________________________________________________
_ 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 _pate
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-a-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." _
Read next: CHAPTER III HE STARTS FOR THE LAND OF ELSEWHERE
Read previous: CHAPTER I MR. WRENN IS LONELY
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