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  OUR MR. WRENN

  THE ROMANTIC ADVENTURES OF A GENTLE MAN

  BY

  SINCLAIR LEWIS

  HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

  NEW YORK AND LONDON

  MCMXIV

  COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY HARPER & BROTHERS

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  PUBLISHED FEBRUARY, 1914

  TO

  GRACE LIVINGSTONE HEGGER

  CHAPTER I

  MR. WRENN IS LONELY

  The ticket-taker of the Nickelorion Moving-Picture Show is a public personage, who stands out on Fourteenth

  Street, New York, wearing a gorgeous light-blue coat of numerous brass buttons. He nods to all the patrons, and

  his nod is the most cordial in town. Mr. Wrenn used to trot down to Fourteenth Street, passing ever so many other

  shows, just to get that cordial nod, because he had a lonely furnished room for evenings, and for daytime a tedious

  job that always made his head stuffy.

  He stands out in the correspondence of the Souvenir and Art Novelty Company as "Our Mr. Wrenn," who would be

  writing you directly and explaining everything most satisfactorily. At thirty-four Mr. Wrenn was the sales-entry

  clerk of the Souvenir Company. He was always bending over bills and columns of figures at a desk behind the

  stock-room. He was a meek little bachlor--a person of inconspicuous blue ready- made suits, and a small

  unsuccessful mustache.

  To-day--historians have established the date as April 9, 1910--there had been some confusing mixed orders from

  the Wisconsin retailers, and Mr. Wrenn had been "called down" by the office manager, Mr. Mortimer R. Guilfogle.

  He needed the friendly nod of the Nickelorion ticket-taker. He found Fourteenth Street, after office hours, swept by

  a dusty wind that whisked the skirts of countless plump Jewish girls, whose V-necked blouses showed soft throats

  of a warm brown. Under the elevated station he secretly made believe that he was in Paris, for here beautiful Italian

  boys swayed with trays of violets; a tramp displayed crimson mechanical rabbits, which squeaked, on silvery

  leading-strings; and a newsstand was heaped with the orange and green and gold of magazine covers.

  "Gee!" inarticulated Mr. Wrenn. "Lots of colors. Hope I see foreign stuff like that in the moving pictures."

  He came primly up to the Nickelorion, feeling in his vest pockets for a nickel and peering around the booth at the

  friendly ticket-taker. But the latter was thinking about buying Johnny's pants. Should he get them at the Fourteenth

  Street Store, or Siegel-Cooper's, or over at Aronson's, near home? So ruminating, he twiddled his wheel

  mechanically, and Mr. Wrenn's pasteboard slip was indifferently received in the plate- glass

  gullet of the grinder without the taker's even seeing the clerk's bow and smile.

  Mr. Wrenn trembled into the door of the Nickelorion. He wanted to turn back and rebuke this fellow, but was

  restrained by shyness. He _had_ liked the man's "Fine evenin', sir "—rain or shine--but he wouldn't stand for being

  cut. Wasn't he making nineteen dollars a week, as against the ticket-taker's ten or twelve? He shook his head with

  the defiance of a cornered mouse, fussed with his mustache, and regarded the moving pictures gloomily.

  They helped him. After a Selig domestic drama came a stirring Vitagraph Western scene, "The Goat of the

  Rancho," which depicted with much humor and tumult the revolt of a ranch cook, a Chinaman. Mr. Wrenn was

  really seeing, not cow-punchers and sage-brush, but himself, defying the office manager's surliness

  and revolting against the ticket- man's rudeness. Now he was ready for the nearly overpowering delight of travelpictures.

  He bounced slightly as a Gaumont film presented Java.

  He was a connoisseur of travel-pictures, for all his life he had been planning a great journey. Though he had done

  Staten Island and patronized an excursion to Bound Brook, neither of these was his grand tour. It was yet to be

  taken. In Mr. Wrenn, apparently fastened to New York like a domestic-minded barnacle, lay the possibilities of

  heroic roaming. He knew it. He, too, like the man who had taken the Gaumont pictures, would saunter among

  dusky Javan natives in "markets with tiles on the roofs and temples and--and--uh, well--places!" The scent of

  Oriental spices was in his broadened nostrils as he scampered out of the Nickelorion, without a look at the tickettaker,

  and headed for "home"-- for his third- floor- front on West Sixteenth Street. He wanted to prowl through his

  collection of steamship brochures for a description of Java. But, of course, when one's landlady has both the

  sciatica and a case of Patient Suffering one stops in the basement dining-room to inquire how she is.

