. Wrenn, feeling like a
shipwrecked land-lubber, compared this gaming smoking woman unfavorably
with the intense respectability of his dear lost patron, Mrs. Zapp. He
sat uneasy till the hand of cards was finished, feeling as though they
were only tolerating him. And Nelly Croubel was nowhere in sight.

Suddenly said Mrs. Arty, “And now you would like to look at that room,
Mr. Wrenn, unless I’m wrong.”

“Why—uh—yes, I guess I would like to.”

“Come with me, child,” she said, in pretended severity. “Tom, you take
my hand in the game, and don’t let me hear you’ve been bidding ten on
no suit without the joker.” She led Mr. Wrenn to the settee hat-rack in
the hall. “The third-floor-back will be vacant in two weeks, Mr. Wrenn.
We can go up and look at it now if you’d like to. The man who has it
now works nights—he’s some kind of a head waiter at Rector’s, or
something like that, and he’s out till three or four. Come.”

When he saw that third-floor-back, the room that the smart people at
Mrs. Arty’s were really willing to let him have, he felt like a man
just engaged. It was all in soft green—grass-green matting, pale-green
walls, chairs of white wicker with green cushions; the bed, a couch
with a denim cover and four sofa pillows. It gave him the impression of
being a guest on Fifth Avenue.

“It’s kind of a plain room,” Mrs. Arty said, doubtfully. “The furniture
is kind of plain. But my head-waiter man—it was furnished for a friend
of his—he says he likes it better than any other room in the house. It
_is_ comfortable, and you get lots of sunlight and—”

“I’ll take—How much is it, please, with board?”

She spoke with a take-it-or-leave-it defiance. “Eleven-fifty a week.”

It was a terrible extravagance; much like marrying a sick woman on a
salary of ten a week, he reflected; nine-teen minus eleven-fifty left
him only seven-fifty for clothes and savings and things and—but—” I’ll
take it,” he said, hastily. He was frightened at himself, but glad,
very glad. He was to live in this heaven; he was going to be away from
that Zapp woman; and Nelly Croubel—Was she engaged to some man? he
wondered.

Mrs. Arty was saying: “First, I want to ask you some questions, though.
Please sit down.” As she creaked into one of the wicker chairs she
suddenly changed from the cigarette-rolling chaffing card-player to a
woman dignified, reserved, commanding. “Mr. Wrenn, you see, Miss
Proudfoot and Miss Croubel are on this floor. Miss Proudfoot can take
care of herself, all right, but Nelly is such a trusting little
thing—She’s like my daughter. She’s the only one I’ve ever given a
reduced rate to—and I swore I never would to anybody!… Do
you—uh—drink—drink much, I mean?”

Nelly on this floor! Near him! Now! He had to have this room. He forced
himself to speak directly.

“I know how you mean, Mrs. Ferrard. No, I don’t drink much of
any—hardly at all; just a glass of beer now and then; sometimes I don’t
even touch that a week at a time. And I don’t gamble and—and I do try
to keep—er—straight—and all that sort of thing.”

“That’s good.”

“I work for the Souvenir and Art Novelty Company on Twenty-eighth
Street. If you want to call them up I guess the manager’ll give me a
pretty good recommend.”

“I don’t believe I’ll need it, Mr. Wrenn. It’s my business to find out
what sort of animiles men are by just talking to them.” She rose,
smiled, plumped out her hand. “You _will_ be nice to Nelly, _won’t_
you! I’m going to fire that Teddem out—don’t tell him, but I am—because
he gets too fresh with her.”

“Yes!”

She suddenly broke into laughter, and ejaculated: “_Say_, that was hard
work! Don’t you _hate_ to have to be serious? Let’s trot down, and I’ll
make Tom or Duncan rush us a growler of beer to welcome you to our
midst…. I’ll bet your socks aren’t darned properly. I’m going to sneak
in and take a look at them, once I get you caged up here…. But I won’t
read your love-letters! Now let’s go down by the fire, where it’s
comfy.”




CHAPTER XV
HE STUDIES FIVE HUNDRED, SAVOUIR FAIRE, AND LOTSA-SNAP OFFICE MOTTOES


On a couch of glossy red leather with glossy black buttons and stiff
fringes also of glossy red leather, Mr. William Wrenn sat upright and
was very confiding to Miss Nelly Croubel, who was curled among the
satin pillows with her skirts drawn carefully about her ankles. He had
been at Mrs. Arty’s for two weeks now. He wore a new light-blue tie,
and his trousers were pressed like sheet steel.

“Yes, I suppose you’re engaged to some one, Miss Nelly, and you’ll go
off and leave us—go off to that blamed Upton’s Grove or some place.”

“I am _not_ engaged. I’ve told you so. Who would want to marry me? You
stop teasing me—you’re mean as can be; I’ll just have to get Tom to
protect me!”

“Course you’re engaged.”

“Ain’t.”

“Are.”

“Ain’t. Who would want to marry poor little me?”

“Why, anybody, of course.”

“You _stop_ teasing me…. Besides, probably you’re in love with twenty
girls.”

“I am _not_. Why, I’ve never hardly known but just two girls in my
life. One was just a girl I went to theaters with once or twice—she was
the daughter of the landlady I used to have before I came here.”

              “If you don’t make love to the landlady’s daughter
               You won’t get a second piece of pie!”

quoted Nelly, out of the treasure-house of literature.

“Sure. That’s it. But I bet you—”

“Who was the other girl?”

“Oh! She…. She was a—an artist. I liked her—a lot. But she was—oh,
awful highbrow. Gee! if—But—”

A sympathetic silence, which Nelly broke with:

“Yes, they’re funny people. Artists…. Do you have your lesson in Five
Hundred tonight? Your very first one?”

“I think so. Say, is it much like this here bridge-whist? Oh say, Miss
Nelly, why do they call it Five Hundred?”

“That’s what you have to make to go out. No, I guess it isn’t very much
like bridge; though, to tell the truth, I haven’t ever played bridge. .
My! it must be a nice game, though.”

“Oh, I thought prob’ly you could play it. You can do ’most everything.
Honest, I’ve never seen nothing like it.”

“Now you stop, Mr. Wrenn. I know I’m a—what was it Mr. Teddem used to
call me? A minx. But—”

“Miss _Nelly!_ You _aren’t_ a minx!”

“Well—”

“Or a mink, either. You’re a—let’s see—an antelope.”

“I am not! Even if I can wriggle my nose like a rabbit. Besides, it
sounds like a muskmelon. But, anyway, the head buyer said I was crazy
to-day.”

“If I heard him say you were crazy—”

“Would you beat him for me?” She cuddled a cushion and smiled
gratefully. Her big eyes seemed to fill with light.

He caught himself wanting to kiss the softness of her shoulder, but he
said only, “Well, I ain’t much of a scrapper, but I’d try to make it
interesting for him.”

“Tell me, did you ever have a fight? When you were a boy? Were you
_such_ a bad boy?”

“I never did when I was a boy, but—well—I did have a couple of fights
when I was on the cattle-boat and in England. Neither of them amounted
to very much, though, I guess. I was scared stiff!”

“Don’t believe it!”

“Sure I was.”

“I don’t believe you’d be scared. You’re too earnest.”

“Me, Miss Nelly? Why, I’m a regular cut-up.”

“You stop making fun of yourself! I _like_ it when you’re earnest—like
when you saw that beautiful snowfall last night…. Oh dear, isn’t it
hard to have to miss so many beautiful things here in the city—there’s
just the parks, and even there there aren’t any birds, real wild birds,
like we used to have in Pennsylvania.”

“Yes, isn’t it! Isn’t it hard!” Mr. Wrenn drew nearer and looked
sympathy.

“I’m afraid I’m getting gushy. Miss Hartenstein—she’s in my
department—she’d laugh at me…. But I do love birds and squirrels and
pussy-willows and all those things. In summer I love to go on picnics
on Staten Island or tramp in Van Cortlandt Park.”

“Would you go on a picnic with me some day next spring?” Hastily, “I
mean with Miss Proudfoot and Mrs. Arty and me?”

“I should be pleased to.” She was prim but trusting about it. “Oh,
listen, Mr. Wrenn; did you ever tramp along the Palisades as far as
Englewood? It’s lovely there—the woods and the river and all those
funny little tugs puffing along, way _way_ down below you—why, I could
lie on the rocks up there and just dream and dream for hours. After
I’ve spent Sunday up there”—she was dreaming now, he saw, and his heart
was passionately tender toward her—“I don’t hardly mind a bit having to
go back to the store Monday morning…. You’ve been up along there,
haven’t you?”

“Me? Why, I guess I’m the guy that discovered the Palisades!… Yes, it
is _won_-derful up there!”

“Oh, you are, are you? I read about that in American history!… But
honestly, Mr. Wrenn, I do believe you care for tramps and things—not
like that Teddem or Mr. Duncan—they always want to just stay in town—or
even Tom, though he’s an old dear.”

Mr. Wrenn looked jealous, with a small hot jealousy. She hastened on
with: “Of course, I mean he’s just like a big brother. To all of us.”

It was sweet to both of them, to her to declare and to him to hear,
that neither Tom nor any other possessed her heart. Their shy glances
were like an outreach of tenderly touching hands as she confided, “Mrs.
Arty and he get up picnics, and when we’re out on the Palisades he says
to me—you know, sometimes he almost makes me think he _is_ sleepy,
though I do believe he just sneaks off under a tree and talks to Mrs.
Arty or reads a magazine—but I was saying: he always says to me, ‘Well,
sister, I suppose you want to mousey round and dream by yourself—you
won’t talk to a growly old bear like me. Well, I’m glad of it. I want
to sleep. I don’t want to be bothered by you and your everlasting
chatter. Get out!’ I b’lieve he just says that ’cause he knows I
wouldn’t want to run off by myself if they didn’t think it was proper.”

As he heard her lively effort to imitate Tom’s bass Mr. Wrenn laughed
and pounded his knee and agreed: “Yes, Tom’s an awfully fine fellow,
isn’t he!… I love to get out some place by myself, too. I like to
wander round places and make up the doggondest fool little stories to
myself about them; just as bad as a kiddy, that way.”

“And you read such an awful lot, Mr. Wrenn! My! Oh, tell me, have you
ever read anything by Harold Bell Wright or Myrtle Reed, Mr. Wrenn?
They write such sweet stories.”

He had not, but he expressed an unconquerable resolve so to do, and
with immediateness. She went on:

“Mrs. Arty told me you had a real big library—nearly a hundred books
and—Do you mind? I went in your room and peeked at them.”

“No, course I don’t mind! If there’s any of them you’d like to borrow
any time, Miss Nelly, I would be awful glad to lend them to you…. But,
rats! Why, I haven’t got hardly any books.”

“That’s why you haven’t wasted any time learning Five Hundred and
things, isn’t it? Because you’ve been so busy reading and so on?”

“Yes, kind of.” Mr. Wrenn looked modest.

“Haven’t you always been lots of—oh, haven’t you always ’magined lots?”

She really seemed to care.

Mr. Wrenn felt excitedly sure of that, and imparted: “Yes, I guess I
have…. And I’ve always wanted to travel a lot.”

“So have I! Isn’t it wonderful to go around and see new places!”

“Yes, _isn’t_ it!” he breathed. “It was great to be in England—though
the people there are kind of chilly some ways. Even when I’m on a wharf
here in New York I feel just like I was off in China or somewheres. I’d
like to see China. And India…. Gee! when I hear the waves down at Coney
Island or some place—you know how the waves sound when they come in.
Well, sometimes I almost feel like they was talking to a guy—you
know—telling about ships. And, oh say, you know the whitecaps—aren’t
they just like the waves was motioning at you—they want you to come and
beat it with you—over to China and places.”

“Why, Mr. Wrenn, you’re a regular poet!”

He looked doubtful.

“Honest; I’m not teasing you; you are a poet. And I think it’s fine
that Mr. Teddem was saying that nobody could be a poet or like that
unless they drank an awful lot and—uh—oh, not be honest and be on a
job. But you aren’t like that. _Are_ you?”

He looked self-conscious and mumbled, earnestly, “Well, I try not to
be.”

“But I am going to make you go to church. You’ll be a socialist or
something like that if you get to be too much of a poet and don’t—”

“Miss Nelly, please _may_ I go to church with you?”

“Why—”

“Next Sunday?”

“Why, yes, I should be pleased. Are you a Presbyterian, though?”

“Why—uh—I guess I’m kind of a Congregationalist; but still, they’re all
so much alike.”

“Yes, they really are. And besides, what does it matter if we all
believe the same and try to do right; and sometimes that’s hard, when
you’re poor, and it seems like—like—”

“Seems like what?” Mr. Wrenn insisted.

“Oh—nothing…. My, you’ll have to get up awful early Sunday morning if
you’d like to go with me. My church starts at ten-thirty.”

“Oh, I’d get up at five to go with you.”

“Stupid! Now you’re just trying to jolly me; you _are_; because you men
aren’t as fond of church as all that, I know you aren’t. You’re real
lazy Sunday mornings, and just want to sit around and read the papers
and leave the poor women—But please tell me some more about your
reading and all that.”

