________________________________________________
_ Sadly clinging to the plan of the walking-trip he was to have
made with Morton, Mr. Wrenn crossed by ferry to Birkenhead,
quite unhappily, for he wanted to be discussing with Morton the
quaintness of the uniformed functionaries. He looked for the
_Merian_ half the way over. As he walked through Birkenhead,
bound for Chester, he pricked himself on to note red-brick
house-rows, almost shocking in their lack of high front stoops.
Along the country road he reflected: "Wouldn't Morty enjoy
this! Farm-yard all paved. Haystack with a little roof on it.
Kitchen stove stuck in a kind of fireplace. Foreign as the deuce."
But Morton was off some place, in a darkness where there weren't
things to enjoy. Mr. Wrenn had lost him forever. Once he heard
himself wishing that even Tim, the hatter, or "good old
McGarver" were along. A scene so British that it seemed proper
to enjoy it alone he did find in a real garden-party, with what
appeared to be a real curate, out of a story in _The Strand_,
passing teacups; but he passed out of that hot glow into a cold
plodding that led him to Chester and a dull hotel which might as
well have been in Bridgeport or Hoboken.
He somewhat timidly enjoyed Chester the early part of the next
day, docilely following a guide about the walls, gaping at the
mill on the Dee and asking the guide two intelligent questions
about Roman remains. He snooped through the galleried streets,
peering up dark stairways set in heavy masonry that spoke of
historic sieges, and imagined that he was historically besieging.
For a time Mr. Wrenn's fancies contented him.
He smiled as he addressed glossy red and green postcards to Lee
Theresa and Goaty, Cousin John and Mr. Guilfogle, writing on
each a variation of "Having a splendid trip. This is a very
interesting old town. Wish you were here." Pantingly, he found
a panorama showing the hotel where he was staying--or at least
two of its chimneys--and, marking it with a heavy cross and the
announcement "This is my hotel where I am staying," he sent it
to Charley Carpenter.
He was at his nearest to greatness at Chester Cathedral.
He chuckled aloud as he passed the remains of a refectory of
monastic days, in the close, where knights had tied their
romantically pawing chargers, "just like he'd read about in a
story about the olden times." He was really there. He glanced
about and assured himself of it. He wasn't in the office. He
was in an English cathedral close!
But shortly thereafter he was in an English temperance hotel,
sitting still, almost weeping with the longing to see Morton.
He walked abroad, feeling like an intruder on the lively night
crowd; in a tap-room he drank a glass of English porter and
tried to make himself believe that he was acquainted with the
others in the room, to which theory they gave but little
support. All this while his loneliness shadowed him.
Of that loneliness one could make many books; how it sat down
with him; how he crouched in his chair, be-spelled by it, till
he violently rose and fled, with loneliness for companion in his
flight. He was lonely. He sighed that he was "lonely as fits."
Lonely--the word obsessed him. Doubtless he was a bit mad, as
are all the isolated men who sit in distant lands longing for
the voices of friendship.
Next morning he hastened to take the train for Oxford to get
away from his loneliness, which lolled evilly beside him in
the compartment. He tried to convey to a stodgy North
Countryman his interest in the way the seats faced each other.
The man said "Oh aye?" insultingly and returned to his
Manchester newspaper.
Feeling that he was so offensive that it was a matter of honor
for him to keep his eyes away, Mr. Wrenn dutifully stared out of
the door till they reached Oxford.
There is a calm beauty to New College gardens. There is, Mr.
Wrenn observed, "something simply _slick_ about all these old
quatrangleses," crossed by summering students in short flappy
gowns. But he always returned to his exile's room, where he now
began to hear the new voice of shapeless nameless Fear--fear of
all this alien world that didn't care whether he loved it or not.
He sat thinking of the cattle-boat as a home which he had loved
but which he would never see again. He had to use force on
himself to keep from hurrying back to Liverpool while there
still was time to return on the same boat.
