Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  Then, wondering why the slurring comparison seemed less offensive coming from Olivia Tinker than from Aurélie Momoro, he did Olivia the justice to remember that she had some warrant to resent anybody’s instinctively looking like an Arab whenever she herself or her mother or father was in sight. For upon this double testimony he realized that he must indeed admit having worn an Arabian expression at such times, and he found himself thinking a little more tolerantly — almost with favour — of Olivia. She was ill-tempered, rather evidently because of some grief or rebellion within herself; but she had made no pretense of liking him, and at least had not told him he looked like a Kabyle or dragged any senile British generals around after her while she was his guest upon a motor trip. “Besides,” he added to himself, as a final explanation of his more severe present hurt, “I never did care for her!”

  In this there appeared to be an implication that at some time in the past he had cared for Mme. Momoro.

  XVIII

  THEY CAME TO Bougie at sunset, and in that warm but fragile light the town seemed not so much built as made merely of colour and painted, a plaid of old rose and faint green and gray, upon its Mediterranean hillside. Here the senile British General proved too violent a pedestrian for the sedentary young American during a stroll — or what Sir William remarkably called a stroll — up and down the steeply slanting streets in the twilight. Mme. Momoro swept ahead with the tall Englishman; Lady Broadfeather and Miss Crewe, chirruping to the polite Hyacinthe, kept nearly up with them; but Ogle fell behind, and, when the dark came on, found his way back alone to the hotel, out of breath, tired, and more disgruntled than ever.

  At dinner, however, he found that it was possible for him to become even more so. Upon the wine list the General discovered a red Beaune, a dear lost love of his, he said — and not only said, but copiously proved by wearing his lost love’s colours, ere long, as his own complexion. Meanwhile, he became so gallant in his praise of the French lady that Miss Crewe looked faintly surprised, though Lady Broad-feather did not. Time after time, he proposed Mme. Momoro’s health in the brave eighteenth-century manner, always brightly ignoring the fact that the ceremony had already been performed. “To Artemis!” he said, and visibly was pleased to think this an original inspiration. “To Artemis, light-footed on the hills, if you understand. When goddesses come to life let it be our mortal privilege to offer libations and quaff nectar to them!” He also drank to Hyacinthe, who rose and bowed, but seemed slightly embarrassed by the compliment. “To your good health, young gentleman! You are the Mozart of bridge. We must recognize precocious genius as well as goddesses.” And a little later, he called Mme. Momoro’s attention to an amiable-looking young couple dining at a table across the room. “Other potentates are dining in Bougie this evening besides yourself, august Artemis. Those two young people are the hereditary rulers of the old and independent principality of Fühlderstein, Prince Orthe the Eighteenth and his bride. They were staying at our hotel in Algiers last week. Curious how one encounters people again and again in this part of North Africa — or, rather, it’s less curious than it is inevitable, since everybody follows the same path and makes the same stops. That reminds me, if you understand; I have a little plan for lunching by the wayside to-morrow on the road to Setif. We could have the hotel put up lunch for us and we might make a little picnic of it in the Gorge du Chabat el Ahkra, you see. If you and your son and Mr. Uh think well of it, I’ll instruct the maître d’hôtel about the hampers. What do you say? Shall we make a sylvan festival — Artemis and fauns and wood-nymphs banqueting in Islam?”

  Mme. Momoro, nodding and smiling, told him that nothing could be more delightful; then she gave Ogle a quick little look of appeal, as if to ask him how she could have extricated herself with any courtesy. A little later she gave him another such look when Sir William, having finished his coffee, set his cup down decisively, rubbed his hands, and exclaimed, “Madame Artemis! Master Mozart! Now to the bridge!”

  Ogle made no response to either of the plaintive glances. He looked over her head, said nothing, and, as soon as the party left the table, went up to his room.