“Well, I’ll be all ready to go at nine-thirty…. I don’t know; why, I
haven’t done much reading. But I would like to travel and—Say, wouldn’t
it be great to—I suppose I’m sort of a kid about it; of course, a guy
has to tend right to business, but it would be great—Say a man was in
Europe with—with—a friend, and they both knew a lot of history—say,
they both knew a lot about Guy Fawkes (he was the guy that tried to
blow up the English Parliament), and then when they were there in
London they could almost think they saw him, and they could go round
together and look at Shelley’s window—he was a poet at Oxford—Oh, it
would be great with a—with a friend.”

“Yes, wouldn’t it?… I wanted to work in the book department one time.
It’s so nice your being—”

“Ready for Five Hundred?” bellowed Tom Poppins in the hall below.
“Ready partner—you, Wrenn?”

Tom was to initiate Mr. Wrenn into the game, playing with him against
Mrs. Arty and Miss Mary Proudfoot.

Mrs. Arty sounded the occasion’s pitch of high merriment by delivering
from the doorway the sacred old saying, “Well, the ladies against the
men, eh?”

A general grunt that might be spelled “Hmmmmhm” assented.

“I’m a good suffragette,” she added. “Watch us squat the men, Mary.”

“Like to smash windows? Let’s see—it’s red fours, black fives up?”
remarked Tom, as he prepared the pack of cards for playing.

“Yes, I would! It makes me so tired,” asseverated Mrs. Arty, “to think
of the old goats that men put up for candidates when they _know_
they’re solemn old fools! I’d just like to get out and vote my head
off.”

“Well, I think the woman’s place is in the home,” sniffed Miss
Proudfoot, decisively, tucking away a doily she was finishing for the
Women’s Exchange and jabbing at her bangs.

They settled themselves about the glowing, glancing, glittering,
golden-oak center-table. Miss Proudfoot shuffled sternly. Mr. Wrenn sat
still and frightened, like a shipwrecked professor on a raft with two
gamblers and a press-agent, though Nelly was smiling encouragingly at
him from the couch where she had started her embroidery—a large
Christmas lamp mat for the wife of the Presbyterian pastor at Upton’s
Grove.

“Don’t you wish your little friend Horatio Hood Teddem was here to play
with you?” remarked Tom.

“I _do_ not,” declared Mrs. Arty. “Still, there was one thing about
Horatio. I never had to look up his account to find out how much he
owed me. He stopped calling me, Little Buttercup, when he owed me ten
dollars, and he even stopped slamming the front door when he got up to
twenty. O Mr. Wrenn, did I ever tell you about the time I asked him if
he wanted to have Annie sweep—”

“Gerty!” protested Miss Proudfoot, while Nelly, on the couch,
ejaculated mechanically, “That story!” but Mrs. Arty chuckled fatly,
and continued:

“I asked him if he wanted me to have Annie sweep his nightshirt when
she swept his room. He changed it next day.”

“Your bid, Mr. Poppins, “said Miss Proudfoot, severely.

“First, I want to tell Wrenn how to play. You see, Wrenn, here’s the
schedule. We play Avondale Schedule, you know.”

“Oh yes,” said Mr. Wrenn, timorously…. He had once heard of
Carbondale—in New Jersey or Pennsylvania or somewhere—but that didn’t
seem to help much.

“Well, you see, you either make or go back,” continued Tom. “Plus and
minus, you know. Joker is high, then right bower, left, and ace.
Then—uh—let’s see; high bid takes the cat—widdie, you know—and
discards. Ten tricks. Follow suit like whist, of course. I guess that’s
all—that ought to give you the hang of it, anyway. I bid six on no
trump.”

As Tom Poppins finished these instructions, given in the card-player’s
rapid don’t-ask-me-any-more-fool-questions manner, Mr. Wrenn felt that
he was choking. He craned up his neck, trying to ease his stiff collar.
So, then, he was a failure, a social outcast already.

So, then, he couldn’t learn Five Hundred! And he had been very proud of
knowing one card from another perfectly, having played a number of
games of two-handed poker with Tim on the cattle-boat. But what the
dickens did “left—cat—follow suit” mean?

And to fail with Nelly watching him! He pulled at his collar again.

Thus he reflected while Mrs. Arty and Tom were carrying on the
following brilliant but cryptic society-dialogue:

_Mrs. Arty:_ Well, I don’t know.

_Tom:_ Not failure, but low bid is crime, little one.

_Mrs. Arty:_ Mary, shall I make—

_Tom:_ Hey! No talking ’cross table!

_Mrs. Arty:_ Um—let—me—see.

_Tom:_ Bid up, bid up! Bid a little seven on hearts?

_Mrs. Arty:_ Just for that I _will_ bid seven on hearts, smarty!

_Tom:_ Oh, how we will squat you!… What you bidding, Wrenn?

Behind Mr. Wrenn, Nelly Croubel whispered to him: “Bid seven on no
suit. You’ve got the joker.” Her delicate forefinger, its nail shining,
was pointing at a curious card in his hand.

“Seven nosut,” he mumbled.

“Eight hearts,” snapped Miss Proudfoot.

Nelly drew up a chair behind Mr. Wrenn’s. He listened to her soft
explanations with the desperate respect and affection which a green
subaltern would give to a general in battle.

Tom and he won the hand. He glanced back at Nelly with awe, then
clutched his new hand, fearfully, dizzily, staring at it as though it
might conceal one of those malevolent deceivers of which Nelly had just
warned him—a left bower.

“Good! Spades—see,” said Nelly.

Fifteen minutes later Mr. Wrenn felt that Tom was hoping he would lead
a club. He played one, and the whole table said: “That’s right. Fine!”

On his shoulder he felt a light tap, and he blushed like a sunset as he
peeped back at Nelly.

Mr. Wrenn, the society light, was Our Mr. Wrenn of the Souvenir Company
all this time. Indeed, at present he intended to keep on taking The Job
seriously until that most mistily distant time, which we all await,
“when something turns up.” His fondling of the Southern merchants was
showing such results that he had grown from an interest in whatever
papers were on his desk to a belief in the divine necessity of The Job
as a whole. Not now, as of old, did he keep the personal letters in his
desk tied up, ready for a sudden departure for Vienna or Kamchatka.
Also, he wished to earn much more money for his new career of luxury.
Mr. Guilfogle had assured him that there might be chances
ahead—business had been prospering, two new road salesmen and a
city-trade man had been added to the staff, and whereas the firm had
formerly been jobbers only, buying their novelties from manufacturers,
now they were having printed for them their own Lotsa-Snap Cardboard
Office Mottoes, which were making a big hit with the trade.

Through his friend Rabin, the salesman, Mr. Wrenn got better acquainted
with two great men—Mr. L. J. Glover, the purchasing agent of the
Souvenir Company, and John Hensen, the newly engaged head of motto
manufacturing. He “wanted to get onto all the different lines of the
business so’s he could step right in anywhere”; and from these men he
learned the valuable secrets of business wherewith the marts of trade
build up prosperity for all of us: how to seat a selling agent facing
the light, so you can see his face better than he can see yours. How
much ahead of time to telephone the motto-printer that “we’ve simply
got to have proof this afternoon; what’s the matter with you, down
there? Don’t you want our business any more?” He also learned something
of the various kinds of cardboard and ink-well glass, though these, of
course, were merely matters of knowledge, not of brilliant business
tactics, and far less important than what Tom Poppins and Rabin called
“handing out a snappy line of talk.”

“Say, you’re getting quite chummy lately—reg’lar society leader,” Rabin
informed him.

Mr. Wrenn’s answer was in itself a proof of the soundness of Rabin’s
observation:

“Sure—I’m going to borrow some money from you fellows. Got to make an
impression, see?”

A few hours after this commendation came Istra’s second letter:

Mouse dear, I’m so glad to hear about the simpatico boarding- house.
Yes indeed I would like to hear about the people in it. And you are
reading history? That’s good. I’m getting sick of Paris and some day
I’m going to stop an absinthe on the boulevard and slap its face to
show I’m a sturdy moving-picture Western Amurrican and then leap to
saddle and pursue the bandit. I’m working like the devil but what’s the
use. That is I mean unless one is doing the job well, as I’m glad you
are. My Dear, keep it up. You know I want you to be _real_ whatever you
are. I didn’t mean to preach but you know I hate people who aren’t
real—that’s why I haven’t much of a flair for myself. _Au récrire_,


I. N.


After he had read her letter for the third time he was horribly shocked
and regarded himself as a traitor, because he found that he was only
pretending to be enjoyably excited over it…. It seemed so detached from
himself. “Flair”—“_au recrire_.” Now, what did those mean? And Istra
was always so discontented. “What ’d she do if she had to be on the job
like Nelly?… Oh, Istra _is_ wonderful. But—gee!—I dunno—”

And when he who has valorously loved says “But—gee!—I dunno—” love
flees in panic.

He walked home thoughtfully.

After dinner he said abruptly to Nelly, “I had a letter from Paris
to-day.”

“Honestly? Who is she?”

“G-g-g-g—”

“Oh, it’s always a she.”

“Why—uh—it _is_ from a girl. I started to tell you about her one day.
She’s an artist, and once we took a long tramp in the country. I met
her—she was staying at the same place as I was in London. But—oh, gee!
I dunno; she’s so blame literary. She _is_ a _fine_ person—Do you think
you’d like a girl like that?”

“Maybe I would.”

“If she was a man?”

“Oh, yes-s! Artists are so romantic.”

“But they ain’t on the job more ’n half the time,” he said, jealously.

“Yes, that’s _so_.”

His hand stole secretly, craftily skirting a cushion, to touch
hers—which she withdrew, laughing:

“Hump-a! You go hold your artist’s hand!”

“Oh, Miss Nelly! When I _told_ you about her _myself!_”

“Oh yes, of course.”

She was contrite, and they played Five Hundred animatedly all evening.




CHAPTER XVI
HE BECOMES MILDLY RELIGIOUS AND HIGHLY LITERARY


The hero of the one-act play at Hammerstein’s Victoria vaudeville
theater on that December evening was, it appeared, a wealthy young
mine-owner in disguise. He was working for the “fake mine promoter”
because he loved the promoter’s daughter with a love that passed all
understanding except that of the girls in the gallery. When the postal
authorities were about to arrest the promoter our young hero saved him
by giving him a real mine, and the ensuing kiss of the daughter ended
the suspense in which Mr. Wrenn and Nelly, Mrs. Arty and Tom had
watched the play from the sixth row of the balcony.

Sighing happily, Nelly cried to the group: “Wasn’t that grand? I got so
excited! Wasn’t that young miner a dear?”

“Awfully nice,” said Mr. Wrenn. “And, gee! wasn’t that great, that
office scene—with that safe and the rest of the stuff—just like you was
in a real office. But, say, they wouldn’t have a copying-press in an
office like that; those fake mine promoters send out such swell
letters; they’d use carbon copies and not muss the letters all up.”

“By gosh, that’s right!” and Tom nodded his chin toward his right
shoulder in approval. Nelly cried, “That’s so; they would”; while Mrs.
Arty, not knowing what a copying-press was, appeared highly
commendatory, and said nothing at all.

During the moving pictures that followed, Mr. Wrenn felt proudly that
he was taken seriously, though he had known them but little over a
month. He followed up his conversational advantage by leading the
chorus in wondering, “which one of them two actors the heroine was
married to?” and “how much a week they get for acting in that thing?”
It was Tom who invited them to Miggleton’s for coffee and fried
oysters. Mr. Wrenn was silent for a while. But as they were stamping
through the rivulets of wheel-tracks that crisscrossed on a slushy
street-crossing Mr. Wrenn regained his advantage by crying, “Say, don’t
you think that play ’d have been better if the promoter ’d had an awful
grouch on the young miner and ’d had to crawfish when the miner saved
him?”

“Why, yes; it would!” Nelly glowed at him.

“Wouldn’t wonder if it would,” agreed Tom, kicking the December slush
off his feet and patting Mr. Wrenn’s back.

“Well, look here,” said Mr. Wrenn, as they left Broadway, with its
crowds betokening the approach of Christmas, and stamped to the quieter
side of Forty-second, “why wouldn’t this make a slick play: say there’s
an awfully rich old guy; say he’s a railway president or something, d’
you see? Well, he’s got a secretary there in the office—on the stage,
see? The scene is his office. Well, this guy’s—the rich old
guy’s—daughter comes in and says she’s married to a poor man and she
won’t tell his name, but she wants some money from her dad. You see,
her dad’s been planning for her to marry a marquise or some kind of a
lord, and he’s sore as can be, and he won’t listen to her, and he just
cusses her out something fierce, see? Course he doesn’t really cuss,
but he’s awful sore; and she tells him didn’t he marry her mother when
he was a poor young man; but he won’t listen. Then the secretary butts
in—my idea is he’s been kind of keeping in the background, see—and
_he’s_ the daughter’s husband all the while, see? and he tells the old
codger how he’s got some of his—some of the old fellow’s—papers that
give it away how he done something that was crooked—some kind of
deal—rebates and stuff, see how I mean?—and the secretary’s going to
spring this stuff on the newspapers if the old man don’t come through
and forgive them; so of course the president has to forgive them, see?”

