Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man Part 5

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-gla.s.ses 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 ingrat.i.tude, 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 Bra.s.s-b.u.t.ton 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 G.o.d-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 b.u.m, 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 b.u.mming 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.