Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  “There should be a public executioner on board every liner,” Macklyn said in a low voice, but with venom. “It’s just such fellows as that who make cultivated foreigners think what they do think of Americans. They think he’s typical.”

  “Well, in a way he is,” Ogle returned. “At least he’s typical of his own type.”

  Macklyn agreed, frowning, and the three young men stared sombrely at the typical person. Typical or not, the person’s appearance, though more than normally jovial under present influences, was not without some impressiveness. He had been at least mannerly enough to remove his fuzzy green cap as a recognition that ladies were present, and the brow revealed beneath his grayish sandy hair was broad, well-shaped, and even of the kind known as commanding; the blue eyes were genial but shrewd, and the other features not at all unpleasant; — on the contrary, they were harmonious and what is commonly called agreeable, in spite of the fact that they were so far from producing that impression upon the three pained observers. He was fifty, perhaps, and becoming comfortably convex, though without much risk of being defined merely as a fat man.

  His toast to the ocean having been heartily honoured, he instantly commanded a refilling of the glasses. “There’s only one thing wrong with this ship,” he announced. “It’s got oil-burning engines and conservatories and a candy store and hot and cold water and a good steam plant and orchestras and automatic watertight steel bulkheads; but it hasn’t got any foot-rail on the bar. If they’d remembered to put one in, ocean life would be just perfect — perfect! But anyway, this is a lot nicer than sittin’ in Doc’s cabin or listening to high-brow opera music in that lobby downstairs. Let’s all take our liquor with us, gentlemen, and go sit down over there on the other side of that sofa and have a nice cosy talk.”

  The location he proposed for this cosiness was highly unacceptable to the three critics. The divan upon which sat Macklyn and Albert Jones was double, with a high back separating the two long seats; and it was the occupation of the vacant one that the objectionable man suggested to his objectionable party. In fact, he did more than suggest it. Carrying a filled glass in one hand, and with his other propelling before him the gray-haired but obviously elated person to whom he had alluded as “Ole Doc Taylor,” he urged his friends to this central position in the room, and, in doing so, passed close by the bridge table With horror, Ogle saw the glass in the outstretched hand wavering over the silken shoulder of Mme. Momoro, and though its bearer avoided catastrophe there, the next moment he bumped heavily into the chair of the young Hyacinthe. “Excuse me, young feller,” he said. “I never been to Europe before; I like the ocean fine, but I haven’t learned to walk on it properly yet.”

  Hyacinthe rose, and, accepting this apology with a foreign formality, he bowed slightly and quickly, inclining his body from the waist; then, without any change of countenance or looking at the disturber, sat down again and played a card from his hand.

  “You’d think that might put the man in his place,” Macklyn muttered.

  But the man was impervious; his voice filled the room. “Doc, you and Mr. Wackstle and Mr. Brown sit on the sofa. I’m goin’ to take this chair where I can get a good look at you, so’s I’ll know you again and be able to pick you out o’ the crowd whenever we all want to go somewhere for a nice song and a little conviviality. That is, if my wife only stays sick long enough, poor woman!”

  Then, seeing his friends disposed as he wished, he seated himself in the deep chair facing them, and, appearing to find life genial and his surroundings benevolent, looked beamingly about the room. His glance fell upon the chilling faces of Macklyn and Albert Jones, who had turned and were looking at him over the back of the divan; and his recognition of them was cordial. “Howdy, boys!” he said, with a wave of the hand that included the frigid Ogle. “I see you never get very far away from the bar.” After that, unconscious of any rebuff, as the three heads turned stonily away, his gaze moved on, and, becoming aware of Mme. Momoro, remained arrested there. “Well, you wouldn’t have seen it in the old days,” he said, in pointedly approving reference to her; “yet I don’t know but what it’s right pleasant, after all — ladies sittin’ around among us and playin’ cards and everything, right in the barroom.”

