Books: Our Mr. Wrenn

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"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."

CHAPTER III

HE STARTS FOR THE LAND OF ELSEWHERE

The International and Atlantic Employment Bureau is a long dirty
room with the plaster cracked like the outlines on a map, hung
with steamship posters and the laws of New York regarding
employment offices, which are regarded as humorous by the
proprietor, M. Baraieff, a short slender ejaculatory person
with a nervous black beard, lively blandness, and a knowledge of
all the incorrect usages of nine languages. Mr. Wrenn edged
into this junk-heap of nationalities with interested wonder.
M. Baraieff rubbed his smooth wicked hands together and bowed a
number of times.

Confidentially leaning across the counter, Mr. Wrenn murmured:
"Say, I read your ad. about wanting cattlemen. I want to make
a trip to Europe. How--?"

"Yes, yes, yes, yes, Mistaire. I feex you up right away.
Ten dollars pleas-s-s-s."

"Well, what does that entitle me to?"

"I tole you I feex you up. Ha! Ha! I know it; you are a
gentleman; you want a nice leetle trip on Europe. Sure. I feex
you right up. I send you off on a nice easy cattleboat where you
won't have to work much hardly any. Right away it goes. Ten
dollars pleas-s-s-s."

"But when does the boat start? Where does it start from?" Mr.
Wrenn was a bit confused. He had never met a man who grimaced
so politely and so rapidly.

"Next Tuesday I send you right off."

Mr. Wrenn regretfully exchanged ten dollars for a card informing
Trubiggs, Atlantic Avenue, Boston, that Mr. "Ren" was to be
"ship 1st poss. catel boat right away and charge my acct. fee
paid Baraieff." Brightly declaring "I geef you a fine ship,"
M. Baraieff added, on the margin of the card, in copper-plate
script, "Best ship, easy work." He caroled, "Come early next
Tuesday morning, "and bowed out Mr. Wrenn like a Parisian
shopkeeper. The row of waiting servant-girls curtsied as though
they were a hedge swayed by the wind, while Mr. Wrenn
self-consciously hurried to get past them.

He was too excited to worry over the patient and quiet suffering
with which Mrs. Zapp heard the announcement that he was going.
That Theresa laughed at him for a cattleman, while Goaty, in the
kitchen, audibly observed that "nobody but a Yankee would travel
in a pig-pen, "merely increased his joy in moving his belongings
to a storage warehouse.

Tuesday morning, clad in a sweater-jacket, tennis-shoes, an old
felt hat, a khaki shirt and corduroys, carrying a suit-case
packed to bursting with clothes and Baedekers, with one hundred
and fifty dollars in express-company drafts craftily concealed,
he dashed down to Baraieff's hole. Though it was only
eight-thirty, he was afraid he was going to be late.

Till 2 P.M. he sat waiting, then was sent to the Joy Steamship
Line wharf with a ticket to Boston and a letter to Trubiggs's
shipping-office: "Give bearer Ren as per inclosed receet one
trip England catel boat charge my acct. SYLVESTRE BARAIEFF, N. Y."

Standing on the hurricane-deck of the Joy Line boat, with his
suit-case guardedly beside him, he crooned to himself tuneless
chants with the refrain, "Free, free, out to sea. Free, free,
that's _me!_" He had persuaded himself that there was practically
no danger of the boat's sinking or catching fire. Anyway, he
just wasn't going to be scared. As the steamer trudged up East
River he watched the late afternoon sun brighten the Manhattan
factories and make soft the stretches of Westchester fields.
(Of course, he "thrilled.")

He had no state-room, but was entitled to a place in a
twelve-berth room in the hold. Here large farmers without their
shoes were grumpily talking all at once, so he returned to the
deck; and the rest of the night, while the other passengers
snored, he sat modestly on a canvas stool, unblinkingly gloating
over a sea-fabric of frosty blue that was shot through with
golden threads when they passed lighthouses or ships. At dawn
he was weary, peppery-eyed, but he viewed the flooding light
with approval.

At last, Boston.

The front part of the shipping-office on Atlantic Avenue was a
glass-inclosed room littered with chairs, piles of circulars,
old pictures of Cunarders, older calendars, and directories to
be ranked as antiques. In the midst of these remains a
red-headed Yankee of forty, smoking a Pittsburg stogie, sat
tilted back in a kitchen chair, reading the Boston _American_.
Mr. Wrenn delivered M. Baraieff's letter and stood waiting,
holding his suit-case, ready to skip out and go aboard a
cattle-boat immediately.

