Our Mister Wren Read online

  credulous youths of twenty-nine; those sermons on content; articles on "building up the rundown store by live

  advertising"; Kiplingesque stories about playing the game; and correspondence-school advertisements that

  shrieked, "Mount the ladder to thorough knowledge--the path to power and to the fuller pay-envelope."

  To all these Mr. Wrenn had been indifferent, for they showed no imagination. But when he saw Big Business

  glorified by a humorous melodrama, then The Job appeared to him as picaresque adventure, and he was in peril of

  his imagination.

  The eight-o'clock sun, which usually found a wildly shaving Mr. Wrenn, discovered him dreaming that he was the

  manager of the Souvenir Company. But that was a complete misunderstanding of the case. The manager of the

  Souvenir Company was Mr. Mortimer R. Guilfogle, and he called Mr. Wrenn in to acquaint him with that fact

  when the new magnate started his career in Big Business by arriving at the office one hour late.

  What made it worse, considered Mr. Guilfogle, was that this Wrenn had a higher average of punctuality than any

  one else in the office, which proved that he knew better. Worst of all, the Guilfogle family eggs had not been

  scrambled right at breakfast; they had been anemic. Mr. Guilfogle punched the buzzer and set his face toward the

  door, with a scowl prepared.

  Mr. Wrenn seemed weary, and not so intimidated as usual.

  "Look here, Wrenn; you were just about two hours late this morning. What do you think this office is? A club or a

  reading-room for hoboes? Ever occur to you we'd like to have you favor us with a call now and then so's we can

  learn how you're getting along at golf or whatever you're doing these days?"

  There was a sample baby-shoe office pin-cushion on the manager's desk. Mr. Wrenn eyed this, and said nothing.

  The manager:

  "Hear what I said? D'yuh think I'm talking to give my throat exercise?"

  Mr. Wrenn was stubborn. "I couldn't help it."

  "Couldn't help----! And you call that an explanation! I know just exactly what you're thinking, Wrenn; you're

  thinking that because I've let you have a lot of chances to really work into the business lately you're necessary to us,

  and not simply an expense----"

  "Oh no, Mr. Guilfogle; honest, I didn't think----"

  "Well, hang it, man, you _want_ to think. What do you suppose we pay you a salary for? And just let me tell you,

  Wrenn, right here and now, that if you can't condescend to spare us some of your valuable time, now and then, we

  can good and plenty get along without you."

  An old tale, oft told and never believed; but it interested Mr. Wrenn just now.

  "I'm real glad you can get along without me. I've just inherited a big wad of money! I think I'll resign! Right

  now!"

  Whether he or Mr. Mortimer R. Guilfogle was the more aghast at hearing him bawl this no one knows. The

  manager was so worried at the thought of breaking in a new man that his eye-glasses slipped off his poor perspiring

  nose. He begged, in sudden tones of old friendship:

  "Why, you can't be thinking of leaving us! Why, we expect to make a big man of you, Wrenn. I was joking about

  firing you. You ought to know that, after the talk we had at Mouquin's the other night. You can't be thinking of

  leaving us! There's no end of possibilities here."

  "Sorry," said the dogged soldier of dreams.

  "Why----" wailed that hurt and astonished victim of ingratitude, Mr. Guilfogle.

  "I'll leave the middle of June. That's plenty of notice," chirruped Mr. Wrenn.

  At five that evening Mr. Wrenn dashed up to the Brass-button Man at his station before the Nickelorion, crying:

  "Say! You come from Ireland, don't you?"

  "Now what would you think? Me--oh no; I'm a Chinaman from Oshkosh!"

  "No, honest, straight, tell me. I've got a chance to travel. What d'yuh think of that? Ain't it great! And I'm going

  right away. What I wanted to ask you was, what's the best place in Ireland to see?"

  "Donegal, o' course. I was born there."

  Hauling from his pocket a pencil and a worn envelope, Mr. Wrenn joyously added the new point of interest to a list

  ranging from Delagoa Bay to Denver.