“You mean the secretary was the daughter’s husband all along, and he
heard what the president said right there?” Nelly panted, stopping
outside Miggleton’s, in the light from the oyster-filled window.

“Yes; and he heard it all.”

“Why, I think that’s just a _fine_ idea,” declared Nelly, as they
entered the restaurant. Though her little manner of dignity and even
restraint was evident as ever, she seemed keenly joyous over his
genius.

“Say, that’s a corking idea for a play, Wrenn,” exclaimed Tom, at their
table, gallantly removing the ladies’ wraps.

“It surely is,” agreed Mrs. Arty.

“Why don’t you write it?” asked Nelly.

“Aw—I couldn’t write it!”

“Why, sure you could, Bill,” insisted Tom. “Straight; you ought to
write it. (Hey, waiter! Four fries and coffee!) You ought to write it.
Why, it’s a wonder; it ’d make a dev— ’Scuse me, ladies. It’d make a
howling hit. You might make a lot of money out of it.”

The renewed warmth of their wet feet on the red-tile floor, the scent
of fried oysters, the din of “Any Little Girl” on the piano, these
added color to this moment of Mr. Wrenn’s great resolve. The four
stared at one another excitedly. Mr. Wrenn’s eyelids fluttered. Tom
brought his hand down on the table with a soft flat “plob” and
declared: “Say, there might be a lot of money in it. Why, I’ve heard
that Harry Smith—writes the words for these musical comedies—makes a
_mint_ of money.”

“Mr. Poppins ought to help you in it—he’s seen such a lot of plays,”
Mrs. Arty anxiously advised.

“That’s a good idea,” said Mr. Wrenn. It had, apparently, been ordained
that he was to write it. They were now settling important details. So
when Nelly cried, “I think it’s just a fine idea; I knew you had lots
of imagination,” Tom interrupted her with:

“No; you write it, Bill. I’ll help you all I can, of course…. Tell you
what you ought to do: get hold of Teddem—he’s had a lot of stage
experience; he’d help you about seeing the managers. That ’d be the
hard part—you can write it, all right, but you’d have to get next to
the guys on the inside, and Teddem—Say, you cer_tain_ly ought to write
this thing, Bill. Might make a lot of money.”

“Oh, a lot!” breathed Nelly.

“Heard about a fellow,” continued Tom—” fellow named Gene Wolf, I think
it was—that was so broke he was sleeping in Bryant Park, and he made a
_hundred thousand dollars_ on his first play—or, no; tell you how it
was: he sold it outright for ten thousand—something like that, anyway.
I got that right from a fellow that’s met him.”

“Still, an author’s got to go to college and stuff like that.” Mr.
Wrenn spoke as though he would be pleased to have the objection
overruled at once, which it was with a universal:

“Oh, rats!”

Crunching oysters in a brown jacket of flour, whose every lump was a
crisp delight, hearing his genius lauded and himself called Bill thrice
in a quarter-hour, Mr. Wrenn was beatified. He asked the waiter for
some paper, and while the four hotly discussed things which “it would
be slick to have the president’s daughter do” he drew up a list of
characters on a sheet of paper he still keeps. It is headed,
“Miggleton’s Forty-second Street Branch.” At the bottom appear numerous
scribblings of the name Nelly.

[Illustration]

“I think I’ll call the heroine ‘Nelly,’” he mused.

Nelly Croubel blushed. Mrs. Arty and Tom glanced at each other. Mr.
Wrenn realized that he had, even at this moment of social triumph,
“made a break.”

He said, hastily; “I always liked that name. I—I had an aunt named
that!”

“Oh—” started Nelly.

“She was fine to me when I was a kid, “Mr. Wrenn added, trying to
remember whether it was right to lie when in such need.

“Oh, it’s a horrid name,” declared Nelly. “Why don’t you call her
something nice, like Hazel—or—oh—Dolores.”

“Nope; Nelly’s an elegant name—an _elegant_ name.”

He walked with Nelly behind the others, along Forty-second Street. To
the outsider’s eye he was a small respectable clerk, slightly stooped,
with a polite mustache and the dignity that comes from knowing well a
narrow world; wearing an overcoat too light for winter; too busily
edging out of the way of people and guiding the nice girl beside him
into clear spaces by diffidently touching her elbow, too pettily busy
to cast a glance out of the crowd and spy the passing poet or king, or
the iron night sky. He was as undistinguishable a bit of the evening
street life as any of the file of street-cars slashing through the wet
snow. Yet, he was the chivalrous squire to the greatest lady of all his
realm; he was a society author, and a man of great prospective wealth
and power over mankind!

“Say, we’ll have the grandest dinner you ever saw if I get away with
the play,” he was saying. “Will you come, Miss Nelly?”

“Indeed I will! Oh, you sha’n’t leave me out! Wasn’t I there when—”

“Indeed you were! Oh, we’ll have a reg’lar feast at the
Astor—artichokes and truffles and all sorts of stuff…. Would—would you
like it if I sold the play?”

“_Course_ I would, silly!”

“I’d buy the business and make Rabin manager—the Souvenir Company.

So he came to relate all those intimacies of The Job; and he was
overwhelmed at the ease with which she “got onto old Goglefogle.”

His preparations for writing the play were elaborate.

He paced Tom’s room till twelve-thirty, consulting as to whether he had
to plan the stage-setting; smoking cigarettes in attitudes on chair
arms. Next morning in the office he made numerous plans of the setting
on waste half-sheets of paper. At noon he was telephoning at Tom
regarding the question of whether there ought to be one desk or two on
the stage.

He skipped the evening meal at Mrs. Arty’s, dining with literary
pensiveness at the Armenian, for he had subtle problems to meditate. He
bought a dollar fountain-pen, which had large gold-like bands and a
rather scratchy pen-point, and a box of fairly large sheets of paper.
Pressing his literary impedimenta tenderly under his arm, he attended
four moving-picture and vaudeville theaters. By eleven he had seen
three more one-act plays and a dramatic playlet.

He slipped by the parlor door at Mrs. Arty’s.

His room was quiet. The lamplight on the delicately green walls was
like that of a regular author’s den, he was quite sure. He happily
tested the fountain-pen by writing the names Nelly and William Wrenn on
a bit of wrapping-paper (which he guiltily burned in an ash-tray);
washed his face with water which he let run for a minute to cool; sat
down before his table with a grunt of content; went back and washed his
hands; fiercely threw off the bourgeois encumbrances of coat and
collar; sat down again; got up to straighten a picture; picked up his
pen; laid it down, and glowed as he thought of Nelly, slumbering there,
near at hand, her exquisite cheek nestling silkenly against her arm,
perhaps, and her white dreams—

Suddenly he roared at himself, “Get on the job there, will yuh?” He
picked up the pen and wrote:

THE MILLIONAIRE’S DAUGHTER
A ONE ACT DRAMATIC PLAYLET
by
WILLIAM WRENN

CHARACTERS


_John Warrington_, a railway president; quite rich.
_Nelly Warrington_, Mr. Warrington’s daughter.
_Reginald Thorne_, his secretary.


He was jubilant. His pen whined at top speed, scattering a shower of
tiny drops of ink.

_Stage Scene: An office. Very expensive. Mr. Warrington and Mr. Thorne
are sitting there. Miss Warrington comes in. She says:_


He stopped. He thought. He held his head. He went over to the
stationary bowl and soaked his hair with water. He lay on the bed and
kicked his heels, slowly and gravely smoothing his mustache. Fifty
minutes later he gave a portentous groan and went to bed.

He hadn’t been able to think of what Miss Warrington says beyond “I
have come to tell you that I am married, papa,” and that didn’t sound
just right; not for a first line it didn’t, anyway.

At dinner next night—Saturday—Tom was rather inclined to make
references to “our author,” and to remark: “Well, I know where somebody
was last night, but of course I won’t tell. Say, them authors are a
wild lot.”

Mr. Wrenn, who had permitted the teasing of even Tim, the hatter,
“wasn’t going to stand for no kidding from nobody—not when Nelly was
there,” and he called for a glass of water with the air of a Harvard
assistant professor forced to eat in a lunch-wagon and slapped on the
back by the cook.

Nelly soothed him. “The play _is_ going well, _isn’t_ it?”

When he had, with a detached grandeur of which he was immediately
ashamed, vouchsafed that he was already “getting right down to brass
tacks on it,” that he had already investigated four more plays and
begun the actual writing, every one looked awed and asked him assorted
questions.

At nine-thirty that evening he combed and tightly brushed his hair,
which he had been pawing angrily for an hour and a half, went down the
hall to Nelly’s hall bedroom, and knocked with: “It’s Mr. Wrenn. May I
ask you something about the play?”

“Just a moment,” he heard her say.

He waited, panting softly, his lips apart. This was to be the first
time he had ever seen Nelly’s room. She opened the door part way,
smiling shyly, timidly, holding her pale-blue dressing-gown close. The
pale blueness was a modestly brilliant spot against the whiteness of
the room—white bureau, hung with dance programs and a yellow Upton’s
Grove High School banner, white tiny rocker, pale-yellow matting,
white-and-silver wall-paper, and a glimpse of a white soft bed.

He was dizzy with the exaltation of that purity, but he got himself to
say:

“I’m kind of stuck on the first part of the play, Miss Nelly. Please
tell me how you think the heroine would speak to her dad. Would she
call him ‘papa’ or ‘sir,’ do you think?”

“Why—let me see—”

“They’re such awful high society—”

“Yes, that’s so. Why, I should think she’d say ‘sir.’ Maybe oh, what
was it I heard in a play at the Academy of Music? ‘Father, I have come
back to you!’”

“Sa-a-ay, that’s a fine line! That’ll get the crowd going right from
the first…. I _told_ you you’d help me a lot.”

“I’m awfully glad if I _have_ helped you,” she said, earnestly. Good
night—and good, “awfully glad, but luck with the play. Good night.”

“Good night. Thank you a lot, Miss Nelly. Church in the morning,
remember! Good night.”

“Good night.”

As it is well known that all playwrights labor with toy theaters before
them for working models, Mr. Wrenn ran to earth a fine unbroken
pasteboard box in which a ninety-eight-cent alarm-clock had recently
arrived. He went out for some glue and three small corks. Setting up
his box stage, he glued a pill-box and a match-box on the floor—the
side of the box it had always been till now—and there he had the
mahogany desks. He thrust three matches into the corks, and behold
three graceful actors—graceful for corks, at least. There was
fascination in having them enter, through holes punched in the back of
the box, frisk up to their desks and deliver magic emotional speeches
that would cause any audience to weep; speeches regarding which he knew
everything but the words; a detail of which he was still quite ignorant
after half an hour of playing with his marionettes.

Before he went despairingly to bed that Saturday night he had added to
his manuscript:

_Mr. Thorne_ says: Here are the papers, sir. As a great railway
president you should—


The rest of that was to be filled in later. How the dickens could he
let the public know how truly great his president was?

(_Daughter, Miss Nelly, comes in._)


_Miss Nelly:_ Father, I have come back to you, sir.
_Mr. Warrington:_ My Daughter!
_Nelly:_ Father, I have something to tell you; something—


Breakfast at Mrs. Arty’s was always an inspiration. In contrast to the
lonely dingy meal at the Hustler Dairy Lunch of his Zapp days, he sat
next to a trimly shirtwaisted Nelly, fresh and enthusiastic after nine
hours’ sleep. So much for ordinary days. But Sunday morning—that was
paradise! The oil-stove glowed and purred like a large tin pussy cat;
it toasted their legs into dreamy comfort, while they methodically
stuffed themselves with toast and waffles and coffee. Nelly and he
always felt gently superior to Tom Poppins, who would be a-sleeping
late, as they talked of the joy of not having to go to the office, of
approaching Christmas, and of the superiority of Upton’s Grove and
Parthenon.

This morning was to be Mr. Wrenn’s first attendance at church with
Nelly. The previous time they had planned to go, Mr. Wrenn had spent
Sunday morning in unreligious fervor at the Chelsea Dental Parlors with
a young man in a white jacket instead of at church with Nelly.

This was also the first time that he had attended a church service in
nine years, except for mass at St. Patrick’s, which he regarded not as
church, but as beauty. He felt tremendously reformed, set upon new
paths of virtue and achievement. He thought slightingly of those lonely
bachelors, Morton and Mittyford, Ph. D. They just didn’t know what it
meant to a fellow to be going to church with a girl like Miss Nelly, he
reflected, as he re brushed his hair after breakfast.

He walked proudly beside her, and made much of the gentility of
entering the church, as one of the well-to-do and intensely bathed
congregation. He even bowed to an almost painfully washed and brushed
young usher with gold-rimmed eye-glasses. He thought scornfully of his
salad days, when he had bowed to the Brass-button Man at the
Nickelorion.

