Books: Our Mr. Wrenn
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Sinclair Lewis >> Our Mr. Wrenn
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"Yes, but, Charley, then if Guilfogle feels he can't pay me that
much--you know he's responsible to the directors; he can't do
everything he wants to--why, he'll just have to fire me, after
I've talked to him like that, whether he wants to or not.
And that'd leave us--that'd leave them--without a sales clerk,
right in the busy season."
"Why, sure, Wrenn; that's what we want to do. If you go it 'd
leave 'em without just about _two_ men. Bother 'em like the deuce.
It 'd bother Mr. Mortimer X. Y. Guglefugle most of all,
thank the Lord. He wouldn't know where he was at--trying to
break in a man right in the busy season. Here's your chance.
Come on, kid; don't pass it up."
"Oh gee, Charley, I can't do that. You wouldn't want me to try
to _hurt_ the Souvenir Company after being there for--lemme see,
it must be seven years."
"Well, maybe you _like_ to get your cute little nose rubbed on
the grindstone! I suppose you'd like to stay on at nineteen per
for the rest of your life."
"Aw, Charley, don't get sore; please don't! I'd like to get off,
all right--like to go traveling, and stuff like that. Gee! I'd
like to wander round. But I can't cut out right in the bus--"
"But can't you see, you poor nut, you won't be _leaving_
'em--they'll either pay you what they ought to or lose you."
"Oh, I don't know about that, Charley.
"Charley was making up for some uncertainty as to his own
logic by beaming persuasiveness, and Mr. Wrenn was afraid
of being hypnotized. "No, no!" he throbbed, rising.
"Well, all right!" snarled Charley, "if you like to be Gogie's
goat.... Oh, you're all right, Wrennski. I suppose you had
ought to stay, if you feel you got to.... Well, so long.
I've got to beat it over and buy a pair of socks before I go back."
Mr. Wrenn crept out of Drubel's behind him, very melancholy.
Even Charley admitted that he "had ought to stay," then; and
what chance was there of persuading the dread Mr. Mortimer R.
Guilfogle that he wished to be looked upon as one resigning?
Where, then, any chance of globe-trotting; perhaps for months he
would remain in slavery, and he had hoped just that morning--
One dreadful quarter-hour with Mr. Guilfogle and he might be free.
He grinned to himself as he admitted that this was like
seeing Europe after merely swimming the mid-winter Atlantic.
Well, he had nine minutes more, by his two-dollar watch; nine
minutes of vagabondage. He gazed across at a Greek restaurant
with signs in real Greek letters like "ruins at--well, at Aythens."
A Chinese chop-suey den with a red-and-yellow carved dragon,
and at an upper window a squat Chinaman who might easily
be carrying a _kris_, "or whatever them Chink knives are," as he
observed for the hundredth time he had taken this journey.
A rotisserie, before whose upright fender of scarlet coals whole
ducks were happily roasting to a shiny brown. In a furrier's
window were Siberian foxes' skins (Siberia! huts of "awful
brave convicks"; the steely Northern Sea; guards in blouses,
just as he'd seen them at an Academy of Music play) and a polar
bear (meaning, to him, the Northern Lights, the long hike,
and the _igloo_ at night). And the florists! There were orchids
that (though he only half knew it, and that all inarticulately)
whispered to him of jungles where, in the hot hush, he saw the
slumbering python and--"What was it in that poem, that,
Mandalay, thing? _was_ it about jungles? Anyway:
"'Them garlicky smells,
And the sunshine and the palms and the bells.'"
He had to hurry back to the office. He stopped only to pat the
head of a florist's delivery horse that looked wistfully at him
from the curb. "Poor old fella. What you thinking about?
Want to be a circus horse and wander? Le's beat it together.
You can't, eh? Poor old fella!"
At three-thirty, the time when it seems to office persons that
the day's work never will end, even by a miracle, Mr. Wrenn was
shaky about his duty to the firm. He was more so after an
electrical interview with the manager, who spent a few minutes,
which he happened to have free, in roaring "I want to know why"
at Mr. Wrenn. There was no particular "why" that he wanted to
know; he was merely getting scientific efficiency out of
employees, a phrase which Mr. Guilfogle had taken from a
business magazine that dilutes efficiency theories for
inefficient employers.
At five-twenty the manager summoned him, complimented him on
nothing in particular, and suggested that he stay late with
Charley Carpenter and the stock-keeper to inventory a line of
desk-clocks which they were closing out.
As Mr. Wrenn returned to his desk he stopped at a window on the
corridor and coveted the bright late afternoon. The cornices of
lofty buildings glistened; the sunset shone fierily through the
glass-inclosed layer-like upper floors. He wanted to be out
there in the streets with the shopping crowds. Old Goglefogle
didn't consider him; why should he consider the firm?