  Mrs. Zapp was a fat landlady. When she sat down there was a straight line from her chin to her knees. She was

  usually sitting down. When she moved she groaned, and her apparel creaked. She groaned and creaked from bed

  to breakfast, and ate five griddle-cakes, two helpin's of scrapple, an egg, some rump steak,

  and three cups of coffee, slowly and resentfully. She creaked and groaned from breakfast to her rocking-chair, and

  sat about wondering why Providence had inflicted upon her a weak digestion. Mr. Wrenn also wondered why,

  sympathetically, but Mrs. Zapp was too conscientiously dolorous to be much cheered by the sympathy of a niggerlovin'

  Yankee, who couldn't appreciate the subtle sorrows of a Zapp of Zapp's Bog, allied to all the First Families

  of Virginia.

  Mr. Wrenn did nothing more presumptuous than sit still, in the stuffy furniture-crowded basement room, which

  smelled of dead food and deader pride in a race that had never existed. He sat still because the chair was broken. It

  had been broken now for four years.

  For the hundred and twenty-ninth time in those years Mrs. Zapp said, in her rich corruption of Southern negro

  dialect, which can only be indicated here, "Ah been meaning to get that chair mended, Mist' Wrenn." He looked

  gratified and gazed upon the crayon enlargements of Lee Theresa, the older Zapp daughter (who

  was forewoman in a factory), and of Godiva. Godiva Zapp was usually called "Goaty," and many times a day was

  she called by Mrs. Zapp. A tamed child drudge was Goaty, with adenoids, which Mrs. Zapp had been meanin' to

  have removed, and which she would continue to have benevolent meanin's about till it should be too late, and she

  should discover that Providence never would let Goaty go to school.

  "Yes, Mist' Wrenn, Ah told Goaty she was to see the man about getting that chair fixed, but she nev' does nothing

  Ah tell her."

  In the kitchen was the noise of Goaty, ungovernable Goaty, aged eight, still snivelingly washing, though not

  leaning, the incredible pile of dinner dishes. With a trail of he sitating remarks on the sadness of sciatica and windy

  evenings Mr. Wrenn sneaked forth from the august presence of Mrs. Zapp and mounted to paradise--his third-floorfront.

  It was an abjectly respectable room--the bedspread patched; no two pieces of furniture from the same family; halftones

  from the magazines pinned on the wall. But on the old marble mantelpiece lived his friends, books from

  wanderland. Other friends the room had rarely known. It was hard enough for Mr. Wrenn to get acquainted with

  people, anyway, and Mrs. Zapp did not expect her gennulman lodgers t
o entertain. So Mr. Wrenn had given up

  asking even Charley Carpenter, the assistant bookkeeper at the Souvenir Company, to call. That left him the

  books, which he now caressed with small eager finger-tips. He picked out a P. & O. circular, and hastily left for

  fairyland.

  The April skies glowed with benevolence this Saturday morning. The Metropolitan Tower was singing, bright ivory

  tipped with gold, uplifted and intensely glad of the morning. The buildings walling in Madison Square were

  jubilant; the honest red-brick fronts, radiant; the new marble, witty. The sparrows in the middle of Fifth Avenue

  were all talking at once, scandalously but cleverly. The polished brass of limousines threw off teethy smiles.

  At least so Mr. Wrenn fancied as he whisked up Fifth Avenue, the skirts of his small blue double-breasted coat

  wagging. He was going blocks out of his way to the office; ready to defy time and eternity, yes, and even the office

  manager. He had awakened with Defiance as his bedfellow, and throughout breakfast at the hustler Dairy Lunch

  sunshine had flickered over the dirty tessellated floor.

