They were a very lively couple as they walked up. He trickled sympathy when she told of the selfishness of the factory girls under her and the meanness of the superintendent over her, and he laughed several times as she remarked that the superintendent "ought to be boiled alive-that's what all lobsters ought to be," so she repeated the epigram with such increased jollity that they swung up to the theater in a gale; and, once facing the ennuied ticket-seller, he demanded dollar seats just as though he had not been doing sums all the way up to prove that seventy-five-cent seats were the best he could afford.
The play was a glorification of Yankee smartness. Mr. Wrenn was disturbed by the fact that the swindler heroes robbed quite all the others, but he was stirred by the brisk romance of money-making. The swindlers were supermen-blonde beasts with card indices and options instead of clubs. Not that Mr. Wrenn made any observations regarding supermen. But when, by way of commercial genius, the swindler robbed a young night clerk Mr. Wrenn whispered to Theresa, "Gee! he certainly does know how to jolly them, heh?"
"Sh-h-h-h-h-h!" said Theresa.
Every one made millions, victims and all, in the last act, as a proof of the social value of being a live American business man. As they oozed along with the departing audience Mr. Wrenn gurgled:
"That makes me feel just like I'd been making a million dollars." Masterfully, he proposed, "Say, let's go some place and have something to eat."
"All right."
"Let's-I almost feel as if I could afford Rector's, after that play; but, anyway, let's go to Allaire's."
Though he was ashamed of himself for it afterward, he was almost haughty toward his waiter, and ordered Welsh rabbits and beer quite as though he usually breakfasted on them. He may even have strutted a little as he hailed a car with an imaginary walking-stick. His parting with Miss Theresa was intimate; he shook her hand warmly.
As he undressed he hoped that he had not been too abrupt with the waiter, "poor cuss." But he lay awake to think of Theresa's hair and hand-clasp; of polished desks and florid gentlemen who curtly summoned bank-presidents and who had-he tossed the bedclothes about in his struggle to get the word-who had a punch!
He would do that Great Traveling of his in the land of Big Business!
The five thousand princes of New York to protect themselves against the four million ungrateful slaves had devised the sacred symbols of dress-coats, large houses, and automobiles as the outward and visible signs of the virtue of making money, to lure rebels into respectability and teach them the social value of getting a dollar away from that inhuman, socially injurious fiend, Some One Else. That Our Mr. Wrenn should dream for dreaming's sake was catastrophic; he might do things because he wanted to, not because they were fashionable; whereupon, police forces and the clergy would disband, Wall Street and Fifth Avenue would go thundering down. Hence, for him were provided those Y. M. C. A. night bookkeeping classes administered by solemn earnest men of thirty for solemn credulous youths of twenty-nine; those sermons on content; articles on "building up the rundown store by live advertising"; Kiplingesque stories about playing the game; and correspondence-school advertisements that shrieked, "Mount the ladder to thorough knowledge-the path to power and to the fuller pay-envelope."
To all these Mr. Wrenn had been indifferent, for they showed no imagination. But when he saw Big Business glorified by a humorous melodrama, then The Job appeared to him as picaresque adventure, and he was in peril of his imagination.
The eight-o'clock sun, which usually found a wildly shaving Mr. Wrenn, discovered him dreaming that he was the manager of the Souvenir Company. But that was a complete misunderstanding of the case. The manager of the Souvenir Company was Mr. Mortimer R. Guilfogle, and he called Mr. Wrenn in to acquaint him with that fact when the new magnate started his career in Big Business by arriving at the office one hour late.
What made it worse, considered Mr. Guilfogle, was that this Wrenn had a higher average of punctuality than any one else in the office, which proved that he knew better. Worst of all, the Guilfogle family eggs had not been scrambled right at breakfast; they had been anemic. Mr. Guilfogle punched the buzzer and set his face toward the door, with a scowl prepared.
Mr. Wrenn seemed weary, and not so intimidated as usual.
"Look here, Wrenn; you were just about two hours late this morning. What do you think this office is? A club or a reading-room for hoboes? Ever occur to you we'd like to have you favor us with a call now and then so's we can learn how you're getting along at golf or whatever you're doing these days?"
There was a sample baby-shoe office pin-cushion on the manager's desk. Mr. Wrenn eyed this, and said nothing. The manager:
"Hear what I said? D'yuh think I'm talking to give my throat exercise?"
Mr. Wrenn was stubborn. "I couldn't help it."
"Couldn't help-! And you call that an explanation! I know just exactly what you're thinking, Wrenn; you're thinking that because I've let you have a lot of chances to really work into the business lately you're necessary to us, and not simply an expense-"
"Oh no, Mr. Guilfogle; honest, I didn't think-"
"Well, hang it, man, you want to think. What do you suppose we pay you a salary for? And just let me tell you, Wrenn, right here and now, that if you can't condescend to spare us some of your valuable time, now and then, we can good and plenty get along without you."
An old tale, oft told and never believed; but it interested Mr. Wrenn just now.
"I'm real glad you can get along without me. I've just inherited a big wad of money! I think I'll resign! Right now!"
Whether he or Mr. Mortimer R. Guilfogle was the more aghast at hearing him bawl this no one knows. The manager was so worried at the thought of breaking in a new man that his eye-glasses slipped off his poor perspiring nose. He begged, in sudden tones of old friendship:
"Why, you can't be thinking of leaving us! Why, we expect to make a big man of you, Wrenn. I was joking about firing you. You ought to know that, after the talk we had at Mouquin's the other night. You can't be thinking of leaving us! There's no end of possibilities here."
"Sorry," said the dogged soldier of dreams.
"Why-" wailed that hurt and astonished victim of ingratitude, Mr. Guilfogle.
"I'll leave the middle of June. That's plenty of notice," chirruped Mr. Wrenn.
At five that evening Mr. Wrenn dashed up to the Brass-button Man at his station before the Nickelorion, crying:
"Say! You come from Ireland, don't you?"
"Now what would you think? Me-oh no; I'm a Chinaman from Oshkosh!"
"No, honest, straight, tell me. I've got a chance to travel. What d'yuh think of that? Ain't it great! And I'm going right away. What I wanted to ask you was, what's the best place in Ireland to see?"
"Donegal, o' course. I was born there."
Hauling from his pocket a pencil and a worn envelope, Mr. Wrenn joyously added the new point of interest to a list ranging from Delagoa Bay to Denver.
He skipped up-town, looking at the stars. He shouted as he saw the stacks of a big Cunarder bulking up at the end of Fourteenth Street. He stopped to chuckle over a lithograph of the Parthenon at the window of a Greek bootblack's stand. Stars-steamer-temples, all these were his. He owned them now. He was free.
Lee Theresa sat waiting for him in the basement livingroom till ten-thirty while he was flirting with trainboards at the Grand Central. Then she went to bed, and, though he knew it not, that prince of wealthy suitors, Mr. Wrenn, had entirely lost the heart and hand of Miss Zapp of the F. F. V.
He stood before the manager's god-like desk on June 14, 1910. Sadly:
"Good-by, Mr. Guilfogle. Leaving to-day. I wish-Gee! I wish I could tell you, you know-about how much I appreciate-"