  For a moment Ogle held his breath. It was not a mitigation of the man’s offence that he had no offensive intention; lightnings should have destroyed the presumptuous fool. Lightnings failing, something ought to be done about it, the playwright thought; and he had impulses to do something about it himself — and to begin by throwing the fellow out of the room, no matter how difficult that might be. Moreover, his inimical urgings were shared by his two friends; Mr. Jones muttered threateningly, while Macklyn said aloud, “I’ll wring the boor’s neck, if be makes anymore references of that kind.”

  But the goddess-like lady herself was apparently unaware that she had been blasphemed, and her impassiveness was unmarred by the slightest access of hauteur. Her quiet gaze did not waver from her cards; there was not a flicker of eyelid, nor any deepening in the eye itself; any observer might well have concluded that she had no knowledge of the English language. And thus, the shocked but romancing playwright said to himself, did some ancestress of Mme. Momoro’s look in the tumbril on the way to the guillotine, cool, untouched, and untouchable, while the canaille surged about the cart, powerless to make her conscious of them.

  The canaille of the present occasion did not delay upon the subject, but, after a philanthropic smiling upon the admirable lady, went on talking: “No, sir; the old days were mighty different. Why, you take the people on this ship, for instance. You know it yourself, Mr. Wackstle. You say you been to Europe seven times, and this is the first for me; but I bet there’s a mighty big difference between the passengers on this ship and the ones on the first ship you went over on. When’d you say that was?”

  “Eighteen-ninety-one, Mr. Tinker.”

  “Tinker!” Albert Jones said bitterly, on the other side of the divan. “The creature’s name is Tinker. It would be!”

  The creature was continuing his dissertation: “Why, there’s more big business represented on this vessel right now than what there was on every ship on all the oceans of the world in eighteen-ninety-one, Mr. Wackstle. You read over the passenger list and look at the names on it that stand for big things and accomplishment all over our country. It took my breath; darned if it didn’t! I’ll bet it would run into hundreds and hundreds o’ millions! I tell you there’s some mighty big men on this ship, gentlemen, — men I want to know before we land ‘way over yonder and get all split up and goin’ every which direction. For instance, you take yourself, Mr. Wackstle. Soon as I saw your name I told my wife, I told her, ‘I certainly got to know that man, Mamma!’ Poor woman, she was already about gone even that early, and she couldn’t take much notice. But you aren’t the only well-known man on this boat.”

  “No,” Mr. Wackstle admitted, laughing modestly. “There’s a dozen bigger celebrities aboard than I claim to be.”

  “Well, I won’t say bigger,” the genial Tinker went on, “but there certainly are others. Take James T. Weatheright, for instance; he’s the best-known man in the whole State of New York, I expect. Weatheright’s Worsteds are practically household goods all over the world. Then there’s T. H. Smith, president of the G. L. and W.; Harold M. Wilson, ex-chairman of the Board of the Western Industrial Corporation; Thomas Swingey, of Swingey Brothers, Incorporated; there’s both the Holebrooks of the Northwestern Trust; there’s Judge Mastin, ex-general counsel for the Roanoke; J. Q. A. McLean, of the Chicago Milling Company — well, talk about an all-star aggregation, why, when you think of what’s represented by a passenger list like that you almost wonder how the United States can go on running with these men out here on the ocean!”

  His new friend, Wackstle, chuckled. “Well, I don’t know. You’ve pretty well covered the list, Mr. Tinker; I don’t know of anybody on board you’ve left out; but when you think it over, most o’ the gentlemen you�
��ve named are like me, either retired or turned the management of their businesses over to other people, except Smith, of course. He’s pretty active in the G. L. and W. still, and it would be a bad thing if this boat went down with him on board. As you say, there’s a lot of money represented; but if this steamer did ram into something in a fog and go to the bottom, everything back home would go on just about the same, and I don’t believe the public would know much difference — except for T. H. Smith and yourself maybe. He’d be the only headliner in the papers, anyhow.”

  “What!” Tinker exclaimed. “Why, James T. Weatheright—”

  “Yes, I admit there might be front-page stuff about Weatheright; but it wouldn’t be heavy. Weatheright turned the worsted business over to his sons more than five years ago.”

