Our Mr Wrenn | Page 2

for all his life he had been
planning a great journey. Though he had done Staten Island and
patronized an excursion to Bound Brook, neither of these was his grand
tour. It was yet to be taken. In Mr. Wrenn, apparently fastened to New
York like a domestic-minded barnacle, lay the possibilities of heroic
roaming. He knew it. He, too, like the man who had taken the Gaumont
pictures, would saunter among dusky Javan natives in "markets with
tiles on the roofs and temples and--and--uh, well--places!" The scent of
Oriental spices was in his broadened nostrils as he scampered out of the
Nickelorion, without a look at the ticket-taker, and headed for
"home"--for his third-floor-front on West Sixteenth Street. He wanted
to prowl through his collection of steamship brochures for a description
of Java. But, of course, when one's landlady has both the sciatica and a
case of Patient Suffering one stops in the basement dining-room to
inquire how she is.
Mrs. Zapp was a fat landlady. When she sat down there was a straight
line from her chin to her knees. She was usually sitting down. When
she moved she groaned, and her apparel creaked. She groaned and
creaked from bed to breakfast, and ate five griddle-cakes, two helpin's
of scrapple, an egg, some rump steak, and three cups of coffee, slowly
and resentfully. She creaked and groaned from breakfast to her
rocking-chair, and sat about wondering why Providence had inflicted
upon her a weak digestion. Mr. Wrenn also wondered why,
sympathetically, but Mrs. Zapp was too conscientiously dolorous to be
much cheered by the sympathy of a nigger-lovin' Yankee, who couldn't
appreciate the subtle sorrows of a Zapp of Zapp's Bog, allied to all the
First Families of Virginia.
Mr. Wrenn did nothing more presumptuous than sit still, in the stuffy
furniture-crowded basement room, which smelled of dead food and
deader pride in a race that had never existed. He sat still because the
chair was broken. It had been broken now for four years.

For the hundred and twenty-ninth time in those years Mrs. Zapp said, in
her rich corruption of Southern negro dialect, which can only be
indicated here, "Ah been meaning to get that chair mended, Mist'
Wrenn." He looked gratified and gazed upon the crayon enlargements
of Lee Theresa, the older Zapp daughter (who was forewoman in a
factory), and of Godiva. Godiva Zapp was usually called "Goaty," and
many times a day was she called by Mrs. Zapp. A tamed child drudge
was Goaty, with adenoids, which Mrs. Zapp had been meanin' to have
removed, and which she would continue to have benevolent meanin's
about till it should be too late, and she should discover that Providence
never would let Goaty go to school.
"Yes, Mist' Wrenn, Ah told Goaty she was to see the man about getting
that chair fixed, but she nev' does nothing Ah tell her."
In the kitchen was the noise of Goaty, ungovernable Goaty, aged eight,
still snivelingly washing, though not cleaning, the incredible pile of
dinner dishes. With a trail of hesitating remarks on the sadness of
sciatica and windy evenings Mr. Wrenn sneaked forth from the august
presence of Mrs. Zapp and mounted to paradise--his third-floor-front.
It was an abjectly respectable room--the bedspread patched; no two
pieces of furniture from the same family; half-tones from the
magazines pinned on the wall. But on the old marble mantelpiece lived
his friends, books from wanderland. Other friends the room had rarely
known. It was hard enough for Mr. Wrenn to get acquainted with
people, anyway, and Mrs. Zapp did not expect her gennulman lodgers
to entertain. So Mr. Wrenn had given up asking even Charley Carpenter,
the assistant bookkeeper at the Souvenir Company, to call. That left
him the books, which he now caressed with small eager finger-tips. He
picked out a P. & O. circular, and hastily left for fairyland.
The April skies glowed with benevolence this Saturday morning. The
Metropolitan Tower was singing, bright ivory tipped with gold, uplifted
and intensely glad of the morning. The buildings walling in Madison
Square were jubilant; the honest red-brick fronts, radiant; the new
marble, witty. The sparrows in the middle of Fifth Avenue were all
talking at once, scandalously but cleverly. The polished brass of
limousines threw off teethy smiles. At least so Mr. Wrenn fancied as he
whisked up Fifth Avenue, the skirts of his small blue double-breasted
coat wagging. He was going blocks out of his way to the office; ready

to defy time and eternity, yes, and even the office manager. He had
awakened with Defiance as his bedfellow, and throughout breakfast at
the hustler Dairy Lunch sunshine had flickered over the dirty
tessellated floor.
He pranced up to the Souvenir Company's brick building, on
Twenty-eighth Street near