  He skipped up-town, looking at the stars. He shouted as he saw the stacks of a big Cunarder bulking up at the end

  of Fourteenth Street. He stopped to chuckle over a lithograph of the Parthenon at the window of a Greek

  bootblack's stand. Stars--steamer--temples, all these were his. He owned them now. He was free.

  Lee Theresa sat waiting for him in the basement livingroom till ten-thirty while he was flirting with trainboards at

  the Grand Central. Then she went to bed, and, though he knew it not, that prince of wealthy suitors, Mr. Wrenn,

  had entirely lost the heart and hand of Miss Zapp of the F. F. V.

  He stood before the manager's god- like desk on June 14, 1910. Sadly:

  "Good-by, Mr. Guilfogle. Leaving to-day. I wish---- Gee! I wish I could tell you, you know--about how much I

  appreciate----"

  The manager moved a wire basket of carbon copies of letters from the left side of his desk to the right, staring at

  them thoughtfully; rearranged his pencils in a pile before his ink-well; glanced at the point of an indelible pencil

  with a manner of startled examination; tapped his desk-blotter with his knuckles; then raised his eyes. He studied

  Mr. Wrenn, smiled, put on the look he used when inviting him out for a drink. Mr. Guilfogle was essentially an

  honest fellow, harshened by The Job; a well-satisfied victim, with the imagination clean gone out of him, so that he

  took follow- up letters and the celerity of office-boys as the only serious things in the world. He was strong, alive,

  not at all a bad chap, merely efficient.

  "Well, Wrenn, I suppose there's no use of rubbing it in. Course you know what I think about the whole thing. It

  strikes me you're a fool to leave a good job. But, after all, that's your business, not ours. We like you, and when

  you get tired of being just a bum, why, come back; we'll always try to have a job open for you. Meanwhile I hope

  you'll have a mighty good time, old man. Where you going? When d'yuh start out?"

  "Why, first I'm going to just kind of wander round generally. Lots of things I'd like to do. I think I'll get away real

  soon now.... Thank you awfully, Mr. Guilfogle, for keeping a place open for me. Course I prob'ly won't need it,

  but gee! I sure do appreciate it."

  "Say, I don't believe you're so plumb crazy about leaving us, after all, now that the cards are all dole out. Straight

  now, are you?"

  "Yes, sir, it does make me feel a little blue--been here so long. But it'll be awful good to get out at sea."

  "Yuh, I know, Wrenn. I'd like to go traveling myself—I suppose you fellows think I wouldn't care to go bumming

  around like you do and never have to worry about how the firm's going to break even. But---- Well, good-by, old

  man, and don't forget us. Drop me a line now and then and let me know how you're getting along. Oh say, if you

  happen to see any novelties that look good let us hear about them. But drop me a line, anyway. We'll always be

  glad to hear from you. Well, good-by and good luck. Sure and drop me a line."

  In the corner which had been his home for eight years Mr. Wrenn could not devise any new and yet more improved

  arrangement of the wire baskets and clips and desk reminders, so he cleaned a pen, blew some gray eraser-dust

  from under his iron ink-well standard, and decided that his desk was in order; reflecting:

  He'd been there
a long time. Now he could never come back to it, no matter how much he wanted to.... How good

  the manager had been to him. Gee! he hadn't appreciated how considerut Guilfogle was!

  He started down the corridor on a round of farewells to the boys. "Too bad he hadn't never got better acquainted

  with them, but it was too late now. Anyway, they were such fine jolly sports; they'd never miss a stupid guy like

  him."

  Just then he met them in the corridor, all of them except Guilfogle, headed by Rabin, the traveling salesman, and

  Charley Carpenter, who was bearing a box of handkerchiefs with a large green-and-crimson-paper label.

  "Gov'nor Wrenn," orated Charley, "upon this suspicious occasion we have the pleasure of showing by this small

  token of our esteem our 'preciation of your untiring efforts in the investigation of Mortimer R. Gugglegiggle of the

  Graft Trust and----

  "Say, old man, joking aside, we're mighty sorry you're going and--uh--well, we'd like to give you something to

  show we're--uh-- mighty sorry you're going. We thought of a box of cigars, but you don't smoke much; anyway,

  these han'k'chiefs'll help to show---- Three cheers for Wrenn, fellows!"

