active sounds from her, next room. He hurried down to the stoop.
She stood behind him on the door-step, glaring up and down the
street, as bored and as ready to spring as the Zoo tiger. Mr.
Wrenn heard himself saying to the girl, "Please, miss, do you
mind telling me--I'm an American; I'm a stranger in London--I
want to go to a good play or something and what would I--what
would be good----"
"I don't know, reahlly," she said, with much hauteur.
"Everything's rather rotten this season, I fancy." Her voice
ran fluting up and down the scale. Her a's were very broad.
"Oh--oh--y-you _are_ English, then?"
"Yes!"
"Why--uh----"
"_Yes!_"
"Oh, I just had a fool idea maybe you might be French."
"Perhaps I am, y' know. I'm not reahlly English," she said, blandly.
"Why--uh----"
"What made you think I was French? Tell me; I'm interested."
"Oh, I guess I was just--well, it was almost make-b'lieve--how
you had a castle in France--just a kind of a fool game."
"Oh, _don't_ be ashamed of imagination," she demanded, stamping
her foot, while her voice fluttered, low and beautifully
controlled, through half a dozen notes. "Tell me the rest of
your story about me."
She was sitting on the rail above him now. As he spoke she
cupped her chin with the palm of her delicate hand and observed
him curiously.
"Oh, nothing much more. You were a countess----"
"Please! Not just `were.' Please, sir, mayn't I be a countess now?"
"Oh yes, of course you are!" he cried, delight submerging
timidity. "And your father was sick with somepun' mysterious,
and all the docs shook their heads and said `Gee! we dunno what
it is,' and so you sneaked down to the treasure-chamber--you
see, your dad--your father, I should say--he was a cranky old
Frenchman--just in the story, you know. He didn't think you
could do anything yourself about him being mysteriously sick.
So one night you----"
"Oh, was it dark? Very _very_ dark? And silent? And my
footsteps rang on the hollow flagstones? And I swiped the gold
and went forth into the night?"
"Yes, _yes!_ That's it."
"But why did I swipe it?"
"I'm just coming to that," he said, sternly.
"Oh, please, sir, I'm awful sorry I interrupted."
"It was like this: You wanted to come over here and study
medicine so's you could cure your father."
"But please, sir," said the girl, with immense gravity, "mayn't
I let him die, and not find out what's ailing him, so I can
marry the _maire?_"
"Nope," firmly, "you got to---- Say, _gee!_ I didn't expect to
tell you all this make-b'lieve.... I'm afraid you'll think
it's awful fresh of me."
"Oh, I loved it--really I did--because you liked to make it up
about poor Istra. (My name is Istra Nash.) I'm sorry to say I'm
not reahlly"--her two "reallys" were quite different--"a countess,
you know. Tell me--you live in this same house, don't you?
Please tell me that you're not an interesting Person. Please!"
"I--gee! I guess I don't quite get you."
"Why, stupid, an Interesting Person is a writer or an artist or
an editor or a girl who's been in Holloway Jail or Canongate for
suffraging, or any one else who depends on an accident to be
tolerable."
"No, I'm afraid not; I'm just a kind of clerk."
"Good! Good! My dear sir--whom I've never seen before--have I?
By the way, please don't think I usually pick up stray gentlemen
and talk to them about my pure white soul. But you, you know,
made stories about me.... I was saying: If you could only know
how I loathe and hate and despise Interesting People just now!
I've seen so much of them. They talk and talk and talk--they're
just like Kipling's bandar-log--What is it?
"See us rise in a flung festoon
Half-way up to the jealous moon.
Don't you wish you--
could know all about art and economics as we do?' That's what
they say. Umph!"
Then she wriggled her fingers in the air like white butterflies,
shrugged her shoulders elaborately, rose from the rail, and sat
down beside him on the steps, quite matter-of-factly.
He gould feel his temple-pulses beat with excitement.
She turned her pale sensitive vivid face slowly toward him.
"When did you see me--to make up the story?"
"Breakfasts. At Mrs. Cattermole's."
"Oh yes.... How is it you aren't out sight-seeing? Or is it
blessedly possible that you aren't a tripper -- a tourist?"
"Why, I dunno." He hunted uneasily for the right answer.
"Not exactly. I tried a stunt--coming over on a cattle-boat."
"That's good. Much better."
She sat silent while, with enormous and self-betraying pains to
avoid detection, he studied her firm thin brilliantly red lips.
At last he tried:
"Please tell me something about London. Some of you English----
Oh, I dunno. I can't get acquainted easily."
"My dear child, I'm not English! I'm quite as American as
yourself. I was born in California. I never saw England till two
years ago, on my way to Paris.
I'm an art student.... That's why my accent is so perishin'
English--I can't afford to be just _ordinary_ British, y' know."
Her laugh had an October tang of bitterness in it.
"Well, I'll--say, what do you know about that!" he said, weakly.
"Tell me about yourself--since apparently we're now
acquainted.... Unless you want to go to that music- hall?"