The church interior was as comfortable as Sunday-morning toast and
marmalade—half a block of red carpet in the aisles; shiny solid-oak
pews, gorgeous stained-glass windows, and a general polite creaking of
ladies’ best stays and gentlemen’s stiff shirt-bosoms, and an odor of
the best cologne and moth-balls.

It lacked but six days till Christmas. Mr. Wrenn’s heart was a little
garden, and his eyes were moist, and he peeped tenderly at Nelly as he
saw the holly and ivy and the frosted Christmas mottoes, “Peace on
Earth, Good Will to Men,” and the rest, that brightened the spaces
between windows.

Christmas—happy homes—laughter…. Since, as a boy, he had attended the
Christmas festivities of the Old Church Sunday-school at Parthenon, and
got highly colored candy in a net bag, his holidays had been celebrated
by buying himself plum pudding at lonely Christmas dinners at large
cheap restaurants, where there was no one to wish him “Merry Christmas”
except his waiter, whom he would quite probably never see again, nor
ever wish to see.

But this Christmas—he surprised himself and Nelly suddenly by hotly
thrusting out his hand and touching her sleeve with the searching
finger-tips of a child comforted from night fears.

During the sermon he had an idea. What was it Nelly had told him about
“Peter Pan”? Oh yes; somebody in it had said “Do you believe in
fairies?” _Say_, why wouldn’t it be great to have the millionaire’s
daughter say to her father, “Do you believe in love?”

“Gee, _I_ believe in love!” he yearned to himself, as he felt Nelly’s
arm unconsciously touch his.

Tom Poppins had Horatio Hood Teddem in that afternoon for a hot toddy.
Horatio looked very boyish, very confiding, and borrowed five dollars
from Mr. Wrenn almost painlessly, so absorbed was Mr. Wrenn in learning
from Horatio how to sell a play. To know the address of the firm of
Wendelbaum & Schirtz, play-brokers, located in a Broadway theater
building, seemed next door to knowing a Broadway manager.

When Horatio had gone Tom presented an idea which he had ponderously
conceived during his Sunday noon-hour at the cigar-store.

“Why not have three of us—say me and you and Mrs. Arty—talk the play,
just like we was acting it?”

He enthusiastically forced the plan on Mr. Wrenn. He pounded
down-stairs and brought up Mrs. Arty. He dashed about the room,
shouting directions. He dragged out his bureau for the
railroad-president’s desk, and a table for the secretary, and, after
some consideration and much rubbing of his chin, with two slams and a
bang he converted his hard green Morris-chair into an office safe.

The play was on. Mr. T. Poppins, in the role of the president, entered,
with a stern high expression on his face, threw a “Good morning,
Thorne,” at Wrenn, his secretary, and peeled off his gloves. (Mr. Wrenn
noted the gloves; they were a Touch.)

Mr. Wrenn approached diffidently, his face expressionless, lest Mrs.
Arty laugh at him. “Here—

“Say, what do you think would be a good way for the secretary to tell
the crowd that the other guy is the president? Say, how about this:
‘The vice-president of the railway would like to have you sign these,
sir, as president’?”

“That’s fine!” exclaimed Mrs. Arty, whose satin dress was carefully
spread over her swelling knees, as she sat in the oak rocker, like a
cheerful bronze monument to Sunday propriety. “But don’t you think he’d
say, ‘when it’s convenient to you, sir’?”

“Gee, that’s dandy!”

The play was on.

It ended at seven. Mr. Wrenn took but fifteen minutes for Sunday
supper, and wrote till one of the morning, finishing the first draft of
his manuscript.

Revision was delightful, for it demanded many conferences with Nelly,
sitting at the parlor table, with shoulders confidentially touching.
They were the more intimate because Tom had invited Mr. Wrenn, Nelly,
and Mrs. Arty to the Grand Christmas Eve Ball of the Cigar-Makers’
Union at Melpomene Hall. Nelly asked of Mr. Wrenn, almost as urgently
as of Mrs. Arty, whether she should wear her new white mull or her
older rose-colored China silk.

Two days before Christmas he timidly turned over the play for typing to
a haughty public stenographer who looked like Lee Theresa Zapp. She
yawned at him when he begged her to be careful of the manuscript. The
gloriously pink-bound and red-underlined typed manuscript of the play
was mailed to Messrs. Wendelbaum & Schirtz, play-brokers, at 6.15 P.M.,
Christmas Eve.

The four walked down Sixth Avenue to the Cigar-Makers’ Ball. They made
an Indian file through the Christmas shopping crowds, and stopped
frequently and noisily before the street-booths’ glamour of tinsel and
teddy-bears. They shrieked all with one rotund mad laughter as Tom
Poppins capered over and bought for seven cents a pink bisque doll,
which he pinned to the lapel of his plaid overcoat. They drank hot
chocolate at the Olympic Confectionery Store, pretending to each other
that they were shivering with cold.

It was here that Nelly reached up and patted Mr. Wrenn’s pale-blue tie
into better lines. In her hair was the scent which he had come to
identify as hers. Her white furs brushed against his overcoat.

The cigar-makers, with seven of them in full evening-dress and two in
dinner-coats, were already dancing on the waxy floor of Melpomene Hall
when they arrived. A full orchestra was pounding and scraping itself
into an hysteria of merriment on the platform under the red
stucco-fronted balcony, and at the bar behind the balcony there was a
spirit of beer and revelry by night.

Mr. Wrenn embarrassedly passed large groups of pretty girls. He felt
very light and insecure in his new gun-metal-finish pumps now that he
had taken off his rubbers and essayed the slippery floor. He tried
desperately not to use his handkerchief too conspicuously, though he
had a cold.

It was not till the choosing of partners for the next dance, when Tom
Poppins stood up beside Nelly, their arms swaying a little, their feet
tapping, that Mr. Wrenn quite got the fact that he could not dance.

He had casually said to the others, a week before, that he knew only
the square dances which, as a boy, he had learned at parties at
Parthenon. But they had reassured him: “Oh, come on—we’ll teach you how
to dance at the ball—it won’t be formal. Besides, we’ll give you some
lessons before we go.” Playwriting and playing Five Hundred had
prevented their giving him the lessons. So he now sat terrified as a
two-step began and he saw what seemed to be thousands of glittering
youths and maidens whirling deftly in a most involved course, getting
themselves past each other in a way which he was sure he could never
imitate. The orchestra yearned over music as rich and smooth as milk
chocolate, which made him intensely lonely for Nelly, though she was
only across the room from him.

Tom Poppins immediately introduced Nelly to a facetious cigar salesman,
who introduced her to three of the beaux in evening clothes, while Tom
led out Mrs. Arty. Mr. Wrenn, sitting in a row of persons who were not
at all interested in his sorrows, glowered out across the hall, and
wished, oh! so bitterly, to flee home. Nelly came up, glowing,
laughing, with black-mustached and pearl-waistcoated men, and
introduced him to them, but he glanced at them disapprovingly; and
always she was carried off to dance again.

She found and hopefully introduced to Mr. Wrenn a wallflower who came
from Yonkers and had never heard of Tom Poppins or aeroplanes or Oxford
or any other topic upon which Mr. Wrenn uneasily tried to discourse as
he watched Nelly waltz and smile up at her partners. Presently the two
sat silent. The wallflower excused herself and went back to her mama
from Yonkers.

Mr. Wrenn sat sulking, hating his friends for having brought him,
hating the sweetness of Nelly Croubel, and saying to himself,
“Oh—_sure_—she dances with all those other men—me, I’m only the poor
fool that talks to her when she’s tired and tries to cheer her up.”

He did not answer when Tom came and told him a new story he had just
heard in the barroom.

Once Nelly landed beside him and bubblingly insisted on his coming out
and trying to learn to dance. He brightened, but shyly remarked, “Oh
no, I don’t think I’d better.” Just then the blackest-mustached and
pearl-waistcoatedest of all the cigar salesmen came begging for a
dance, and she was gone, with only: “Now get up your courage. I’m going
to _make_ you dance.”

At the intermission he watched her cross the floor with the hateful
cigar salesman, slender in her tight crisp new white mull, flourishing
her fan and talking with happy rapidity. She sat down beside him. He
said nothing; he still stared out across the glassy floor. She peeped
at him curiously several times, and made a low tapping with her fan on
the side of her chair.

She sighed a little. Cautiously, but very casually, she said, “Aren’t
you going to take me out for some refreshments, Mr. Wrenn?”

“Oh sure—I’m good enough to buy refreshments for her!” he said to
himself.

Poor Mr. Wrenn; he had not gone to enough parties in Parthenon, and he
hadn’t gone to any in New York. At nearly forty he was just learning
the drab sulkiness and churlishness and black jealousy of the lover….
To her: “Why didn’t you go out with that guy with the black mustache?”
He still stared straight ahead.

She was big-eyed, a tear showing. “Why, Billy—” was all she answered.

He clenched his hands to keep from bursting out with all the pitiful
tears which were surging in his eyes. But he said nothing.

“Billy, what—”

He turned shyly around to her; his hand touched hers softly.

“Oh, I’m a beast,” he said, rapidly, low, his undertone trembling to
her ears through the laughter of a group next to them. “I didn’t mean
that, but I was—I felt like such a mutt—not being able to dance. Oh,
Nelly, I’m awfully sorry. You know I didn’t mean—_Come on!_ Let’s go
get something to eat!”

As they consumed ice-cream, fudge, doughnuts, and chicken sandwiches at
the refreshment counter they were very intimate, resenting the presence
of others. Tom and Mrs. Arty joined them. Tom made Nelly light her
first cigarette. Mr. Wrenn admired the shy way in which, taking the
tiniest of puffs, she kept drawing out her cigarette with little pouts
and nose wriggles and pretended sneezes, but he felt a lofty gladness
when she threw it away after a minute, declaring that she’d never smoke
again, and that she was going to make all three of her companions stop
smoking, “now that she knew how horrid and sneezy it was, so there!”

With what he intended to be deep subtlety Mr. Wrenn drew her away to
the barroom, and these two children, over two glasses of ginger-ale,
looked their innocent and rustic love so plainly that Mrs. Arty and Tom
sneaked away. Nelly cut out a dance, which she had promised to a
cigar-maker, and started homeward with Mr. Wrenn.

“Let’s not take a car—I want some fresh air after that smoky place,”
she said. “But it _was_ grand…. Let’s walk up Fifth Avenue.”

“Fine…. Tired, Nelly?”

“A little.”

He thought her voice somewhat chilly.

“Nelly—I’m so sorry—I didn’t really have the chance to tell you in
there how sorry I was for the way I spoke to you. Gee! it was fierce of
me—but I felt—I couldn’t dance, and—oh—”

No answer.

“And you did mind it, didn’t you?”

“Why, I didn’t think you were so very nice about it—when I’d tried so
hard to have you have a good time—”

“Oh, Nelly, I’m so sorry—”

There was tragedy in his voice. His shoulders, which he always tried to
keep as straight as though they were in a vise when he walked with her,
were drooping.

She touched his glove. “Oh don’t, Billy; it’s all right now. I
understand. Let’s forget—”

“Oh, you’re too good to me!”

Silence.

As they crossed Twenty-third on Fifth Avenue she took his arm. He
squeezed her hand. Suddenly the world was all young and beautiful and
wonderful. It was the first time in his life that he had ever walked
thus, with the arm of a girl for whom he cared cuddled in his. He
glanced down at her cheap white furs. Snowflakes, tremulous on the fur,
were turned into diamond dust in the light from a street-lamp which
showed as well a tiny place where her collar had been torn and mended
ever so carefully. Then, in a millionth of a second, he who had been a
wanderer in the lonely gray regions of a detached man’s heart knew the
pity of love, all its emotion, and the infinite care for the beloved
that makes a man of a rusty sales-clerk. He lifted a face of adoration
to the misty wonder of the bare trees, whose tracery of twigs filled
Madison Square; to the Metropolitan Tower, with its vast upward stretch
toward the ruddy sky of the city’s winter night. All these mysteries he
knew and sang. What he _said_ was:

“Gee, those trees look like a reg’lar picture!… The Tower just kind of
fades away. Don’t it?”

“Yes, it is pretty,” she said, doubtfully, but with a pressure of his
arm.

Then they talked like a summer-time brook, planning that he was to buy
a Christmas bough of evergreen, which she would smuggle to breakfast in
the morning. Through their chatter persisted the new intimacy which had
been born in the pain of their misunderstanding.

On January 10th the manuscript of “The Millionaire’s Daughter” was
returned by play-brokers Wendelbaum & Schirtz with this letter:

DEAR SIR,—We regret to say that we do not find play available. We
inclose our reader’s report on the same. Also inclose bill for ten
dollars for reading-fee, which kindly remit at early convenience.


He stood in the hall at Mrs. Arty’s just before dinner. He reread the
letter and slowly opened the reader’s report, which announced:

“Millionaire’s Daughter.” One-act vlle. Utterly impos. Amateurish to
the limit. Dialogue sounds like burlesque of Laura Jean Libbey. Can it.


