pale-blue tie into better lines. In her hair was the scent
which he had come to identify as hers. Her white furs brushed
against his overcoat.
The cigar- makers, with seven of them in full evening-dress and
two in dinner-coats, were already dancing on the waxy floor of
Melpomene Hall when they arrived. A full orchestra was pounding
and scraping itself into an hysteria of merriment on the
platform under the red stucco- fronted balcony, and at the bar
behind the balcony there was a spirit of beer and revelry by night.
Mr. Wrenn embarrassedly passed large groups of pretty girls.
He felt very light and insecure in his new gun-metal- finish
pumps now that he had taken off his rubbers and essayed the
slippery floor. He tried desperately not to use his handkerchief
too conspicuously, though he had a cold.
It was not till the choosing of partners for the next dance,
when Tom Poppins stood up beside Nelly, their arms swaying a
little, their feet tapping, that Mr. Wrenn quite got the fact
that he could not dance.
He had casually said to the others, a week before, that he knew
only the square dances which, as a boy, he had learned at
parties at Parthenon. But they had reassured him: "Oh, come
on--we'll teach you how to dance at the ball--it won't be formal.
Besides, we'll give you some lessons before we go."
Playwriting and playing Five Hundred had prevented their giving
him the lessons. So he now sat terrified as a two-step began
and he saw what seemed to be thousands of glittering youths and
maidens whirling deftly in a most involved course, getting
themselves past each other in a way which he was sure he could
never imitate. The orchestra yearned over music as rich and
smooth as milk chocolate, which made him intensely lonely for
Nelly, though she was only across the room from him.
Tom Poppins immediately introduced Nelly to a facetious cigar
salesman, who introduced her to three of the beaux in evening
clothes, while Tom led out Mrs. Arty. Mr. Wrenn, sitting in a
row of persons who were not at all interested in his sorrows,
glowered out across the hall, and wished, oh! so bitterly, to
flee home. Nelly came up, glowing, laughing, with
black-mustached and pearl-waistcoated men, and introduced him to
them, but he glanced at them disapprovingly; and always she was
carried off to dance again.
She found and hopefully introduced to Mr. Wrenn a wallflower who
came from Yonkers and had never heard of Tom Poppins or
aeroplanes or Oxford or any other topic upon which Mr. Wrenn
uneasily tried to discourse as he watched Nelly waltz and smile
up at her partners. Presently the two sat silent. The wallflower
excused herself and went back to her mama from Yonkers.
Mr. Wrenn sat sulking, hating his friends for having brought
him, hating the sweetness of Nelly Croubel, and saying to
himself, "Oh--_sure_--she dances with all those other men--me,
I'm only the poor fool that talks to her when she's tired and
tries to cheer her up."
He did not answer when Tom came and told him a new story he had
just heard in the barroom.
Once Nelly landed beside him and bubblingly insisted on his
coming out and trying to learn to dance. He brightened, but
shyly remarked, "Oh no, I don't think I'd better." Just then the
blackest-mustached and pearl-waistcoatedest of all the cigar
salesmen came begging for a dance, and she was gone, with only:
"Now get up your courage. I'm going to _make_ you dance."
At the intermission he watched her cross the floor with the
hateful cigar salesman, slender in her tight crisp new white
mull, flourishing her fan and talking with happy rapidity.
She sat down beside him. He said nothing; he still stared out
across the glassy floor. She peeped at him curiously several
times, and made a low tapping with her fan on the side of her chair.
She sighed a little. Cautiously, but very casually, she said,
"Aren't you going to take me out for some refreshments, Mr. Wrenn?"
"Oh sure--I'm good enough to buy refreshments for her!" he said
to himself.
Poor Mr. Wrenn; he had not gone to enough parties in Parthenon,
and he hadn't gone to any in New York. At nearly forty he was
just learning the drab sulkiness and churlishness and black
jealousy of the lover.... To her: "Why didn't you go out with
She was big-eyed, a tear showing. "Why, Billy----" was all she
answered.
He clenched his hands to keep from bursting out with all the
pitiful tears which were surging in his eyes. But he said nothing.
"Billy, what----"
He turned shyly around to her; his hand touched hers softly.
"Oh, I'm a beast," he said, rapidly, low, his undertone
trembling to her ears through the laughter of a group next to
them. "I didn't mean that, but I was--I felt like such a
mutt--not being able to dance. Oh, Nelly, I'm awfully sorry.
You know I didn't mean---- _Come on!_ Let's go get something to eat!"
As they consumed ice-cream, fudge, doughnuts, and chicken
sandwiches at the refreshment counter they were very intimate,
resenting the presence of others. Tom and Mrs. Arty joined
them. Tom made Nelly light her first cigarette. Mr. Wrenn
admired the shy way in which, taking the tiniest of puffs, she
kept drawing out her cigarette with little pouts and nose
wriggles and pretended sneezes, but he fe lt a lofty gladness
when she threw it away after a minute, declaring that she'd
never smoke again, and that she was going to make all three of
her companions stop smoking, "now that she knew how horrid and
sneezy it was, so there!"
