Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man Part 32

"Yes, I guess it is about that, Miss Theresa."

"Well, I just knew you couldn't stand it away from us.

I suppose you'll want your room back. Ma, here's Mr. Wrenn back again--Mr. Wrenn! _Ma!_"

"Oh-h-h-h!" sounded Goaty Zapp's voice, in impish disdain, below. "Mr. Wrenn's back. Hee, hee! Couldn't stand it. Ain't that like a Yankee!"

A slap, a wail, then Mrs. Zapp's elephantine slowness on the stairs from the bas.e.m.e.nt. She appeared, b.u.t.toning her collar, smiling almost pleasantly, for she disliked Mr. Wrenn less than she did any other of her lodgers.

"Back already, Mist' Wrenn? Ah declare, Ah was saying to Lee Theresa just yest'day, Ah just knew you'd be wis.h.i.+ng you was back with us. Won't you come in?"

He edged into the parlor with, "How is the sciatica, Mrs. Zapp?"

"Ah ain't feeling right smart."

"My room occupied yet?"

He was surveying the airless parlor rather heavily, and his curt manner was not pleasing to the head of the house of Zapp, who remarked, funereally:

"It ain't taken just now, Mist' Wrenn, but Ah dunno.

There was a gennulman a-looking at it just yesterday, and he said he'd be permanent if he came. Ah declare, Mist' Wrenn, Ah dunno's Ah like to have my gennulmen just get up and go without giving me notice."

Lee Theresa scowled at her.

Mr. Wrenn retorted, "I _did_ give you notice."

"Ah know, but--well, Ah reckon Ah can let you have it, but Ah'll have to have four and a half a week instead of four. Prices is all going up so, Ah declare, Ah was just saying to Lee T'resa Ah dunno what we're all going to do if the dear Lord don't look out for us. And, Mist' Wrenn, Ah dunno's Ah like to have you coming in so late nights. But Ah reckon Ah can accommodate you."

"It's a good deal of a favor, isn't it, Mrs. Zapp?"

Mr. Wrenn was dangerously polite. Let gentility look out for the sharp practices of the Yankee.

"Yes, but--"

It was our hero, our madman of the seven and seventy seas, our revolutionist friend of Istra, who leaped straight from the salt-incrusted decks of his laboring steamer to the musty parlor and declared, quietly but unmovably-practically unmovably--"Well, then, I guess I'd better not take it at all."

"So that's the way you're going to treat us!" bellowed Mrs.

Zapp. "You go off and leave us with an unoccupied room and-- Oh! You poor white trash--you--"

"_Ma!_ You shut up and go down-stairs-s-s-s-s!" Theresa hissed.

"Go on."

Mrs. Zapp wabbled regally out. Lee Theresa spoke to Mr. Wrenn:

"Ma ain't feeling a bit well this afternoon. I'm sorry she talked like that. You will come back, won't you?" She showed all her teeth in a genuine smile, and in her anxiety reached his heart. "Remember, you promised you would."

"Well, I will, but--"

Bill Wrenn was fading, an affrighted specter. The "but" was the last glimpse of him, and that Theresa overlooked, as she bustlingly chirruped: "I _knew_ you would understand. I'll skip right up and look at the room and put on fresh sheets."

One month, one hot New York month, pa.s.sed before the imperial Mr. Guilfogle gave him back The Job, and then at seventeen dollars and fifty cents a week instead of his former nineteen dollars. Mr. Wrenn refused, upon pretexts, to go out with the manager for a drink, and presented him with twenty suggestions for new novelties and circular letters. He rearranged the unsystematic methods of Jake, the cub, and two days later he was at work as though he had never in his life been farther from the Souvenir Company than Newark.

CHAPTER XIII

HE IS "OUR MR. WRENN"

DEAR ISTRA,--I am back in New York feeling very well & hope this finds you the same. I have been wanting to write to you for quite a while now but there has not been much news of any kind & so I have not written to you. But now I am back working for the Souvenir Company. I hope you are having a good time in Paris it must be a very pretty city & I have often wished to be there perhaps some day I shall go. I [several erasures here]

have been reading quite a few books since I got back & think now I shall get on better with my reading. You told me so many things about books & so on & I do appreciate it. In closing, I am yours very sincerely, WILLIAM WRENN.

There was nothing else he could say. But there were a terrifying number of things he could think as he crouched by the window overlooking West Sixteenth Street, whose dull hue had not changed during the centuries while he had been tramping England.

Her smile he remembered--and he cried, "Oh, I want to see her so much." Her gallant dash through the rain--and again the cry.

At last he cursed himself, "Why don't you _do_ something that 'd count for her, and not sit around yammering for her like a fool?"

He worked on his plan to "bring the South into line"--the Souvenir Company's line. Again and again he sprang up from the writing-table in his hot room when the presence of Istra came and stood compellingly by his chair. But he worked.

The Souvenir Company salesmen had not been able to get from the South the business which the company deserved if right and justice were to prevail. On the steamer from England Mr. Wrenn had conceived the idea that a Dixieland Ink-well, with the Confederate and Union flags draped in graceful cast iron, would make an admirable present with which to draw the attention of the Southem trade. The ink-well was to be followed by a series of letters, sent on the slightest provocation, on order or re-order, tactfully hoping the various healths of the Southland were good and the baseball season important; all to insure a welcome to the salesmen on the Southem route.

He drew up his letters; he sketched his ink-well; he got up the courage to talk with the office manager.... To forget love and the beloved, men have ascended in aeroplanes and conquered African tribes. To forget love, a new, busy, much absorbed Mr.

Wrenn, very much Ours, bustled into Mr. Guilfogle's office, slapped down his papers on the desk, and demanded: "Here's that plan about gettin' the South interested that I was telling you about. Say, honest, I'd like awful much to try it on. I'd just have to have part time of one stenographer."

"Well, you know our stenographers are pretty well crowded.

But you can leave the outline with me. I'll look it over,"

said Mr. Guilfogle.

That same afternoon the manager enthusiastically O. K.'d the plan. To enthusiastically--O. K. is an office technology for saying, gloomily, "Well, I don't suppose it 'd hurt to try it, anyway, but for the love of Mike be careful, and let me see any letters you send out."

So Mr. Wrenn dictated a letter to each of their Southern merchants, sending him a Dixieland Ink-well and inquiring about the crops. He had a stenographer, an efficient intolerant young woman who wrote down his halting words as though they were examples of bad English she wanted to show her friends, and waited for the next word with cynical amus.e.m.e.nt.

"By gos.h.!.+" growled Bill Wrenn, the cattleman, "I'll show her I'm running this. I'll show her she's got another think coming."

But he dictated so busily and was so hot to get results that he forgot the girl's air of high-cla.s.s martyrdom.

He watched the Southern baseball results in the papers. He seized on every salesman on the Southern route as he came in, and inquired about the religion and politics of the merchants in his district. He even forgot to worry about his next rise in salary, and found it much more exciting to rush back for an important letter after a quick lunch than to watch the time and make sure that he secured every minute of his lunch-hour.

When October came--October of the vagabond, with the leaves brilliant out on the Palisades, and Sixth Avenue moving-picture palaces cool again and gay--Mr. Wrenn stayed late, under the mercury-vapor lights, making card cross-files of the Southern merchants, their hobbies and prejudices, and whistling as he worked, stopping now and then to slap the desk and mutter, "By gos.h.!.+ I'm gettin' 'em--gettin' 'em."

He rarely thought of Istra till he was out on the street again, proud of having worked so late that his eyes ached. In fact, his chief troubles these days came when Mr. Guilfogle wouldn't "let him put through an idea."