He went into the dining salon a little late, and the tables were well filled, including his own; for as he came near it he perceived that three of the four chairs were now occupied. Two of the people to be his companions there for the rest of the voyage were ladies; and as he approached, with other groups and passing stewards intervening between the table and himself, his first impression was confused and not strongly favourable. The two ladies were obviously Americans, and in dress and looks resembled other American mothers and daughters on board; they were well dressed in the prosperous American fashion of “smartness”; and they were both rather good-looking “in the American way,” he thought, discriminating instantly in favour of a French manner of being beautiful. The mother was a dimly pretty exposition of what the dark-eyed, dark-haired twenty-year-old daughter would be at about forty; but his sensitive nostrils at once detected the exhalation of provincialism — and also a pungent discontent. Indeed, as he came nearer, he thought he had never seen two silent ladies more earnestly engaged in expressing peevishness.
A table steward was bending over the occupant of the third chair and trying to explain in imperfect English an item upon the large cardboard menu, behind which this person’s face was momentarily concealed from public view. His shoulders were revealed, however, and something in their breadth and thickness disquieted Ogle as he took his seat. Then disquiet became rapidly a sickish apprehension, and apprehension as abruptly exchanged itself for the full shock of dismay.
The person engaged with the steward tossed the menu, which was printed in Italian, upon the table. “Oh, my gosh!” he exclaimed in a voice disreputably hoarse. “Bring us the worst you got, as long as it ain’t spaghetti. I been eatin’ spaghetti for three days because it’s the only thing I know the name of. My gosh!”
It was the execrable Tinker. He and his family were to be the unfortunate young man’s messmates all the way to Africa.
Moreover, he saw no means of escape; every seat in the room and in the balcony above was assigned and occupied, as the Chief Steward had already informed him. His sole recourse would be to effect an exchange with someone; but the only people he knew well enough to approach with such a proposal were Albert Jones and Macklyn, and Ogle was convinced that if he should so approach them, neither of them would respond helpfully or even graciously.
But what dismayed him even more than the prospect of nine long days of enforced intimacy with the Tinker family was what he conceived to be the odium attached to such an association, so sharp were the young man’s prejudices. Seeing him in this close association with them at every meal, who could come to any conclusion except that he was a member of the Tinker party, travelling with the Tinkers, at the least a friend of the Tinkers, or, worse, a relative of the Tinkers — or, worst of all, Tinker’s son-in-law? Mme. Momoro herself might even now be looking down upon him from her balcony table, wondering if this were true of him; and he cast a pathetic upward glance round the three sides of the balcony visible from his chair; but discerned no glint of burnished gold enhelmed above the scrolled wrought-iron railing.
Tinker addressed him. “Fine morning we’ve had. Mighty nice bright day!” It was notable how his voice betrayed him with its debauched hoarseness; but what repelled the playwright was the commonplace approach of the provincial, the customary “small-town” manner of opening acquaintance through the weather. However, he said, “Very,” and looked up again at the balcony.
Tinker coughed and glanced placatively at his wife; but she offered him no more encouragement to go on talking than Ogle did. She sat with downcast, brooding eyes in the manner of a woman who has lately had much to suffer but more to condemn, and, as for returning her husband’s plaintive glance, she made it clear that she had no desire to look at anything so leprous.
The daughter’s manner was the mother’s emphasized, but with something virulent added. Laurence Ogle had the habit of detaching the observing and note-taking part of himself from his emotions and sensations, a sixth sense that students of their fellow-men acquire; and he was conscious of the emanation of a powerful and unusual hostility from this silent girl. Her hostility seemed directed against everything — against the ship and all the people in it, against every circumstance of life; but most of all, and with the bitterest concentration, against her father. She was sullen and suffering, making both her sullenness and her suffering so evident that a stranger duller than Ogle must have perceived them at a glance; and in spite of himself, his curiosity began to stir. Internal family struggle was his principal dramatic subject, and already he caught a glimpse of such a struggle in progress here — with the girl enraged and worsted. This was his shrewd guess, at least, though he thought she might have a temporary advantage to-day, because of her father’s recent misbehaviour.
