Books: Our Mr. Wrenn

S >> Sinclair Lewis >> Our Mr. Wrenn

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Lying on his mattress, Bill stared at the network of the
ratlines against the brilliant sky. The crisscross lines made
him think of the ruled order-blanks of the Souvenir Company.

"Gee!" he mused, "I'd like to know if Jake is handling my work
the way we--they--like it. I'd like to see the old office again,
and Charley Carpenter, just for a couple of minutes. Gee!
I wish they could have seen me put it all over Pete to-night!
That's what I'm going to do to the blooming Englishmen if they
don't like me."

The S.S. _Merian_ panted softly beside the landing-stage at
Birkenhead, Liverpool's Jersey City, resting in the sunshine
after her voyage, while the cattle were unloaded. They had
encountered fog-banks at the mouth of the Mersey River. Mr.
Wrenn had ecstatically watched the shores of
England--_England!_--ride at him through the fog, and had panted
over the lines of English villas among the dunes. It was like
a dream, yet the shore had such amazingly safe solid colors,
real red and green and yellow, when contrasted with the fog-wet
deck unearthily glancing with mist-lights.

Now he was seeing his first foreign city, and to Morton,
stolidly curious beside him, he could say nothing save "Gee!"
With church-tower and swarthy dome behind dome, Liverpool lay
across the Mersey. Up through the Liverpool streets that ran
down to the river, as though through peep-holes slashed straight
back into the Middle Ages, his vision plunged, and it wandered
unchecked through each street while he hummed:

"Free, free, in Eu-ro-pee, that's _me!_"

The cattlemen were called to help unload the remaining hay.
They made a game of it. Even Satan smiled, even the Jewish
elders were lightly affable as they made pretendedly fierce
gestures at the squat patient hay-bales. Tim, the hatter,
danced a limber foolish jig upon the deck, and McGarver
bellowed, "The bon-nee bon-nee banks of Loch Lo-o-o-o-mond."

The crowd bawled: "Come on, Bill Wrenn; your turn. Hustle up
with that bale, Pete, or we'll sic Bill on you."

Bill Wrenn, standing very dignified, piped: "I'm Colonel
Armour. I own all these cattle, 'cept the Morris uns, see?
Gotta do what I say, savvy? Tim, walk on your ear."

The hatter laid his head on the deck and waved his anemic legs
in accordance with directions from Colonel Armour (late Wrenn).

The hay was off. The _Merian_ tooted and headed across the
Mersey to the Huskinson Dock, in Liverpool, while the cattlemen
played tag about the deck. Whooping and laughing, they made
last splashy toilets at the water-butts, dragged out their
luggage, and descended to the dock-house.

As the cattlemen passed Bill Wrenn and Morton, shouting
affectionate good-bys in English or courteous Yiddish, Bill
commented profanely to Morton on the fact that the solid stone
floor of the great shed seemed to have enough sea-motion to
"make a guy sick." It was nearly his last utterance as Bill Wrenn.
He became Mr. Wrenn, absolute Mr. Wrenn, on the street,
as he saw a real English bobby, a real English carter, and the
sign, "Cocoa House. Tea _Id_."

England!

"Now for some real grub!" cried Morton. "No more scouse and
willow-leaf tea."

Stretching out their legs under a table glorified with toasted
Sally Lunns and Melton Mowbrays, served by a waitress who said
"Thank _you_" with a rising inflection, they gazed at the line of
mirrors running Britishly all around the room over the long
lounge seat, and smiled with the triumphant content which comes
to him whose hunger for dreams and hunger for meat-pies are
satisfied together.

CHAPTER V

HE FINDS MUCH QUAINT ENGLISH FLAVOR

Big wharves, all right. England sure is queen of the sea, heh?
Busy town, Liverpool. But, say, there is a quaint English
flavor to these shops.... Look at that: `Red Lion Inn.'...
`Overhead trams' they call the elevated. Real flavor, all
right. English as can be.... I sure like to wander around
these little shops. Street crowd. That's where you get the
real quaint flavor."

