Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man Part 19

He slumped down by her, clasping his knees and trying to appear the dignified American business man in his country-house.

She smiled at him intimately, and quizzed:

"Tell me about the last time you sat with a girl by the fire.

Tell poor Istra the dark secret. Was she the perfect among pink faces?"

"I've--never--sat--before--any--fireplace--with --any--one! Except when I was about nine--one Hallowe'en--at a party in Parthenon--little town up York State."

"Really? Poor kiddy!"

She reached out her hand and took his. He was terrifically conscious of the warm smoothness of her fingers playing a soft tattoo on the back of his hand, while she said:

"But you have been in love? Drefful in love?"

"I never have."

"Dear child, you've missed so much of the tea and cakes of life, haven't you? And you have an interest in life. Do you know, when I think of the jaded Interesting People I've met--Why do I leave you to be spoiled by some shop-girl in a flowered hat?

She'd drag you to moving-picture shows.... Oh! You didn't tell me that you went to moving pictures, did you?"

"No!" he lied, fervently, then, feeling guilty, "I used to, but no more."

"It _shall_ go to the nice moving pictures if it wants to! It shall take me, too. We'll forget there are any syndicalists or broken-colorists for a while, won't we? We'll let the robins cover us with leaves."

"You mean like the babes in the woods? But, say, I'm afraid you ain't just a babe in the woods! You're the first person with brains I ever met, 'cept, maybe, Dr. Mittyford; and the Doc never would play games, I don't believe. The very first one, really."

"Thank you!" Her warm pressure on his hand tightened. His heart was making the maddest gladdest leaps, and timidly, with a feeling of historic daring, he ventured to explore with his thumb-tip the fine lines of the side of her hand.... It actually was he, sitting here with a princess, and he actually did feel the softness of her hand, he pantingly a.s.sured himself.

Suddenly she gave his hand a parting pressure and sprang up.

"Come. We'll have tiffin, and then I'll send you away, and to-morrow we'll go see the Tate Gallery."

While Istra was sending the slavey for cakes and a pint of light wine Mr. Wrenn sat in a chair--just sat in it; he wanted to show that he could be dignified and not take advantage of Miss Nash's kindness by slouchin' round. Having read much Kipling, he had an idea that tiffin was some kind of lunch in the afternoon, but of course if Miss Nash used the word for evening supper, then he had been wrong.

Istra whisked the writing-table with the Reseda-green cover over before the fire, chucked its papers on the bed, and placed a bunch of roses on one end, moving the small blue vase two inches to the right, then two inches forward.

The wine she poured into a decanter. Wine was distinctly a problem to him. He was excited over his sudden rise into a society where one took wine as a matter of course. Mrs. Zapp wouldn't take it as a matter of course. He rejoiced that he wasn't narrow-minded, like Mrs. Zapp. He worked so hard at not being narrow-minded like Mrs. Zapp that he started when he was called out of his day-dream by a mocking voice:

"But you might look at the cakes. Just once, anyway. They are very nice cakes."

"Uh--"

"Yes, I know the wine is wine. Beastly of it."

"Say, Miss Nash, I did get you this time."

"Oh, don't tell me that my presiding G.o.ddessship is over already."

"Uh--sure! Now I'm going to be a cruel boss."

"Dee-lighted! Are you going to be a caveman?"

"I'm sorry. I don't quite get you on that."

"That's too bad, isn't it. I think I'd rather like to meet a caveman."

"Oh say, I know about that caveman--Jack London's guys. I'm afraid I ain't one. Still--on the cattle-boat--Say, I wish you could of seen it when the gang were tying up the bulls, before starting. Dark close place 'tween-decks, with the steers bellowin' and all parked tight together, and the stiffs gettin'

seasick--so seasick we just kind of staggered around; and we'd get hold of a head rope and yank and then let go, and the bosses, d yell, 'Pull, or I'll brain you.' And then the fo'c'sle--men packed in like herrings."

She was leaning over the table, making a labyrinth with the currants from a cake and listening intently. He stopped politely, feeling that he was talking too much. But, "Go on, please do," she commanded, and he told simply, seeing it more and more, of Satan and the Grenadier, of the fairies who had beckoned to him from the Irish coast hills, and the comradeship of Morton.

She interrupted only once, murmuring, "My dear, it's a good thing you're articulate, anyway--" which didn't seem to have any bearing on hay-bales.

She sent him away with a light "It's been a good party, hasn't it, caveman? (If you _are_ a caveman.) Call for me tomorrow at three. We'll go to the Tate Gallery."

She touched his hand in the fleetingest of grasps.

"Yes. Good night, Miss Nash," he quavered.

A morning of planning his conduct so that in accompanying Istra Nash to the Tate Gallery he might be the faithful shadow and beautiful transcript of Mittyford, Ph.D. As a result, when he stood before the large canvases of Mr. Watts at the Tate he was so heavy and correctly appreciative, so ready not to enjoy the stories in the pictures of Millais, that Istra suddenly demanded:

"Oh, my dear child, I have taken a great deal on my hands.

You've got to learn to play. You don't know how to play. Come.

I shall teach you. I don't know why I should, either. But--come."

She explained as they left the gallery: "First, the art of riding on the buses. Oh, it is an art, you know. You must appreciate the flower-girls and the gr-r-rand young bobbies.

You must learn to watch for the blossoms on the restaurant terraces and roll on the gra.s.s in the parks. You're much too respectable to roll on the gra.s.s, aren't you? I'll try ever so hard to teach you not to be. And we'll go to tea. How many kinds of tea are there?"

"Oh, Ceylon and English Breakfast and--oh--Chinese."

"B--"

"And golf tees!" he added, excitedly, as they took a seat in front atop the bus.

"Puns are a beginning at least," she reflected.

"But how many kinds of tea _are_ there, Istra?... Oh say, I hadn't ought to--"

"Course; call me Istra or anything else. Only, you mustn't call my bluff. What do I know about tea? All of us who play are bluffers, more or less, and we are ever so polite in pretending not to know the others are bluffing.... There's lots of kinds of tea. In the New York Chinatown I saw once--Do you know Chinatown? Being a New-Yorker, I don't suppose you do."

"Oh yes. And Italiantown. I used to wander round there."

"Well, down at the Seven Flowery Kingdoms Chop Suey and American Cooking there's tea at five dollars a cup that they advertise is grown on 'cloud-covered mountain-tops.' I suppose when the tops aren't cloud-covered they only charge three dollars a cup....

But, serious-like, there's really only two kinds of teas--those you go to to meet the man you love and ought to hate, and those you give to spite the women you hate but ought to--hate! Isn't that lovely and complicated? That's playing. With words. My aged parent calls it 'talking too much and not saying anything.'

Note that last--not saying _anything!_ It's one of the rules in playing that mustn't be broken."

He understood that better than most of the things she said.

"Why," he exclaimed, "it's kind of talking sideways."