HE BUYS AN ORANGE TIE
The Aengusmere Caravanserai is so unyieldingly cheerful and artistic
that it makes the ordinary person long for a dingy old-fashioned room
in which he can play solitaire and chew gum without being rebuked with
exasperating patience by the wall stencils and clever etchings and
polished brasses. It is adjectiferous. The common room (which is
uncommon for hotel parlor) is all in superlatives and chintzes.
Istra had gone up to her room to sleep, bidding Mr. Wrenn do likewise
and avoid the wrong bunch at the Caravanserai; for besides the wrong
bunch of Interesting People there were, she explained, a right bunch,
of working artists. But he wanted to get some new clothes, to replace
his rain-wrinkled ready-mades. He was tottering through the common
room, wondering whether he could find a clothing-shop in Aengusmere,
when a shrill gurgle from a wing-chair by the rough-brick fireplace
halted him.
“Oh-h-h-h, _Mister_ Wrenn; Mr. _Wrenn!_” There sat Mrs. Stettinius, the
poet-lady of Olympia’s rooms on Great James Street.
“Oh-h-h-h, Mr. Wrenn, you _bad_ man, _do_ come sit down and tell me all
_about_ your _wonderful_ trek with Istra Nash. I _just_ met _dear_
Istra in the upper hall. Poor dear, she was _so_ crumpled, but her hair
was like a sunset over mountain peaks—you know, as Yeats says:
“A stormy sunset were her lips,
A stormy sunset on doomed ships,
only of course this was her _hair_ and not her _lips_—and she told me
that you had tramped all the _way_ from London. I’ve never heard of
anything so romantic—or no, I won’t say ‘romantic’—I _do_ agree with
dear Olympia—_isn’t_ she a mag_nifi_cent woman—_so_ fearless and
progressive—didn’t you _adore_ meeting her?—she is our modern Joan of
Arc—such a _noble_ figure—I _do_ agree with her that _romantic_ love is
_passé_, that we have entered the era of glorious companionship that
regards varietism as _exactly_ as romantic as monogamy. But—but—where
was I?—I think your gipsying down from London was _most_ exciting. Now
_do_ tell us all about it, Mr. Wrenn. First, I want you to meet Miss
Saxonby and Mr. Gutch and _dear_ Yilyena Dourschetsky and Mr. Howard
Bancock Binch—of course you know his poetry.”
And then she drew a breath and flopped back into the wing-chair’s
muffling depths.
During all this Mr. Wrenn had stood, frightened and unprotected and
rain-wrinkled, before the gathering by the fireless fireplace,
wondering how Mrs. Stettinius could get her nose so blue and yet so
powdery. Despite her encouragement he gave no fuller account of the
“gipsying” than, “Why—uh—we just tramped down,” till Russian-Jewish
Yilyena rolled her ebony eyes at him and insisted, “Yez, you mus’ tale
us about it.”
Now, Yilyena had a pretty neck, colored like a cigar of mild flavor,
and a trick of smiling. She was accustomed to having men obey her. Mr.
Wrenn stammered:
“Why—uh—we just walked, and we got caught in the rain. Say, Miss Nash
was a wonder. She never peeped when she got soaked through—she just
laughed and beat it like everything. And we saw a lot of quaint English
places along the road—got away from all them tourists—trippers—you
know.”
A perfectly strange person, a heavy old man with horn spectacles and a
soft shirt, who had joined the group unbidden, cleared his throat and
interrupted:
“Is it not a strange paradox that in traveling, the most observant of
all pursuits, one should have to encounter the eternal bourgeoisie!”
From the Cockney Greek chorus about the unlighted fire:
“Yes!”
“Everywhere.”
“Uh—” began Mr. Gutch. He apparently had something to say. But the
chorus went on:
“And just as swelteringly monogamic in Port Said as in Brum.”
“Yes, that’s so.”
“Mr. Wr-r-renn,” thrilled Mrs. Stettinius, the lady poet, “didn’t you
notice that they were perfectly oblivious of all economic movements;
that their observations never post-dated ruins?”
“I guess they wanted to make sure they were admirin’ the right things,”
ventured Mr. Wrenn, with secret terror.
“Yes, that’s so,” came so approvingly from the Greek chorus that the
personal pupil of Mittyford, Ph.D., made his first epigram:
“It isn’t so much what you like as what you don’t like that shows if
you’re wise.”
“Yes,” they gurgled; and Mr. Wrenn, much pleased with himself, smiled
_au prince_ upon his new friends.