Thus Morton, to the glowing Mr. Wrenn, as they turned into St.
George's Square, noting the Lipton's Tea establishment. _Sir_
Thomas Lipton--wasn't he a friend of the king? Anyway, he was
some kind of a lord, and he owned big society racing-yachts.

In the grandiose square Mr. Wrenn prayerfully remarked, "Gee!"

"Greek temple. Fine," agreed Morton.

"That's St. George's Hall, where they have big organ concerts,"
explained Mr. Wrenn. "And there's the art-gallery across the
Square, and here's the Lime Street Station." He had studied his
Baedeker as club women study the cyclopedia. "Let's go over and
look at the trains."

"Funny little boxes, ain't they, Wrenn, them cars! Quaint
things. What is it they call 'em--carriages? First, second,
third class...."

"Just like in books."

"Booking-office. That's tickets.... Funny, eh?"

Mr. Wrenn insisted on paying for both their high teas at the
cheap restaurant, timidly but earnestly. Morton was troubled.
As they sat on a park bench, smoking those most Anglican
cigarettes, "Dainty Bits," Mr. Wrenn begged:

"What's the matter, old man?"

"Oh, nothing. Just thinking." Morton smiled artificially.
He added, presently: "Well, old Bill, got to make the break.
Can't go on living on you this way."

"Aw, thunder! You ain't living on me. Besides, I want you to.
Honest I do. We can have a whole lot better time together, Morty."

"Yes, but--Nope; I can't do it. Nice of you. Can't do it,
though. Got to go on my own, like the fellow says."

"Aw, come on. Look here; it's my money, ain't it? I got a
right to spend it the way I want to, haven't I? Aw, come on.
We'll bum along together, and then when the money is gone we'll
get some kind of job together. Honest, I want you to."

"Hunka. Don't believe you'd care for the kind of knockabout
jobs I'll have to get."

"Sure I would. Aw, come on, Morty. I--"

"You're too level-headed to like to bum around like a fool hobo.
You'd dam soon get tired of it."

"What if I did? Morty, look here. I've been learning something
on this trip. I've always wanted to just do one thing--see
foreign places. Well, I want to do that just as much as ever.
But there's something that's a whole lot more important.
Somehow, I ain't ever had many friends. Some ways you're about
the best friend I've ever had--you ain't neither too highbrow or
too lowbrow. And this friendship business--it means such an
awful lot. It's like what I was reading about--something by
Elbert Hubbard or--thunder, I can't remember his name, but,
anyway, it's one of those poet guys that writes for the back
page of the _Journal_--something about a _joyous adventure_.
That's what being friends is. Course you understand I wouldn't
want to say this to most people, but you'll understand how I mean.
It's--this friendship business is just like those old crusaders--
you know--they'd start out on a fine morning--you know; armor
shining, all that stuff. It wouldn't make any dif. what they met
as long as they was fighting together. Rainy nights with folks
sneaking through the rain to get at 'em, and all sorts of things--
ready for anything, long as they just stuck together. That's the way
this friendship business is, I b'lieve. Just like it said in the
_Journal_. Yump, sure is. Gee! it's--Chance to tell folks
what you think and really get some fun out of seeing places
together. And I ain't ever done it much. Course I don't mean
to say I've been living off on any blooming desert island all my
life, but, just the same, I've always been kind of alone--not
knowing many folks. You know how it is in a New York
rooming-house. So now--Aw, don't slip up on me, Morty.
Honestly, I don't care what kind of work we do as long as we can
stick together; I don't care a hang if we don't get anything
better to do than scrub floors!"

Morton patted his arm and did not answer for a while. Then:

"Yuh, I know how you mean. And it's good of you to like beating
it around with me. But you sure got the exaggerated idee of me.
And you'd get sick of the holes I'm likely to land in."

There was a certain pride which seemed dreadfully to shut Mr.
Wrenn out as Morton added:

"Why, man, I'm going to do all of Europe. From the Turkish
jails to--oh, St. Petersburg.... You made good on the _Merian_,
all right. But you do like things shipshape."