The father, indeed, seemed to feel himself at a disadvantage; his abased glances at his wife and daughter proved his low estate no less than did his lamentable hoarseness; and there were things about him significant of the struggle an erring man makes to present a fine appearance after sin. A stiff white shirt and collar replaced the softer stuffs he had worn yesterday; his scarf of satin, appropriately black, was pinned with a fine black pearl; he had been to the ship’s barbers and smelled too fragrantly of the contact; he was sleeked and powdered and polished; the broad nails upon his slightly tremulous fingers, as he broke a piece of bread, glanced and twinkled like little mirrors.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Couldn’t ask for better weather than we’re getting now. Seems funny to think of everything back home all covered with ice and snow. You’re from somewheres East, I expect.”
“Yes,” Ogle said.
“Boston, I expect?”
“New York.”
“Well, New York’s’a big place these days,” Tinker remarked tolerantly. “My wife and daughter here, though, they like it better than I do. We come from a pretty good-sized town ourselves, and while the population isn’t quite as big as New York’s yet, it’s certainly got every advantage you can find in New York and some ways more. What’d you say your name was?”“
“Ogle.”
“Glad to meet you; glad to meet you,” Tinker said as heartily as his hoarseness permitted. “Mine’s Tinker, and this is my wife, Mrs. Tinker, Mr. Ogle. My daughter, Libby, Mr. Ogle.”
Ogle made two inclinations of the head and these salutes were acknowledged with a distant formality a little surpassing his own. Indeed, he found in theirs something that appeared to be not so much reserve as a personal reproach, Mrs. Tinker seeming to include every member of her husband’s sex in her disapproval, and the daughter perhaps desiring to make it clear that she wished nothing from any person contaminated by her father’s introduction. Her dark lashes separated widely for an instant, disclosing beautiful and resentful eyes in which blue fires smouldered; colour came abruptly upon her unrouged cheeks; then she looked down again, and Ogle was surprised by the revelation that this sulky Miss Libby Tinker was one of the prettiest girls he had ever seen. —
The discovery failed to please him with her, however, “Middle-West belle” being the depreciàtive phrase that came instantly into his mind; He had no interest in representatives of that type, although as a playwright he was curious about what he felt certain he had accurately perceived in her — that deep and settled anger with her father. It was, in fact, an enmity, one beyond ordinary family-quarrel animosities, he was sure. It was too fixed and too profound to be the result of any mere mortification caused in her by the man’s manners, and, as a spectator of the human comedy, he would have given something to know what inspired it.
“This is our first time over,” Tinker said. “I expect you been over often, probably, Mr. Ogle?”
“No,” Ogle replied, and was displeased to suspect that his colour heightened as he spoke. “Not often.”
“Too busy, I expect. You’re in business in New York, aren’t you, Mr. Ogle?”
“No.”
Tinker nodded. “Professional man. What I thought when I l
ooked at you. I’m a business man, myself. I expect you’ve probably heard of the Illinois and Union Paper Company.”
“No. I haven’t.”
Tinker looked surprised and a little baffled. “You never did?” he said. “Well, of course New York City’s got so many interests of its own, you often do meet people from there that don’t get to hear much about what goes on outside their own town. We have representatives right in New York, though: Stone, Tinsdale and Company, thirty-two Broad Street. I expect you’ve heard of them, all right!”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Is that so?” Tinker said. “Well, New York certainly is a big town! Stone, Tinsdale and Company handle a lot of business, and the figures for what the Illinois alone did through them last year would surprise you. I’m president of the Illinois is how I happen to know. I was telling Mr. Weatheright about those figures last night, and he was surprised. You met Mr. Weatheright yet?”
“No. I don’t know him.”