No! He was going to "stick it out somehow, and get onto the
hang of all this highbrow business."
Then he said: "Oh, darn it all. I feel rotten. I wish I was dead!"
"Those, sir, are the windows of the apartment once occupied by
Walter Pater," said the cultured American after whom he was
trailing. Mr. Wrenn viewed them attentively, and with shame
remembered that he didn't know who Walter Pater was. But--oh
yes, now he remembered; Walter was the guy that 'd murdered his
whole family. So, aloud, "Well, I guess Oxford's sorry Walt
ever come here, all right."
"My dear sir, Mr. Pater was the most immaculate genius of the
nineteenth century," lectured Dr. Mittyford, the cultured
American, severely.
Mr. Wrenn had met Mittyford, Ph.D., near the barges; had, upon
polite request, still more politely lent him a match, and seized
the chance to confide in somebody. Mittyford had a bald head,
neat eye-glasses, a fair family income, a chatty good-fellowship
at the Faculty Club, and a chilly contemptuousness in his
rhetoric class-room at Leland Stanford, Jr., University. He
wrote poetry, which he filed away under the letter "P" in his
letter-file.
Dr. Mittyford grudgingly took Mr. Wrenn about, to teach him what
not to enjoy. He pointed at Shelley's rooms as at a
certificated angel's feather, but Mr. Wrenn writhingly admitted
that he had never heard of Shelley, whose name he confused with
Max O'Rell's, which Dr. Mittyford deemed an error. Then,
Pater's window. The doctor shrugged. Oh well, what could you
expect of the proletariat! Swinging his stick aloofly, he
stalked to the Bodleian and vouchsafed, "That, sir, is the
_AEschylus_ Shelley had in his pocket when he was drowned."
Though he heard with sincere regret the news that his new idol
was drowned, Mr. Wrenn found that _AEschylus_ left him cold. It
seemed to be printed in a foreign language. But perhaps it was
merely a very old book.
Standing before a case in which was an exquisite book in a queer
wrigglesome language, bearing the legend that from this volume
Fitzgerald had translated the _Rubaiyat_, Dr. Mittyford waved his
hand and looked for thanks.
"Pretty book," said Mr. Wrenn.
"And did you note who used it?"
"Uh--yes." He hastily glanced at the placard. "Mr. Fitzgerald.
Say, I think I read some of that Rubaiyat. It was something
about a Persian kitten--I don't remember exactly."
Dr. Mittyford walked bitterly to the other end of the room.
About eight in the evening Mr. Wrenn's landlady knocked with,
"There's a gentleman below to see you, sir."
"Me?" blurted Mr. Wrenn.
He galloped down-stairs, panting to himself that Morton had at
last found him. He peered out and was overwhelmed by a
motor-car, with Dr. Mittyford waiting in awesome fur coat,
goggles, and gauntlets, centered in the car-lamplight that
loomed in the shivery evening fog.
"Gee! just like a hero in a novel!" reflected Mr. Wrenn.
"Get on your things," said the pedagogue. "I'm going to give
you the time of your life."
Mr. Wrenn obediently went up and put on his cap. He was
excited, yet frightened and resentful at being "dragged into all
this highbrow business" which he had resolutely been putting
away the past two hours.
As he stole into the car Dr. Mittyford seemed comparatively
human, remarking: "I feel bored this evening. I thought I would
give you a _nuit blanche_. How would you like to go to the Red
Unicorn at Brempton--one of the few untouched old inns?"
"That would be nice," said Mr. Wrenn, unenthusiastically.
His chilliness impressed Dr. Mittyford, who promptly told one of
the best of his well-known whimsical yet scholarly stories.
"Ha! ha!" remarked Mr. Wrenn.
He had been saying to himself: "By golly! I ain't going to even
try to be a society guy with him no more. I'm just going to be
_me_, and if he don't like it he can go to the dickens."
So he was gentle and sympathetic and talked West Sixteenth
Street slang, to the rhetorician's lofty amusement.