"Oh, I'd--"

"We might stay friends if we busted up now and met in New York
again. But not if you get into all sorts of bum places w--"

"Why, look here, Morty--"

"--with me.... However, I'll think it over. Let's not talk
about it till to-morrow."

"Oh, please do think it over, Morty, old man, won't you? And
to-night you'll let me take you to a music-hall, won't you?"

"Uh--yes," Morton hesitated.

A music-hall--not mere vaudeville! Mr. Wrenn could hardly keep
his feet on the pavement as they scampered to it and got
ninepenny seats. He would have thought it absurd to pay
eighteen cents for a ticket, but pence--They were out at
nine-thirty. Happily tired, Mr. Wrenn suggested that they go to
a temperance hotel at his expense, for he had read in Baedeker
that temperance hotels were respectable--also cheap.

"No, no!" frowned Morton. "Tell you what you do, Bill. You go
to a hotel, and I'll beat it down to a lodging-house on Duke
Street.... Juke Street!... Remember how I ran onto Pete on the
street? He told me you could get a cot down there for fourpence."

"Aw, come on to a hotel. Please do! It 'd just hurt me to think
of you sleeping in one of them holes. I wouldn't sleep a bit
if--"

"Say, for the love of Mike, Wrenn, get wise! Get wise, son!
I'm not going to sponge on you, and that's all there is to it."

Bill Wrenn strode into their company for a minute, and quoth the
terrible Bill:

"Well, you don't need to get so sore about it. I don't go
around asking folks can I give 'em a meal ticket all the time,
let me tell you, and when I do--Oh rats! Say, I didn't mean to
get huffy, Morty. But, doggone you, old man, you can't shake me
this easy. I sye, old top, I'm peeved; yessir. We'll go Dutch
to a lodging-house, or even walk the streets."

"All right, sir; all right. I'll take you up on that. We'll
sleep in an areaway some place."

They walked to the outskirts of Liverpool, questing the desirable
dark alley. Awed by the solid quietude and semigrandeur of the
large private estates, through narrow streets where dim trees
leaned over high walls whose long silent stretches were broken
only by mysterious little doors, they tramped bashfully,
inspecting, but always rejecting, nooks by lodge gates.

They came to a stone church with a porch easily reached from the
street, a large and airy stone porch, just suited, Morton
declared, "to a couple of hoboes like us. If a bobby butts in,
why, we'll just slide under them seats. Then the bobby can go
soak his head."

Mr. Wrenn had never so far defied society as to steal a place
for sleeping. He felt very uneasy, like a man left naked on the
street by robbers, as he rolled up his coat for a pillow and
removed his shoes in a place that was perfectly open to the
street. The paved floor was cold to his bare feet, and, as he
tried to go to sleep, it kept getting colder and colder to his
back. Reaching out his hand, he fretfully rubbed the cracks
between stones. He scowled up at the ceiling of the porch.
He couldn't bear to look out through the door, for it framed the
vicar's house, with lamplight bodying forth latticed windows,
suggesting soft beds and laughter and comfortable books. All
the while his chilled back was aching in new places.

He sprang up, put on his shoes, and paced the churchyard. It
seemed a great waste of educational advantages not to study the
tower of this foreign church, but he thought much more about his
aching shoulder-blades.

Morton came from the porch stiff but grinning. "Didn't like it
much, eh, Bill? Afraid you wouldn't. Must say I didn't either,
though. Well, come on. Let's beat it around and see if we
can't find a better place."

In a vacant lot they discovered a pile of hay. Mr. Wrenn hardly
winced at the hearty slap Morton gave his back, and he
pronounced, "Some Waldorf-Astoria, that stack!" as they sneaked
into the lot. They had laid loving hands upon the hay,
remarking, "Well, I _guess!_" when they heard from a low stable
at the very back of the lot:

"I say, you chaps, what are you doing there?"

A reflective carter, who had been twisting two straws, ambled
out of the shadow of the stable and prepared to do battle.