The shipping-agent glanced through the letter, then snapped:

"Bryff's crazy. Always sends 'em too early. Wrenn, you ought
to come to me first. What j'yuh go to that Jew first for? Here
he goes and sends you a day late--or couple days too early. 'F
you'd got here last night I could 've sent you off this morning
on a Dominion Line boat. All I got now is a Leyland boat that
starts from Portland Saturday. Le's see; this is Wednesday.
Thursday, Friday--you'll have to wait three days. Now you want
me to fix you up, don't you? I might not be able to get you off
till a week from now, but you'd like to get off on a good boat
Saturday instead, wouldn't you?"

"Oh yes; I _would_. I--"

"Well, I'll try to fix it. You can see for yourself; boats
ain't leaving every minute just to please Bryff. And it's the
busy season. Bunches of rah-rah boys wanting to cross, and
Canadians wanting to get back to England, and Jews beating it to
Poland--to sling bombs at the Czar, I guess. And lemme tell
you, them Jews is all right. They're willing to pay for a man's
time and trouble in getting 'em fixed up, and so--"

With dignity Mr. William Wrenn stated, "Of course I'll be glad
to--uh--make it worth your while."

"I _thought_ you was a gentleman. Hey, Al! _Al!_" An underfed boy
with few teeth, dusty and grown out of his trousers, appeared.
"Clear off a chair for the gentleman. Stick that valise on top
my desk.... Sit down, Mr. Wrenn. You see, it's like this: I'll
tell you in confidence, you understand. This letter from Bryff
ain't worth the paper it's written on. He ain't got any right
to be sending out men for cattle-boats. Me, I'm running that.
I deal direct with all the Boston and Portland lines. If you
don't believe it just go out in the back room and ask any of the
cattlemen out there."

"Yes, I see," Mr. Wrenn observed, as though he were ill, and
toed an old almanac about the floor. "Uh--Mr.--Trubiggs, is it?"

"Yump. Yump, my boy. Trubiggs. Tru by name and true by
nature. Heh?"

This last was said quite without conviction. It was evidently
a joke which had come down from earlier years. Mr. Wrenn
ignored it and declared, as stoutly as he could:

"You see, Mr. Trubiggs, I'd be willing to pay you--"

"I'll tell you just how it is, Mr. Wrenn. I ain't one of these
Sheeny employment bureaus; I'm an American; I like to look out
for Americans. Even if you _didn't_ come to me first I'll watch
out for your interests, same's if they was mine. Now, do you
want to get fixed up with a nice fast boat that leaves Portland
next Saturday, just a couple of days' wait?"

"Oh yes, I _do_, Mr. Trubiggs."

"Well, my list is really full--men waiting, too--but if it 'd be
worth five dollars to you to--"

"Here's the five dollars."

The shipping-agent was disgusted. He had estimated from Mr.
Wrenn's cheap sweater-jacket and tennis-shoes that he would be
able to squeeze out only three or four dollars, and here he
might have made ten. More in sorrow than in anger:

"Of course you understand I may have a lot of trouble working
you in on the _next_ boat, you coming as late as this. Course
five dollars is less 'n what I usually get." He contemptuously
tossed the bill on his desk. "If you want me to slip a little
something extra to the agents--"

Mr. Wrenn was too head-achy to be customarily timid. "Let's see
that. Did I give you only five dollars?" Receiving the bill, he
folded it with much primness, tucked it into the pocket of his
shirt, and remarked:

"Now, you said you'd fix me up for five dollars. Besides, that
letter from Baraieff is a form with your name printed on it; so
I know you do business with him right along. If five dollars
ain't enough, why, then you can just go to hell, Mr. Trubiggs;
yes, sir, that's what you can do. I'm just getting tired of
monkeying around. If five _is_ enough I'll give this back to you
Friday, when you send me off to Portland, if you give me a
receipt. There!" He almost snarled, so weary and discouraged
was he.

Now, Trubiggs was a warm-hearted rogue, and he liked the society
of what he called "white people." He laughed, poked a Pittsburg
stogie at Mr. Wrenn, and consented:

"All right. I'll fix you up. Have a smoke. Pay me the five
Friday, or pay it to my foreman when he puts you on the
cattle-boat. I don't care a rap which. You're all right.
Can't bluff you, eh?"

And, further bluffing Mr. Wrenn, he suggested to him a
lodging-house for his two nights in Boston. "Tell the clerk
that red-headed Trubiggs sent you, and he'll give you the best
in the house. Tell him you're a friend of mine."

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