Mrs. Stettinius was getting into her stride for a few remarks upon the
poetry of industrialism when Mr. Gutch, who had been “Uh—”ing for some
moments, trying to get in his remark, winked with sly rudeness at Miss
Saxonby and observed:
“I fancy romance isn’t quite dead yet, y’ know. Our friends here seem
to have had quite a ro-mantic little journey.” Then he winked again.
“Say, what do you mean?” demanded Bill Wrenn, hot-eyed, fists clenched,
but very quiet.
“Oh, I’m not _blaming_ you and Miss Nash—quite the reverse!” tittered
the Gutch person, wagging his head sagely.
Then Bill Wrenn, with his fist at Mr. Gutch’s nose, spoke his mind:
“Say, you white-faced unhealthy dirty-minded lump, I ain’t much of a
fighter, but I’m going to muss you up so’s you can’t find your ears if
you don’t apologize for those insinuations.”
“Oh, Mr. Wrenn—”
“He didn’t mean—”
“I didn’t mean—”
“He was just spoofing—”
“I was just spoofing—”
Bill Wrenn, watching the dramatization of himself as hero, was enjoying
the drama. “You apologize, then?”
“Why certainly, Mr. Wrenn. Let me explain—”
“Oh, don’t explain,” snortled Miss Saxonby.
“Yes!” from Mr. Bancock Binch, “explanations are _so_ conventional, old
chap.”
Do you see them?—Mr. Wrenn, self-conscious and ready to turn into a
blind belligerent Bill Wrenn at the first disrespect; the talkers
sitting about and assassinating all the princes and proprieties and,
poor things, taking Mr. Wrenn quite seriously because he had uncovered
the great truth that the important thing in sight-seeing is not to see
sights. He was most unhappy, Mr. Wrenn was, and wanted to be away from
there. He darted as from a spring when he heard Istra’s voice, from the
edge of the group, calling, “Come here a sec’, Billy.”
She was standing with a chair-back for support, tired but smiling.
“I can’t get to sleep yet. Don’t you want me to show you some of the
buildings here?”
“Oh _yes!_”
“If Mrs. Stettinius can spare you!”
This by way of remarking on the fact that the female poet was staring
volubly.
“G-g-g-g-g-g—” said Mrs. Stettinius, which seemed to imply perfect
consent.
Istra took him to the belvedere on a little slope overlooking the lawns
of Aengusmere, scattered with low bungalows and rose-gardens.
“It is beautiful, isn’t it? Perhaps one could be happy here—if one
could kill all the people except the architect,” she mused.
“Oh, it is,” he glowed.
Standing there beside her, happiness enveloping them, looking across
the marvelous sward, Bill Wrenn was at the climax of his comedy of
triumph. Admitted to a world of lawns and bungalows and big studio
windows, standing in a belvedere beside Istra Nash as her friend—
“Mouse dear,” she said, hesitatingly, “the reason why I wanted to have
you come out here, why I couldn’t sleep, I wanted to tell you how
ashamed I am for having been peevish, being petulant, last night. I’m
so sorry, because you were very patient with me, you were very good to
me. I don’t want you to think of me just as a crochety woman who didn’t
appreciate you. You are very kind, and when I hear that you’re married
to some nice girl I’ll be as happy as can be.”
“Oh, Istra,” he cried, grasping her arm, “I don’t want any girl in the
world—I mean—oh, I just want to be let go ’round with you when you’ll
let me—”
“No, no, dear. You must have seen last night; that’s impossible. Please
don’t argue about it now; I’m too tired. I just wanted to tell you I
appreciated—And when you get back to America you won’t be any the worse
for playing around with poor Istra because she told you about different
things from what you’ve played with, about rearing children as
individuals and painting in _tempera_ and all those things? And—and I
don’t want you to get too fond of me, because we’re—different…. But we
have had an adventure, even if it was a little moist.” She paused;
then, cheerily: “Well, I’m going to beat it back and try to sleep
again. Good-by, Mouse dear. No, don’t come back to the
Cara-advanced-serai. Play around and see the animiles. G’-by.”
He watched her straight swaying figure swing across the lawn and up the
steps of the half-timbered inn. He watched her enter the door before he
hastened to the shops which clustered about the railway- station,
outside of the poetic preserves of the colony proper.
He noticed, as he went, that the men crossing the green were mostly
clad in Norfolk jackets and knickers, so he purchased the first pair of
unrespectable un-ankle-concealing trousers he had owned since small
boyhood, and a jacket of rough serge, with a gaudy buckle on the belt.
Also, he actually dared an orange tie!
He wanted something for Istra at dinner—“a s’prise,” he whispered under
his breath, with fond babying. For the first time in his life he
entered a florist’s shop…. Normally, you know, the poor of the city
cannot afford flowers till they are dead, and then for but one day…. He
came out with a bunch of orchids, and remembered the days when he had
envied the people he had seen in florists’ shops actually buying
flowers. When he was almost at the Caravanserai he wanted to go back
and change the orchids for simpler flowers, roses or carnations, but he
got himself not to.
