"Well-" said he.
That was all he could say till he had digested a pair of thoughts: Just what did she mean by "types"? Had it something to do with printing stories? And what could he say about the people, anyway? He observed:
"Oh, I don't know-just talk about-oh, cards and jobs and folks and things and-oh, you know; go to moving pictures and vaudeville and go to Coney Island and-oh, sleep."
"But you-?"
"Well, I read a good deal. Quite a little. Shakespeare and geography and a lot of stuff. I like reading."
"And how do you place Nietzsche?" she gravely desired to know.
"?"
"Nietzsche. You know-the German humorist."
"Oh yes-uh-let me see now; he's-uh-"
"Why, you remember, don't you? Haeckel and he wrote the great musical comedy of the century. And Matisse did the music-Matisse and Rodin."
"I haven't been to it," he said, vaguely. "...I don't know much German. Course I know a few words, like Spricken Sie Dutch and Bitty, sir, that Rabin at the Souvenir Company-he's a German Jew, I guess-learnt me.... But, say, isn't Kipling great! Gee! when I read Kim I can imagine I'm hiking along one of those roads in India just like I was there-you know, all those magicians and so on.... Readin's wonderful, ain't it!"
"Um. Yes."
"I bet you read an awful lot."
"Very little. Oh-D'Annunzio and some Turgenev and a little Tourgenieff.... That last was a joke, you know."
"Oh yes," disconcertedly.
"What sorts of plays do you go to, Mr. Wrenn?"
"Moving pictures mostly," he said, easily, then bitterly wished he hadn't confessed so low-life a habit.
"Well-tell me, my dear-Oh, I didn't mean that; artists use it a good deal; it just means `old chap.' You don't mind my asking such beastly personal questions, do you? I'm interested in people.... And now I must go up and write a letter. I was going over to Olympia's-she's one of the Interesting People I spoke of-but you see you have been much more amusing. Good night. You're lonely in London, aren't you? We'll have to go sightseeing some day."
"Yes, I am lonely!" he exploded. Then, meekly: "Oh, thank you! I sh'd be awful pleased to.... Have you seen the Tower, Miss Nash?"
"No. Never. Have you?"
"No. You see, I thought it 'd be kind of a gloomy thing to see all alone. Is that why you haven't never been there, too?"
"My dear man, I see I shall have to educate you. Shall I? I've been taken in hand by so many people-it would be a pleasure to pass on the implied slur. Shall I?"
"Please do."
"One simply doesn't go and see the Tower, because that's what trippers do. Don't you understand, my dear? (Pardon the `my dear' again.) The Tower is the sort of thing school superintendents see and then go back and lecture on in school assembly-room and the G. A. R. hall. I'll take you to the Tate Gallery." Then, very abruptly, "G' night," and she was gone.
He stared after her smooth back, thinking: "Gee! I wonder if she got sore at something I said. I don't think I was fresh this time. But she beat it so quick.... Them lips of hers-I never knew there was such red lips. And an artist-paints pictures!... Read a lot-Nitchy-German musical comedy. Wonder if that's that `Merry Widow' thing?... That gray dress of hers makes me think of fog. Cur'ous."
In her room Istra Nash inspected her nose in a mirror, powdered, and sat down to write, on thick creamy paper:
Skilly dear, I'm in a fierce Bloomsbury boarding-house-bores -except for a Phe-nomenon-little man of 35 or 40 with embryonic imagination a virgin soul. I'll try to keep from planting radical thoughts in the virgin soul, but I'm tempted.
Oh Skilly dear I'm lonely as the devil. Would it be too bromid. to say I wish you were here? I put out my hand in the darkness, yours wasn't there. My dear, my dear, how desolate-Oh you understand it only too well with your supercilious grin your superior eye-glasses your beatific Oxonian ignorance of poor eager America.
I suppose I am just a barbarous Californian kiddy. It's just as Pere Dureon said at the atelier, "You haf a' onderstanding of the 'igher immorality, but I 'ope you can cook-paint you cannot."
He wins. I can't sell a single thing to the art editors here or get one single order. One horrid eye-glassed earnest youth who Sees People at a magazine, he vouchsafed that they "didn't use any Outsiders." Outsiders! And his hair was nearly as red as my wretched mop. So I came home howled burned Milan tapers before your picture. I did. Though you don't deserve it.
Oh damn it, am I getting sentimental? You'll read this at Petit Monsard over your drip grin at your poor unnietzschean barbarian.
I. N.
CHAPTER VIII. HE TIFFINS
Mr. Wrenn, chewing and chewing and chewing the cud of thought in his room next evening, after an hour had proved two things; thus:
(a) The only thing he wanted to do was to go back to America at once, because England was a country where every one-native or American-was so unfriendly and so vastly wise that he could never understand them.
(b) The one thing in the world that he wanted to do was to be right here, for the most miraculous event of which he had ever heard was meeting Miss Nash. First one, then the other, these thoughts swashed back and forth like the swinging tides. He got away from them only long enough to rejoice that somehow-he didn't know how-he was going to be her most intimate friend, because they were both Americans in a strange land and because they both could make-believe.
Then he was proving that Istra would, and would not, be the perfect comrade among women when some one knocked at his door.
Electrified, his cramped body shot up from its crouch, and he darted to the door.
Istra Nash stood there, tapping her foot on the sill with apologetic haste in her manner. Abruptly she said:
"So sorry to bother you. I just wondered if you could let me have a match? I'm all out."
"Oh yes! Here's a whole box. Please take 'em. I got plenty more." [Which was absolutely untrue.]
"Thank you. S' good o' you," she said, hurriedly. "G' night."
She turned away, but he followed her into the hall, bashfully urging: "Have you been to another show? Gee! I hope you draw a better one next time 'n the one about the guy with the nephew."
"Thank you."
She glanced back in the half dark hall from her door-some fifteen feet from his. He was scratching at the wall-paper with a diffident finger, hopeful for a talk.
"Won't you come in?" she said, hesitatingly.
"Oh, thank you, but I guess I hadn't better."
Suddenly she flashed out the humanest of smiles, her blue-gray eyes crinkling with cheery friendship. "Come in, come in, child." As he hesitatingly entered she warbled: "Needn't both be so lonely all the time, after all, need we? Even if you don't like poor Istra. You don't-do you?" Seemingly she didn't expect an answer to her question, for she was busy lighting a Russian cigarette. It was the first time in his life that he had seen a woman smoke.
With embarrassed politeness he glanced away from her as she threw back her head and inhaled deeply. He blushingly scrutinized the room.
In the farther corner two trunks stood open. One had the tray removed, and out of the lower part hung a confusion of lacey things from which he turned away uncomfortable eyes. He recognized the black-and-gold burnoose, which was tumbled on the bed, with a nightgown of lace insertions and soft wrinkles in the lawn, a green book with a paper label bearing the title Three Plays for Puritans , a red slipper, and an open box of chocolates.
On the plain kitchen-ware table was spread a cloth of Reseda green, like a dull old leaf in color. On it lay a gold-mounted fountain-pen, huge and stub-pointed; a medley of papers and torn envelopes, a bottle of Creme Yvette, and a silver-framed portrait of a lean smiling man with a single eye-glass.
Mr. Wrenn did not really see all these details, but he had an impression of luxury and high artistic success. He considered the Yvette flask the largest bottle of perfume he'd ever seen; and remarked that there was "some guy's picture on the table." He had but a moment to reconnoiter, for she was astonishingly saying: