Mr. Wrenn had met Mittyford, Ph.D., near the barges; had, upon polite request, still more politely lent him a match, and seized the chance to confide in somebody. Mittyford had a bald head, neat eye-gla.s.ses, a fair family income, a chatty good-fellowship at the Faculty Club, and a chilly contemptuousness in his rhetoric cla.s.s-room at Leland Stanford, Jr., University. He wrote poetry, which he filed away under the letter "P" in his letter-file.
Dr. Mittyford grudgingly took Mr. Wrenn about, to teach him what not to enjoy. He pointed at Sh.e.l.ley"s rooms as at a certificated angel"s feather, but Mr. Wrenn writhingly admitted that he had never heard of Sh.e.l.ley, whose name he confused with Max O"Rell"s, which Dr. Mittyford deemed an error. Then, Pater"s window. The doctor shrugged. Oh well, what could you expect of the proletariat! Swinging his stick aloofly, he stalked to the Bodleian and vouchsafed, "That, sir, is the _AEschylus_ Sh.e.l.ley had in his pocket when he was drowned."
Though he heard with sincere regret the news that his new idol was drowned, Mr. Wrenn found that _AEschylus_ left him cold. It seemed to be printed in a foreign language. But perhaps it was merely a very old book.
Standing before a case in which was an exquisite book in a queer wrigglesome language, bearing the legend that from this volume Fitzgerald had translated the _Rubaiyat_, Dr. Mittyford waved his hand and looked for thanks.
"Pretty book," said Mr. Wrenn.
"And did you note who used it?"
"Uh--yes." He hastily glanced at the placard. "Mr. Fitzgerald.
Say, I think I read some of that Rubaiyat. It was something about a Persian kitten--I don"t remember exactly."
Dr. Mittyford walked bitterly to the other end of the room.
About eight in the evening Mr. Wrenn"s landlady knocked with, "There"s a gentleman below to see you, sir."
"Me?" blurted Mr. Wrenn.
He galloped down-stairs, panting to himself that Morton had at last found him. He peered out and was overwhelmed by a motor-car, with Dr. Mittyford waiting in awesome fur coat, goggles, and gauntlets, centered in the car-lamplight that loomed in the shivery evening fog.
"Gee! just like a hero in a novel!" reflected Mr. Wrenn.
"Get on your things," said the pedagogue. "I"m going to give you the time of your life."
Mr. Wrenn obediently went up and put on his cap. He was excited, yet frightened and resentful at being "dragged into all this highbrow business" which he had resolutely been putting away the past two hours.
As he stole into the car Dr. Mittyford seemed comparatively human, remarking: "I feel bored this evening. I thought I would give you a _nuit blanche_. How would you like to go to the Red Unicorn at Brempton--one of the few untouched old inns?"
"That would be nice," said Mr. Wrenn, unenthusiastically.
His chilliness impressed Dr. Mittyford, who promptly told one of the best of his well-known whimsical yet scholarly stories.
"Ha! ha!" remarked Mr. Wrenn.
He had been saying to himself: "By golly! I ain"t going to even try to be a society guy with him no more. I"m just going to be _me_, and if he don"t like it he can go to the d.i.c.kens."
So he was gentle and sympathetic and talked West Sixteenth Street slang, to the rhetorician"s lofty amus.e.m.e.nt.
The tap-room of the Red Unicorn was lighted by candles and a fireplace. That is a simple thing to say, but it was not a simple thing for Mr. Wrenn to see. As he observed the trembling shadows on the sanded floor he wriggled and excitedly murmured, "Gee!... Gee whittakers!"
The shadows slipped in arabesques over the dust-gray floor and scampered as bravely among the rafters as though they were in such a tale as men told in believing days. Rustics in smocks drank ale from tankards; and in a corner was snoring an ear-ringed peddler with his beetle-black head propped on an oilcloth pack.
Stamping in, chilly from the ride, Mr. Wrenn laughed aloud.
With a comfortable feeling on the side toward the fire he stuck his slight legs straight out before the old-time settle, looked devil-may-care, made delightful ridges on the sanded floor with his toe, and clapped a pewter pot on his knee with a small emphatic "Wop!" After about two and a quarter tankards he broke out, "Say, that peddler guy there, don"t he look like he was a gipsy--you know--sneaking through the hedges around the manner-house to steal the earl"s daughter, huh?"