  There, without turning on the light, he sat for a little while on the edge of his bed; then he got up and stood looking down upon a dim little square before the hotel, where two or three ragged Arabs and a few cats seemed to be holding inexplicable converse together. The young American at the window did not puzzle himself over the argument apparently taking place between men and animals below him; he had just solved a puzzle of his own and was not attracted to another. The significance of the presence in Bougie of the Fuhlderstein bridal couple had not been wasted upon him, and neither had Sir William Broadfeather’s comment upon it. “One encounters people again and again in this part of North Africa.. — . — . Everybody follows the same path and makes the same stops.” Tinker himself didn’t know where he was going — that was probably quite true; but Mme. Momoro knew. Everybody followed the same path; and of course she knew that was the path upon which Cayzac would set the Tinkers.

  The young playwright began to be borne down under the conviction that his fate as a traveller, and perhaps as a human being, was inextricably bound up with that of the Tinker family. The gods of spiteful comedy, at play in the African sky, had looked down upon him and with malevolent laughter had seen to it that there should be no escape from his aversion; it was a question of a few days, perhaps of a few hours, when the Old Man of the Sea would be upon him again. There was no longer a possible doubt of Mme. Momoro’s diplomacy;and Ogle underwent the experience of knowing that he was being used — not a comfortable experience for a young man by no means selfless or lacking a fair opinion of his own significance.

  In the morning, if he chose, he could assert himself; he could say, “No; we aren’t going to lunch with Sir William Broadfeather in the Chabat. We’re not going on to Setif and Biskra and Batna and Constantine and the rest of it, looking for a person named Tinker — who has his family with him, by the way, and is therefore in no pressing need of our society. We’re going back to Algiers.” For a little while he thought he had determined upon this virile course and took a grim pleasure in thinking of it — until he realized that he wasn’t capable of saying such a thing to Mme. Momoro. Here he fell short as an analyst: he didn’t know why he wasn’t capable of it; he knew only that he wasn’t. But there were other reasons why he must go on as she had too adroitly planned: the concierge of the hotel had handed him a telegram from Cayzac’s offices and it informed him that his rather anxiously expected letters had been received in Algiers and forwarded to Biskra. It might take them some time to be returned to Algiers; he was now within two days’ easy motoring of Biskra; and the letters were growing daily more important to him.

  Humiliating as it was to be used — and used by a woman to whom he had shown only the tenderest chivalry — he must continue to be used. ‘Then, having reached this enfeebling conclusion, he thought of the Arab donkeys and their unfailing behaviour, which was what Mme. Momoro had prophesied of them. What a reproach to him! For they were ridden, yes; but at least they showed a fighting heel to the road, rider or no rider. He had none to show; and with a sickish laugh, he found himself facing a deduction that in spirit he was not their equal.

  From a little distance there came on the night air a sonorous palpitation: the rolling of drums and a challenging music from the bugles of a detachment of French cavalry on the march. The sounds, so martial and stirring, roused him from his distressful reverie; and as he stepped out upon the small balcony beyond his window, bugles and drums grew louder, and men and horses began to pass a corner beyond the open square. They were but vaguely illuminated by a single street lamp, and he could see little except soldierly outlines, twinklings of metal and moving sleeknesses of light upon the horses; nothing was definite in the darkness except the clean rattle of the drums and the brazen clarity of the bugles. Then abruptly these fell silent and another music set the pace — the African oboes and torn-toms of an Arab c
avalry troop following the French to barracks. The torn-toms, beating with their ominous monotony, were like a pulsation in this Arab earth, Ogle thought — a barbaric heartbeat he might have heard in that earth every moment since he had set foot in Algeria, if he had listened; and over the torn-toms the oboe pipings rose and drooped in strange quarter-tones, singing uncivilized messages in the united voices of new-born babies and old cats wailing out of Egypt.

  Morose as he was, the young American on the dark balcony found himself fascinated by that wail and by the throbbing of the torn-toms. He could bear a little more of this Africa, he thought, even though he must see it in the society of a lady who was betraying him.