"Say, old man, can't we sleep in your hay just to-night?" argued
Morton. "We're Americans. Came over on a cattle-boat. We
ain't got only enough money to last us for food," while Mr.
Wrenn begged, "Aw, please let us."

"Oh! You're Americans, are you? You seem decent enough. I've
got a brother in the States. He used to own this stable with
me. In St. Cloud, Minnesota, he is, you know. Minnesota's some
kind of a shire. Either of you chaps been in Minnesota?"

"Sure," lied Morton; "I've hunted bear there."

"Oh, I say, bear now! My brother's never written m--"

"Oh, that was way up in the northern part, in the Big Woods.
I've had some narrow escapes."

Then Morton, who had never been west of Pittsburg, sang somewhat
in this wise the epic of the hunting he had never done:

Alone. Among the pines. Dead o' winter. Only one shell in his
rifle. Cold of winter. Snow--deep snow. Snow-shoes. Hiking
along--reg'lar mushing--packing grub to the lumber-camp. Way up
near the Canadian border. Cold, terrible cold. Stars looked
like little bits of steel.

Mr. Wrenn thought he remembered the story. He had read it in a
magazine. Morton was continuing:

Snow stretched out among the pines. He was wearing a Mackinaw
and shoe-packs. Saw a bear loping along. He had--Morton had--a
.44-.40 Marlin, but only one shell. Thrust the muzzle of his
rifle right into the bear's mouth. Scared for a minute. Almost
fell off his snow-shoes. Hardest thing he ever did, to pull that
trigger. Fired. Bear sort of jumped at him, then rolled over, clawing.
Great place, those Minnesota Big--

"What's a shoe-pack?" the Englishman stolidly interjected.

"Kind of a moccasin.... Great place, those woods. Hope your
brother gets the chance to get up there."

"I say, I wonder did you ever meet him? Scrabble is his name,
Jock Scrabble."

"Jock Scrabble--no, but _say!_ By golly, there was a fellow up in
the Big Woods that came from St. Cl--St. Cloud? Yes, that was
it. He was telling us about the town. I remember he said your
brother had great chances there."

The Englishman meditatively accepted a bad cigar from Mr. Wrenn.
Suddenly: "You chaps can sleep in the stable-loft if you'd
like. But you must blooming well stop smoking."

So in the dark odorous hay-mow Mr. Wrenn stretched out his legs
with an affectionate "good night" to Morton. He slept nine
hours. When he awoke, at the sound of a chain clanking in the
stable below, Morton was gone. This note was pinned to his
sleeve:

DEAR OLD MAN,--I still feel sure that you will not enjoy the
hiking. Bumming is not much fun for most people, I don't think,
even if they say it is. I do not want to live on you. I always
did hate to graft on people. So I am going to beat it off
alone. But I hope I will see you in N Y & we will enjoy many a
good laugh together over our trip. If you will phone the P. R.
R. you can find out when I get back & so on. As I do not know
what your address will be. Please look me up & I hope you will
have a good trip.
Yours truly,
HARRY P. MORTON.

Mr. Wrenn lay listening to the unfriendly rattling of the chain
harness below for a long time. When he crawled languidly down
from the hay-loft he glowered in a manner which was decidedly
surly even for Bill Wrenn at a middle-aged English stranger who
was stooping over a cow's hoof in a stall facing the ladder.

"Wot you doing here?" asked the Englishman, raising his head and
regarding Mr. Wrenn as a housewife does a cockroach in the
salad-bowl.

Mr. Wrenn was bored. This seemed a very poor sort of man; a
bloated Cockney, with a dirty neck-cloth, vile cuffs of grayish
black, and a waistcoat cut foolishly high.

"The owner said I could sleep here," he snapped.

"Ow. 'E did, did 'e? 'E ayn't been giving you any of the
perishin' 'osses, too, 'as 'e?"

It was sturdy old Bill Wrenn who snarled, "Oh, shut up!" Bill
didn't feel like standing much just then. He'd punch this
fellow as he'd punched Pete, as soon as not--or even sooner.