Nelly was coming down-stairs. He handed her the letter and report, then
tried to stick out his jaw. She read them. Her hand slipped into his.
He went quickly toward the basement and made himself read the
letter—though not the report—to the tableful. He burned the manuscript
of his play before going to bed. The next morning he waded into The Job
as he never had before. He was gloomily certain that he would never get
away from The Job. But he thought of Nelly a hundred times a day and
hoped that sometime, some spring night of a burning moon, he might dare
the great adventure and kiss her. Istra— Theoretically, he remembered
her as a great experience. But what nebulous bodies these theories are!

That slow but absolutely accurate Five-Hundred player, Mr. William
Wrenn, known as Billy, glanced triumphantly at Miss Proudfoot, who was
his partner against Mrs. Arty and James T. Duncan, the traveling-man,
on that night of late February. His was the last bid in the crucial
hand of the rubber game. The others waited respectfully. Confidently,
he bid “Nine on no trump.”

“Good Lord, Billl” exclaimed James T. Duncan.

“I’ll make it.”

And he did. He arose a victor. There was no uneasiness, but rather all
the social polish of Mrs. Arty’s at its best, in his manner, as he
crossed to Mrs. Ebbitt’s chair and asked: “How is Mr. Ebbitt to-night?
Pretty rheumatic?” Miss Proudfoot offered him a lime tablet, and he
accepted it judicially. “I believe these tablets are just about as good
as Park & Tilford’s,” he said, cocking his head. “Say, Dunk, I’ll match
you to see who rushes a growler of beer. Tom’ll be here pretty
soon—store ought to be closed by now. We’ll have some ready for him.”

“Right, Bill,” agreed James T. Duncan.

Mr. Wrenn lost. He departed, after secretively obtaining not one, but
two pitchers, in one of which he got a “pint of dark” and in the other
a surprise. He bawled upstairs to Nelly, “Come on down, Nelly, can’t
you? Got a growler of ice-cream soda for the ladies!”

It is true that when Tom arrived and fell to conversational blows with
James T. Duncan over the merits of a Tom Collins Mr. Wrenn was not
brilliant, for the reason that he took Tom Collins to be a man instead
of the drink he really is.

Yet, as they went up-stairs Miss Proudfoot said to Nelly: “Mr. Wrenn is
quiet, but I do think in some ways he’s one of the nicest men I’ve seen
in the house for years. And he is so earnest. And I think he’ll make a
good pinochle player, besides Five Hundred.”

“Yes,” said Nelly.

“I think he was a little shy at first…. _I_ was always shy…. But he
likes us, and I like folks that like folks.”

“_Yes!_” said Nelly.




CHAPTER XVII
HE IS BLOWN BY THE WHIRLWIND


“He was blown by the whirlwind and followed a wandering flame through
perilous seas to a happy shore.”—_Quoth François._


On an April Monday evening, when a small moon passed shyly over the
city and the streets were filled with the sound of hurdy-gurdies and
the spring cries of dancing children, Mr. Wrenn pranced down to the
basement dining-room early, for Nelly Croubel would be down there
talking to Mrs. Arty, and he gaily wanted to make plans for a picnic to
occur the coming Sunday. He had a shy unacknowledged hope that he might
kiss Nelly after such a picnic; he even had the notion that he might
some day—well, other fellows had been married; why not?

Miss Mary Proudfoot was mending a rent in the current table-cloth with
delicate swift motions of her silvery-skinned hands. She informed him:
“Mr. Duncan will be back from his Southern trip in five days. We’ll
have to have a grand closing progressive Five Hundred tournament.” Mr.
Wrenn was too much absorbed in wondering whether Miss Proudfoot would
make some of her celebrated—and justly celebrated—minced-ham sandwiches
for the picnic to be much interested. He was not much more interested
when she said, “Mrs. Ferrard’s got a letter or something for you.”

Then, as dinner began, Mrs. Ferrard rushed in dramatically and said,
“There’s a telegram for you, Mr. Wrenn!”

Was it death? Whose death? The table panted, Mr. Wrenn with them….
That’s what a telegram meant to them.

Their eyes were like a circle of charging bayonets as he opened and
read the message—a ship’s wireless.

Meet me _Hesperida._—ISTRA.


“It’s just—a—a business message,” he managed to say, and splashed his
soup. This was not the place to take the feelings out of his thumping
heart and examine them.

Dinner was begun. Picnics were conversationally considered in all their
more important phases—historical, dietetical, and social. Mr. Wrenn
talked much and a little wildly. After dinner he galloped out to buy a
paper. The S.S. _Hesperiida_ was due at ten next morning.

It was an evening of frightened confusion. He tottered along Lexington
Avenue on a furtive walk. He knew only that he was very fond of Nelly,
yet pantingly eager to see Istra. He damned himself—“damned” is
literal—every other minute for a cad, a double-faced traitor, and all
the other horrifying things a man is likely to declare himself to be
for making the discovery that two women may be different and yet
equally likable. And every other minute he reveled in an adventurous
gladness that he was going to see Istra—actually, incredibly going to
see her, just the next day! He returned to find Nelly sitting on the
steps of Mrs. Arty’s.

“Hello.”

“Hello.”

Both good sound observations, and all they could say for a time, while
Mr. Wrenn examined the under side of the iron steps rail minutely.

“Billy—was it something serious, the telegram?”

“No, it was—Miss Nash, the artist I told you about, asked me to meet
her at the boat. I suppose she wants me to help her with her baggage
and the customs and all them things. She’s just coming from Paris.”

“Oh yes, I see.”

So lacking in jealousy was Nelly that Mr. Wrenn was disappointed,
though he didn’t know why. It always hurts to have one’s thunderous
tragedies turn out realistic dialogues.

“I wonder if you would like to meet her. She’s awful well educated, but
I dunno—maybe she’d strike you as kind of snobbish. But she dresses I
don’t think I ever seen anybody so elegant. In dressing, I mean.
Course”—hastily—“she’s got money, and so she can afford to. But
she’s—oh, awful nice, some ways. I hope you like—I hope she won’t—”

“Oh, I sha’n’t mind if she’s a snob. Of course a lady gets used to
that, working in a department store,” she said, chillily; then repented
swiftly and begged: “Oh, I _didn’t_ mean to be snippy, Billy. Forgive
me! I’m sure Miss Nash will be real nice. Does she live here in New
York?”

“No—in California…. I don’t know how long she’s going to stay here.”

“Well—well—hum-m-m. I’m getting _so_ sleepy. I guess I’d better go up
to bed. Good night.”

Uneasy because he was away from the office, displeased because he had
to leave his beloved letters to the Southern trade, angry because he
had had difficulty in getting a pass to the wharf, and furious,
finally, because he hadn’t slept, Mr. Wrenn nursed all these cumulative
emotions attentively and waited for the coming of the _Hesperida_. He
was wondering if he’d want to see Istra at all. He couldn’t remember
just how she looked. Would he like her?

The great steamer swung side-to and was coaxed alongside the wharf.
Peering out between rows of crowding shoulders, Mr. Wrenn coldly
inspected the passengers lining the decks. Istra was not in sight. Then
he knew that he was wildly agitated about her. Suppose something had
happened to her!

The smallish man who had been edging into the crowd so politely
suddenly dashed to the group forming at the gang-plank and pushed his
way rudely into the front rank. His elbow dug into the proper waistcoat
of a proper plump old gentleman, but he didn’t know it. He stood
grasping the rope rail of the plank, gazing goggle-eyed while the plank
was lifted to the steamer’s deck and the long line of smiling and
waving passengers disembarked. Then he saw her—tall, graceful,
nonchalant, uninterested, in a smart check suit with a lively hat of
black straw, carrying a new Gladstone bag.

He stared at her. “Gee!” he gasped. “I’m crazy about her. I am, all
right.”

She saw him, and their smiles of welcome made them one. She came from
the plank and hastily kissed him.

“Really here!” she laughed.

“Well, well, well, well! I’m so glad to see you!”

“Glad to see you, Mouse dear.”

“Have good tr—”

“Don’t ask me about it! There was a married man _sans_ wife who
persecuted me all the way over. I’m glad _you_ aren’t going to fall in
love with me.”

“Why—uh—”

“Let’s hustle over and get through the customs as soon as we can.
Where’s N? Oh, how clever of it, it’s right by M. There’s one of my
trunks already. How are you, Mouse dear?”

But she didn’t seem really to care so very much, and the old
bewilderment she always caused was over him.

“It is good to get back after all, and—Mouse dear, I know you won’t
mind finding me a place to live the next few days, will you?” She quite
took it for granted. “We’ll find a place this morning, _n’est-ce pas?_
Not too expensive. I’ve got just about enough to get back to
California.”

Man fashion, he saw with acute clearness the pile of work on his desk,
and, man fashion, responded, “No; be glad tuh.”

“How about the place where you’re living? You spoke about its being so
clean and all.”

The thought of Nelly and Istra together frightened him.

“Why, I don’t know as you’d like it so very much.”

“Oh, it’ll be all right for a few days, anyway. Is there a room
vacant.”

He was sulky about it. He saw much trouble ahead.

“Why, yes, I suppose there is.”

“Mouse dear!” Istra plumped down on a trunk in the confused billows of
incoming baggage, customs officials, and indignant passengers that
surged about them on the rough floor of the vast dock-house. She stared
up at him with real sorrow in her fine eyes.

“Why, Mouse! I thought you’d be glad to see me. I’ve never rowed with
you, have I? I’ve tried not to be temperamental with you. That’s why I
wired you, when there are others I’ve known for years.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean to seem grouchy; I didn’t! I just wondered if you’d
like the house.”

He could have knelt in repentance before his goddess, what time she was
but a lonely girl in the clatter of New York. He went on:

“And we’ve got kind of separated, and I didn’t know—But I guess I’ll
always—oh—kind of worship you.”

“It’s all right, Mouse. It’s—Here’s the customs men.”

Now Istra Nash knew perfectly that the customs persons were not ready
to examine her baggage as yet. But the discussion was ended, and they
seemed to understand each other.

“Gee, there’s a lot of rich Jew ladies coming back this time!” said he.

“Yes. They had diamonds three times a day,” she assented.

“Gee, this is a big place!”

“Yes.” So did they testify to fixity of friendship till they reached
the house and Istra was welcomed to “that Teddem’s” room as a new
guest.

Dinner began with the ceremony due Mrs. Arty. There was no lack of the
sacred old jokes. Tom Poppins did not fail to bellow “Bring on the
dish-water,” nor Miss Mary Proudfoot to cheep demurely “Don’t y’ knaow”
in a tone which would have been recognized as fascinatingly English
anywhere on the American stage. Then the talk stopped dead as Istra
Nash stood agaze in the doorway—pale and intolerant, her red hair
twisted high on her head, tall and slim and uncorseted in a gray
tight-fitting gown. Every head turned as on a pivot, first to Istra,
then to Mr. Wrenn. He blushed and bowed as if he had been called on for
a speech, stumblingly arose, and said: “Uh—uh—uh—you met Mrs. Ferrard,
didn’t you, Istra? She’ll introduce you to the rest.”

He sat down, wondering why the deuce he’d stood up, and unhappily
realized that Nelly was examining Istra and himself with cool
hostility. In a flurry he glowered at Istra as she nonchalantly sat
down opposite him, beside Mrs. Arty, and incuriously unfolded her
napkin. He thought that in her cheerful face there was an expression of
devilish amusement.

He blushed. He furiously buttered his bread as Mrs. Arty remarked to
the assemblage:

“Ladies and gentlemen, I want you all to meet Miss Istra Nash. Miss
Nash—you’ve met Mr. Wrenn; Miss Nelly Croubel, our baby; Tom Poppins,
the great Five-Hundred player; Mrs. Ebbitt, Mr. Ebbitt, Miss
Proudfoot.”

Istra Nash lifted her bowed eyes with what seemed shyness, hesitated,
said “Thank you” in a clear voice with a precise pronunciation, and
returned to her soup, as though her pleasant communion with it had been
unpleasantly interrupted.

The others began talking and eating very fast and rather noisily. Miss
Mary Proudfoot’s thin voice pierced the clamor:

“I hear you have just come to New York, Miss Nash.”

“Yes.”

“Is this your first visit to—”

“No.”

Miss Proudfoot rancorously took a long drink of water.

Nelly attempted, bravely:

“Do you like New York, Miss Nash?”

“Yes.”

Nelly and Miss Proudfoot and Tom Poppins began discussing shoe-stores,
all at once and very rapidly, while hot and uncomfortable Mr. Wrenn
tried to think of something to say…. Good Lord, suppose Istra “queered”
him at Mrs. Arty’s!… Then he was angry at himself and all of them for
not appreciating her. How exquisite she looked, with her tired white
face!

As the soup-plates were being removed by Annie, the maid, with an
elaborate confusion and a general passing of plates down the line,
Istra Nash peered at the maid petulantly. Mrs. Arty frowned, then grew
artificially pleasant and said:

“Miss Nash has just come back from Paris. She’s a regular European
traveler, just like Mr. Wrenn.”

Mrs. Samuel Ebbitt piped: “Mr. Ebbitt was to Europe. In 1882.”