  Afterward, by his desk, alone, holding the box of handkerchiefs with the resplendent red-and-green label, Mr.

  Wrenn began to cry.

  He was lying abed at eight-thirty on a morning of late June, two weeks after leaving the Souvenir Company,

  deliberately hunting over his pillow for cool spots, very hot and restless in the legs and enormously depressed in the

  soul. He would have got up had there been anything to get up for. There was nothing, yet he felt uneasily guilty.

  For two weeks he had been afraid of losing, by neglect, the job he had already voluntarily given up. So there are

  men whom the fear of death has driven to suicide.

  Nearly every morning he had driven himself from bed and had finished shaving before he was quite satisfied that he

  didn't have to get to the office on time. As he wandered about during the day he remarked with frequency, "I'm

  scared as teacher's pet playing hookey for the first time, like what we used to do in Parthenon." All proper persons

  were at work of a week-day afternoon. What, then, was he doing walking along the street when all morality

  demanded his sitting at a desk at the Souvenir Company, being a little more careful, to win the divine favor of

  Mortimer R. Guilfogle?

  He was sure that if he were already out on the Great Traveling he would be able to "push the buzzer on himself and

  get up his nerve." But he did not know where to go. He had planned so many trips these years that now he couldn't

  keep any one of them finally decided on for more than an hour. It rather stretched his short arms to embrace at once

  a gay old dream of seeing Venice and the stern civic duty of hunting abominably dangerous beasts in the Guatemala

  bush.

  The expense bothered him, too. He had through many years so persistently saved money for the Great Traveling

  that he begrudged money for that Traveling itself. Indeed, he planned to spend not more than $300 of the $1,235.80

  he had now accumulated, on his first venture, during which he hoped to learn the trade of wandering.

  He was always influenced by a sentence he had read somewhere about "one of those globe-trotters you meet

  carrying a monkey-wrench in Calcutta, then in raiment and a monocle at the Athenaeum." He would learn some

  Kiplingy trade that would teach him the use of astonishingly technical tools, also daring and the location of

  smugglers' haunts, copra islands, and whaling - stations with curious names.

  He pictured himself shipping as third engineer at the Manihiki Islands or engaged for taking moving pictures of an

  aeroplane flight in Algiers. He _had_ to get away from Zappism. He had to be out on the iron seas, where the

  battle-ships and liners went by like a marching military band. But he couldn't get started.

  Once beyond Sandy Hook, he would immediately know all about engines and fighting. It would help, he was

  certain, to be shanghaied. But no matter how wistfully, no matter how late at night he timorously forced himself to

  loiter among unwashed English stokers on West Street, he couldn't get himself molested except by glib persons

  wishing ten cents "for a place to sleep." When he had dallied through breakfast that particular morning he sat

  about. Once he had pictured sitting about reading travel-books as a perfect occupation. But it concealed no

  exciting little surprises when he could be a Sunday loafer on any plain Monday. Furthermore, Goaty never made

  his bed till noon, and the gray-and-brown-patched coverlet seemed to trail all about the disordered room.

  Midway in a paragraph he rose, threw _One Hundred Ways to See California_ on the tumbled bed, and ran away

  from Our Mr. Wrenn. But Our Mr. Wrenn pursued him along the wharves, where the sun glared on oily water. He

  had seen the wharves twelve times that fortnight. In fact, he even cried viciously that "he had seen too blame much

  of the blame wharves."

  Early in the afternoon he went to a moving-picture show, but the first sight of the white giant figures bulking

  against the gray background was wearily unreal; and when the inevitable large-eyed black-braided Indian maiden

  met the canonical cow-puncher he threshed about in his seat, was irritated by the nervous click of the machine and

  the hot stuffiness of the room, and ran away just at the exciting moment when the Indian chief dashed into camp

  and summoned his braves to the war-path.

  Perhaps he could hide from thought at home.

