Books: Our Mr. Wrenn

S >> Sinclair Lewis >> Our Mr. Wrenn

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"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_nificent_ 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 _passe_,
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.

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