“I’ll be glad to introduce you,” said Tinker cordially. “He’s a mighty interesting man — plain, too. You’d never know he was a big man from him. No airs or putting on at all; just as simple and ordinary as you or me. There’s a number of other well-known men on this boat, too, Mr. Ogle; though I don’t s’pose I need to be tellin’ you that, because of course you know it yourself from the passenger list. What I like about a steamship, it’s just the same as a railroad train — you get acquainted with everybody and everybody’s friendly and easy-goin’. I’ve had conversations with as many as a hundred people, I expect, these three days since we came on board. My wife and daughter, though, they’ve been under the weather. This is the first meal they been able to take in the dining-room.” He looked solicitously at his daughter, and there was anxiety in his hoarse voice. “Your digestion feels all right so far to-day, don’t it, Baby?”
Her response was a momentary glare at him and nothing more. The steward had returned, bringing a large dish of hors d’œuvres which he presented first to Tinker. “Are you going to keep the man waiting at your elbow all day?” Mrs. Tinker said sharply. “If you don’t want any of what he’s got, tell him so and give the rest of us a chance.”
Tinker’s eyes, genuinely troubled, still rested upon his daughter, and he sighed audibly, then looked at the hors d’œuvres. “I’ll take a couple o’ sardines,” he said feebly. “I wouldn’t trust any the rest of it.”
After that for a time he was pensive and occupied himself with eating. Now and then, as the constrained repast went through its courses, he glanced with a kind of guilty hopefulness at his wife or with a furtive anxiety at his daughter, but received no encouragement from either of them. They murmured together indistinguishably at times, apparently referring to the Italian dishes set before them; but that was their nearest approach to geniality; and as the playwright was trying all the while to show by his manner that his connection with this party was accidental and unwilling, there could not easily have been a more painful little group of people among all the pleasure-seekers on the “Duumvir.” Ogle made the meal as short a one as he could with any assurance to himself that he obtained a sustaining quantity of nourishment; — he meant to avoid lingering at the table with the Tinker family, and he was determined not to be seen walking out with them, which would be more conspicuous and therefore worse. He had come late to lunch; nevertheless he was the first person in the room to place his napkin on the table and rise for departure.
Tinker glanced up with more than mere surprise in his expression; there was something suddenly haggard in his look. “My goodness!” he said. “You don’t eat much. You through already?”
“Yes,” Ogle said, and he added coldly, “I take coffee in the lounge.”
It was an unfortunate addition, one he need not have made, since his only purpose was to use the word “lounge” as a chill corrective to the misnomer “lobby,” which had irked him yesterday upon the lips of Tinker. Tinker avenged himself at once, although unconsciously; he had been alone with his wife and daughter at the table before Ogle’s arrival, and this experience was not one he cared so soon to repeat. He gave the two ladies a hunted look, dropped his napkin upon the floor, and jumped up.
“Wait!” he said desperately. “I’ll go with you.” And he accompanied the dismayed and red-faced young man in as hurried a departure from the room as could be made without open indecorum. “My soul!” he exclaimed, when they reached the passageway outside, “I’m glad to get out o’ there.”
Ogle took his overcoat and cap from a hook on the wall. “I don’t care for any coffee,” he said. “I’m going out on deck.”
Tinker found his own coat and cap. “I’ll go with you,” he said. “A little fresh air’ll do me more good than all the coffee in the world. I sat up kind of late last night, and I ate too many of those hazlenuts and Saratoga chips they keep up there in the smoking-room. It’s dangerous for a man to change off from a home diet all at once like that. I’m glad you suggested the open air instead of coffee, Mr. Ogle.”
Thus, companionably, he emerged upon the deck beside the annoyed playwright, who saw no immediate means of avoiding his society. “The man seems to believe we belong to the same club,” Ogle thought indignantly; and in truth some such conception was not unlike the present viewpoint of his unwelcome companion. For when a man is in flight from his womenkind — and this was Tinker’s condition at the moment — he looks upon all other men, even strangers and foreigners, as sympathetic comrades who will instantly comprehend his plight and even dishonour themselves to succour him. The fugitive kept close to Ogle, bumping shoulders with him now and then as they walked down the long deck.