  He pranced up to the Souvenir Company's brick building, on Twenty-eighth Street near Sixth Ave nue. In the office

  he chuckled at his ink-well and the untorn blotters on his orderly desk. Though he sat under the weary unnatural

  brilliance of a mercury- vapor light, he dashed into his work, and was too keen about this business of living merrily

  to be much flustered by the bustle of the lady buyer's superior "_Good_ morning." Even up to ten-thirty he was still

  slamming down papers on his desk. Just let any one try to stop his course, his readiness for snapping fingers at The

  Job; just let them _try_ it, that was all he wanted!

  Then he was shot out of his chair and four feet along the corridor, in reflex response to the surly " Bur-r-r-r-r" of

  the buzzer. Mr. Mortimer R. Guilfogle, the manager, desired to see him. He scampered along the corridor and slid

  decorously through the manager's doorway into the long sun-bright room, ornate with rugs and souvenirs. Seven

  Novelties glittered on the desk alone, including a large rococo Shakespeare-style glass ink-well containing cloves

  and a small iron Pittsburg-style one containing ink. Mr. Wrenn blinked like a noon-roused owlet in the brilliance.

  The manager dropped his fist on the desk, glared, smoothed his flowered prairie of waistcoat, and growled, his red

  jowls quivering:

  "Look here, Wrenn, what's the matter with you? The Bronx Emporium order for May Day novelties was filled

  twice, they write me."

  "They ordered twice, sir. By 'phone," smiled Mr. Wrenn, in an agony of politeness.

  "They ordered hell, sir! Twice--the same order?"

  "Yes, sir; their buyer was prob----"

  "They say they've looked it up. Anyway, they won't pay twice. I know, em. We'll have to crawl down graceful,

  and all because you---- I want to know why you ain't more careful!"

  The announcement that Mr. Wrenn twice wriggled his head, and once tossed it, would not half denote his wrath. At

  last! It was here--the time for revolt, when he was going to be defiant. He had been careful; old Goglefogle was

  only barking; but why should _he_ be barked at? With his voice palpitating and his heart thudding so that he felt

  sick he declared:

  "I'm _sure_, sir, about that order. I looked it up. Their buyer was drunk!"

  It was done. And now would he be discharged? The manager was speaking:

  "Probably. You looked it up, eh? Um! Send me in the two order-records. Well. But, anyway, I want you to be

  more careful after this, Wrenn. You're pretty sloppy. Now get out. Expect me to make firms pay twice for the

  same order, cause of your carelessness?"

  Mr. Wrenn found himself outside in the dark corridor. The manager hadn't seemed much impressed by his revolt.

  The manager wasn't. He called a stenographer and dictated:

  "Bronx Emporium:

  "GENTLEMEN:--Our Mr. Wrenn has again (underline that `again,' Miss Blaustein), again looked up your order for

  May Day novelties. As we wrote before, order certainly was duplicated by 'phone. Our Mr. Wrenn is thoroughly

  reliable, and we have his records of these two orders. We shall therefore have to push collection on both----"

  After all, Mr. Wrenn was thinking, the crafty manager might be merely concealing his hand. Perhaps he had

  understood the defiance. That gladdened him till after lunch. But at three, when his head was again foggy with

  work and he had forgotten whether there was still April anywhere, he began to dread what the manager might

  do to him. Suppose he lost his job; The Job! He worked unnecessarily late, hoping that the manager would learn of

  it. As he wavered home, drunk with weariness, his fear of losing The Job was almost equal to his desire to resign

  from The Job.

  He had worked so late that when he awoke on Sunday morning he was still in a whirl of figures. As he went out to

  his breakfast of coffee and whisked wheat at the Hustler Lunch the lines between the blocks of the cement walk,

  radiant in a white flare of sunshine, irritatingly recalled the cross- lines of order-lists, with the narrow cement blocks

  at the curb standing for unfilled column- headings. Even the ridges of the Hustler Lunch's imitation steel ceiling,

  running in parallel lines, jeered down at him that he was a prosaic man whose path was a ruler.