  “Look here! Look here!” Tinker was not satisfied. “I don’t want to blow my own horn; but I’d like to say right here and now, my town would know the difference if this ship went down. And I don’t like to dispute you, Mr. Wackstle, but I guess your town and these other gentlemen’s towns would, too. Why, you take even ole Doc Taylor here—”

  But the person hé named was in no mood for so serious a discussion; and he began to sing, “Yes, Sir, She’s My Baby” again, Mr. Brown joining him. Mr. Tinker looked upon them disapprovingly for a moment; then his brow cleared, and he sang, too.

  On the other side of the divan the music was as little appreciated as the mystifying conversation upon celebrities had been. “Dear me!” Albert Jones complained. “There really ought to be some protection. Somebody ought to speak to the chief steward.” —

  “It wouldn’t do any good,” Macklyn said gloomily. “They cater to this class of people. All of the liners are full of riffraff nowadays, because a different type of people has begun to travel, made prosperous in these last few years. What did you think of that list of ‘well-known’ Americans aboard, Mr. Ogle?” Ogle, who had grown a little red during the enumeration of celebrities, was nevertheless able to laugh in response to the direct question. “Quite a blow to my vanity, I’m afraid. You said I was for the many, Mr. Macklyn. This seems to indicate I’m for the few, after all, like you and Albert Jones.”

  The sombre Macklyn took him literally. “I shouldn’t mind, if I were you. At least you can say you never sought the bauble reputation in the Provincial’s mouth — or, happily, that you never obtained it. Naturally, this sort of thing would not be entertained by ‘The Pastoral Scene!’”

  By an interesting coincidence he learned within a few moments that he was mistaken. The song behind him drew to a rather hoarse conclusion; a steward brought a tray of copious fresh supplies, prepared at the bar; then the talkative Tinker began a fresh discourse, this time inspired by the recent effort to be musical.

  “Yes, sir; that’s a mighty good song; I like ‘Aunt Mariar’ better, though more homelike. I heard some nice music in New York. Got there three days before we sailed and went to shows every night. Two nights it was to musical shows; they had a lot of good music in ’em, cheerful you know, not sad stuff nobody can understand like that Italian orchestra was playin’ down there in the lobby awhile ago — and more good-lookin’ girls than you ever saw in your life! I don’t know where these New York managers find ’em all. Seems like every time I come to New York they’ve got more of ’em and prettier ones and better dancers. The last night, though, we went to a show without any music, a play — oh, Boy!”

  “Was it good?”

  “‘Good’?” Tinker repeated in a peculiar tone; and he whistled. “I don’t know how they get away with it!”

  “Raw, you mean?” Dr. Taylor inquired with warm interest.

  “Listen!” Tinker said. “My wife wanted to get up and go out right in the middle of the first act; and I pretty near had to hold her down; but after that she was willing to stay to see just how far they would go. Besides, nobody there knew us and we didn’t have our daughter with us. A friend of mine from my city had been to it, and he told me I oughtn’t to miss it. Well, sir, it would pretty near make a horse blush; and some of the stuff they pulled — well, the gallery laughed right out! What was funny to me, though, most of ’em downstairs sat as solemn as an egg and never turned a hair. If you’d told me a few years ago I’d ever hear such talk outside of some old left-over livery-stable in the backwoods I’d ‘a’ thought you were crazy! They tell me they’re pretty nearly all like that in New York now; but they’ll have to go some to beat this one! It was certainly what you might call spicy. Yes, sir, some rancid!”

  “Comedy?” Mr. Wackstle asked.

  ‘“No, it didn’t seem meant to be. They came out with these things lookin’ as serious as a postman in a blizzard: that’s what made the gallery laugh, I guess. No; you wouldn’t call it a comedy, though the hero of it ran off with his daughter-in-law, a right good-lookin’ actress; but she took an overdose of laudanum or something and died, so it didn’t seem meant for a comedy.”

  “What was the name of it?”

  “Peculiar name,” Tinker replied. “Pasturage — something like ‘The Pasturage Scene.’ No; that wasn’t it, not ‘Pasturage.’ I remember — they called it ‘The Pastoral Scene.’ That’s it. High-brow name; but when you come to what some of ’em said in it — oh, Boy! not so high-brow!”