With what he intended to be deep subtlety Mr. Wrenn drew her
away to the barroom, and these two children, over two glasses of
ginger-ale, looked their innocent and rustic love so plainly
that Mrs. Arty and Tom sneaked away. Nelly cut out a dance,
which she had promised to a cigar-maker, and started homeward
with Mr. Wrenn.
"Let's not take a car--I want some fresh air after that smoky
place," she said. "But it _was_ grand.... Let's walk up
Fifth Avenue."
"Fine.... Tired, Nelly?"
"A little."
He thought her voice somewhat chilly.
"Nelly--I'm so sorry--I didn't really have the chance to tell
you in there how sorry I was for the way I spoke to you.
Gee! it was fierce of me--but I felt--I couldn't dance, and--oh----"
No answer.
"And you did mind it, didn't you?"
"Why, I did n't think you were so very nice about it--when I'd
tried so hard to have you have a good time----"
"Oh, Nelly, I'm so sorry----"
There was tragedy in his voice. His shoulders, which he always
tried to keep as straight as though they were in a vise when he
walked with her, were drooping.
She touched his glove. "Oh don't, Billy; it's all right now.
I understand. Let's forget----"
"Oh, you're too good to me!"
Silence.
As they crossed Twenty-third on Fifth Avenue she took his arm.
He squeezed her hand. Suddenly the world was all young and
beautiful and wonderful. It was the first time in his life that
he had ever walked thus, with the arm of a girl for whom he
cared cuddled in his. He glanced down at her cheap white furs.
Snowflakes, tremulous on the fur, were turned into diamond dust
in the light from a street-lamp which showed as well a tiny
place where her collar had been torn and mended ever so
carefully. Then, in a millionth of a second, he who had been a
wanderer in the lonely gray regions of a detached man's heart
knew the pity of love, all its emotion, and the infinite care
for the beloved that makes a man of a rusty sales-clerk.
He lifted a face of adoration to the misty wonder of the bare
trees, whose tracery of twigs filled Madison Squa re; to the
Metropolitan Tower, with its vast upward stretch toward the
ruddy sky of the city's winter night. All these mysteries he
knew and sang. What he _said_ was:
"Gee, those trees look like a reg'lar picture!... The Tower
just kind of fades away. Don't it?"
"Yes, it is pretty," she said, doubtfully, but with a pressure
of his arm.
Then they talked like a summer-time brook, planning that he was
to buy a Christmas bough of evergreen, which she would smuggle
to breakfast in the morning. Through their chatter persisted
the new intimacy which had been born in the pain of their
misunderstanding.
On January 10th the manuscript of "The Millionaire's Daughter"
was returned by play-brokers Wendelbaum & Schirtz with this letter:
DEAR SIR,--We regret to say that we do not find play available.
We inclose our reader's report on the same. Also inclose bill
for ten dollars for reading- fee, which kindly remit at early
convenience.
He stood in the hall at Mrs. Arty's just before dinner.
He reread the letter and slowly opened the reader's report,
which announced:
"Millionaire's Daughter." One-act vlle. Utterly impos.
Amateurish to the limit. Dialogue sounds like burlesque of
Laura Jean Libbey. Can it.
Nelly was coming down-stairs. He handed her the letter and
report, then tried to stick out his jaw. She read them. Her
hand slipped into his. He went quickly toward the basement and
made himself read the letter--though not the report--to the
tableful. He burned the manuscript of his play before go ing to
bed. The next morning he waded into The Job as he never had
before. He was gloomily certain that he would never get away
from The Job. But he thought of Nelly a hundred times a day and
hoped that sometime, some spring night of a burning moon, he
might dare the great adventure and kiss her. Istra----
Theoretically, he remembered her as a great experience.
But what nebulous bodies these theories are!
That slow but absolutely accurate Five-Hundred player, Mr.
William Wrenn, known as Billy, glanced triumphantly at Miss
Proudfoot, who was his partner against Mrs. Arty and James
T. Duncan,the traveling- man, on that night of late February.
His was the last bid in the crucial hand of the rubber game.
The others waited respectfully. Confidently, he bid "Nine
on no trump."
"Good Lord, Billl" exclaimed James T. Duncan.
"I'll make it."
And he did. He arose a victor. There was no uneasiness, but
rather all the social polish of Mrs. Arty's at its best, in his
manner, as he crossed to Mrs. Ebbitt's cha ir and asked: "How is
Mr. Ebbitt to-night? Pretty rheumatic?" Miss Proudfoot offered
him a lime tablet, and he accepted it judicially. "I believe
these tablets are just about as good as Park & Tilford's," he
said, cocking his head. "Say, Dunk, I'll ma tch you to see who
rushes a growler of beer. Tom'll be here pretty soon--store
ought to be closed by now. We'll have some ready for him."
"Right, Bill," agreed James T. Duncan.
