Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man Part 42

His room was quiet. The lamplight on the delicately green walls was like that of a regular author's den, he was quite sure. He happily tested the fountain-pen by writing the names Nelly and William Wrenn on a bit of wrapping-paper (which he guiltily burned in an ash-tray); washed his face with water which he let run for a minute to cool; sat down before his table with a grunt of content; went back and washed his hands; fiercely threw off the bourgeois enc.u.mbrances of coat and collar; sat down again; got up to straighten a picture; picked up his pen; laid it down, and glowed as he thought of Nelly, slumbering there, near at hand, her exquisite cheek nestling silkenly against her arm, perhaps, and her white dreams--

Suddenly he roared at himself, "Get on the job there, will yuh?"

He picked up the pen and wrote:

THE MILLIONAIRE'S DAUGHTER

A ONE ACT DRAMATIC PLAYLET by

WILLIAM WRENN

CHARACTERS

_John Warrington_, a railway president; quite rich.

_Nelty Warrington_, Mr. Warrington's daughter.

_Reginald Thorne_, his secretary.

He was jubilant. His pen whined at top speed, scattering a shower of tiny drops of ink.

_Stage Scene: An office. Very expensive. Mr. Warrington and Mr.

Thorne are sitting there. Miss Warrington comes in. She says:_

He stopped. He thought. He held his head. He went over to the stationary bowl and soaked his hair with water. He lay on the bed and kicked his heels, slowly and gravely smoothing his mustache. Fifty minutes later he gave a portentous groan and went to bed.

He hadn't been able to think of what Miss Warrington says beyond "I have come to tell you that I am married, papa," and that didn't sound just right; not for a first line it didn't, anyway.

At dinner next night--Sat.u.r.day--Tom was rather inclined to make references to "our author," and to remark: "Well, I know where somebody was last night, but of course I won't tell. Say, them authors are a wild lot."

Mr. Wrenn, who had permitted the teasing of even Tim, the hatter, "wasn't going to stand for no kidding from n.o.body--not when Nelly was there," and he called for a gla.s.s of water with the air of a Harvard a.s.sistant professor forced to eat in a lunch-wagon and slapped on the back by the cook.

Nelly soothed him. "The play _is_ going well, _isn't_ it?"

When he had, with a detached grandeur of which he was immediately ashamed, vouchsafed that he was already "getting right down to bra.s.s tacks on it," that he had already investigated four more plays and begun the actual writing, every one looked awed and asked him a.s.sorted questions.

At nine-thirty that evening he combed and tightly brushed his hair, which he had been pawing angrily for an hour and a half, went down the hall to Nelly's hall bedroom, and knocked with: "It's Mr. Wrenn. May I ask you something about the play?"

"Just a moment," he heard her say.

He waited, panting softly, his lips apart. This was to be the first time he had ever seen Nelly's room. She opened the door part way, smiling shyly, timidly, holding her pale-blue dressing-gown close. The pale blueness was a modestly brilliant spot against the whiteness of the room--white bureau, hung with dance programs and a yellow Upton's Grove High School banner, white tiny rocker, pale-yellow matting, white-and-silver wall-paper, and a glimpse of a white soft bed.

He was dizzy with the exaltation of that purity, but he got himself to say:

"I'm kind of stuck on the first part of the play, Miss Nelly.

Please tell me how you think the heroine would speak to her dad.

Would she call him 'papa' or 'sir,' do you think?"

"Why--let me see--"

"They're such awful high society--"

"Yes, that's so. Why, I should think she'd say 'sir.' Maybe oh, what was it I heard in a play at the Academy of Music?

'Father, I have come back to you!'"

"Sa-a-ay, that's a fine line! That'll get the crowd going right from the first.... I _told_ you you'd help me a lot."

"I'm awfully glad if I _have_ helped you," she said, earnestly.

Good night--and good, "awfully glad, but luck with the play.

Good night."