"Oh no, no, no! Gee, I was just _crazy_ to have somebody to talk
to--somebody nice--I was just about nutty, I was so lonely," all
in a burst. He finished, hesitatingly, "I guess the English are
kinda hard to get acquainted with."
"Lonely, eh?" she mused, abrupt and bluffly kind as a man, for
all her modulating woman's voice. "You don't know any of the
people here in the house?"
"No'm. Say, I guess we got rooms next to each other."
"How romantic!" she mocked.
"Wrenn's my name; William Wrenn. I work for--I used to work for
the Souvenir and Art Novelty Company. In New York."
"Oh. I see. Novelties? Nice little ash-trays with `Love from
the Erie Station'? And woggly pin-cushions?"
"Yes! And fat pug-dogs with black eyes."
"Oh no-o-o! Please not black! Pale sympathetic blue eyes--nice
honest blue eyes!"
"Nope. Black. Awful black.... Say, gee, I ain't talking too
nutty, am I?"
"`Nutty'? You mean `idiotically'? The slang's changed
since---- Oh yes, of course; you've succeeded in talking quite
nice and `idiotic.'"
"Oh, say, gee, I didn't mean to---- When you been so nice and
all to me----"
"Don't apologize!" Istra Nash demanded, savagely. "Haven't they
taught you that?"
"Yes'm," he mumbled, apologetically.
She sat silent again, apparently not at all satisfied with the
architecture of the opposite side of Tavistock Place.
Diffidently he edged into speech:
"Honest, I did think you was English. You came from California?
Oh, say, I wonder if you've ever heard of Dr. Mittyford. He's
some kind of school-teacher. I think he teaches in Leland
Stamford College."
"Leland Stanford? You know him?" She dropped into interested
familiarity.
"I met him at Oxford."
"Really?... My brother was at Stanford. I think I've heard him
speak of---- Oh yes. He said that Mittyford was a cultural
climber, if you know what I mean; rather--oh, how shall I
express it?--oh, shall we put it, finicky about things people
have just told him to be finicky about."
"Yes!" glowed Mr. Wrenn.
To the luxury of feeling that he knew the unusual Miss Istra
Nash he sacrificed Dr. Mittyford, scholarship and eye-glasses
and Shelley and all, without mercy.
"Yes, he was awfully funny. Gee! I didn't care much for him."
"Of course you know he's a great man, however?" Istra was as
bland as though she had meant that all along, which left Mr.
Wrenn nowhere at all when it came to deciding what she meant.
Without warning she rose from the steps, flung at him "G' night,"
and was off down the street.
Sitting alone, all excited happiness, Mr. Wrenn muttered: "Ain't
she a wonder! Gee! she's striking- lookin'! Gee whittakers!"
Some hours later he said aloud, tossing about in bed: "I wonder
if I was too fresh. I hope I wasn't. I ought to be careful."
He was so worried about it that he got up and smoked a
cigarette, remembered that he was breaking still another rule by
smoking too much, then got angry and snapped defiantly at his
suit-case: "Well, what do I care if I _am_ smoking too much?
And I'll be as fresh as I want to." He threw a newspaper at the
censorious suit-case and, much relieved, went to bed to dream
that he was a rabbit making enormously amusing jests, at which
he laughed rollickingly in half-dream, till he realized that he
was being awakened by the sound of long sobs from the room of
Istra Nash.
Afternoon; Mr. Wrenn in his room. Miss Nash was back from tea,
but there was not a sound to be heard from her room, though he
listened with mouth open, bent forward in his chair, his hands
clutching the wooden seat, his finger-tips rubbing nervously
back and forth over the rough under-surface of the wood.
He wanted to help her--the wonderful lady who had been sobbing
in the night. He had a plan, in which he really believed,
to say to her, "Please let me help you, princess, jus' like I
was a knight."
At last he heard her moving about. He rushed downstairs and
waited on the stoop.
When she came out she glanced down and smiled contentedly.
He was flutteringly sure that she expected to see him there.
But all his plan of proffering assistance vanished as he saw
her impatient eyes and her splendors of dress -- another tight -
fitting gown, of smoky gray, with faint silvery lights gliding
along the fabric.
She sat on the rail above him, immediately, unhesitatingly, and
answered his "Evenin'" cheerfully.
He wanted so much to sit beside her, to be friends with her.
But, he felt, it took courage to sit beside her. She was likely
to stare haughtily at him. However, he did go up to the rail
and sit, shyly kicking his feet, beside her, and she did not
stare haughtily. Instead she moved over an inch or two, glanced
at him almost as though they were sharing a secret, and said, quietly:
"I thought quite a bit about you last evening. I believe you
really have an imagination, even though you are a salesman--I
mean so many don't; you know how it is."
"Oh yes."
You see, Mr. Wrenn didn't know he was commonplace.
