Books: Our Mr. Wrenn
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Sinclair Lewis >> Our Mr. Wrenn
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"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.
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