CHAPTER II
HE WALKS WITH MISS THERESA
As he left the Souvenir Company building after working late at
taking inventory and roamed down toward Fourteenth Street, Mr.
Wrenn felt forlornly aimless. The worst of it all was that he
could not go to the Nickelorion for moving pictures; not after
having been cut by the ticket-taker. Then, there before him was
the glaring sign of the Nickelorion tempting him; a bill with
"Great Train Robbery Film Tonight" made his heart thump like
stair-climbing--and he dashed at the ticket-booth with a nickel
doughtily extended. He felt queer about the scalp as the
cashier girl slid out a coupon. Why did she seem to be watching
him so closely? As he dropped the ticket in the chopper he
tried to glance away from the Brass-button Man. For one-
nineteenth of a second he kept his head turned. It turned
back of itself; he stared full at the man, half bowed--and
received a hearty absent-minded nod and a "Fine evenin'."
He sang to himself a monotonous song of great joy. When he
stumbled over the feet of a large German in getting to a seat,
he apologized as though he were accustomed to laugh easily with
many friends.
The train-robbery film was--well, he kept repeating "Gee!" to
himself pantingly. How the masked men did sneak, simply sneak
and sneak, behind the bushes! Mr. Wrenn shrank as one of them
leered out of the picture at him. How gallantly the train
dashed toward the robbers, to the spirit-stirring roll of the
snare-drum. The rush from the bushes followed; the battle with
detectives concealed in the express-car. Mr. Wrenn was
standing sturdily and shooting coolly with the slender
hawk-faced Pinkerton man in puttees; with him he leaped to horse
and followed the robbers through the forest. He stayed through
the whole program twice to see the train robbery again.
As he started to go out he found the ticket-taker changing his
long light-blue robe of state for a highly commonplace sack-coat
without brass buttons. In his astonishment at seeing how a
Highness could be transformed into an every-day man, Mr. Wrenn
stopped, and, having stopped, spoke:
"Uh--that was quite a--quite a picture--that train robbery.
Wasn't it."
"Yuh, I guess--Now where's the devil and his wife flew away
to with my hat? Them guys is always swiping it. Picture,
mister? Why, I didn't see it no more 'n--Say you, Pink Eye,
say you crab-footed usher, did you swipe my hat? Ain't he the
cut-up, mister! Ain't both them ushers the jingling sheepsheads,
though! Being cute and hiding my hat in the box-office.
_Picture?_ I don't get no chance to see any of 'em. Funny,
ain't it?--me barking for 'em like I was the grandmother of the
guy that invented 'em, and not knowing whether the train
robbery--Now who stole my going-home shoes?... Why, I don't
know whether the train did any robbing or not!"
He slapped Mr. Wrenn on the back, and the sales clerk's heart
bounded in comradeship. He was surprised into declaring:
"Say--uh--I bowed to you the other night and you--well, honestly,
you acted like you never saw me."
"Well, well, now, and that's what happens to me for being the
dad of five kids and a she-girl and a tom-cat. Sure, I couldn't
've seen you. Me, I was probably that busy with fambly cares--I
was probably thinking who was it et the lemon pie on me--was it Pete
or Johnny, or shall I lick 'em both together, or just bite me wife."
Mr. Wrenn knew that the ticket-taker had never, never really
considered biting his wife. _He_ knew! His nod and grin and
"That's the idea!" were urbanely sophisticated. He urged:
"Oh yes, I'm sure you didn't intend to hand me the icy mitt.
Say! I'm thirsty. Come on over to Moje's and I'll buy you a drink."
He was aghast at this abyss of money-spending into which he had
leaped, and the Brass-button Man was suspiciously wondering what
this person wanted of him; but they crossed to the adjacent
saloon, a New York corner saloon, which of course "glittered"
with a large mirror, heaped glasses, and a long shining
foot-rail on which, in bravado, Mr. Wrenn placed his
Cum-Fee-Best shoe.
"Uh?" said the bartender.
"Rye, Jimmy," said the Brass-button Man.
"Uh-h-h-h-h," said Mr. Wrenn, in a frightened diminuendo, now
that--wealthy citizen though he had become--he was in danger of
exposure as a mollycoddle who couldn't choose his drink properly.
"Stummick been hurting me. Guess I'd better just take a lemonade."
"You're the brother-in-law to a wise one," commented the
Brass-button Man. "Me, I ain't never got the sense to do the
traffic cop on the booze. The old woman she says to me, `Mory,'
she says, `if you was in heaven and there was a pail of beer on
one side and a gold harp on the other,' she says, `and you was
to have your pick, which would you take?' And what 'd yuh think
I answers her?"