  As he came into his room he stood at gaze like a kitten of good family beholding a mangy mongrel asleep in its

  pink basket. For on his bed was Mrs. Zapp, her rotund curves stretching behind her large flat feet, whose soles

  were toward him. She was noisily somnolent; her stays creaked regularly as she breathed, except when she moved

  slightly and groaned.

  Guiltily he tiptoed down-stairs and went snuffling along the dusty unvaried brick side streets, wondering where in

  all New York he could go. He read minutely a placard advertising an excursion to the Catskills, to start that

  evening. For an exhilarated moment he resolved to go, but--" oh, there was a lot of them rich society folks up

  there." He bought a morning _American_ and, sitting in Union Square, gravely studied the humorous drawings.

  He casually noticed the "Help Wanted" advertisements.

  They suggested an uninteresting idea that somehow he might find it economical to go venturing as a waiter or farmhand.

  And so he came to the gate of paradise:

  MEN WANTED. Free passage on cattle-boats to Liverpool feeding cattle. Low fee. Easy work. Fast boats.

  Apply International and Atlantic Employment Bureau, ---- Greenwich Street.

  "Gee!" he cried, "I guess Providence has picked out my first hike for me."

  CHAPTER III

  HE STARTS FOR THE LAND OF ELSEWHERE

  The International and Atlantic Employment Bureau is a long dirty room with the plaster cracked like the outlines on

  a map, hung with steamship posters and the laws of New York regarding employment offices, which are regarded

  as humorous by the proprietor, M. Baraieff, a short slender ejaculatory person with a nervous black beard, lively

  blandness, and a knowledge of all the incorrect usages of nine languages. Mr. Wrenn edged into this junk -heap of

  nationalities with interested wonder. M. Baraieff rubbed his smooth wicked hands together and bowed a number of

  times.

  Confidentially leaning across the counter, Mr.
Wrenn murmured: "Say, I read your ad. about wanting cattlemen. I

  want to make a trip to Europe. How----?"

  "Yes, yes, yes, yes, Mistaire. I feex you up right away. Ten dollars pleas-s-s-s."

  "Well, what does that entitle me to?"

  "I tole you I feex you up. Ha! Ha! I know it; you are a gentleman; you want a nice leetle trip on Europe. Sure.

  I feex you right up. I send you off on a nice easy cattleboat where you won't have to work much hardly any. Right

  away it goes. Ten dollars pleas-s-s-s."

  "But when does the boat start? Where does it start from?" Mr. Wrenn was a bit confused. He had never met a man

  who grimaced so politely and so rapidly.

  "Next Tuesday I send you right off."

  Mr. Wrenn regretfully exchanged ten dollars for a card informing Trub iggs, Atlantic Avenue, Boston, that Mr.

  "Ren" was to be "ship 1st poss. catel boat right away and charge my acct. fee paid Baraieff." Brightly declaring "I

  geef you a fine ship," M. Baraieff added, on the margin of the card, in copper-plate script, "Best ship, easy work."

  He caroled, "Come early next Tuesday morning, "and bowed out Mr. Wrenn like a Parisian shopkeeper. The row

  of waiting servant-girls curtsied as though they were a hedge swayed by the wind, while Mr. Wrenn selfconsciously

  hurried to get past them.

  He was too excited to worry over the patient and quiet suffering with which Mrs. Zapp heard the announcement that

  he was going. That Theresa laughed at him for a cattleman, while Goaty, in the kitchen, audibly observed that

  "nobody but a Yankee would travel in a pig-pen, "merely increased his joy in moving his belongings to a storage

  warehouse.

  Tuesday morning, clad in a sweater-jacket, tennis-shoes, an old felt hat, a khaki shirt and corduroys, carrying a suitcase

  packed to bursting with clothes and Baedekers, with one hundred and fifty dollars in express-company drafts

  craftily concealed, he dashed down to Baraieff's hole. Though it was only eight-thirty, he was afraid he was going

  to be late.

  Till 2 P.M. he sat waiting, then was sent to the Joy Steamship Line wharf with a ticket to Boston and a letter to

  Trubiggs's shipping-office: "Give bearer Ren as per inclosed receet one trip England catel boat charge my acct.

  SYLVESTRE BARAIEFF, N. Y."