"Good night. Thank you a lot, Miss Nelly. Church in the morning, remember! Good night."

"Good night."

As it is well known that all playwrights labor with toy theaters before them for working models, Mr. Wrenn ran to earth a fine unbroken pasteboard box in which a ninety-eight-cent alarm-clock had recently arrived. He went out for some glue and three small corks. Setting up his box stage, he glued a pill-box and a match-box on the floor--the side of the box it had always been till now--and there he had the mahogany desks. He thrust three matches into the corks, and behold three graceful actors--graceful for corks, at least. There was fascination in having them enter, through holes punched in the back of the box, frisk up to their desks and deliver magic emotional speeches that would cause any audience to weep; speeches regarding which he knew everything but the words; a detail of which he was still quite ignorant after half an hour of playing with his marionettes.

Before he went despairingly to bed that Sat.u.r.day night he had added to his ma.n.u.script:

_Mr. Thorne_ says: Here are the papers, sir. As a great railway president you should--

The rest of that was to be filled in later. How the d.i.c.kens could he let the public know how truly great his president was?

(_Daughter, Miss Nelly, comes in._)

_Miss Nelly:_ Father, I have come back to you, sir.

_Mr. Warrington:_ My Daughter!

_Nelly:_ Father, I have something to tell you; something--

Breakfast at Mrs. Arty's was always an inspiration. In contrast to the lonely dingy meal at the Hustler Dairy Lunch of his Zapp days, he sat next to a trimly shirtwaisted Nelly, fresh and enthusiastic after nine hours' sleep. So much for ordinary days. But Sunday morning--that was paradise! The oil-stove glowed and purred like a large tin p.u.s.s.y cat; it toasted their legs into dreamy comfort, while they methodically stuffed themselves with toast and waffles and coffee. Nelly and he always felt gently superior to Tom Poppins, who would be a-sleeping late, as they talked of the joy of not having to go to the office, of approaching Christmas, and of the superiority of Upton's Grove and Parthenon.

This morning was to be Mr. Wrenn's first attendance at church with Nelly. The previous time they had planned to go, Mr. Wrenn had spent Sunday morning in unreligious fervor at the Chelsea Dental Parlors with a young man in a white jacket instead of at church with Nelly.

This was also the first time that he had attended a church service in nine years, except for ma.s.s at St. Patrick's, which he regarded not as church, but as beauty. He felt tremendously reformed, set upon new paths of virtue and achievement. He thought slightingly of those lonely bachelors, Morton and Mittyford, Ph. D. They just didn't know what it meant to a fellow to be going to church with a girl like Miss Nelly, he reflected, as he re brushed his hair after breakfast.

He walked proudly beside her, and made much of the gentility of entering the church, as one of the well-to-do and intensely bathed congregation. He even bowed to an almost painfully washed and brushed young usher with gold-rimmed eye-gla.s.ses.

He thought scornfully of his salad days, when he had bowed to the Bra.s.s-b.u.t.ton Man at the Nickelorion.

The church interior was as comfortable as Sunday-morning toast and marmalade--half a block of red carpet in the aisles; shiny solid-oak pews, gorgeous stained-gla.s.s windows, and a general polite creaking of ladies' best stays and gentlemen's stiff shirt-bosoms, and an odor of the best cologne and moth-b.a.l.l.s.

It lacked but six days till Christmas. Mr. Wrenn's heart was a little garden, and his eyes were moist, and he peeped tenderly at Nelly as he saw the holly and ivy and the frosted Christmas mottoes, "Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men," and the rest, that brightened the s.p.a.ces between windows.

Christmas--happy homes--laughter.... Since, as a boy, he had attended the Christmas festivities of the Old Church Sunday-school at Parthenon, and got highly colored candy in a net bag, his holidays had been celebrated by buying himself plum pudding at lonely Christmas dinners at large cheap restaurants, where there was no one to wish him "Merry Christmas" except his waiter, whom he would quite probably never see again, nor ever wish to see.