Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man Part 4

"Oh, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. Honest I didn't.

I've always thought you'd think I was fresh if I called you 'Miss Theresa,' and so I--"

"Why, I guess I could go up to the Armenian with you, perhaps.

When would you like to go? You know I've always got lots of dates but I--um--let's see, I think I could go to-morrow evening."

"Let's do it! Shall I call for you, Miss--uh--Theresa?"

"Yes, you may if you'll be a good boy. Good night." She departed with an air of intimacy.

Mr. Wrenn scuttled to the Nickelorion, and admitted to the Bra.s.s-b.u.t.ton Man that he was "feeling pretty good 's evening."

He had never supposed that a handsome creature like Miss Theresa could ever endure such a "slow fellow" as himself. For about one minute he considered with a chill the question of whether she was agreeable because of his new wealth, but reproved the fiend who was making the suggestion; for had he not heard her mention with great scorn a second cousin who had married an old Yankee for his money? That just settled _that_, he a.s.sured himself, and scowled at a pa.s.sing messenger-boy for having thus hinted, but hastily grimaced as the youngster showed signs of loud displeasure.

The Armenian restaurant is peculiar, for it has foreign food at low prices, and is below Thirtieth Street, yet it has not become Bohemian. Consequently it has no bad music and no crowd of persons from Missouri whose women risk salvation for an evening by smoking cigarettes. Here prosperous Oriental merchants, of mild natures and bandit faces, drink semi-liquid Turkish coffee and discuss rugs and revolutions.

In fact, the place seemed so unartificial that Theresa, facing Mr. Wrenn, was bored. And the menu was foreign without being Society viands. It suggested rats' tails and birds' nests, she was quite sure. She would gladly have experimented with _pate de foie gras_ or alligator-pears, but what social prestige was there to be gained at the factory by remarking that she "always did like _pahklava_"? Mr. Wrenn did not see that she was glancing about discontentedly, for he was delightedly listening to a lanky young man at the next table who was remarking to his _vis-a-vis_, a pale slithey lady in black, with the lines of a torpedo-boat: "Try some of the stuffed vine-leaves, child of the angels, and some wheat _pilaf_ and some _bourma_. Your wheat _pilaf_ is a comfortable food and cheering to the stomach of man.

Simply _won_-derful. As for the _bourma_, he is a merry beast, a brown rose of pastry with honey cunningly secreted between his petals and--Here! Waiter! Stuffed vine-leaves, wheat _p'laf, bourm'_--twice on the order and hustle it."

"When you get through listening to that man--he talks like a bar of soap--tell me what there is on this bill of fare that's safe to eat," snorted Theresa.

"I thought he was real funny," insisted Mr. Wrenn.... "I'm sure you'll like _s.h.i.+sh kebab_ and s--"

"_s.h.i.+sh kibub!_ Who ever heard of such a thing! Haven't they any--oh, I thought they'd have stuff they call 'Turkish Delight'

and things like that."

"'Turkish Delights' is cigarettes, I think."

"Well, I know it isn't, because I read about it in a story in a magazine. And they were eating it. On the terrace.... What is that _s.h.i.+sh kibub_?"

"_Kebab_.... It's lamb roasted on skewers. I know you'll like it."

"Well, I'm not going to trust any heathens to cook my meat.

I'll take some eggs and some of that--what was it the idiot was talking about--_berma_?"

"_Bourma_.... That's awful nice. With honey. And do try some of the stuffed peppers and rice."

"All right," said Theresa, gloomily.

Somehow Mr. Wrenn wasn't vastly transformed even by the possession of the two thousand dollars her mother had reported.

He was still "funny and sort of scary," not like the overpowering Southern gentlemen she supposed she remembered.

Also, she was hungry. She listened with stolid glumness to Mr.

Wrenn's observation that that was "an awful big hat the lady with the funny guy had on."

He was chilled into quietness till Papa Gouroff, the owner of the restaurant, arrived from above-stairs. Papa Gouroff was a Russian Jew who had been a police spy in Poland and a hotel proprietor in Mogador, where he called himself Turkish and married a renegade Armenian. He had a nose like a sickle and a neck like a blue-gum n.i.g.g.e.r. He hoped that the place would degenerate into a Bohemian restaurant where liberal clergymen would think they were slumming, and barbers would think they were entering society, so he always wore a _fez_ and talked bad Arabic. He was local color, atmosphere, Bohemian flavor. Mr.