The linen and glassware and silver of the Caravanserai were almost as
coarse as those of a temperance hotel, for all the raftered ceiling and
the etchings in the dining-room. Hunting up the stewardess of the inn,
a bustling young woman who was reading Keats energetically at an
office-like desk, Mr. Wrenn begged: “I wonder could I get some special
cups and plates and stuff for high tea tonight. I got a kind of party—”
“How many?” The stewardess issued the words as though he had put a
penny in the slot.
“Just two. Kind of a birthday party.” Mendacious Mr. Wrenn!
“Certainly. Of course there’s a small extra charge. I have a Royal
Satsuma tea-service—practically Royal Satsuma, at least—and some
special Limoges.”
“I think Royal Sats’ma would be nice. And some silverware?”
“Surely.”
“And could we get some special stuff to eat?”
“What would you like?”
“Why—”
Mendacious Mr. Wrenn! as we have commented. He put his head on one
side, rubbed his chin with nice consideration, and condescended, “What
would you suggest?”
“For a party high tea? Why, perhaps consomme and omelet Bergerac and a
salad and a sweet and _cafe diable_. We have a chef who does French
eggs rather remarkably. That would be simple, but—”
“Yes, that would be very good,” gravely granted the patron of cuisine.
“At six; for two.”
As he walked away he grinned within. “Gee! I talked to that omelet
Berg’ rac like I’d known it all my life!”
Other s’prises for Istra’s party he sought. Let’s see; suppose it
really were her birthday, wouldn’t she like to have a letter from some
important guy? he queried of himself. He’d write her a make-b’lieve
letter from a duke. Which he did. Purchasing a stamp, he humped over a
desk in the common room and with infinite pains he inked the stamp in
imitation of a postmark and addressed the letter to “Lady Istra Nash,
Mouse Castle, Suffolk.”
Some one sat down at the desk opposite him, and he jealously carried
the task upstairs to his room. He rang for pen and ink as regally as
though he had never sat at the wrong end of a buzzer. After half an
hour of trying to visualize a duke writing a letter he produced this:
LADY ISTRA NASH,
Mouse Castle.
DEAR MADAM,—We hear from our friend Sir William Wrenn that some folks
are saying that to-day is not your birthday & want to stop your
celebration, so if you should need somebody to make them believe to-day
is your birthday we have sent our secretary, Sir Percival Montague. Sir
William Wrenn will hide him behind his chair, and if they bother you
just call for Sir Percival and he will tell them. Permit us, dear Lady
Nash, to wish you all the greetings of the season, and in close we beg
to remain, as ever, Yours sincerely,
DUKE VERE DE VERE.
He was very tired. When he lay down for a minute, with a pillow tucked
over his head, he was almost asleep in ten seconds. But he sprang up,
washed his prickly eyes with cold water, and began to dress. He was shy
of the knickers and golf-stockings, but it was the orange tie that gave
him real alarm. He dared it, though, and went downstairs to make sure
they were setting the table with glory befitting the party.
As he went through the common room he watched the three or four groups
scattered through it. They seemed to take his clothes as a matter of
course. He was glad. He wanted so much to be a credit to Istra.
Returning from the dining-room to the common room, he passed a group
standing in a window recess and looking away from him. He overheard:
“Who is the remarkable new person with the orange tie and the rococo
buckle on his jacket belt—the one that just went through? Did you ever
_see_ anything so funny! His collar didn’t come within an inch and a
half of fitting his neck. He must be a poet. I wonder if his verses are
as jerry-built as his garments!”
Mr. Wrenn stopped.
Another voice:
“And the beautiful lack of development of his legs! It’s like the good
old cycling days, when every draper’s assistant went bank-holidaying….
I don’t know him, but I suppose he’s some tuppeny-ha’p’ny illustrator.”
“Or perhaps he has convictions about fried bananas, and dines on a bean
saute. O Aengusmere! Shades of Aengus!”
“Not at all. When they look as gentle as he they always hate the
capitalists as a militant hates a cabinet minister. He probably dines
on the left ear of a South-African millionaire every evening before
exercise at the barricades…. I say, look over there; there’s a real
artist going across the green. You can tell he’s a real artist because
he’s dressed like a navvy and—”
Mr. Wrenn was walking away, across the common room, quite sure that
every one was eying him with amusement. And it was too late to change
his clothes. It was six already.