“No ’twa’n’t, Fannie; ’twas in 1881,” complained Mr. Ebbitt.

Miss Nash waited for the end of this interruption as though it were a
noise which merely had to be endured, like the Elevated.

Twice she drew in her breath to speak, and the whole table laid its
collective knife and fork down to listen. All she said was:

“Oh, will you pardon me if I speak of it now, Mrs. Ferrard, but would
you mind letting me have my breakfast in my room to-morrow? About nine?
Just something simple—a canteloupe and some shirred eggs and
chocolate?”

“Oh no; why, yes, certainly, “mumbled Mrs. Arty, while the table held
its breaths and underneath them gasped:

“Chocolate!”

“A canteloupe!”

“Shirred eggs!”

“_In her room—at nine!_”

All this was very terrible to Mr. Wrenn. He found himself in the
position of a man scheduled to address the Brewers’ Association and the
W. C. T. U. at the same hour. Valiantly he attempted:

“Miss Nash oughta be a good person for our picnics. She’s a regular
shark for outdoor tramping.”

“Oh yes, Mr. Wrenn and I tramped most all night in England one time,”
said Istra, innocently.

The eyes of the table asked Mr. Wrenn what he meant by it. He tried to
look at Nelly, but something hurt inside him.

“Yes,” he mumbled. “Quite a long walk.”

Miss Mary Proudfoot tried again:

“is it pleasant to study in Paris? Mrs. Arty said you were an artist.”

“No.”

Then they were all silent, and the rest of the dinner Mr. Wrenn
alternately discussed Olympia Johns with Istra and picnics with Nelly.
There was an undertone of pleading in his voice which made Nelly glance
at him and even become kind. With quiet insistence she dragged Istra
into a discussion of rue de la Paix fashions which nearly united the
shattered table and won Mr. Wrenn’s palpitating thankfulness.

After dessert Istra slowly drew a plain gold cigarette-case from a
brocade bag of silvery gray. She took out a match and a thin Russian
cigarette, which she carefully lighted. She sat smoking in one of her
best attitudes, pointed elbows on the table, coolly contemplating a
huge picture called “Hunting the Stag” on the wall behind Mr. Wrenn.

Mrs. Arty snapped to the servant, “Annie, bring me _my_ cigarettes.”
But Mrs. Arty always was penitent when she had been nasty, and—though
Istra did not at once seem to know that the landlady _had_ been
nasty—Mrs. Arty invited her up to the parlor for after-dinner so
cordially that Istra could but grant “Perhaps I will,” and she even
went so far as to say, “I think you’re all to be envied, having such a
happy family.”

“Yes, that’s so,” reflected Mrs. Arty.

“Yes,” added Mr. Wrenn.

And Nelly: “That’s so.”

The whole table nodded gravely, “Yes, that’s so.”

“I’m sure”—Istra smiled at Mrs. Arty—“that it’s because a woman is
running things. Now think what cat-and-dog lives you’d lead if Mr.
Wrenn or Mr.—Popple, was it?—were ruling.”

They applauded. They felt that she had been humorous. She was again and
publicly invited up to the parlor, and she came, though she said,
rather shortly, that she didn’t play Five Hundred, but only bumblepuppy
bridge, a variety of whist which Mr. Wrenn instantly resolved to learn.
She reclined (“reclined” is perfectly accurate) on the red-leather
couch, among the pillows, and smoked two cigarettes, relapsing into
“No?”’s for conversation.

Mr. Wrenn said to himself, almost spitefully, as she snubbed Nelly,
“Too good for us, is she?” But he couldn’t keep away from her. The
realization that Istra was in the room made him forget most of his
melds at pinochle; and when Miss Proudfoot inquired his opinion as to
whether the coming picnic should be held on Staten island or the
Palisades he said, vaguely, “Yes, I guess that would be better.”

For he was wanting to sit down beside Istra Nash, just be near her; he
_had_ to be! So he ventured over and was instantly regarding all the
rest as outsiders whom his wise comrade and himself were studying.

“Tell me, Mouse dear, why do you like the people here? The peepul, I
mean. They don’t seem so very remarkable. Enlighten poor Istra.”

“Well, they’re awful kind. I’ve always lived in a house where the folks
didn’t hardly know each other at all, except Mrs. Zapp—she was the
landlady—and I didn’t like her very much. But here Tom Poppins and Mrs.
Arty and—the rest—they really like folks, and they make it just like a
home…. Miss Croubel is a very nice girl. She works for Wanamacy’s—she
has quite a big job there. She is assistant buyer in the—”

He stopped in horror. He had nearly said “in the lingery department.”
He changed it to “in the clothing department,” and went on, doubtfully:
“Mr. Duncan is a traveling-man. He’s away on a trip.”

“Which one do you play with? So Nelly likes to—well, make
b’lieve—’magine?”

“How did you—”

“Oh, I watched her looking at you. I think she’s a terribly nice
pink-face. And just now you’re comparing her and me.”

“Gee!” he said.

She was immensely pleased with herself. “Tell me, what do these people
think about; at least, what do you talk about?”

“_Say!_”

“S-s-s-h! Not so loud, my dear.”

“Say, I know how you mean. You feel something like what I did in
England. You can’t get next to what the folks are thinking, and it
makes you sort of lonely.”

“Well, I—”

Just then Tom Poppins rolled jovially up to the couch. He had carried
his many and perspiring pounds over to Third Avenue because Miss
Proudfoot reflected, “I’ve got a regular sweet tooth to-night.” He
stood before Istra and Mr. Wrenn theatrically holding out a bag of
chocolate drops in one hand and peanut brittle in the other; and
grandiloquently:

“Which shall it be, your Highness? Nobody loves a fat man, so he has to
buy candy so’s they’ll let him stick around. Le’s see; you take
chocolates, Bill. Name your drink, Miss Nash.” She looked up at him,
gravely and politely—too gravely and politely. She didn’t seem to
consider him a nice person.

“Neither, thank you,” sharply, as he still stood there. He moved away,
hurt, bewildered.

Istra was going on, “I haven’t been here long enough to be lonely yet,
but in any case—” when Mr. Wrenn interrupted:

“You’ve hurt Tom’s feelings by not taking any candy; and, gee, he’s
awful kind!”

“Have I?” mockingly.

“Yes, you _have_. And there ain’t any too many kind people in this
world.”

“Oh yes, of course you’ re right. I _am_ sorry, really I am.”

She dived after Tom’s retreat and cheerfully addressed him:

“Oh, I do want some of those chocolates. Will you let me change my
mind? Please do.”

“Yes _ma’am_, you sure can!” said broad Tom, all one pleased chuckle,
poking out the two bags.

Istra stopped beside the Five-Hundred table to smile in a lordly way
down at Mrs. Arty and say, quite humanly:

“I’m so sorry I can’t play a decent game of cards. I’m afraid I’m too
stupid to learn. You are very lucky, I think.”

Mr. Wrenn on the couch was horribly agitated…. Wasn’t Istra coming
back?

She was. She detached herself from the hubbub of invitations to learn
to play Five Hundred and wandered back to the couch, murmuring: “Was
bad Istra good? Am I forgiven? Mouse dear, I didn’t mean to be rude to
your friends.”

As the bubbles rise through water in a cooking-pot, as the surface
writhes, and then, after the long wait, suddenly the water is aboil, so
was the emotion of Mr. Wrenn now that Istra, the lordly, had actually
done something he suggested.

“Istra—” That was all he could say, but from his eyes had gone all
reserve.

Her glance back was as frank as his—only it had more of the mother in
it; it was like a kindly pat on the head; and she was the mother as she
mused:

“So you _have_ missed me, then?”

“Missed you—”

“Did you think of me after you came here? Oh, I know—I was forgotten;
poor Istra abdicates to the pretty pink-face.”

“Oh, Istra, _don’t_. I—can’t we just go out for a little walk so—so we
can talk?”

“Why, we can talk here.”

“Oh, gee!—there’s so many people around…. Golly! when I came back to
America—gee!—I couldn’t hardly sleep nights—”

From across the room came the boisterous, somewhat coarse-timbred voice
of Tom, speaking to Nelly:

“Oh yes, of course you think you’re the only girl that ever seen a
vodville show. _We_ ain’t never seen a vodville show. Oh no!”

Nelly and Miss Proudfoot dissolved in giggles at the wit.

Mr. Wrenn gazed at them, detached; these were not his people, and with
startled pride he glanced at Istra’s face, delicately carven by
thought, as he stumbled hotly on.

“—just couldn’t sleep nights at all…. Then I got on the job….”

“Let’s see, you’re still with that same company?”

“Yes. Souvenir and Art Novelty Company. And I got awfully on the job
there, and so I managed to forget for a little while and—”

“So you really do like me even after I was so beastly to you in
England.”

“Oh, that wasn’t nothing…. But I was always thinking of you, even when
I was on the job—”

“It’s gratifying to have some one continue taking me seriously….
Really, dear, I do appreciate it. But you mustn’t—you mustn’t—”

“Oh, gee! I just can’t get over it—you here by me—ain’t it curious!…
“Then he persisted with the tale of his longing, which she had so
carefully interrupted: “The people here are _awful_ kind and good, and
you can bank on ’em. But—oh—”

From across the room, Tom’s pretended jeers, lighted up with Miss
Proudfoot’s giggles, as paper lanterns illumine Coney Island. From Tom:

“Yes, you’re a hot dancer, all right. I suppose you can do the Boston
and all them swell dances. Wah-h-h-h-h!”

“—but Istra, oh, gee! you’re like poetry—like all them things a feller
can’t get but he tries to when he reads Shakespeare and all those
poets.”

“Oh, dear boy, you mustn’t! We will be good friends. I do appreciate
having some one care whether I’m alive or not. But I thought it was all
understood that we weren’t to take playing together seriously; that it
was to be merely playing—nothing more.”

“But, anyway, you will let me play with you here in New York as much as
I can? Oh, come on, _let’s_ go for a walk—let’s—let’s go to a show.”

“I’m awf’ly sorry, but I promised—a man’s going to call for me, and
we’re going to a stupid studio party on Bryant Park. Bore, isn’t it,
the day of landing? And poor Istra dreadfully landsick.”

“Oh, then,” hopefully, “don’t go. Let’s—”

“I’m sorry, Mouse dear, but I’m afraid I can’t break the date…. Fact, I
must go up and primp now—”

“Don’t you care a bit?” he said, sulkily.

“Why, yes, of course. But you wouldn’t have Istra disappoint a nice
Johnny after he’s bought him a cunnin’ new weskit, would you?… Good
night, dear.” She smiled—the mother smile—and was gone with a lively
good night to the room in general.

Nelly went up to bed early. She was tired, she said. He had no chance
for a word with her. He sat on the steps outside alone a long time.
Sometimes he yearned for a sight of Istra’s ivory face. Sometimes, with
a fierce compassion that longed to take the burden from her, he
pictured Nelly working all day in the rushing department store on which
the fetid city summer would soon descend.

They did have their walk the next night, Istra and Mr. Wrenn, but Istra
kept the talk to laughing burlesques of their tramp in England.
Somehow—he couldn’t tell exactly why—he couldn’t seem to get in all the
remarks he had inside him about how much he had missed her.

Wednesday—Thursday—Friday; he saw her only at one dinner, or on the
stairs, departing volubly with clever-looking men in evening clothes to
taxis waiting before the house.

Nelly was very pleasant; just that—pleasant. She pleasantly sat as his
partner at Five Hundred, and pleasantly declined to go to the moving
pictures with him. She was getting more and more tired, staying till
seven at the store, preparing what she called “special stunts” for the
summer white sale. Friday evening he saw her soft fresh lips drooping
sadly as she toiled up the front steps before dinner. She went to bed
at eight, at which time Istra was going out to dinner with a thin,
hatchet-faced sarcastic-looking man in a Norfolk jacket and a fluffy
black tie. Mr. Wrenn resented the Norfolk jacket. Of course, the kingly
men in evening dress would be expected to take Istra away from him, but
a Norfolk jacket—He did not call it that. Though he had worn one in the
fair village of Aengusmere, it was still to him a “coat with a belt.”

He thought of Nelly all evening. He heard her—there on the same floor
with him—talking to Miss Proudfoot, who stood at Nelly’s door, three
hours after she was supposed to be asleep.

“No,” Nelly was saying with evidently fictitious cheerfulness, “no, it
was just a little headache…. It’s much better. I think I can sleep now.
Thank you very much for coming.”

Nelly hadn’t told Mr. Wrenn that she had a severe headache—she who had
once, a few weeks before, run to him with a cut in her soft small
finger, demanding that he bind it up…. He went slowly to bed.

He had lain awake half an hour before his agony so overpowered him that
he flung out of bed. He crouched low by the bed, like a child, his legs
curled under him, the wooden sideboard pressing into his chest in one
long line of hot pain, while he prayed:

“O God, O God, forgive me, forgive me, oh, forgive me! Here I been
forgetting Nelly (and I _love_ her) and comparing her with Istra and
not appreciating her, and Nelly always so sweet to me and trusting me
so—O God, keep me away from wickedness!”