The tap-room of the Red Unicorn was lighted by candles and
a fireplace. That is a simple thing to say, but it was not a
simple thing for Mr. Wrenn to see. As he observed the trembling
shadows on the sanded floor he wriggled and excitedly murmured,
"Gee!... Gee whittakers!"
The shadows slipped in arabesques over the dust-gray floor and
scampered as bravely among the rafters as though they were in
such a tale as men told in believing days. Rustics in smocks
drank ale from tankards; and in a corner was snoring an
ear-ringed peddler with his beetle-black head propped on an
oilcloth pack.
Stamping in, chilly from the ride, Mr. Wrenn laughed aloud.
With a comfortable feeling on the side toward the fire he stuck
his slight legs straight out before the old-time settle, looked
devil-may-care, made delightful ridges on the sanded floor with
his toe, and clapped a pewter pot on his knee with a small
emphatic "Wop!" After about two and a quarter tankards he broke
out, "Say, that peddler guy there, don't he look like he was a
gipsy--you know--sneaking through the hedges around the
manner-house to steal the earl's daughter, huh?"
"Yes.... You're a romanticist, then, I take it?"
"Yes, I guess I am. Kind of. Like to read romances and stuff."
He stared at Mittyford beseechingly. "But, say--say, I wonder
why--Somehow, I haven't enjoyed Oxford and the rest of the places
like I ought to. See, I'd always thought I'd be simply nutty about
the quatrangles and stuff, but I'm afraid they're too highbrow for
me. I hate to own up, but sometimes I wonder if I can get away
with this traveling stunt."
Mittyford, the magnificent, had mixed ale and whisky punch.
He was mellowly instructive:
"Do you know, I've been wondering just what you _would_ get out
of all this. You really have a very fine imagination of a sort,
you know, but of course you're lacking in certain factual bases.
As I see it, your _metier_ would be to travel with a pleasant
wife, the two of you hand in hand, so to speak, looking at the
more obvious public buildings and plesaunces--avenues and
plesuances. There must be a certain portion of the tripper
class which really has the ability `for to admire and for to see.'"
Dr. Mittyford finished his second toddy and with a wave of his
hand presented to Mr. Wrenn the world and all the plesaunces
thereof, for to see, though not, of course, to admire Mittyfordianly.
"But--what are you to do now about Oxford? Well, I'm afraid
you're taken into captivity a bit late to be trained for that
sort of thing. Do about Oxford? Why, go back, master the world
you understand. By the way, have you seen my book on _Saxon
Derivatives?_ Not that I'm prejudiced in its favor, but it might
give you a glimmering of what this difficile thing `culture'
really is."
The rustics were droning a church anthem. The glow of the ale
was in Mr. Wrenn. He leaned back, entirely happy, and it seemed
confusedly to him that what little he had heard of his learned
and affectionate friend's advice gratefully confirmed his own
theory that what one wanted was friends--a "nice wife"--folks.
"Yes, sir, by golly! It was awfully nice of the Doc." He
pictured a tender girl in golden brown back in the New York he
so much desired to see who would await him evenings with a smile
that was kept for him. Homey--that was what _he_ was going to be!
He happily and thoughtfully ran his finger about the rim of his
glass ten times.
"Time to go, I' m afraid," Dr. Mittyford was saying. Through
the exquisite haze that now filled the room Mr. Wrenn saw him
dimly, as a triangle of shirt-front and two gleaming ellipses
for eyes.... His dear friend, the Doc!... As he walked through
the room chairs got humorously in his way, but he good-naturedly
picked a path among them, and fell asleep in the motor-car. All
the ride back he made soft mouse-like sounds of snoring.
When he awoke in the morning with a headache and surveyed his
unchangeably dingy room he realized slowly, after smothering his
head in the pillow to shut off the light from his scorching
eyeballs, that Dr. Mittyford had called him a fool for trying to
wander. He protested, but not for long, for he hated to venture
out there among the dreadfully learned colleges and try to
understand stuff written in letters that look like crow-tracks.
