HE TIFFINS
Mr. Wrenn, chewing and chewing and chewing the cud of thought in his
room next evening, after an hour had proved two things; thus:
(a) The only thing he wanted to do was to go back to America at once,
because England was a country where every one—native or American—was so
unfriendly and so vastly wise that he could never understand them.
(b) The one thing in the world that he wanted to do was to be right
here, for the most miraculous event of which he had ever heard was
meeting Miss Nash. First one, then the other, these thoughts swashed
back and forth like the swinging tides. He got away from them only long
enough to rejoice that somehow—he didn’t know how—he was going to be
her most intimate friend, because they were both Americans in a strange
land and because they both could make-believe.
Then he was proving that Istra would, and would not, be the perfect
comrade among women when some one knocked at his door.
Electrified, his cramped body shot up from its crouch, and he darted to
the door.
Istra Nash stood there, tapping her foot on the sill with apologetic
haste in her manner. Abruptly she said:
“So sorry to bother you. I just wondered if you could let me have a
match? I’m all out.”
“Oh _yes!_ Here’s a whole box. Please take ’em. I got plenty more.”
[Which was absolutely untrue.]
“Thank you. S’ good o’ you,” she said, hurriedly. “G’ night.”
She turned away, but he followed her into the hall, bashfully urging:
“Have you been to another show? Gee! I hope you draw a better one next
time ’n the one about the guy with the nephew.”
“Thank you.”
She glanced back in the half dark hall from her door—some fifteen feet
from his. He was scratching at the wall-paper with a diffident finger,
hopeful for a talk.
“Won’t you come in?” she said, hesitatingly.
“Oh, thank you, but I guess I hadn’t better.”
Suddenly she flashed out the humanest of smiles, her blue-gray eyes
crinkling with cheery friendship. “Come in, come in, child.” As he
hesitatingly entered she warbled: “Needn’t both be so lonely all the
time, after all, need we? Even if you _don’t_ like poor Istra. You
don’t—do you?” Seemingly she didn’t expect an answer to her question,
for she was busy lighting a Russian cigarette. It was the first time in
his life that he had seen a woman smoke.
With embarrassed politeness he glanced away from her as she threw back
her head and inhaled deeply. He blushingly scrutinized the room.
In the farther corner two trunks stood open. One had the tray removed,
and out of the lower part hung a confusion of lacey things from which
he turned away uncomfortable eyes. He recognized the black-and-gold
burnoose, which was tumbled on the bed, with a nightgown of lace
insertions and soft wrinkles in the lawn, a green book with a paper
label bearing the title _Three Plays for Puritans_, a red slipper, and
an open box of chocolates.
On the plain kitchen-ware table was spread a cloth of Reseda green,
like a dull old leaf in color. On it lay a gold-mounted fountain-pen,
huge and stub-pointed; a medley of papers and torn envelopes, a bottle
of Creme Yvette, and a silver-framed portrait of a lean smiling man
with a single eye-glass.
Mr. Wrenn did not really see all these details, but he had an
impression of luxury and high artistic success. He considered the
Yvette flask the largest bottle of perfume he’d ever seen; and remarked
that there was “some guy’s picture on the table.” He had but a moment
to reconnoiter, for she was astonishingly saying:
“So you were lonely when I knocked?”
“Why, how—”
“Oh, I could see it. We all get lonely, don’t we? I do, of course. Just
now I’m getting sorer and sorer on Interesting People. I think I’ll go
back to Paris. There even the Interesting People are—why, they’re
interesting. Savvy—you see I _am_ an American—savvy?”
“Why—uh—uh—uh—I d-don’t exactly get what you mean. How do you mean
about ‘Interesting People’?”
“My dear child, of course you don’t get me.” She went to the mirror and
patted her hair, then curled on the bed, with an offhand “Won’t you sit
down?” and smoked elaborately, blowing the blue tendrils toward the
ceiling as she continued: “Of course you don’t get it. You’re a nice
sensible clerk who’ve had enough real work to do to keep you from being
afraid that other people will think you’re commonplace. You don’t have
to coddle yourself into working enough to earn a living by talking
about temperament.
“Why, these Interesting People—You find ’em in London and New York and
San Francisco just the same. They’re convinced they’re the wisest
people on earth. There’s a few artists and a bum novelist or two
always, and some social workers. The particular bunch that it amuses me
to hate just now—and that I apparently can’t do without—they gather
around Olympia Johns, who makes a kind of salon out of her rooms on
Great James Street, off Theobald’s Road…. They might just as well be in
New York; but they’re even stodgier. They don’t get sick of the game of
being on intellectual heights as soon as New-Yorkers do.