Wrenn murmured to Theresa:

"Say, do you see that man? He's Signor Gouroff, the owner.

I've talked to him a lot of times. Ain't he great! Golly! look at that beak of his. Don't he make you think of _kiosks_ and _hyrems_ and stuff? Gee! What does he make you think--"

"He's got on a dirty collar.... That waiter's awful slow....

Would you please be so kind and pour me another gla.s.s of water?"

But when she reached the honied _bourma_ she grew tolerant toward Mr. Wrenn. She had two cups of cocoa and felt fat about the eyes and affectionate. She had mentioned that there were good shows in town. Now she resumed:

"Have you been to 'The Gold Brick' yet?"

"No, I--uh--I don't go to the theater much."

"Gwendolyn Muzzy was telling me that this was the funniest show she'd ever seen. Tells how two confidence men fooled one of those terrible little jay towns. Shows all the funny people, you know, like they have in jay towns.... I wish I could go to it, but of course I have to help out the folks at home, so-- Well.... Oh dear."

"Say! I'd like to take you, if I could. Let's go--this evening!" He quivered with the adventure of it.

"Why, I don't know; I didn't tell Ma I was going to be out.

But--oh, I guess it would be all right if I was with you."

"Let's go right up and get some tickets."

"All right." Her a.s.sent was too eager, but she immediately corrected that error by yawning, "I don't suppose I'd ought to go, but if you want to--"

They were a very lively couple as they walked up. He trickled sympathy when she told of the selfishness of the factory girls under her and the meanness of the superintendent over her, and he laughed several times as she remarked that the superintendent "ought to be boiled alive--that's what _all_ lobsters ought to be," so she repeated the epigram with such increased jollity that they swung up to the theater in a gale; and, once facing the ennuied ticket-seller, he demanded dollar seats just as though he had not been doing sums all the way up to prove that seventy-five-cent seats were the best he could afford.

The play was a glorification of Yankee smartness. Mr. Wrenn was disturbed by the fact that the swindler heroes robbed quite all the others, but he was stirred by the brisk romance of money-making. The swindlers were supermen--blonde beasts with card indices and options instead of clubs. Not that Mr. Wrenn made any observations regarding supermen. But when, by way of commercial genius, the swindler robbed a young night clerk Mr.

Wrenn whispered to Theresa, "Gee! he certainly does know how to jolly them, heh?"

"Sh-h-h-h-h-h!" said Theresa.

Every one made millions, victims and all, in the last act, as a proof of the social value of being a live American business man.

As they oozed along with the departing audience Mr. Wrenn gurgled:

"That makes me feel just like I'd been making a million dollars." Masterfully, he proposed, "Say, let's go some place and have something to eat."

"All right."

"Let's--I almost feel as if I could afford Rector's, after that play; but, anyway, let's go to Allaire's."

Though he was ashamed of himself for it afterward, he was almost haughty toward his waiter, and ordered Welsh rabbits and beer quite as though he usually breakfasted on them. He may even have strutted a little as he hailed a car with an imaginary walking-stick. His parting with Miss Theresa was intimate; he shook her hand warmly.

As he undressed he hoped that he had not been too abrupt with the waiter, "poor cuss." But he lay awake to think of Theresa's hair and hand-clasp; of polished desks and florid gentlemen who curtly summoned bank-presidents and who had--he tossed the bedclothes about in his struggle to get the word--who had a _punch!_

He would do that Great Traveling of his in the land of Big Business!

The five thousand princes of New York to protect themselves against the four million ungrateful slaves had devised the sacred symbols of dress-coats, large houses, and automobiles as the outward and visible signs of the virtue of making money, to lure rebels into respectability and teach them the social value of getting a dollar away from that inhuman, socially injurious fiend, Some One Else. That Our Mr. Wrenn should dream for dreaming's sake was catastrophic; he might do things because he wanted to, not because they were fas.h.i.+onable; whereupon, police forces and the clergy would disband, Wall Street and Fifth Avenue would go thundering down. Hence, for him were provided those Y. M. C. A. night bookkeeping cla.s.ses administered by solemn earnest men of thirty for solemn 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 advertis.e.m.e.nts 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.