  XIX

  IN THE MORNING when he asked for his bill, he was surprised to find as an item upon it, “Spéciale Diner for six persons,” at a price equally special; and, beneath it, another even more striking, for this one referred to a number of bottles of “Beaune Rouge 1907.” That vintage, moreover, was evidently all that Sir William had said of it; the hotel authorities, who should have known, heartily agreed with him upon its worth.

  “This is a mistake,” Ogle informed the landlord, in the “Bureau.”

  “General Broadfeather would be annoyed, I think, if I paid more than half upon these items. It was his proposal that our two parties dine together, and I think you’d better transfer half the amount to his account.”

  The landlord looked blank. “How can I? He is gone two hours.”

  “That’s singular,” the American said. “Did he look over his own bill before he left?”

  “Eh? Did he? I escape with my life!”

  “Then he must have misunderstood. It’s rather odd he—” Ogle was puzzled. “Singular!” he said. “Did he have lunch put up to be taken in his car?”

  “No, gentleman. He did nothing.”

  “Singular,” Ogle repeated thoughtfully; and he paid the bill.

  Outdoors, in the morning sunshine, the automobile was waiting for him. The chauffeur and a porter were strapping bags upon the roof; Hyacinthe stood pensively regarding an unlighted cigarette; and Mme. Momoro, already in her accustomed place in the car, gaily waved her long black-gloved hand and smiled a greeting to her preoccupied squire as he appeared.

  “Broadfeather didn’t do anything about lunch,” he informed her. “He has two hours’ start of us, and if you expect to carry out his idea of hard-boiled eggs and sandwiches and wood-nymphs and fauns and so forth in the Gorge du Chabat—”

  “No, no; I don’t,” she laughed. “Those English will not be there, thank heaven! We will lunch at any place where there is food. Get in and let us forget the English.”

  He obeyed half of this request; but, when they were again forth upon the road, reverted to “the English.”

  “Then you knew the Broadfeathers had started a long time ahead of us, I take it,” he said.

  “At least I was certain they knew I hoped they would! Last night I think he drank too much. After we had played bridge for a time he was so confused he didn’t know how to count. One moment he would be almost quarrelsome with poor little Hyacinthe and the next he would be — with me — too pleasant! He became — well, I must call it odious; and we had to stop playing. I am afraid his poor, round, little, old wife must have been very mortified; and I hope she is giving him such a day of it now as he deserves. We’ll not see them again. Do you object if we don’t talk of him? It was a little painful.”

  Ogle had his own reasons for regarding the subject of General Sir William Broadfeather as a little painful; but he acquiesced without mentioning them. “Very well,” he said, and, as he added nothing to that, she looked at him inquiringly.

  “You are hating me again? Have I done somesing more?”

  “Not at all.”

  She shook her head and sighed. “I shouldn’t have come with you. You are not happy.”

  “I’m quite all right.”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t know what has happened; but somesing has changed very much.” She spoke with a sorrowful conviction that proved itself well-founded in the utterance of a single word. Upon the “Duumvir” and in Algiers, and, indeed, until the ascent of the Djurdjurra, he had thought her most irresistible of all whenever she said “somesing”; and once he had spoken of this to her, telling her he found the word, on her lips, “adorable.” But when she said it now, his emotional experience took the form of a wish that she might be content to say nothing at all. “I should never have come with you. I should—” Her voice trembled, and then suddenly she sank back against the cushions, her hand pressed upon her forehead in an impulsive gesture of pain. “Ah! I should have known it!”

  “You should have known what?”

  “That you might come to look upon me and poor Hyacinthe as an imposition upon you.” She drew in her breath sharply, then straightened herself to her usual erectness. “It is one, too.”

  “An imposition? No, indeed!” he protested with some apparent warmth. “You mustn’t say such things.”

  “Not if they were true?” And when he would have protested again, she checked him. “No. You see you offered me an escape, and I was weak enough to take advantage of it.”

  “You mean an escape from Paris in winter-time?” She shook her head. “I must make a confession to you. The escape was-from much worse: it was from the long tyranny of Mademoiselle Daurel. You write comedies — or tragedies, it may be; — but you don’t understand women’s quarrels, because even the most adroit man can’t understand them. When men really quarrel it is over; they have done with each other; but it isn’t so with women. When I said we would go to Paris I knew that before we should quite leave, Mademoiselle Daurel would make overtures, and I was afraid I would be weak enough to listen. My feeling for Hyacinthe might conquer; so we should have gone back to that old life of petty persecution. It has happened before, you see.”

  “You’ve broken away and gone back before this, you mean?”

  “More than once. The last time it was because — ah, a man could never understand how a woman’s hopes can chain her to a persecution! I had this hope for Hyacinthe: Hyacinthe’s work is drudgery; he is unhappy in it, and since our friend who gave him that appointment is dead, he has no political influence to go higher. He is very quiet, but he is clever; he knows music; and a Parisian impresario wishes him to buy an interest in his office for one hundred thousand francs. It would be heaven for Hyacinthe, and one hundred thousand francs is nothing to Mademoiselle Daurel. I was so absurd as to say to her that she might be happier to do a little for him in her lifetime. She was infuriated!”

  “Why?”

  “Because she thought it might allow us to escape from her. That terrible old woman—” Mme.

  Momoro again caught in her breath audibly, and for a moment could not speak. “It is incredible, but there are some old women like that. They are unable to exist unless they have somebody beside them whom they are keeping in torment. I think she can’t live without me. So I felt that just to step into an automobile with you — well, it was simple enough to seem an escape. It was to go out upon the road like a gypsy. Gypsies are hard to find, and they are free. You can’t understand what it means to be free from such a pressure, or how happy I’ve been these quick little days away from it. But — well, I thought it was what you wanted. I thought I could be—”

  Her voice trembled again; but she laughed bravely and went on, “I thought I could be — well, entertaining to you. You see, I didn’t know you hated — mountains!”

  “I don’t in the least know what you mean,” he said valiantly. “I’m stupid and silent sometimes without reason. You mustn’t think—”

  But she interrupted him. “You mustn’t struggle so hard to be kind; we can’t be impositions upon you any longer.”

  “What a horrible light that puts me in!” he protested. “Merely because I’m a little quiet—”

  “No!” she said with sudden sharpness. “I shall sail from Tunis for Marseilles as soon as there is a steamer; bu
t to get to Tunis I am afraid I must go as far as Biskra with you; that is only one more day. I leave you as soon as I can, you see, which should be some consolation to you.”

  “Then you say good-bye to me at Biskra?”

  “Because it isn’t possible sooner!”

  The sharpness of her tone, unfortunately, roused a sharpness in him; and his sense of being used rose suddenly above the treacherous sympathy he had begun to feel for her. He spoke with bitterness.

  “I see! You feel pretty sure he’ll be in Biskra.” She stared at him. “I think you may mean Mr. Tinker.”

  “Yes.”

  She said nothing; but, after looking at him expressionlessly for a moment or two longer, made an odd movement as if she had forgotten that she was in a moving vehicle and meant to rise from her seat and leave him. Then she leaned forward, her hand uplifted to tap on the glass before her and her lips parted in the impulse to speak to the chauffeur.

  Ogle caught the uplifted hand and held it. “Aurélie!” he said. “You can’t get out here on the road.”

  “Why not?” she asked fiercely. “There are some things one prefers to others.” Then she released her hand from his, put it over her eyes, and again sank back upon the cushions. “Just a second,” she murmured. “Sometimes one must think a little.”

  “I hope so. Certainly before one does anything absurd.” He went on talking, as men do when they begin to feel remorseful. “I don’t see why you resent my inference; surely it wasn’t an unfair one. How-

  ever, since you do resent it, I’ll gladly apologize and withdraw what I said. I didn’t mean to — —”

  “Thank you,” she said; and she laughed helplessly, as if in apology for the tears that now trembled upon her eyelids and the emotion that kept her from speaking. She sought her handkerchief vainly for a moment, a search always disastrous to the strength of a gentleman witnessing it; and, when she had found it and used it, gave him her hand without looking at him.