He packed his suit-case slowly, feeling that he was very wicked
in leaving Oxford's opportunities.
Mr. Wrenn rode down on a Tottenham Court Road bus, viewing the
quaintness of London. Life was a rosy ringing valiant pursuit,
for he was about to ship on a Mediterranean steamer laden
chiefly with adventurous friends. The bus passed a victoria
containing a man with a real monocle. A newsboy smiled up at him.
The Strand roared with lively traffic.
But the gray stonework and curtained windows of the
Anglo-Southern Steamship Company's office did not invite any Mr.
Wrenns to come in and ship, nor did the hall porter, a beefy
person with a huge collar and sparse painfully sleek hair, whose
eyes were like cold boiled mackerel as Mr. Wrenn yearned:
"Please--uh--please will you be so kind and tell me where I can
ship as a steward for the Med--"
"None needed."
"Or Spain? I just want to get any kind of a job at first.
Peeling potatoes or--It don't make any difference--"
"None needed, I said, my man." The porter examined the hall
clock extensively.
Bill Wrenn suddenly popped into being and demanded: "Look here,
you; I want to see somebody in authority. I want to know what
I _can_ ship as."
The porter turned round and started. All his faith in mankind
was destroyed by the shock of finding the fellow still there.
"Nothing, I told you. No one needed."
"Look here; can I see somebody in authority or not?"
The porter was privately esteemed a wit at his motherin-law's.
Waddling away, he answered, "Or not."
Mr. Wrenn drooped out of the corridor. He had planned to see the
Tate Gallery, but now he hadn't the courage to face the
difficulties of enjoying pictures. He zig-zagged home, mourning:
"What's the use. And I'll be hung if I'll try any other
offices, either. The icy mitt, that's what they hand you here.
Some day I'll go down to the docks and try to ship there.
Prob'ly. Gee! I feel rotten!"
Out of all this fog of unfriendliness appeared the waitress at
the St. Brasten Cocoa House; first, as a human being to whom he
could talk, second, as a woman. She was ignorant and vulgar;
she misused English cruelly; she wore greasy cotton garments,
planted her large feet on the floor with firm clumsiness, and
always laughed at the wrong cue in his diffident jests. But she
did laugh; she did listen while he stammered his ideas of
meat-pies and St. Paul's and aeroplanes and Shelley and fog and
tan shoes. In fact, she supposed him to be a gentleman and
scholar, not an American.
He went to the cocoa-house daily.
She let him know that he was a man and she a woman, young and
kindly, clear-skinned and joyous-eyed. She touched him with
warm elbow and plump hip, leaning against his chair as he gave
his order. To that he looked forward from meal to meal, though he
never ceased harrowing over what he considered a shameful intrigue.
That opinion of his actions did not keep him from tingling one
lunch-time when he suddenly understood that she was expecting to
be tempted. He tempted her without the slightest delay,
muttering, "Let's take a walk this evening?"
She accepted. He was shivery and short of breath while he was
trying to smile at her during the rest of the meal, and so he
remained all afternoon at the Tower of London, though he very
well knew that all this history--"kings and gwillotines and
stuff"--demanded real Wrenn thrills.
They were to meet on a street-corner at eight. At seven-thirty
he was waiting for her. At eight-thirty he indignantly walked
away, but he hastily returned, and stood there another
half-hour. She did not come.
When he finally fled home he was glad to have escaped the great
mystery of life, then distressingly angry at the waitress, and
desolate in the desert stillness of his room.
He sat in his cold hygienic uncomfortable room on Tavistock
Place trying to keep his attention on the "tick, tick, tick,
tick" of his two-dollar watch, but really cowering before the
vast shadowy presences that slunk in from the hostile city.