"The beer," said the bartender. "She had your number, all right."
"Not on your tin-type," declared the ticket-taker.
"`Me?' I says to her. `Me? I'd pinch the harp and pawn it for
ten growlers of Dutch beer and some man-sized rum!'"
"Hee, hee hee!" grinned Mr. Wrenn.
"Ha, ha, ha!" grumbled the bartender.
"Well-l-l," yawned the ticket-taker, "the old woman'll be
chasing me best pants around the flat, if she don't have me to
chase, pretty soon. Guess I'd better beat it. Much obliged for
the drink, Mr. Uh. So long, Jimmy."
Mr. Wrenn set off for home in a high state of exhilaration
which, he noticed, exactly resembled driving an aeroplane, and
went briskly up the steps of the Zapps' genteel but unexciting
residence. He was much nearer to heaven than West Sixteenth
Street appears to be to the outsider. For he was an explorer of
the Arctic, a trusted man on the job, an associate of witty
Bohemians. He was an army lieutenant who had, with his friend
the hawk-faced Pinkerton man, stood off bandits in an attack
on a train. He opened and closed the door gaily.
He was an apologetic little Mr. Wrenn. His landlady stood
on the bottom step of the hall stairs in a bunchy Mother
Hubbard, groaning:
"Mist' Wrenn, if you got to come in so late, Ah wish you
wouldn't just make all the noise you can. Ah don't see why Ah
should have to be kept awake all night. Ah suppose it's the
will of the Lord that whenever Ah go out to see Mrs. Muzzy and
just drink a drop of coffee Ah must get insomina, but Ah don't
see why anybody that tries to be a gennulman should have to go
and bang the door and just rack mah nerves."
He slunk up-stairs behind Mrs. Zapp's lumbering gloom.
"There's something I wanted to tell you, Mrs. Zapp--something
that's happened to me. That's why I was out celebrating last
evening and got in so late." Mr. Wrenn was diffidently sitting
in the basement.
"Yes," dryly, "Ah noticed you was out late, Mist' Wrenn."
"You see, Mrs. Zapp, I--uh--my father left me some land, and
it's been sold for about one thousand plunks."
" Ah'm awful' glad, Mist' Wrenn," she said, funereally. "Maybe
you'd like to take that hall room beside yours now. The two
rooms'd make a nice apartment." (She really said "nahs
'pahtmun', "you understand.)
"Why, I hadn't thought much about that yet." He felt guilty, and
was profusely cordial to Lee Theresa Zapp, the factory
forewoman, who had just thumped down-stairs.
Miss Theresa was a large young lady with a bust, much black
hair, and a handsome disdainful discontented face. She waited
till he had finished greeting her, then sniffed, and at her
mother she snarled:
"Ma, they went and kept us late again to-night. I'm getting
just about tired of having a bunch of Jews and Yankees think I'm
a nigger. Uff! I hate them!"
"T'resa, Mist' Wrenn's just inherited two thousand dollars, and
he's going to take that upper hall room." Mrs. Zapp beamed with
maternal fondness at the timid lodger.
But the gallant friend of Pinkertons faced her--for the first
time. "Waste his travel-money?" he was inwardly exclaiming as
he said:
"But I thought you had some one in that room. I heard som--"
"That fellow! Oh, he ain't going to be perm'nent. And he
promised me--So you can have--"
"I'm _awful_ sorry, Mrs. Zapp, but I'm afraid I can't take it.
Fact is, I may go traveling for a while."
"Co'se you'll keep your room if you do, Mist' Wrenn?"
"Why, I'm afraid I'll have to give it up, but--Oh, I may not be
going for a long long while yet; and of course I'll be glad to
come--I'll want to come back here when I get back to New York.
I won't be gone for more than, oh, probably not more than a year
anyway, and--"
"And Ah thought you said you was going to be perm'nent!" Mrs.
Zapp began quietly, prefatory to working herself up into
hysterics. "And here Ah've gone and had your room fixed up
just for you, and new paper put in, and you've always been
talking such a lot about how you wanted your furniture arranged,
and Ah've gone and made all mah plans--"
Mr. Wrenn had been a shyly paying guest of the Zapps for four
years. That famous new paper had been put up two years before.
So he spluttered: "Oh, I'm _awfully_ sorry. I wish--uh--I
don't--"
"Ah'd _thank_ you, Mist' Wrenn, if you could _conveniently_ let me
_know_ before you go running off and leaving me with empty rooms,
with the landlord after the rent, and me turning away people
that 'd pay more for the room, because Ah wanted to keep it for
you. And people always coming to see you and making me answer
the door and--"
Even the rooming-house worm was making small worm-like sounds
that presaged turning. Lee Theresa snapped just in time, "Oh,
cut it out, Ma, will you!" She had been staring at the worm, for
he had suddenly become interesting and adorable and,
incidentally, an heir. "I don't see why Mr. Wrenn ain't giving
us all the notice we can expect. He said he mightn't be going
for a long time."
