Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man Part 7

"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 Sat.u.r.day, 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 s.h.i.+pping-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 s.h.i.+rt, 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 h.e.l.l, 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."

When Mr. Wrenn had gone Mr. Trubiggs remarked to some one, by telephone, "'Nother sucker coming, Blaugeld. Now don't try to do me out of my bit or I'll cap for some other joint, understand? Huh? Yuh, stick him for a thirty-five-cent bed.

S' long."

The caravan of Trubiggs's cattlemen who left for Portland by night steamer, Friday, was headed by a bulky-shouldered boss, who wore no coat and whose corduroy vest swung cheerfully open. A motley troupe were the cattlemen--Jews with small trunks, large imitation-leather valises and a.s.sorted bundles, a stolid prophet-bearded procession of weary men in tattered derbies and sweat-shop clothes.

There were Englishmen with rope-bound pine chests. A lewd-mouthed American named Tim, who said he was a hatter out of work, and a loud-talking tough called Pete mingled with a straggle of hoboes.

The boss counted the group and selected his confidants for the trip to Portland--Mr. Wrenn and a youth named Morton.

Morton was a square heavy-fleshed young man with stubby hands, who, up to his eyes, was stolid and solid as a granite monument, but merry of eye and hinting friendliness in his tousled soft-brown hair. He was always wielding a pipe and artfully blowing smoke through his nostrils.

Mr. Wrenn and he smiled at each other searchingly as the Portland boat pulled out, and a wind swept straight from the Land of Elsewhere.

After dinner Morton, smoking a pipe shaped somewhat like a golf-stick head and somewhat like a toad, at the rail of the steamer, turned to Mr. Wrenn with:

"Cla.s.sy bunch of cattlemen we've got to go with. Not!... My name's Morton."

"I'm awful glad to meet you, Mr. Morton. My name's Wrenn."

"Glad to be off at last, ain't you?"

"Golly! I should say I _am!_"

"So'm I. Been waiting for this for years. I'm a clerk for the P. R. R. in N' York."

"I come from New York, too."

"So? Lived there long?"

"Uh-huh, I--" began Mr. Wrenn.

"Well, I been working for the Penn. for seven years now. Now I've got a vacation of three months. On me. Gives me a chance to travel a little. Got ten plunks and a second-cla.s.s ticket back from Glasgow. But I'm going to see England and France just the same. Prob'ly Germany, too."

"Second cla.s.s? Why don't you go steerage, and save?"

"Oh, got to come back like a gentleman. You know. You're from New York, too, eh?"

"Yes, I'm with an art-novelty company on Twenty-eighth Street.

I been wanting to get away for quite some time, too.... How are you going to travel on ten dollars?"

"Oh, work m' way. Cinch. Always land on my feet. Not on my uppers, at that. I'm only twenty-eight, but I've been on my own, like the English fellow says, since I was twelve.... Well, how about you? Traveling or going somewhere?"

"Just traveling. I'm glad we're going together, Mr. Morton.

I don't think most of these cattlemen are very nice. Except for the old Jews. They seem to be fine old coots. They make you think of--oh--you know--prophets and stuff. Watch 'em, over there, making tea. I suppose the steamer grub ain't kosher.

I seen one on the Joy Line saying his prayers--I suppose he was--in a kind of shawl."

"Well, well! You don't say so!"

Distinctly, Mr. Wrenn felt that he was one of the gentlemen who, in Kipling, stand at steamer rails exchanging observations on strange lands. He uttered, cosmopolitanly:

"Gee! Look at that sunset. Ain't that grand!"

"Holy smoke! it sure is. I don't see how anybody could believe in religion after looking at that."

Shocked and confused at such a theory, yet excited at finding that Morton apparently had thoughts, Mr. Wrenn piped: "Honestly, I don't see that at _all_. I don't see how anybody could disbelieve anything after a sunset like that. Makes me believe all sorts of thing--gets me going--I imagine I'm all sorts of places--on the Nile and so on."

"Sure! That's just it. Everything's so peaceful and natural.

Just _is_. Gives the imagination enough to do, even by itself, without having to have religion."

"Well," reflected Mr. Wrenn, "I don't hardly ever go to church.

I don't believe much in all them highbrow sermons that don't come down to bra.s.s tacks--ain't got nothing to do with real folks. But just the same, I love to go up to St. Patrick's Cathedral. Why, I get real _thrilled_--I hope you won't think I'm trying to get high-browed, Mr. Morton."

"Why, no. Cer'nly not. I understand. Gwan."

"It gets me going when I look down the aisle at the altar and see the arches and so on. And the priests in their robes--they look so--so way up--oh, I dunno just how to say it--so kind of _uplifted_."

"Sure, I know. Just the esthetic end of the game. Esthetic, you know--the beauty part of it."