  He went clear up to the branch post-office after breakfast to get the Sunday mail, but the mail was a

  disappointment. He was awaiting a wonderful fully illustrated guide to the Land of the Midnight Sun, a suggestion

  of possible and coyly improbable trips, whereas he got only a letter from his oldest acquaintance--Cousin John, of

  Parthenon, New York, the boy-who-comes-to-play of Mr. Wrenn's back- yard days in Parthenon. Without opening

  the letter Mr. Wrenn tucked it into his inside coat pocket, threw away his toothpick, and turned to Sunday

  wayfaring.

  He jogged down Twenty-third Street to the North River ferries afoot. Trolleys took money, and of course one saves

  up for future great traveling. Over him the April clouds were fetterless vagabonds whose gaiety made him shrug

  with excitement and take a curb with a frisk as gambolsome as a Central Park lamb. There was no hint of sales- lists

  in the clouds, at least. And with them Mr. Wrenn's soul swept along, while his half-soled Cum-Fee-Best $3.80

  shoes were ambling past warehouses. Only once did he condescend to being really on Twenty-third Street. At the

  Ninth Avenue corner, under the grimy Elevated, he sighted two blocks down to the General Theological Seminary's

  brick Gothic and found in a pointed doorway suggestions of alien beauty.

  But his real object was to loll on a West and South Railroad in luxury, and go sailing out into the foam and perilous

  seas of North River. He passed through the smoking-cabin. He didn't smoke--the habit used up travel-money.

  Once seated on the upper deck, he knew that at last he was outward-bound on a liner. True, there was no great

  motion, but Mr. Wrenn was inclined to let realism off easily in this feature of his voyage. At least there were

  undoubted life-preservers in the white racks overhead; and everywhere the world, to his certain witnessing, was

  turned to crusading, to setting forth in great ships as if it were again in the brisk morning of history when the joy of

  adventure possessed the Argonauts.

  He wasn't excited over the liners they passed. He was so experienced in all of travel, save the traveling, as to have

  gained a calm interested knowledge. He
knew the _Campagnia_ three docks away, and explained to a Harlem

  grocer her fine points, speaking earnestly of stacks and sticks, tonnage and knots.

  Not excited, but--where couldn't he go if he were pulling out for Arcady on the _Campagnia!_ Gee! What were

  even the building-block towers of the Metropolitan and Singer buildings and the _Times's_ cream-stick compared

  with some old shrine in a cathedral close that was misted with centuries!

  All this he felt and hummed to himself, though not in words. He had never heard of Arcady, though fo r many years

  he had been a citizen of that demesne.

  Sure, he declared to himself, he was on the liner now; he was sliding up the muddy Mersey (see the _W. S. Travel

  Notes_ for the source of his visions); he was off to St. George's Square for an organ-recital (see the English

  Baedeker); then an express for London and---- Gee!

  The ferryboat was entering her slip. Mr. Wrenn trotted toward the bow to thrill over the bump of the boat's snub

  nose against the lofty swaying piles and the swash of the brown waves heaped before her as she sidled into place.

  He was carried by the herd on into the station.

  He did not notice the individual people in his exultation as he heard the great chords of the station's paean. The vast

  roof roared as the iron coursers stamped titanic hoofs of scorn at the little stay-at-home.

  That is a washed-out hint of how the poets might describe Mr. Wrenn's passion. What he said was "Gee!"

  He strolled by the lists of destinations hung on the track gates. Chicago (the plains! the Rockies! sunset over

  mining-camps!), Washington, and the magic Southland--thither the iron horses would be galloping, their swarthy

  smoke manes whipped back by the whirlwind, pounding out with clamorous strong hoofs their sixty miles an hour.

  Very well. In time he also would mount upon the iron coursers and charge upon Chicago and the Southland; just as

  soon as he got ready.

  Then he headed for Cortlandt Street; for Long Island, City. finally, the Navy Yard. Along his way were the docks

  of the tramp steamers where he might ship as steward in the all-promising Sometime. He had never done anything

  so reckless as actually to ask a skipper for the chance to go a-sailing, but he had once gone into a mission society's

  free shipping-office on West Street where a disapproving elder had grumped at him, "Are you a sailor? No? Can't