"Why, I don"t think you ought to talk about them so severe," he implored, as they started down-stairs. "I don"t mean they"re like you. They don"t savvy like you do. I mean it! But I was awful int"rested in what that Miss Johns said about kids in school getting crushed into a mold. Gee! that"s so; ain"t it?
Never thought of it before. And that Mrs. Stettinius talked about Yeats so beautiful."
"Oh, my dear, you make my task so much harder. I want you to be different. Can"t you see your cattle-boat experience is realer than any of the things those half-baked thinkers have done? I _know_. I"m half-baked myself."
"Oh, I"ve never done nothing."
"But you"re ready to. Oh, I don"t know. I want--I wish Jock Seton--the filibuster I met in San Francisco--I wish he were here. Mouse, maybe I can make a filibuster of you. I"ve got to create something. Oh, those people! If you just knew them! That fool Mary Stettinius is mad about that Tchatzsky person, and her husband invites him to teas. Stettinius is mad about Olympia, who"ll probably take Carson out and marry him, and he"ll keep on hanging about the Greek girl. Ungh!"
"I don"t know--I don"t know--"
But as he didn"t know what he didn"t know she merely patted his arm and said, soothingly: "I won"t criticize your first specimens of radicals any more. They are trying to do something, anyway." Then she added, in an irrelevant tone, "You"re exactly as tall as I am. Mouse dear, you ought to be taller."
They were entering the drab stretch of Tavistock Place, after a silence as drab, when she exclaimed: "Mouse, I am _so_ sick of everything. I want to get out, away, anywhere, and do something, anything, just so"s it"s different. Even the country. I"d like--Why couldn"t we?"
"Let"s go out on a picnic to-morrow, Istra."
"A picnic picnic? With pickles and a pillow cushion and several kinds of cake?... I"m afraid the Bois Boulogne has spoiled me for that.... Let me think."
She drooped down on the steps of their house. Her head back, her supple strong throat arched with the pa.s.sion of hating boredom, she devoured the starlight dim over the stale old roofs across the way.
"Stars," she said. "Out on the moors they would come down by you.... What is _your_ adventure--your formula for it?... Let"s see; you take common roadside things seriously; you"d be dear and excited over a Red Lion Inn."
"Are there more than one Red Li--"
"My dear Mouse, England is a menagerie of Red Lions and White Lions and fuzzy Green Unicorns.... Why not, why not, _why not!_ Let"s walk to Aengusmere. It"s a fool colony of artists and so on, up in Suffolk; but they _have_ got some beautiful cottages, and they"re more Celt than Dublin.... Start right now; take a train to Chelmsford, say, and tramp all night. Take a couple of days or so to get there. Think of it! Tramping through dawn, past English fields. Think of it, Yankee. And not caring what anybody in the world thinks. Gipsies. Shall we?"
"Wh-h-h-h-y--" He was sure she was mad. Tramping all night!
He couldn"t let her do this.
She sprang up. She stared down at him in revulsion, her hands clenched. Her voice was hostile as she demanded:
"What? Don"t you want to? With _me?_"
He was up beside her, angry, dignified; a man.
"Look here. You know I want to. You"re the elegantest--I mean you"re--Oh, you ought to know! Can"t you see how I feel about you? Why, I"d rather do this than anything I ever heard of in my life. I just don"t want to do anything that would get people to talking about you."
"Who would know? Besides, my dear man, I don"t regard it as exactly wicked to walk decently along a country road."
"Oh, it isn"t that. Oh, please, Istra, don"t look at me like that--like you hated me."
She calmed at once, drummed on his arm, sat down on the railing, and drew him to a seat beside her.
"Of course, Mouse. It"s silly to be angry. Yes, I do believe you want to take care of me. But don"t worry.... Come! Shall we go?"
"But wouldn"t you rather wait till to-morrow?"
"No. The whole thing"s so mad that if I wait till then I"ll never want to do it. And you"ve got to come, so that I"ll have some one to quarrel with.... I hate the smugness of London, especially the smugness of the anti-smug anti-bourgeois radicals, so that I have the finest mad mood! Come. We"ll go."
Even this logical exposition had not convinced him, but he did not gainsay as they entered the hall and Istra rang for the landlady. His knees grew sick and old and quavery as he heard the landlady"s voice loud below-stairs: "Now wot do they want?
It"s eleven o"clock. Aren"t they ever done a-ringing and a-ringing?"
The landlady, the tired thin parchment-faced North Countrywoman, whose G.o.d was Respectability of Lodgings, listened in a frightened way to Istra"s blandly superior statement: "Mr. Wrenn and I have been invited to join an excursion out of town that leaves to-night. We"ll pay our rent and leave our things here."
"Going off together--"
"My good woman, we are going to Aengusmere. Here"s two pound.
Don"t allow any one in my room. And I may send for my things from out of town. Be ready to pack them in my trunks and send them to me. Do you understand?"
"Yes, miss, but--"
"My good woman, do you realize that your "buts" are insulting?"
"Oh, I didn"t go to be insulting--"
"Then that"s all.... Hurry now, Mouse!"
On the stairs, ascending, she whispered, with the excitement not of a tired woman, but of a tennis-and-dancing-mad girl: "We"re off! Just take a tooth-brush. Put on an outing suit--any old thing--and an old cap."
She darted into her room.
Now Mr. Wrenn had, for any old thing, as well as for afternoon and evening dress, only the st.u.r.dy undistinguished clothes he was wearing, so he put on a cap, and hoped she wouldn"t notice.
She didn"t. She came knocking in fifteen minutes, trim in a khaki suit, with low thick boots and a jolly tousled blue tam-o"-shanter.
"Come on. There"s a train for Chelmsford in half an hour, my time-table confided to me. I feel like singing."
CHAPTER X
HE GOES A-GIPSYING
They rode out of London in a third-cla.s.s compartment, opposite a curate and two stodgy people who were just people and defied you (Istra cheerfully explained to Mr. Wrenn) to make anything of them but just people.
"Wouldn"t they stare if they knew what idiocy we"re up to!"
she suggested.
Mr. Wrenn bobbed his head in entire agreement. He was trying, without any slightest success, to make himself believe that Mr.
William Wrenn, Our Mr. Wrenn, late of the Souvenir Company, was starting out for a country tramp at midnight with an artist girl.
The night foreman of the station, a person of bedizenment and pride, stared at them as they alighted at Chelmsford and glanced around like strangers. Mr. Wrenn stared back defiantly and marched with Istra from the station, through the sleeping town, past its ragged edges, into the country.