“I’ll have to take you there. It’s a cheery sensation, you know, to
find a man who has some imagination, but who has been unspoiled by
Interesting People, and take him to hear them wamble. They sit around
and growl and rush the growler—I hope you know growler-rushing—and
rejoice that they’re free spirits. Being Free, of course, they’re not
allowed to go and play with nice people, for when a person is Free, you
know, he is never free to be anything but Free. That may seem
confusing, but they understand it at Olympia’s.
“Of course there’s different sorts of intellectuals, and each cult
despises all the others. Mostly, each cult consists of one person, but
sometimes there’s two—a talker and an audience—or even three. For
instance, you may be a militant and a vegetarian, but if some one is a
militant and has a good figure, why then—oof!… That’s what I mean by
‘Interesting People.’ I loathe them! So, of course, being one of them,
I go from one bunch to another, and, upon my honor, every single time I
think that the new bunch _is_ interesting!”
Then she smoked in gloomy silence, while Mr. Wrenn remarked, after some
mental labor, “I guess they’re like cattlemen—the cattle-ier they are,
the more romantic they look, and then when you get to know them the
chief trouble with them is that they’re cattlemen.”
“Yes, that’s it. They’re—why, they’re—Oh, poor dear, there, there,
there! It _sha’n’t_ have so much intellekchool discussion, _shall_ it!…
I think you’re a very nice person, and I’ll tell you what we’ll do.
We’ll have a small fire, shall we? In the fireplace.”
“Yes!”
She pulled the old-fashioned bell-cord, and the old-fashioned North
Country landlady came—tall, thin, parchment-faced, musty-looking as
though she had been dressed up in Victorian garments in 1880 and left
to stand in an unaired parlor ever since. She glowered silent
disapproval at the presence of Mr. Wrenn in Istra’s room, but sent a
slavey to make the fire—“saxpence uxtry.” Mr. Wrenn felt guilty till
the coming of the slavey, a perfect Christmas-story-book slavey, a
small and merry lump of soot, who sang out, “Chilly t’-night, ayn’t
it?” and made a fire that was soon singing “Chilly t’-night,” like the
slavey.
Istra sat on the floor before the fire, Turk-wise, her quick delicate
fingers drumming excitedly on her knees.
“Come sit by me. You, with your sense of the romantic, ought to
appreciate sitting by the fire. You know it’s always done.”
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 assured 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 goddessship 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 packed 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 grass in
the parks. You’re much too respectable to roll on the grass, 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.”
“Why, yes. Of course. Talking sideways. Don’t you see now?”
Gallant gentleman as he was, he let her think she had invented the
phrase.
She said many other things; things implying such vast learning that he
made gigantic resolves to “read like thunder.”
Her great lesson was the art of taking tea. He found, surprisedly, that
they weren’t really going to endanger their clothes by rolling on park
grass. Instead, she led him to a tea-room behind a candy-shop on
Tottenham Court Road, a low room with white wicker chairs, colored
tiles set in the wall, and green Sedji-ware jugs with irregular bunches
of white roses. A waitress with wild-rose cheeks and a busy step
brought Orange Pekoe and lemon for her, Ceylon and Russian Caravan tea
and a jug of clotted cream for him, with a pile of cinnamon buns.
“But—” said Istra. “Isn’t this like Alice in Wonderland! But you must
learn the buttering of English muffins most of all. If you get to be
very good at it the flunkies will let you take tea at the Carleton.
They are such hypercritical flunkies, and the one that brings the gold
butter-measuring rod to test your skill, why, he always wears
knee-breeches of silver gray. So you can see, Billy, how careful you
have to be. And eat them without buttering your nose. For if you butter
your nose they’ll think you’re a Greek professor. And you wouldn’t like
that, would you, honey?” He learned how to pat the butter into the
comfortable brown insides of the muffins that looked so cold and floury
without. But Istra seemed to have lost interest; and he didn’t in the
least follow her when she observed:
“Doubtless it _was_ the best butter. But where, where, dear dormouse,
are the hatter and hare? Especially the sweet bunny rabbit that
wriggled his ears and loved Gralice, the _princesse d’outre-mer._
“Where, where are the hatter and hare,
And where is the best butter gone?”
Presently: “Come on. Let’s beat it down to Soho for dinner. Or—no! Now
you shall lead me. Show me where you’d go for dinner. And you shall
take me to a music-hall, and make me enjoy it. Now _you_ teach _me_ to
play.”