He huddled there many minutes, praying, the scorching pressure of the
bedside growing more painful. All the while the camp-fire he had shared
with Istra was burning within his closed eyes, and Istra was visibly
lording it in a London flat filled with clever people, and he was
passionately aware that the line of her slim breast was like the lip of
a shell; the line of her pallid cheek, defined by her flame-colored
hair, something utterly fine, something he could not express.

“Oh,” he groaned, “she is like that poetry stuff in Shakespeare that’s
so hard to get…. I’ll be extra nice to Nelly at the picnic Sunday…. Her
trusting me so, and then me—O God, keep me away from wickedness!”

As he was going out Saturday morning he found a note from Istra waiting
in the hall on the hat-rack:

Do you want to play with poor Istra tomorrow Sat. afternoon and perhaps
evening, Mouse? You have Saturday afternoon off, don’t you? Leave me a
note if you can call for me at 1.30.


I. N.


He didn’t have Saturday afternoon off, but he said he did in his note,
and at one-thirty he appeared at her door in a new spring suit
(purchased on Tuesday), a new spring hat, very fuzzy and gay (purchased
Saturday noon), and the walking-stick he had bought on Tottenham Court
Road, but decently concealed from the boarding-house.

Istra took him to what she called a “futurist play.” She explained it
all to him several times, and she stood him tea and muffins, and
recalled Mrs. Cattermole’s establishment with full attention to Mrs.
Cattermole’s bulbous but earnest nose. They dined at the Brevoort, and
were back at nine-thirty; for, said Istra, she was “just a bit tired,
Mouse.”

They stood at the door of Istra’s room. Istra said, “You may come
in—just for a minute.”

It was the first time he had even peeped into her room in New York. The
old shyness was on him, and he glanced back.

Nelly was just coming up-stairs, staring at him where he stood inside
the door, her lips apart with amazement.

Ladies distinctly did not entertain in their rooms at Mrs. Arty’s.

He wanted to rush out, to explain, to invite her in, to—to— He
stuttered in his thought, and by now Nelly had hastened past, her face
turned from them.

Uneasily he tilted on the front of a cane-seated rocking-chair, glaring
at a pile of books before one of Istra’s trunks. Istra sat on the
bedside nursing her knee. She burst out:

“O Mouse dear, I’m so bored by everybody—every sort of everybody…. Of
course I don’t mean you; you’re a good pal…. Oh—Paris is _too_
complex—especially when you can’t quite get the nasal vowels—and New
York is too youthful and earnest; and Dos Puentes, California, will be
plain hell…. And all my little parties—I start out on them happily,
always, as naive as a kiddy going to a birthday party, and then I get
there and find I can’t even dance square dances, as the kiddy does, and
go home—Oh damn it, damn it, damn it! Am I shocking you? Well, what do
I care if I shock everybody!”

Her slim pliant length was flung out along the bed, and she was crying.
Her beautiful hands clutched the corners of a pillow bitterly.

He crept over to the bed, patting her shoulder, slowly and regularly,
too frightened of her mood even to want to kiss her.

She looked up, laughing tearfully. “Please say, ‘There, there, there;
don’t cry.’ It always goes with pats for weepy girls, you know…. O
Mouse, you will be good to some woman some day.”

Her long strong arms reached up and drew him down. It was his head that
rested on her shoulder. It seemed to both of them that it was he who
was to be petted, not she. He pressed his cheek against the comforting
hollow of her curving shoulder and rested there, abandoned to a forlorn
and growing happiness, the happiness of getting so far outside of his
tight world of Wrennishness that he could give comfort and take comfort
with no prim worried thoughts of Wrenn.

Istra murmured: “Perhaps that’s what I need—some one to need me. Only—”
She stroked his hair. “Now you must go, dear.”

“You—It’s better now? I’m afraid I ain’t helped you much. It’s kinda t’
other way round.”

“Oh yes, indeed, it’s all right now! Just nerves. Nothing more. Now,
good night.”

“Please, won’t you come to the picnic to-morrow? It’s—”

“No. Sorry, but can’t possibly.”

“Please think it over.”

“No, no, no, no, dear! You go and forget me and enjoy yourself and be
good to your pink-face—Nelly, isn’t it? She seems to be terribly nice,
and I know you two will have a good party. You must forget me. I’m just
a teacher of playing games who hasn’t been successful at any game
whatever. Not that it matters. I don’t care. I don’t, really. Now, good
night.”




CHAPTER XVIII
AND FOLLOWS A WANDERING FLAME THROUGH PERILOUS SEAS


They had picnic dinner early up there on the Palisades:

Nelly and Mr. Wrenn, Mrs. Arty and Tom, Miss Proudfoot and Mrs. Samuel
Ebbitt, the last of whom kept ejaculating: “Well! I ain’t run off like
this in ten years!” They squatted about a red-cotton table-cloth spread
on a rock, broadly discussing the sandwiches and cold chicken and
lemonade and stuffed olives, and laughing almost to a point of distress
over Tom’s accusation that Miss Proudfoot had secreted about her person
a bottle of rye whisky.

Nelly was very pleasant to Mr. Wrenn, but she called him neither Billy
nor anything else, and mostly she talked to Miss Proudfoot, smiling at
him, but saying nothing when he managed to get out a jest about Mrs.
Arty’s chewing-gum. When he moved to her side with a wooden plate of
cream-cheese sandwiches (which Tom humorously termed “cold-cream
wafers”) Mr. Wrenn started to explain how he had come to enter Istra’s
room.

“Why shouldn’t you?” Nelly asked, curtly, and turned to Miss Proudfoot.

“She doesn’t seem to care much,” he reflected, relieved and stabbed in
his humble vanity and reattracted to Nelly, all at once. He was anxious
about her opinion of Istra and her opinion of himself, and slightly
defiant, as she continued to regard him as a respectable person whose
name she couldn’t exactly remember.

Hadn’t he the right to love Istra if he wanted to? he desired to know
of himself. Besides, what had he _done?_ Just gone out walking with his
English hotel acquaintance Istra! He hadn’t been in her room but just a
few minutes. Fine reason that was for Nelly to act like a blooming
iceberg! Besides, it wasn’t as if he were engaged to Nelly, or anything
like that. Besides, of course Istra would never care for him. There
were several other besideses with which he harrowed himself while
trying to appear picnically agreeable. He was getting very much
confused, and was slightly abrupt as he said to Nelly, “Let’s walk over
to that high rock on the edge.”

A dusky afterglow filled the sky before them as they silently trudged
to the rock and from the top of the sheer cliff contemplated the smooth
and steely-gray Hudson below. Nelly squeaked her fear at the drop and
clutched his arm, but suddenly let go and drew back without his aid.

He groaned within, “I haven’t the right to help her.” He took her arm
as she hesitatingly climbed from the rock down to the ground.

She jerked it free, curtly saying, “No, thank you.”

She was repentant in a moment, and, cheerfully:

“Miss Nash took me in her room yesterday and showed me her things. My,
she’s got such be-_yoo_-ti-ful jewels! La V’lieres and pearls and a
swell amethyst brooch. My! She told me all about how the girls used to
study in Paris, and how sorry she would be to go back to California and
keep house.”

“Keep house?”

Nelly let him suffer for a moment before she relieved him with, “For
her father.”

“Oh…. Did she say she was going back to California soon?”

“Not till the end of the summer, maybe.”

“Oh…. Oh, Nelly—”

For the first time that day he was perfectly sincere. He was trying to
confide in her. But the shame of having emotions was on him. He got no
farther.

To his amazement, Nelly mused, “She is very nice.”

He tried hard to be gallant. “Yes, she is interesting, but of course
she ain’t anywheres near as nice as you are, Nelly, be—”

“Oh, don’t, Billy!”

The quick agony in her voice almost set them both weeping. The shared
sorrow of separation drew them together for a moment. Then she started
off, with short swift steps, and he tagged after. He found little to
say. He tried to comment on the river. He remarked that the
apartment-houses across in New York were bright in the sunset; that, in
fact, the upper windows looked “like there was a fire in there.” Her
sole comment was “Yes.”

When they rejoined the crowd he was surprised to hear her talking
volubly to Miss Proudfoot. He rejoiced that she was “game,” but he did
not rejoice long. For a frightened feeling that he had to hurry home
and see Istra at once was turning him weak and cold. He didn’t want to
see her; she was intruding; but he had to go—go at once; and the agony
held him all the way home, while he was mechanically playing the part
of stern reformer and agreeing with Tom Poppins that the horrors of the
recent Triangle shirt-waist-factory fire showed that “something oughta
be done—something sure oughta be.”

He trembled on the ferry till Nelly, with a burst of motherly
tenderness in her young voice, suddenly asked: “Why, you’re shivering
dreadfully! Did you get a chill?”

Naturally, he wanted the credit of being known as an invalid, and
pitied and nursed, but he reluctantly smiled and said, “Oh no, it ain’t
anything at all.”

Then Istra called him again, and he fumed over the slowness of their
landing.

And, at home, Istra was out.

He went resolutely down and found Nelly alone, sitting on a round
pale-yellow straw mat on the steps.

He sat by her. He was very quiet; not at all the jovial young man of
the picnic properly following the boarding-house-district rule that
males should be jocular and show their appreciation of the ladies by
“kidding them.” And he spoke with a quiet graciousness that was almost
courtly, with a note of weariness and spiritual experience such as
seldom comes into the boarding-houses, to slay joy and bring wisdom and
give words shyness.

He had, as he sat down, intended to ask her to go with him to a
moving-picture show. But inspiration was on him. He merely sat and
talked.

When Mr. Wrenn returned from the office, two evenings later, he found
this note awaiting him:

DEAR MOUSE,—Friend has asked me to join her in studio & have beat it.
Sorry not see you & say good-by. Come see me sometime—phone before and
see if I’m in—Spring xxx—address xx South Washington Sq. In haste,


ISTRA.


He spent the evening in not going to the studio. Several times he broke
away from a pinochle game to rush upstairs and see if the note was as
chilly as he remembered. It always was.

Then for a week he awaited a more definite invitation from her, which
did not come. He was uneasily polite to Nelly these days, and
tremulously appreciative of her gentleness. He wanted to brood, but he
did not take to his old habit of long solitary walks. Every afternoon
he planned one for the evening; every evening found that he “wanted to
be around with folks.”

He had a sort of youthful defiant despair, so he jested much at the
card-table, by way of practising his new game of keeping people from
knowing what he was thinking. He took sophisticated pleasure in noting
that Mrs. Arty no longer condescended to him. He managed to imitate
Tom’s writing on a card which he left with a bunch of jonquils in
Nelly’s room, and nearly persuaded even Tom himself that Tom was the
donor. Probably because he didn’t much care what happened he was able
to force Mr. Mortimer R. Guilfogle to raise his salary to twenty-three
dollars a week. Mr. Guilfogle went out of his way to admit that the
letters to the Southern trade had been “a first-rate stunt, son.”

John Henson, the head of the Souvenir Company’s manufacturing
department, invited Mr. Wrenn home to dinner, and the account of the
cattle-boat was much admired by Mrs. Henson and the three young
Hensons.

A few days later, in mid-June, there was an unusually cheerful dinner
at the boarding-house. Nelly turned to Mr. Wrenn—yes, he was quite sure
about it; she was speaking exclusively to him, with a lengthy and most
merry account of the manner in which the floor superintendent had
“called down” the unkindest of the aislesmen.

He longed to give his whole self in his answer, to be in the absolute
community of thought that lovers know. But the image of Istra was
behind his chair. Istra—he had to see her—now, this evening. He rushed
out to the corner drug-store and reached her by telephone.

Yes-s, admitted Istra, a little grudgingly, she was going to be at the
studio that evening, though she—well, there was going to be a little
party—some friends—but—yes, she’d be glad to have him come.

Grimly, Mr. Wrenn set out for Washington Square.

Since this scientific treatise has so exhaustively examined Mr. Wrenn’s
reactions toward the esthetic, one need give but three of his
impressions of the studio and people he found on Washington
Square—namely:

(_a_) That the big room was bare, ill kept, and not comparable to the
red-plush splendor of Mrs. Arty’s, for all its pretension to
superiority. Why, a lot of the pictures weren’t framed! And you should
have seen the giltness and fruit-borderness of the frames at Mrs.
Arty’s!

(_b_) That the people were brothers-in-talk to the inmates of the flat
on Great James Street, London, only far less, and friendly.

(_c_) That Mr. Wrenn was now a man of friends, and if the “blooming
Bohemians,” as he called them, didn’t like him they were permitted to
go to the dickens.

Istra was always across the room from him somehow. He found himself
glad. It made their parting definite.

He was going back to his own people, he was deciding.

As he rose with elaborate boarding-house apologies to the room at large
for going, and a cheerful but not intimate “Good night” to Istra, she
followed him to the door and into the dark long hallway without.

“Good night, Mouse dear. I’m glad you got a chance to talk to the
Silver Girl. But was Mr. Hargis rude to you? I heard him talking Single
Tax—or was it Matisse?—and he’s usually rude when he talks about them.”

“No. He was all right.”