"Ow.... It's shut up, is it?... I've 'arf a mind to set the
'tecs on you, but I'm lyte. I'll just 'it you on the bloody nowse."

Bill Wrenn stepped off the ladder and squared at him. He was
sorry that the Cockney was smaller than Pete.

The Cockney came over, feinted in an absent-minded manner, made
swift and confusing circles with his left hand, and hit Bill
Wrenn on the aforesaid bloody nose, which immediately became a
bleeding nose. Bill Wrenn felt dizzy and, sitting on a
grain-sack, listened amazedly to the Cockney's apologetic:

"I'm sorry I ayn't got time to 'ave the law on you, but I could
spare time to 'it you again."

Bill shook the blood from his nose and staggered at the Cockney,
who seized his collar, set him down outside the stable with a
jarring bump, and walked away, whistling:

"Come, oh come to our Sunday-school,
Ev-v-v-v-v-v-ry Sunday morn-ing."

"Gee!" mourned Mr. William Wrenn, "and I thought I was getting
this hobo business down pat.... Gee! I wonder if Pete _was_ so
hard to lick?"

CHAPTER VI

HE IS AN ORPHAN

Sadly clinging to the plan of the walking-trip he was to have
made with Morton, Mr. Wrenn crossed by ferry to Birkenhead,
quite unhappily, for he wanted to be discussing with Morton the
quaintness of the uniformed functionaries. He looked for the
_Merian_ half the way over. As he walked through Birkenhead,
bound for Chester, he pricked himself on to note red-brick
house-rows, almost shocking in their lack of high front stoops.
Along the country road he reflected: "Wouldn't Morty enjoy
this! Farm-yard all paved. Haystack with a little roof on it.
Kitchen stove stuck in a kind of fireplace. Foreign as the deuce."

But Morton was off some place, in a darkness where there weren't
things to enjoy. Mr. Wrenn had lost him forever. Once he heard
himself wishing that even Tim, the hatter, or "good old
McGarver" were along. A scene so British that it seemed proper
to enjoy it alone he did find in a real garden-party, with what
appeared to be a real curate, out of a story in _The Strand_,
passing teacups; but he passed out of that hot glow into a cold
plodding that led him to Chester and a dull hotel which might as
well have been in Bridgeport or Hoboken.

He somewhat timidly enjoyed Chester the early part of the next
day, docilely following a guide about the walls, gaping at the
mill on the Dee and asking the guide two intelligent questions
about Roman remains. He snooped through the galleried streets,
peering up dark stairways set in heavy masonry that spoke of
historic sieges, and imagined that he was historically besieging.
For a time Mr. Wrenn's fancies contented him.

He smiled as he addressed glossy red and green postcards to Lee
Theresa and Goaty, Cousin John and Mr. Guilfogle, writing on
each a variation of "Having a splendid trip. This is a very
interesting old town. Wish you were here." Pantingly, he found
a panorama showing the hotel where he was staying--or at least
two of its chimneys--and, marking it with a heavy cross and the
announcement "This is my hotel where I am staying," he sent it
to Charley Carpenter.

He was at his nearest to greatness at Chester Cathedral.
He chuckled aloud as he passed the remains of a refectory of
monastic days, in the close, where knights had tied their
romantically pawing chargers, "just like he'd read about in a
story about the olden times." He was really there. He glanced
about and assured himself of it. He wasn't in the office. He
was in an English cathedral close!

But shortly thereafter he was in an English temperance hotel,
sitting still, almost weeping with the longing to see Morton.
He walked abroad, feeling like an intruder on the lively night
crowd; in a tap-room he drank a glass of English porter and
tried to make himself believe that he was acquainted with the
others in the room, to which theory they gave but little
support. All this while his loneliness shadowed him.

Of that loneliness one could make many books; how it sat down
with him; how he crouched in his chair, be-spelled by it, till
he violently rose and fled, with loneliness for companion in his
flight. He was lonely. He sighed that he was "lonely as fits."
Lonely--the word obsessed him. Doubtless he was a bit mad, as
are all the isolated men who sit in distant lands longing for
the voices of friendship.