“Gee! I’m afraid I don’t know a single thing to teach you.”
“Yes, but—See here! We are two lonely Western barbarians in a strange
land. We’ll play together for a little while. We’re not used to each
other’s sort of play, but that will break up the monotony of life all
the more. I don’t know how long we’ll play or—Shall we?”
“Oh yes!”
“Now show me how you play.”
“I don’t believe I ever did much, really.”
“Well, you shall take me to your kind of a restaurant.”
“I don’t believe you’d care much for penny meat-pies.”
“Little meat-pies?”
“Um-huh.”
“Little _crispy_ ones? With flaky covers?”
“Um-huh.”
“Why, course I would! And ha’p’ny tea? Lead me to it, O brave knight!
And to a vaudeville.”
He found that this devoted attendant of theaters had never seen the
beautiful Italians who pounce upon protesting zylophones with small
clubs, or the side-splitting juggler’s assistant who breaks up piles
and piles of plates. And as to the top hat that turns into an accordion
and produces much melody, she was ecstatic.
At after-theater supper he talked of Theresa and South Beach, of
Charley Carpenter and Morton—Morton—Morton.
They sat, at midnight, on the steps of the house in Tavistock Place.
“I do know you now, “she mused. “It’s curious how any two babes in a
strange-enough woods get acquainted. You _are_ a lonely child, aren’t
you?” Her voice was mother-soft. “We will play just a little—”
“I wish I had some games to teach. But you know so much.”
“And I’m a perfect beauty, too, aren’t I?” she said, gravely.
“Yes, you are!” stoutly.
“You would be loyal…. And I need some one’s admiration…. Mostly, Paris
and London hold their sides laughing at poor Istra.”
He caught her hand. “Oh, don’t! They _must_ ’preciate you. I’d like to
kill anybody that didn’t!”
“Thanks.” She gave his hand a return pressure and hastily withdrew her
own. “You’ll be good to some sweet pink face…. And I’ll go on being
discontented. Oh, isn ’t life the fiercest proposition!… We seem
different, you and I, but maybe it’s mostly surface—down deep we’re
alike in being desperately unhappy because we never know what we’re
unhappy about. Well—”
He wanted to put his head down on her knees and rest there. But he sat
still, and presently their cold hands snuggled together.
After a silence, in which they were talking of themselves, he burst
out: “But I don’t see how Paris could help ’preciating you. I’ll bet
you’re one of the best artists they ever saw…. The way you made up a
picture in your mind about that juggler!”
“Nope. Sorry. Can’t paint at all.”
“Ah, stuff!” with a rudeness quite masterful. “I’ll bet your pictures
are corkers.”
“Um.”
“Please, would you let me see some of them some time. I suppose it
would bother—”
“Come up-stairs. I feel inspired. You are about to hear some great
though nasty criticisms on the works of the unfortunate Miss Nash.”
She led the way, laughing to herself over something. She gave him no
time to blush and hesitate over the impropriety of entering a lady’s
room at midnight, but stalked ahead with a brief “Come in.”
She opened a large portfolio covered with green-veined black paper and
yanked out a dozen unframed pastels and wash-drawings which she
scornfully tossed on the bed, saying, as she pointed to a mass of
Marseilles roofs:
“Do you see this sketch? The only good thing about it is the thing that
last art editor, that red-headed youth, probably didn’t like. Don’t you
hate red hair? You see these ridiculous glaring purple shadows under
the _clocher?_”
She stared down at the picture interestedly, forgetting him, pinching
her chin thoughtfully, while she murmured: “They’re rather nice. Rather
good. Rather good.”
Then, quickly twisting her shoulders about, she poured out:
“But look at this. Consider this arch. It’s miserably out of drawing.
And see how I’ve faked this figure? It isn’t a real person at all.
Don’t you notice how I’ve juggled with this stairway? Why, my dear man,
every bit of the drawing in this thing would disgrace a seventh-grade
drawing-class in Dos Puentes. And regard the bunch of lombardies in
this other picture. They look like umbrellas upside down in a silly
wash-basin. Uff! It’s terrible. _Affreux!_ Don’t act as though you
liked them. You really needn’t, you know. Can’t you see now that
they’re hideously out of drawing?”
Mr. Wrenn’s fancy was walking down a green lane of old France toward a
white cottage with orange-trees gleaming against its walls. In her
pictures he had found the land of all his forsaken dreams.
“I—I—I—” was all he could say, but admiration pulsed in it.
“Thank you…. Yes, we _will_ play. Good night. To-morrow!”