Mr. Wrenn

“ 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.... ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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 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 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.” ”

“ 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?” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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?” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”