"Yes.... You"re a romanticist, then, I take it?"
"Yes, I guess I am. Kind of. Like to read romances and stuff."
He stared at Mittyford beseechingly. "But, say--say, I wonder why--Somehow, I haven"t enjoyed Oxford and the rest of the places like I ought to. See, I"d always thought I"d be simply nutty about the quatrangles and stuff, but I"m afraid they"re too highbrow for me. I hate to own up, but sometimes I wonder if I can get away with this traveling stunt."
Mittyford, the magnificent, had mixed ale and whisky punch.
He was mellowly instructive:
"Do you know, I"ve been wondering just what you _would_ get out of all this. You really have a very fine imagination of a sort, you know, but of course you"re lacking in certain factual bases.
As I see it, your _metier_ would be to travel with a pleasant wife, the two of you hand in hand, so to speak, looking at the more obvious public buildings and plesaunces--avenues and plesuances. There must be a certain portion of the tripper cla.s.s which really has the ability "for to admire and for to see.""
Dr. Mittyford finished his second toddy and with a wave of his hand presented to Mr. Wrenn the world and all the plesaunces thereof, for to see, though not, of course, to admire Mittyfordianly.
"But--what are you to do now about Oxford? Well, I"m afraid you"re taken into captivity a bit late to be trained for that sort of thing. Do about Oxford? Why, go back, master the world you understand. By the way, have you seen my book on _Saxon Derivatives?_ Not that I"m prejudiced in its favor, but it might give you a glimmering of what this difficile thing "culture"
really is."
The rustics were droning a church anthem. The glow of the ale was in Mr. Wrenn. He leaned back, entirely happy, and it seemed confusedly to him that what little he had heard of his learned and affectionate friend"s advice gratefully confirmed his own theory that what one wanted was friends--a "nice wife"--folks.
"Yes, sir, by golly! It was awfully nice of the Doc." He pictured a tender girl in golden brown back in the New York he so much desired to see who would await him evenings with a smile that was kept for him. Homey--that was what _he_ was going to be!
He happily and thoughtfully ran his finger about the rim of his gla.s.s ten times.
"Time to go, I" m afraid," Dr. Mittyford was saying. Through the exquisite haze that now filled the room Mr. Wrenn saw him dimly, as a triangle of shirt-front and two gleaming ellipses for eyes.... His dear friend, the Doc!... As he walked through the room chairs got humorously in his way, but he good-naturedly picked a path among them, and fell asleep in the motor-car. All the ride back he made soft mouse-like sounds of snoring.
When he awoke in the morning with a headache and surveyed his unchangeably dingy room he realized slowly, after smothering his head in the pillow to shut off the light from his scorching eyeb.a.l.l.s, that Dr. Mittyford had called him a fool for trying to wander. He protested, but not for long, for he hated to venture out there among the dreadfully learned colleges and try to understand stuff written in letters that look like crow-tracks.
He packed his suit-case slowly, feeling that he was very wicked in leaving Oxford"s opportunities.
Mr. Wrenn rode down on a Tottenham Court Road bus, viewing the quaintness of London. Life was a rosy ringing valiant pursuit, for he was about to ship on a Mediterranean steamer laden chiefly with adventurous friends. The bus pa.s.sed a victoria containing a man with a real monocle. A newsboy smiled up at him.
The Strand roared with lively traffic.
But the gray stonework and curtained windows of the Anglo-Southern Steamship Company"s office did not invite any Mr.
Wrenns to come in and ship, nor did the hall porter, a beefy person with a huge collar and spa.r.s.e painfully sleek hair, whose eyes were like cold boiled mackerel as Mr. Wrenn yearned:
"Please--uh--please will you be so kind and tell me where I can ship as a steward for the Med--"
"None needed."
"Or Spain? I just want to get any kind of a job at first.
Peeling potatoes or--It don"t make any difference--"
"None needed, I said, my man." The porter examined the hall clock extensively.
Bill Wrenn suddenly popped into being and demanded: "Look here, you; I want to see somebody in authority. I want to know what I _can_ ship as."
The porter turned round and started. All his faith in mankind was destroyed by the shock of finding the fellow still there.
"Nothing, I told you. No one needed."
"Look here; can I see somebody in authority or not?"
The porter was privately esteemed a wit at his motherin-law"s.
Waddling away, he answered, "Or not."