“You may of noticed my wife was a little frosty with me, Mr. Ogle,” he said confidentially. “My glory! When she and Baby want to do it, they can do it, believe me! There was quite a number of gentlemen on this boat sat up pretty late last night; and I haven’t seen many of ’em around to-day yet, to tell the truth; but I’ve seen some of their families, and I guess one or two of those gentlemen got plenty to go through when they do get up. It’s a funny thing how some women just naturally can’t stand it to let their husbands sit up a little late, even when there’s no more object in goin’ to bed early than there is on a steamship in the middle of the ocean. That white-moustached ole Doc Taylor’s lucky; he’s a bachelor and travellin’ alone. You aren’t married, either, are you, Mr. Ogle?”
“No.”
“Well,” Tinker said pensively, “of course it’s the natural condition, and I’ve got a mighty splendid wife — I’ve never been sorry I didn’t stop and think twice before we got things settled — but there are a few times in any married man’s life when he probably ought to have a little more liberty than he’s liable to actually get. It don’t seem like it’s in a woman’s disposition to allow it to him.” He coughed and seemed to ruminate as they rounded the forward windows of the “Palm Garden” and passed to the starboard promenade deck and the sunshine. “I suppose there’s probably some women in the world could understand a man’s nature, but likely it’s only a few. I expect that one there could, maybe; — anyhow she acts like it to me.”
The lady to whom he referred was alone, reclining in a deck chair at a little distance before them; she was wrapped luxuriously in a coat of minks’ fur and reading a little book exquisitely bound in green and gold. Ogle had an impulse to turn and run, rather than that she should see him with Tinker, whom the smoking-room episode, if nothing else, must necessarily have rendered offensive to her sight. For the lady was Mme. Momoro.
“She’s what I’d call a one-hundred percenter for all-round looks,” Tinker said warmly. “Let’s stop and talk to her.”
“What!” the playwright exclaimed. He was horrified, perceiving that she must have heard this genial proposal, since they were within a dozen feet of her and she had looked up to observe them. “No! Don’t think of such a thing.”
But Tinker had already grasped his arm, turning him toward the rec
umbent lady’s chair, “You’re lookin’ like the first rose o’ summer to-day,” he said gallantly and without the slightest hesitation or emharassment. “I feel like the last one myself. I want you to meet a young New York lawyer; his name’s Mr. Ogle. Mr. Ogle, this is Mrs. Mummero.”
VII
MME. MOMORO WAS neither surprised nor in any manner resentful of the intrusion. On the contrary, she smiled charmingly up at the dazed playwright and his brazen companion. “Will you sit with me?” she said in her lovely voice and with the hint of mispronunciation that almost yet not quite made “seet” of “sit.” She moved her long black-gloved hand toward the vacant chairs beside her. “I am tiring myself to read a stupid little book. When I saw you coming, I hoped you would stop and chat with me.” Then with her fine eyes upon the broad surfaces of Tinker’s massaged and powdered cheeks, she inquired so gravely that a shrewd compatriot of hers might have suspected a latent drollery, “Your health to-day, it is excellent?”
“Fine!” he said. “Fine!” However, realizing that his extreme hoarseness seemed to contradict him, “All except my throat,” he added. “I ate a silver basketful of Saratoga chips last night — awful salty. Affects my larynx.”
“Ah, that is bad,” she said compassionately. “You will not sit with me? You both?”
Before replying, Tinker looked thoughtfully up and down the deck, as though his answer might depend upon what he saw. His purpose had been to refresh himself with a few moments of conversation during which he would remain standing, apparently detained for the casual moment only, and he may have wondered if it were wise — to-day especially — to sit publicly beside a beautiful French lady when two American ladies who did not understand his nature might pass at any moment and draw wilful conclusions. Nevertheless, he realized that it was impossible to add a great deal to the domestic disfavour in which he already stood; and the French lady’s invitation was strangely pleasant to him. “Well, I don’t know,” he began. “I’d certainly like to if —— — —”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 391