Mr. Wrenn lost. He departed, after secretively obtaining not
one, but two pitchers, in one of which he got a "pint of dark"
and in the other a surprise. He bawled upstairs to Nelly,
"Come on down, Nelly, can't you? Got a growler of ice-cream
soda for the ladies!"
It is true that when Tom arrived and fell to conversational
blows with James T. Duncan over the merits of a Tom Collins Mr.
Wrenn was not brilliant, for the reason that he took Tom Collins
to be a man instead of the drink he really is.
Yet, as they went up-stairs Miss Proudfoot said to Nelly:
"Mr. Wrenn is quiet, but I do think in some ways he's one of the
nicest men I've seen in the house for years. And he is so earnest.
And I think he'll make a good pinochle player, besides Five Hundred."
"Yes," said Nelly.
"I think he was a little shy at first.... _I_ was always
shy.... But he likes us, and I like folks that like folks."
"_Yes!_" said Nelly.
CHAPTER XVII
HE IS BLOWN BY THE WHIRLWIND
"He was blown by the whirlwind and followed a wandering flame
through perilous seas to a happy shore."--_Quoth Francois._
On an April Monday evening, when a small moon passed shyly over
the city and the streets were filled with the sound of
hurdy- gurdies and the spring cries of dancing children, Mr.
Wrenn pranced down to the basement dining- room early, for Nelly
Croubel would be down there talking to Mrs. Arty, and he gaily
wanted to make plans for a picnic to occur the coming Sunday.
He had a shy unacknowledged hope that he might kiss Nelly after
such a picnic; he even had the notion that he might some
day--well, other fellows had been married; why not?
Miss Mary Proudfoot was mending a rent in the current
table-cloth with delicate swift motions of her silvery-skinned
hands. She informed him: "Mr. Duncan will be back from his
Southern trip in five days. We'll have to have a grand closing
progressive Five Hundred tournament." Mr. Wrenn was too much
absorbed in wondering whether Miss Proudfoot would make some of
her celebrated--and justly celebrated--minced-ham sandwiches
for the picnic to be much interested. He was not much more
interested when she said, "Mrs. Ferrard's got a letter or
something for you."
Then, as dinner began, Mrs. Ferrard rushed in dramatically and
said, "There's a telegram for you, Mr. Wrenn!"
Was it death? Whose death? The table panted, Mr. Wrenn with
them.... That's what a telegram meant to them.
Their eyes were like a circle of charging bayonets as he opened
and read the message--a ship's wireless.
Meet me _Hesperida._--ISTRA.
"It's just--a--a business message," he managed to say, and
splashed his soup. This was not the place to take the feelings
out of his thumping heart and examine them.
Dinner was begun. Picnics were conversationally considered in
all their more important phases--historical, dietetical, and
social. Mr. Wrenn talked much and a little wildly. After
dinner he galloped out to buy a paper. The S.S. _Hesperiida_ was
due at ten next morning.
It was an evening of frightened confusion. He tottered along
Lexington Avenue on a furtive walk. He knew only that he was
very fond of Nelly, yet pantingly eager to see Istra. He damned
himself-- "damned" is literal--every other minute for a cad, a
double-faced traitor, and all the other horrifying things a man
is likely to declare himself to be for making the discovery that
two women may be different and yet equally likable. And every
other minute he reveled in an adventurous gladness that he was
going to see Istra--actually, incredibly going to see her, just
the next day! He returned to find Nelly sitting on the steps of
Mrs. Arty's.
"Hello."
"Hello."
Both good sound observations, and all they could say for a time,
while Mr. Wrenn examined the under side of the iron steps rail
minutely.
"Billy--was it something serious, the telegram?"
"No, it was---- Miss Nash, the artist I told you about, asked me
to meet her at the boat. I suppose she wants me to help her
with her baggage and the customs and all them things. She's
just coming from Paris."
"Oh yes, I see."
So lacking in jealousy was Nelly that Mr. Wrenn was
disappointed, though he didn't know why. It always hurts to
have one's thunderous tragedies turn out realistic dialogues.
"I wonder if you would like to meet her. She's awful well
educated, but I dunno--maybe she'd strike you as kind of
snobbish. But she dresses I don't think I ever seen anybody so
elegant. In dressing, I mean. Course"--hastily-- "she's got
money, and so she can afford to. But she's--oh, awful nice,
some ways. I hope you like---- I hope she won't----"
"Oh, I sha'n't mind if she's a snob. Of course a lady gets used
to that, working in a department store," she said, chillily;
then repented swiftly and begged: "Oh, I _didn't_ mean to be
snippy, Billy. Forgive me! I'm sure Miss Nash will be real
nice. Does she live here in New York?"
"No--in California.... I don't know how long she's going to
stay here."
"Well--well--hum-m- m. I'm getting _so_ sleepy. I guess I'd
better go up to bed. Good night."
Uneasy because he was away from the office, displeased because
he had to leave his beloved letters to the Southern trade, angry