He stuck out his jaw, and remembered that he had planned to hide the
“letter from the duke” in Istra’s napkin that it might be the greater
surprise. He sat down at their table. He tucked the letter into the
napkin folds. He moved the vase of orchids nearer the center of the
table, and the table nearer the open window giving on the green. He
rebuked himself for not being able to think of something else to
change. He forgot his clothes, and was happy.
At six-fifteen he summoned a boy and sent him up with a message that
Mr. Wrenn was waiting and high tea ready.
The boy came back muttering, “Miss Nash left this note for you, sir,
the stewardess says.”
Mr. Wrenn opened the green-and-white Caravanserai letter excitedly.
Perhaps Istra, too, was dressing for the party! He loved all s’prises
just then. He read:
Mouse dear, I’m sorrier than I can tell you, but you know I warrned you
that bad Istra was a creature of moods, and just now my mood orders me
to beat it for Paris, which I’m doing, on the 5.17 train. I won’t say
good-by—I hate good-bys, they’re so stupid, don’t you think? Write me
some time, better make it care Amer. Express Co., Paris, because I
don’t know yet just where I’ll be. And please don’t look me up in
Paris, because it’s always better to end up an affair without
explanations, don’t you think? You have been wonderfully kind to me,
and I’ll send you some good thought-forms, shall I?
I. N.
He walked to the office of the Caravanserai, blindly, quietly. He paid
his bill, and found that he had only fifty dollars left. He could not
get himself to eat the waiting high tea. There was a seven-fourteen
train for London. He took it. Meantime he wrote out a cable to his New
York bank for a hundred and fifty dollars. To keep from thinking in the
train he talked gravely and gently to an old man about the brave days
of England, when men threw quoits. He kept thinking over and over, to
the tune set by the rattling of the train trucks: “Friends… I got to
make friends, now I know what they are…. Funny some guys don’t make
friends. Mustn’t forget. Got to make lots of ’em in New York. Learn how
to make ’em.”
He arrived at his room on Tavistock Place about eleven, and tried to
think for the rest of the night of how deeply he was missing Morton of
the cattle-boat now that—now that he had no friend in all the hostile
world.
In a London A. B. C. restaurant Mr. Wrenn was talking to an American
who had a clipped mustache, brisk manners, a Knight-of-Pythias pin, and
a mind for duck-shooting, hardware-selling, and cigars.
“No more England for mine,” the American snapped, good-humoredly. “I’m
going to get out of this foggy hole and get back to God’s country just
as soon as I can. I want to find out what’s doing at the store, and I
want to sit down to a plate of flapjacks. I’m good and plenty sick of
tea and marmalade. Why, I wouldn’t take this fool country for a gift.
No, sir! Me for God’s country—Sleepy Eye, Brown County, Minnesota. You
bet!”
“You don’t like England much, then?” Mr. Wrenn carefully reasoned.
“Like it? Like this damp crowded hole, where they can’t talk English,
and have a fool coinage—Say, that’s a great system, that metric system
they’ve got over in France, but here—why, they don’t know whether
Kansas City is in Kansas or Missouri or both…. ‘Right as rain’—that’s
what a fellow said to me for ‘all right’! Ever hear such nonsense?….
And tea for breakfast! Not for me! No, sir! I’m going to take the first
steamer!”
With a gigantic smoke-puff of disgust the man from Sleepy Eye stalked
out, jingling the keys in his trousers pocket, cocking up his cigar,
and looking as though he owned the restaurant.
Mr. Wrenn, picturing him greeting the Singer Tower from an incoming
steamer, longed to see the tower.
“Gee! I’ll do it!”
He rose and, from that table in the basement of an A. B. C. restaurant,
he fled to America.
He dashed up-stairs, fidgeted while the cashier made his change, rang
for a bus, whisked into his room, slammed his things into his
suit-case, announced to it wildly that they were going home, and
scampered to the Northwestem Station. He walked nervously up and down
till the Liverpool train departed. “Suppose Istra wanted to make up,
and came back to London?” was a terrifying thought that hounded him. He
dashed into the waiting-room and wrote to her, on a souvenir post-card
showing the Abbey: “Called back to America—will write. Address care of
Souvenir Company, Twenty-eighth Street.” But he didn’t mail the card.
Once settled in a second-class compartment, with the train in motion,
he seemed already much nearer America, and, humming, to the great
annoyance of a lady with bangs, he planned his new great work—the
making of friends; the discovery, some day, if Istra should not relent,
of “somebody to go home to.” There was no end to the “societies and
lodges and stuff” he was going to join directly he landed.
At Liverpool he suddenly stopped at a post-box and mailed his card to
Istra. That ended his debate. Of course after that he had to go back to
America.
He sailed exultantly, one month and seventeen days after leaving
Portland.