"Oh!" grunted Mrs. Zapp. "So mah own flesh and blood is going
to turn against me!"
She rose. Her appearance of majesty was somewhat lessened by
the creak of stays, but her instinct for unpleasantness was
always good. She said nothing as she left them, and she plodded
up-stairs with a train of sighs.
Mr. Wrenn looked as though sudden illness had overpowered him.
But Theresa laughed, and remarked: "You don't want to let Ma
get on her high horse, Mr. Wrenn. She's a bluff."
With much billowing of the lower, less stiff part of her
garments, she sailed to the cloudy mirror over the
magazine-filled bookcase and inspected her cap of false curls,
with many prods of her large firm hands which flashed with
Brazilian diamonds. Though he had heard the word "puffs,"
he did not know that half her hair was false. He stared
at it. Though in disgrace, he felt the honor of knowing
so ample and rustling a woman as Miss Lee Theresa.
"But, say, I wish I could 've let her know I was going earlier,
Miss Zapp. I didn't know it myself, but it does seem like a
mean trick. I s'pose I ought to pay her something extra."
"Why, child, you won't do anything of the sort. Ma hasn't got
a bit of kick coming. You've always been awful nice, far as I
can see." She smiled lavishly. "I went for a walk to-night....
I wish all those men wouldn't stare at a girl so. I'm sure I
don't see why they should stare at me."
Mr. Wrenn nodded, but that didn't seem to be the right comment,
so he shook his head, then looked frightfully embarrassed.
"I went by that Armenian restaurant you were telling me about,
Mr. Wrenn. Some time I believe I'll go dine there." Again she paused.
He said only, "Yes, it is a nice place."
Remarking to herself that there was no question about it,
after all, he _was_ a little fool, Theresa continued the siege.
"Do you dine there often?"
"Oh yes. It is a nice place."
"Could a lady go there?"
"Why, yes, I--"
"Yes!"
"I should think so," he finished.
"Oh!... I do get so awfully tired of the greasy stuff Ma and
Goaty dish up. They think a big stew that tastes like
dish-water is a dinner, and if they do have anything I like they
keep on having the same thing every day till I throw it in the
sink. I wish I could go to a restaurant once in a while for a
change, but of course--I dunno's it would be proper for a
lady to go alone even there. What do you think? Oh dear!"
She sat brooding sadly.
He had an inspiration. Perhaps Miss Theresa could be persuaded
to go out to dinner with him some time. He begged:
"Gee, I wish you'd let me take you up there some evening, Miss Zapp."
"Now, didn't I tell you to call me `Miss Theresa'? Well, I
suppose you just don't want to be friends with me. Nobody
does." She brooded again.
"Oh, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. Honest I didn't.
I've always thought you'd think I was fresh if I called you
`Miss Theresa,' and so I--"
"Why, I guess I could go up to the Armenian with you, perhaps.
When would you like to go? You know I've always got lots of
dates but I--um--let's see, I think I could go to-morrow evening."
"Let's do it! Shall I call for you, Miss--uh--Theresa?"
"Yes, you may if you'll be a good boy. Good night." She
departed with an air of intimacy.
Mr. Wrenn scuttled to the Nickelorion, and admitted to the
Brass-button Man that he was "feeling pretty good 's evening."
He had never supposed that a handsome creature like Miss Theresa
could ever endure such a "slow fellow" as himself. For about
one minute he considered with a chill the question of whether
she was agreeable because of his new wealth, but reproved the
fiend who was making the suggestion; for had he not heard her
mention with great scorn a second cousin who had married an old
Yankee for his money? That just settled _that_, he assured
himself, and scowled at a passing messenger-boy for having thus
hinted, but hastily grimaced as the youngster showed signs of
loud displeasure.
The Armenian restaurant is peculiar, for it has foreign food at
low prices, and is below Thirtieth Street, yet it has not become
Bohemian. Consequently it has no bad music and no crowd of
persons from Missouri whose women risk salvation for an evening
by smoking cigarettes. Here prosperous Oriental merchants,
of mild natures and bandit faces, drink semi-liquid Turkish
coffee and discuss rugs and revolutions.
In fact, the place seemed so unartificial that Theresa, facing
Mr. Wrenn, was bored. And the menu was foreign without being
Society viands. It suggested rats' tails and birds' nests, she
was quite sure. She would gladly have experimented with _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."
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