“Then what _is_ worrying you?”

“Oh—nothing. Good ni—”

“You _are_ going off angry. _Aren’t_ you?”

“No, but—oh, there ain’t any use of our—of me being— _Is_ there?”

“N-no—”

“Matisse—the guy you just spoke about—and these artists here tonight in
bobtail dress-suits—I wouldn’t know when to wear one of them things,
and when a swallow-tail—if I had one, even—or when a Prince Albert or—”

“Oh, not a Prince Albert, Mouse dear. Say, a frock-coat.”

“Sure. That’s what I mean. It’s like that Matisse guy. I don’t know
about none of the things you’re interested in. While you’ve been away
from Mrs. Arty’s—Lord, I’ve missed you so! But when I try to train with
your bunch, or when you spring Matisse” (he seemed peculiarly to resent
the unfortunate French artist) “on me I sort of get onto myself—and now
it ain’t like it was in England; I’ve got a bunch of my own I can chase
around with. Anyway, I got onto myself tonight. I s’pose it’s partly
because I been thinking you didn’t care much for _my_ friends.”

“But, Mouse dear, all this isn’t news to me. Surely you, who’ve gipsied
with me, aren’t going to be so obvious, so banal, as to blame _me_
because you’ve cared for me, are you, child?”

“Oh no, no, no! I didn’t mean to do that. I just wanted—oh, gee! I
dunno—well, I wanted to have things between us definite.”

“I do understand. You’re quite right. And now we’re just friends,
aren’t we?”

“Yes.”

“Then good-by. And sometime when I’m back in New York—I’m going to
California in a few days—I think I’ll be able to get back here—I
certainly hope so—though of course I’ll have to keep house for friend
father for a while, and maybe I’ll marry myself with a local magnate in
desperation—but, as I was saying, dear, when I get back here we’ll have
a good dinner, _nicht wahr?_”

“Yes, and—good-by.”

She stood at the top of the stairs looking down. He slowly clumped down
the wooden treads, boiling with the amazing discoveries that he had
said good-by to Istra, that he was not sorry, and that now he could
offer to Nelly Croubel everything.

Istra suddenly called, “O Mouse, wait just a moment.”

She darted like a swallow. She threw her arm about his shoulder and
kissed his cheek. Instantly she was running up-stairs again, and had
disappeared into the studio.

Mr. William Wrenn was walking rapidly up Riverside Drive, thinking
about his letters to the Southern merchants.

While he was leaving the studio building he had perfectly seen himself
as one who was about to go through a tumultuous agony, after which he
would be free of all the desire for Istra and ready to serve Nelly
sincerely and humbly.

But he found that the agony was all over. Even to save his dignity as
one who was being dramatic, he couldn’t keep his thoughts on Istra.

Every time he thought of Nelly his heart was warm and he chuckled
softly. Several times out of nothing came pictures of the supercilious
persons whom he had heard solving the problems of the world at the
studio on Washington Square, and he muttered: “Oh, hope they choke.
Istra’s all right, though; she learnt me an awful lot. But—gee! I’m
glad she ain’t in the same house; I suppose I’d ag’nize round if she
was.”

Suddenly, at no particular street corner on Riverside Drive, just _a_
street, he fled over to Broadway and the Subway. He had to be under the
same roof with Nelly. If it were only possible to see her that night!
But it was midnight. However, he formulated a plan. The next morning he
would leave the office, find her at her department store, and make her
go out to Manhattan Beach with him for dinner that night.

He was home. He went happily up the stairs. He would dream of Nelly,
and—

Nelly’s door opened, and she peered out, drawing her _peignoir_ about
her.

“Oh,” she said, softly, “is it you?”

“Yes. My, you’re up late.”

“Do you—Are you all right?”

He dashed down the hall and stood shyly scratching at the straw of his
newest hat.

“Why yes, Nelly, course. Poor—Oh, don’t tell me you have a headache
again?”

“No—I was awful foolish, of course, but I saw you when you went out
this evening, and you looked so savage, and you didn’t look very well.”

“But now it’s all right.”

“Then good night.”

“Oh no—listen—please do! I went over to the place Miss Nash is living
at, because I was pretty sure that I ain’t hipped on her—sort of
hypnotized by her—any more. And I found I ain’t! _I ain’t!_ I don’t
know what to say, I want to—I want you to know that from going to try
and see if I can’t get you to care for me.” He was dreadfully earnest,
and rather quiet, with the dignity of the man who has found himself.
“I’m scared,” he went on, “about saying this, because maybe you’ll
think I’ve got an idea I’m kind of a little tin god, and all I’ve got
to do is to say which girl I’ll want and she’ll come a-running, but it
isn’t that; _it isn’t_. It’s just that I want you to know I’m going to
give _all_ of me to you now if I can get you to want me. And I _am_
glad I knew Istra—she learnt me a lot about books and all, so I have
more to me, or maybe will have, for you. It’s —Nelly—promise you’ll
be—my friend—promise—If you knew how I rushed back here tonight to see
you!”

“Billy—”

She held out her hand, and he grasped it as though it were the sacred
symbol of his dreams.

“To-morrow,” she smiled, with a hint of tears, “I’ll be a reg’lar lady,
I guess, and make you explain and explain like everything, but now I’m
just glad. Yes,” defiantly, “I _will_ admit it if I want to! I _am_
glad!”

Her door closed.




CHAPTER XIX
TO A HAPPY SHORE


Upon an evening of November, 1911, it chanced that of Mrs. Arty’s flock
only Nelly and Mr. Wrenn were at home. They had finished two hot games
of pinochle, and sat with their feet on a small amiable oil-stove. Mr.
Wrenn laid her hand against his cheek with infinite content. He was
outlining the situation at the office.

The business had so increased that Mr. Mortimer R. Guilfogle, the
manager, had told Rabin, the head traveling-salesman, that he was going
to appoint an assistant manager. Should he, Mr. Wrenn queried, try to
get the position? The other candidates, Rabin and Henson and Glover,
were all good friends of his, and, furthermore, could he “run a bunch
of guys if he was over them?”

“Why, of course you can, Billy. I remember when you came here you were
sort of shy. But now you’re ’most the star boarder! And won’t those
others be trying to get the job away from you? Of course!”

“Yes, that’s so.”

“Why, Billy, some day you might be manager!”

“Say, that would be great, wouldn’t it! But hones’, Nell, do you think
I might have a chance to land the assistant’s job?”

“I certainly do.”

“Oh, Nelly—gee! you make me—oh, learn to bank on myself—”

He kissed her for the second time in his life.

“Mr. Guilfogle,” stated Mr. Wrenn, next day, “I want to talk to you
about that assistant managership.”

The manager, in his new office and his new flowered waistcoat, had
acted interested when Our steady and reliable Mr. Wrenn came in. But
now he tried to appear dignified and impatient.

“That—” he began.

“I’ve been here longer than any of the other men, and I know every line
of the business now, even the manufacturing. You remember I held down
Henson’s job when his wife was sick.”

“Yes, but—”

“And I guess Jake thinks I can boss all right, and Miss Leavenbetz,
too.”

“Now will you kindly ’low _me_ to talk a little, Wrenn? I know a
_little_ something about how things go in the office myself! I don’t
deny you’re a good man. Maybe some day you may get to be assistant
manager. But I’m going to give the first try at it to Glover. He’s had
so much more experience with meeting people directly—personally. But
you’re a good man—”

“Yes, I’ve heard that before, but I’ll be gol-darned if I’ll stick at
one desk all my life just because I save you all the trouble in that
department, Guilfogle, and now—”

“Now, now, now, now! Calm down; hold your horses, my boy. This ain’t a
melodrama, you know.”

“Yes, I know; I didn’t mean to get sore, but you know—”

“Well, now I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to make you
head of the manufacturing department instead of getting in a new man,
and shift Henson to purchasing. I’ll put Jake on your old job, and
expect you to give him a lift when he needs it. And you’d better keep
up the most important of the jollying-letters, I guess.”

“Well, I like that all right. I appreciate it. But of course I expect
more pay—two men’s work—”

“Let’s see; what you getting now?”

“Twenty-three.”

“Well, that’s a good deal, you know. The overhead expenses have been
increasing a lot faster than our profits, and we’ve—”

“Huh!”

“—got to see where new business is coming in to justify the liberal way
we’ve treated you men before we can afford to do much
salary-raising—though we’re just as glad to do it as you men to get it;
but—”

“Huh!”

“—if we go to getting extravagant we’ll go bankrupt, and then we won’t
any of us have jobs…. Still, I _am_ willing to raise you to
twenty-five, though—”

“Thirty-five!”

Mr. Wrenn stood straight. The manager tried to stare him down. Panic
was attacking Mr. Wrenn, and he had to think of Nelly to keep up his
defiance. At last Mr. Guilfogle glared, then roared: “Well, confound
it, Wrenn, I’ll give you twenty-nine-fifty, and not a cent more for at
least a year. That’s final. _Understand?_”

“All right,” chirped Mr. Wrenn.

“Gee!” he was exulting to himself, “never thought I’d get anything like
that. Twenty-nine-fifty! More ’n enough to marry on now! I’m going to
get _twenty-nine-fifty!_”

“Married five months ago to-night, honey,” said Mr. Wrenn to Nelly, his
wife, in their Bronx flat, and thus set down October 17, 1913, as a
great date in history.

“Oh, I _know_ it, Billy. I wondered if you’d remember. You just ought
to see the dessert I’m making—but that’s a s’prise.”

“Remember! Should say I did! See what I’ve got for somebody!”

He opened a parcel and displayed a pair of red-worsted bed-slippers, a
creation of one of the greatest red-worsted artists in the whole land.
Yes, and he could afford them, too. Was he not making thirty-two
dollars a week—he who had been poor! And his chances for the assistant
managership “looked good.”

“Oh, they’ll be so comfy when it gets cold. You’re a dear! Oh, Billy,
the janitress says the Jewish lady across the court in number seventy
is so lazy she wears her corsets to bed!”

“Did the janitress get the coal put in, Nell?”

“Yes, but her husband is laid off again. I was talking to her quite a
while this afternoon…. Oh, dear, I do get so lonely for you,
sweetheart, with nothing to do. But I did read some _Kim_ this
afternoon. I liked it.”

“That’s fine!”

“But it’s kind of hard. Maybe I’ll—Oh, I don’t know. I guess I’ll have
to read a lot.”

He patted her back softly, and hoped: “Maybe some day we can get a
little house out of town, and then you can garden…. Sorry old Siddons
is laid off again…. Is the gas-stove working all right now?”

“Um-huh, honey. I fixed it.”

“Say, let me make the coffee, Nell. You’ll have enough to do with
setting the table and watching the sausages.”

“All rightee, hun. But, oh, Billy, I’m so, shamed. I was going to get
some potato salad, and I’ve just remembered I forgot.” She hung her
head, with a fingertip to her pretty lips, and pretended to look
dreadfully ashamed. “Would you mind so ver-ee much skipping down to
Bachmeyer’s for some? Ah-h, is it just fearful neglected when it comes
home all tired out?”

“No, indeedy. But you got to kiss me first, else I won’t go at all.”

Nelly turned to him and, as he held her, her head bent far back. She
lay tremblingly inert against his arms, staring up at him, panting.
With her head on his shoulder—a soft burden of love that his shoulder
rejoiced to bear—they stood gazing out of the narrow kitchen window of
their sixth-story flat and noticed for the hundredth time that the
trees in a vacant lot across were quite as red and yellow as the
millionaire trees in Central Park along Fifth Avenue.

“Sometime,” mused Mr. Wrenn, “we’ll live in Jersey, where there’s trees
and trees and trees—and maybe there’ll be kiddies to play under them,
and then you won’t be lonely, honey; they’ll keep you some busy!”

“You skip along now, and don’t be talking nonsense, or I’ll not give
you one single wee bit of dinner!” Then she blushed adorably, with
infinite hope.

He hastened out of the kitchen, with the happy glance he never failed
to give the living-room—its red-papered walls with shiny imitation-oak
woodwork; the rows of steins on the plate-rack; the imitation-oak
dining-table, with a vase of newly dusted paper roses; the Morris
chair, with Nelly’s sewing on a tiny wicker table beside it; the large
gilt-framed oleograph of “Pike’s Peak by Moonlight.”

He clattered down the slate treads of the stairs. He fairly vaulted out
of doors. He stopped, startled.

Across the ragged vacant lots to the west a vast sunset processional
marched down the sky. It had not been visible from their flat, which
looked across East River to the tame grassy shore of a real-estate
boomer’s suburb. “Gee!” he mourned, “it’s the first time I’ve noticed a
sunset for a month! I used to see knights’ flags and Mandalay and all
sorts of stuff in sunsets!”

Wistfully the exile gazed at his lost kingdom, till the October chill
aroused him.

But he learned a new way to cook eggs from the proprietor of the
delicatessen store; and his plans for spending the evening playing
pinochle with Nelly, and reading the evening paper aloud, set him
chuckling softly to himself as he hurried home through the brisk autumn
breeze with seven cents’ worth of potato salad.

THE END