Next morning he hastened to take the train for Oxford to get
away from his loneliness, which lolled evilly beside him in
the compartment. He tried to convey to a stodgy North
Countryman his interest in the way the seats faced each other.
The man said "Oh aye?" insultingly and returned to his
Manchester newspaper.

Feeling that he was so offensive that it was a matter of honor
for him to keep his eyes away, Mr. Wrenn dutifully stared out of
the door till they reached Oxford.

There is a calm beauty to New College gardens. There is, Mr.
Wrenn observed, "something simply _slick_ about all these old
quatrangleses," crossed by summering students in short flappy
gowns. But he always returned to his exile's room, where he now
began to hear the new voice of shapeless nameless Fear--fear of
all this alien world that didn't care whether he loved it or not.

He sat thinking of the cattle-boat as a home which he had loved
but which he would never see again. He had to use force on
himself to keep from hurrying back to Liverpool while there
still was time to return on the same boat.

No! He was going to "stick it out somehow, and get onto the
hang of all this highbrow business."

Then he said: "Oh, darn it all. I feel rotten. I wish I was dead!"

"Those, sir, are the windows of the apartment once occupied by
Walter Pater," said the cultured American after whom he was
trailing. Mr. Wrenn viewed them attentively, and with shame
remembered that he didn't know who Walter Pater was. But--oh
yes, now he remembered; Walter was the guy that 'd murdered his
whole family. So, aloud, "Well, I guess Oxford's sorry Walt
ever come here, all right."

"My dear sir, Mr. Pater was the most immaculate genius of the
nineteenth century," lectured Dr. Mittyford, the cultured
American, severely.

Mr. Wrenn had met Mittyford, Ph.D., near the barges; had, upon
polite request, still more politely lent him a match, and seized
the chance to confide in somebody. Mittyford had a bald head,
neat eye-glasses, a fair family income, a chatty good-fellowship
at the Faculty Club, and a chilly contemptuousness in his
rhetoric class-room at Leland Stanford, Jr., University. He
wrote poetry, which he filed away under the letter "P" in his
letter-file.

Dr. Mittyford grudgingly took Mr. Wrenn about, to teach him what
not to enjoy. He pointed at Shelley's rooms as at a
certificated angel's feather, but Mr. Wrenn writhingly admitted
that he had never heard of Shelley, whose name he confused with
Max O'Rell's, which Dr. Mittyford deemed an error. Then,
Pater's window. The doctor shrugged. Oh well, what could you
expect of the proletariat! Swinging his stick aloofly, he
stalked to the Bodleian and vouchsafed, "That, sir, is the
_AEschylus_ Shelley had in his pocket when he was drowned."

Though he heard with sincere regret the news that his new idol
was drowned, Mr. Wrenn found that _AEschylus_ left him cold. It
seemed to be printed in a foreign language. But perhaps it was
merely a very old book.

Standing before a case in which was an exquisite book in a queer
wrigglesome language, bearing the legend that from this volume
Fitzgerald had translated the _Rubaiyat_, Dr. Mittyford waved his
hand and looked for thanks.

"Pretty book," said Mr. Wrenn.

"And did you note who used it?"

"Uh--yes." He hastily glanced at the placard. "Mr. Fitzgerald.
Say, I think I read some of that Rubaiyat. It was something
about a Persian kitten--I don't remember exactly."

Dr. Mittyford walked bitterly to the other end of the room.

About eight in the evening Mr. Wrenn's landlady knocked with,
"There's a gentleman below to see you, sir."

"Me?" blurted Mr. Wrenn.

He galloped down-stairs, panting to himself that Morton had at
last found him. He peered out and was overwhelmed by a
motor-car, with Dr. Mittyford waiting in awesome fur coat,
goggles, and gauntlets, centered in the car-lamplight that
loomed in the shivery evening fog.

"Gee! just like a hero in a novel!" reflected Mr. Wrenn.

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