Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man Part 17

At last he heard her moving about. He rushed downstairs and waited on the stoop.

When she came out she glanced down and smiled contentedly.

He was flutteringly sure that she expected to see him there.

But all his plan of proffering a.s.sistance vanished as he saw her impatient eyes and her splendors of dress--another tight-fitting gown, of smoky gray, with faint silvery lights gliding along the fabric.

She sat on the rail above him, immediately, unhesitatingly, and answered his "Evenin'" cheerfully.

He wanted so much to sit beside her, to be friends with her.

But, he felt, it took courage to sit beside her. She was likely to stare haughtily at him. However, he did go up to the rail and sit, shyly kicking his feet, beside her, and she did not stare haughtily. Instead she moved over an inch or two, glanced at him almost as though they were sharing a secret, and said, quietly:

"I thought quite a bit about you last evening. I believe you really have an imagination, even though you are a salesman--I mean so many don't; you know how it is."

"Oh yes."

You see, Mr. Wrenn didn't know he was commonplace.

"After I left here last night I went over to Olympia Johns', and she dragged me off to a play. I thought of you at it because there was an imaginative butler in it. You don't mind my comparing you to a butler, do you? He was really quite the nicest person in the play, y' know. Most of it was gorgeously rotten. It used to be a French farce, but they sent it to Sunday-school and gave it a nice fresh frock. It seemed that a gentleman-tabby had been trying to make a match between his nephew and his ward. The ward arted. Personally I think it was by tonsorial art. But, anyway, the uncle knew that nothing brings people together so well as hating the same person. You know, like hating the cousin, when you're a kiddy, hating the cousin that always keeps her nails clean?"

"Yes! That's _so!_"

"So he turned nasty, and of course the nephew and ward clinched till death did them part--which, I'm very sorry to have to tell you, death wasn't decent enough to do on the stage. If the play could only have ended with everybody's funeral I should have called it a real happy ending."

Mr. Wrenn laughed gratefully, though uncertainly. He knew that she had made jokes for him, but he didn't exactly know what they were.

"The imaginative butler, he was rather good. But the rest--Ugh!"

"That must have been a funny play," he said, politely.

She looked at him sidewise and confided, "Will you do me a favor?"

"Oh yes, I--"

"Ever been married?"

He was frightfully startled. His "No" sounded as though he couldn't quite remember.

She seemed much amused. You wouldn't have believed that this superior quizzical woman who tapped her fingers carelessly on her slim exquisite knee had ever sobbed in the night.

"Oh, that wasn't a personal question," she said. "I just wanted to know what you're like. Don't you ever collect people? I do--chloroform 'em quite cruelly and pin their poor little corpses out on nice clean corks.... You live alone in New York, do you?"

"Y-yes."

"Who do you play with--know?"

"Not--not much of anybody. Except maybe Charley Carpenter.

He's a.s.sistant bookkeeper for the Souvenir Company. "He had wanted to, and immediately decided not to, invent _grandes mondes_ whereof he was an intimate.

"What do--oh, you know--people in New York who don't go to parties or read much--what do they do for amus.e.m.e.nt? I'm so interested in types."

"Well--" said he.

That was all he could say till he had digested a pair of thoughts: Just what did she mean by "types"? Had it something to do with printing stories? And what could he say about the people, anyway? He observed:

"Oh, I don't know--just talk about--oh, cards and jobs and folks and things and--oh, you know; go to moving pictures and vaudeville and go to Coney Island and--oh, sleep."

"But you--?"

"Well, I read a good deal. Quite a little. Shakespeare and geography and a lot of stuff. I like reading."

"And how do you place Nietzsche?" she gravely desired to know.

"Nietzsche. You know--the German humorist."

"Oh yes--uh--let me see now; he's--uh--"

"Why, you remember, don't you? Haeckel and he wrote the great musical comedy of the century. And Matisse did the music--Matisse and Rodin."

"I haven't been to it," he said, vaguely. "...I don't know much German. Course I know a few words, like _Sp.r.i.c.ken Sie Dutch_ and _Bitty, sir_, that Rabin at the Souvenir Company--he's a German Jew, I guess--learnt me.... But, say, isn't Kipling great! Gee! when I read _Kim_ I can imagine I'm hiking along one of those roads in India just like I was there--you know, all those magicians and so on.... Readin's wonderful, ain't it!"

"Um. Yes."

"I bet you read an awful lot."

"Very little. Oh--D'Annunzio and some Turgenev and a little Tourgenieff.... That last was a joke, you know."

"Oh yes," disconcertedly.

"What sorts of plays do you go to, Mr. Wrenn?"

"Moving pictures mostly," he said, easily, then bitterly wished he hadn't confessed so low-life a habit.

"Well--tell me, my dear--Oh, I didn't mean that; artists use it a good deal; it just means 'old chap.' You _don't_ mind my asking such beastly personal questions, do you? I'm interested in people.... And now I must go up and write a letter. I was going over to Olympia's--she's one of the Interesting People I spoke of--but you see you have been much more amusing. Good night.

You're lonely in London, aren't you? We'll have to go sightseeing some day."

"Yes, I am lonely!" he exploded. Then, meekly: "Oh, thank you!

I sh'd be awful pleased to.... Have you seen the Tower, Miss Nash?"

"No. Never. Have you?"

"No. You see, I thought it 'd be kind of a gloomy thing to see all alone. Is that why you haven't never been there, too?"

"My dear man, I see I shall have to educate you. Shall I? I've been taken in hand by so many people--it would be a pleasure to pa.s.s on the implied slur. Shall I?"

"Please do."

"One simply doesn't go and see the Tower, because that's what trippers do. Don't you understand, my dear? (Pardon the 'my dear' again.) The Tower is the sort of thing school superintendents see and then go back and lecture on in school a.s.sembly-room and the G. A. R. hall. I'll take you to the Tate Gallery." Then, very abruptly, "G' night," and she was gone.