  The flush upon the outraged playwright’s cheek had deepened. He sat scorching with rage and the desire to kill. This, then, was what an unspeakable Tinker saw in a work of art that had cost its creator so many days and nights of anguished composition! Ogle’s staring eye was fixed upon the continuing serenity of Mme. Momoro. She could not help hearing the loud voice uttering these horrible and unctuous innuendos, and upon such a woman nothing was lost. If she had not herself seen the play, and had nothing to judge it by except this description, and he should be presented to her as the author of “The Pastoral Scene” — The thought was suffocating, and he was not comforted by the realization that his two colleagues in art were internally raging with him. As it was impossible to walk round a divan and choke a man to death in a steamer’s smoking-room, Ogle rose to his feet.

  “I think I’ll go and dress for dinner,” he said huskily.

  Jones and Macklyn got up as he did. “Yes,” the latter said. “This place has become sheerly unbearable.”

  The three went to the open door, where Ogle half-paused for a cross-shoulder murderous glance at the unconscious Tinker. The beautiful bridge player sat imperturbable in floating veils of cigar smoke from the divan, which was again turbulent in song. The execrable Tinker, standing, and with a fountain pen for a baton, was apparently conducting a large orchestra. And even outside upon the deck, the fugitive artists were pursued by the hateful chorus:

  “Mariar!

  Mariar!

  Bay rum in a bottle we’ll buy er.

  Mariar!

  Mariar!

  Dirty old Auntie Mariar!”

  V

  THE REPELLENT CADENCE beat upon Ogle’s ears, then got inside of them and clung lingeringly there. When Macklyn and Jones, after a few final words about Tinker, had gone below, the heated playwright decided to cool his head with a round or two of the open deck before dressing; and to his disgust he found his step keeping time to the hateful drum-beat chant:

  Mariar!

  Mariar!

  Bay rum in a bottle we’ll buy ’er!

  The thing was so persistent that when he paused, standing by the rail and looking peevishly out at the flattened sea, the deep pulsation of the ship’s propellers throbbed up into his feet:

  Mariar!

  Mariar!

  Dirty old Auntie Mariar!

  He went below, keeping time to “Mariar” with every step. It was a curse upon him, worse than

  “Punch, Brothers, Punch,” he thought; for “Mariar” was odious in its origin; and yet, loathing it, he could not get rid of it, not even in the quiet of his own cabin. Standing before a mirror there, an hour after he had left the smoking-room, he found himself tying a strip of black silk about his
collar into a knot the shape of a butterfly, and, as he did so, actually timing the movements of his hands to the beat of “Mariar.” In spite of himself, he brushed his hair with a vocal “Mariar” for every stroke of his brushes; — the wretched chanting had fastened itself not only in his ears but in his throat. Over and over, he muttered fiercely, unable to stop:

  “Mariar!

  Mariar!

  Bay rum in a bottle we’ll buy ’er!”

  An interruption broke the spell for him, though not in a manner to please him greatly — the voice of the execrable Tinker, speaking hoarsely with the opening of the outer door of the adjoining cabin.

  “Well, well, well, Hon! How’re you and Baby feeling by this time? Don’t you want to get up for dinner?”

  His wife’s reply was delivered in a thin, high tone of irritation:— “No, we don’t! We don’t either of us feel right like ourselves yet, and we’re going to stay here till to-morrow noon and maybe longer. Where on earth have you been all this time? Never coming near us since before lunch! We might have been dead for all you knew or seemed to care. Where’ve you been?”

  “Why, right on this vessel, dearie. — Now, Honey—”

  Evidently he leaned over her with some placative purpose, for Mrs. Tinker’s voice interrupted him, rising into an outcry:

  “Go ‘way! I’ll be sick again! My goodness! Why, the whole cabin reeks with it!”

  “With what, Mamma?”

  “Whiskey!”

  “Whiskey?” Tinker’s voice sounded incredulous and plaintive. “Why, no, Mamma! I haven’t been near—”