"After I left here last night I went over to Olympia Johns', and
she dragged me off to a play. I thought of you at it because
there was an imaginative butler in it. You don't mind my
comparing you to a butler, do you? He was really quite the
nicest person in the play, y' know. Most of it was gorgeously
rotten. It used to be a French farce, but they sent it to
Sunday-school and gave it a nice fresh frock. It seemed that a
gentleman-tabby had been trying to make a match between his
nephew and his ward. The ward arted. Personally I think it
was by tonsorial art. But, anyway, the uncle knew that nothing
brings people together so well as hating the same person. You know,
like hating the cousin, when you're a kiddy, hating the cousin
that always keeps her nails clean?"
"Yes! That's _so!_"
"So he turned nasty, and of course the nephew and ward clinched
till death did them part--which, I'm very sorry to have to tell
you, death wasn't decent enough to do on the stage. If the play
could only have ended with everybody's funeral I should have
called it a real happy ending."
Mr. Wrenn laughed gratefully, though uncertainly. He knew that she
had made jokes for him, but he didn't exactly know what they were.
"The imaginative butler, he was rather good. But the rest---- Ugh!"
"That must have been a funny play," he said, politely.
She looked at him sidewise and confided, "Will you do me a favor?"
"Oh yes, I----"
"Ever been married?"
He was frightfully startled. His "No" sounded as though he
couldn't quite remember.
She seemed much amused. You wouldn't have believed that this
superior quizzical woman who tapped her fingers carelessly on
"Oh, that wasn't a personal question," she said. "I just wanted
to know what you're like. Don't you ever collect people? I
do--chloroform 'em quite cruelly and pin their poor little
corpses out on nice clean corks.... You live alone in New York,
do you?"
"Y-yes."
"Who do you play with--know?"
"Not--not much of anybody. Except maybe Charley Carpenter.
He's assistant bookkeeper for the Souvenir Company. "He had
wanted to, and immediately decided not to, invent _grandes
mondes_ whereof he was an intimate.
"What do--oh, you know--people in New York who don't go to
parties or read much--what do they do for amusement? I'm so
interested in types."
"Well----" said he.
That was all he could say till he had digested a pair of
thoughts: Just what did she mean by "types"? Had it something
to do with printing stories? And what could he say about the
people, anyway? He observed:
"Oh, I don't know--just talk about--oh, cards and jobs and folks
and things and--oh, you know; go to moving pictures and
vaudeville and go to Coney Island and--oh, sleep."
"But you----?"
"Well, I read a good deal. Quite a little. Shakespeare and
geography and a lot of stuff. I like reading."
"And how do you place Nietzsche?" she gravely desired to know.
"?"
"Nietzsche. You know--the German humorist."
"Oh yes--uh--let me see now; he's--uh----"
"Why, you remember
, don't you? Haeckel and he wrote the great
musical comedy of the century. And Matisse did the
music--Matisse and Rodin."
"I haven't been to it," he said, vaguely. "...I don't know
much German. Course I know a few words, like _Spricken Sie
Dutch_ and _Bitty, sir_, that Rabin at the Souvenir Company--he's
a German Jew, I guess-- learnt me.... But, say, isn't Kipling
great! Gee! when I read _Kim_ I can imagine I'm hiking along one
of those roads in India just like I was there--you know, all
those magicians and so on.... Readin's wonderful, ain't it!"
"Um. Yes."
"I bet you read an awful lot."
"Very little. Oh--D'Annunzio and some Turgenev and a little
Tourgenieff.... That last was a joke, you know."
"Oh yes," disconcertedly.
"What sorts of plays do you go to, Mr. Wrenn?"
"Moving pictures mostly," he said, easily, then bitterly wished
he hadn't confessed so low- life a habit.
"Well--tell me, my dear---- Oh, I didn't mean that; artists use
it a good deal; it just means `old chap.' You _don't_ mind my
asking such beastly personal questions, do you? I'm interested
in people.... And now I must go up and write a letter. I was
going over to Olympia's--she's one of the Interesting People I
spoke of--but you see you have been much more amusing. Good night.
You're lonely in London, aren't you? We'll have to go sightseeing
some day."
"Yes, I am lonely!" he exploded. Then, meekly: "Oh, thank you!
I sh'd be awful pleased to.... Have you seen the Tower, Miss Nash?"
"No. Never. Have you?"
"No. You see, I thought it 'd be kind of a gloomy thing to see
all alone. Is that why you haven't never been there, too?"
"My dear man, I see I shall have to educate you. Shall I? I've
been taken in hand by so many people--it would be a pleasure to
pass on the implied slur. Shall I?"
"Please do."
"One simply doesn't go and see the Tower, because that's what
trippers do. Don't you understand, my dear? (Pardon the `my
dear' again.) The Tower is the sort of thing school
superintendents see and then go back and lecture on in school
assembly-room and the G. A. R. hall. I'll take you to the Tate
Gallery." Then, very abruptly, "G' night," and she was gone.
He stared after her smooth back, thinking: "Gee! I wonder if
she got sore at something I said. I don't think I was fresh
this time. But she beat it so quick.... Them lips of hers--I