He didn't in the least know what he was afraid of. The actual
Englishman whom he passed on the streets did not seem to
threaten his life, yet his friendly watch and familiar suit-case
seemed the only things he could trust in all the menacing world
as he sat there, so vividly conscious of his fear and loneliness
that he dared not move his cramped legs.
The tension could not last. For a time he was able to laugh at
himself, and he made pleasant pictures--Charley Carpenter
telling him a story at Drubel's; Morton companionably smoking on
the top deck; Lee Theresa flattering him during an evening walk.
Most of all he pictured the brown-eyed sweetheart he was going
to meet somewhere, sometime. He thought with sophomoric shame
of his futile affair with the waitress, then forgot her as he
seemed almost to touch the comforting hand of the brown-eyed girl.
"Friends, that's what I want. You bet!" That was the work
he was going to do--make acquaintances. A girl who would
understand him, with whom he could trot about, seeing
department-store windows and moving-picture shows.
It was then, probably, hunched up in the dowdy chair of faded
upholstery, that he created the two phrases which became his
formula for happiness. He desired "somebody to go home to evenings";
still more, "some one to work with and work for."
It seemed to him that he had mapped out his whole life. He sat
back, satisfied, and caught the sound of emptiness in his room,
emphasized by the stilly tick of his watch.
"Oh--Morton--" he cried.
He leaped up and raised the window. It was raining, but through
the slow splash came the night rattle of hostile London. Staring
down, he studied the desolate circle of light a street-lamp cast
on the wet pavement. A cat gray as dish-water, its fur worn off
in spots, lean and horrible, sneaked through the circle of light
like the spirit of unhappiness, like London's sneer at solitary
Americans in Russell Square rooms.
Mr. Wrenn gulped. Through the light skipped a man and a girl,
so little aware of him that they stopped, laughingly, wrestling
for an umbrella, then disappeared, and the street was like a
forgotten tomb. A hansom swung by, the hoofbeats sharp and
cheerless. The rain dripped. Nothing else. Mr. Wrenn slammed
down the window.
He smoothed the sides of his suit-case and reckoned the number
of miles it had traveled with him. He spun his watch about on
the table, and listened to its rapid mocking speech, "Friends,
friends; friends, friends."
Sobbing, he began to undress, laying down each garment as though
he were going to the scaffold. When the room was dark the great
shadowy forms of fear thronged unchecked about his narrow dingy bed.
Once during the night he woke. Some sound was threatening him.
It was London, coming to get him and torture him. The light in
his room was dusty, mottled, gray, lifeless. He saw his door,
half ajar, and for some moments lay motionless, watching stark
and bodiless heads thrust themselves through the opening and
withdraw with sinister alertness till he sprang up and opened
the door wide.
But he did not even stop to glance down the hall for the crowd
of phantoms that had gathered there. Some hidden manful scorn
of weakness made him sneer aloud, "Don't be a baby even if you
_are_ lonely."
His voice was deeper than usual, and he went to bed to sleep,
throwing himself down with a coarse wholesome scorn of his
nervousness.
He awoke after dawn, and for a moment curled in happy wriggles
of satisfaction over a good sleep. Then he remembered that he
was in the cold and friendless prison of England, and lay there
panting with desire to get away, to get back to America, where
he would be safe.
He wanted to leap out of bed, dash for the Liverpool train, and
take passage for America on the first boat. But perhaps the
officials in charge of the emigrants and the steerage (and of
course a fellow would go steerage to save money) would want to
know his religion and the color of his hair--as bad as trying to
ship. They might hold him up for a couple of days. There were
quarantines and customs and things, of which he had heard.
Perhaps for two or even three days more he would have to stay in
this nauseating prison-land.
This was the morning of August 3, 1910, two weeks after his
arrival in London, and twenty-two days after victoriously
reaching England, the land of romance. _
Read next: CHAPTER VII HE MEETS A TEMPERAMENT
Read previous: CHAPTER V HE FINDS MUCH QUAINT ENGLISH FLAVOR
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