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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Our Mr. Wrenn, by Sinclair Lewis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Our Mr. Wrenn
+       The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man
+
+Author: Sinclair Lewis
+
+Release Date: April 4, 2002 [eBook #4961]
+[Most recently updated: July 28, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Charles Aldarondo
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR MR. WRENN ***
+
+[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
+
+
+
+
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