Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  She overwhelmed the wretched young man who had so strangely misunderstood her until now; she daunted and dismayed him. He stepped back from her, staring incredulously. “What?” he gasped.

  “You say it! You say—”

  “Yes!” she cried. “Once! I say it once, but not again.” She followed him as he stepped backward from her. “I want you to go now; the porters will be here for my luggage, and you will be in the way. If you think of me after this, regretting the expense of our excursion together, please remember I have done my best. In return, I have given you at least part of an education.”

  He came back a step toward her. “And I’d like you to remember—”

  “No! No!” she cried. “Not another word! The last is said.” And as he persisted, trying to speak, she took him by the shoulders, pushing him toward the door. “No! No! No! The last is said, I tell you! If you don’t go—” She began to laugh loudly, and, as she opened the door and pushed him into the corridor, “You dear little fool!” she cried. “If you don’t go, I’ll tell you how old I am!”

  Then the door closed sharply upon her continuing laughter.

  XXVIII

  ALL THAT DAY there were no tourists for the great white camel to carry, nor any for the two tall brown camels, also of superior breed, his companions in waiting. The white camel was not actually white, the colour of his fine long hair being old ivory deepening to creamed coffee; but he was famed as “the white camel” and so called by the Arabs and by the travellers who came to this oasis. Moreover, the white camel was distinguished among his kind not only for his colour, but for his voice. The voice of any camel has a wide range in pessimistic eloquence; beyond question a camel has a vocabulary and can say many things, all of them discontented. Without flattery it can be said that this master of patience is at the same time the world’s supreme artist in the expression of discontent — a seeming paradox hinting that at least the one virtue is not its own reward — and discontent is always inharmonious. No one has ever thought the camel’s utterance musical; in it there is too much that is prehistoric, and, in spite of his long association with man, too much that is uncultivated. It was an oriental ear, accustomed to the painful speech of camels, that rejoiced in a perfect contrast when the voice of the turtle was heard in the land.

  Compared to the voice of the white camel the voices of other camels were the voices of doves; and it is difficult to resist the impression that he recognized his own talent and frankly wished for the applause of the many. Throughout all this bright February afternoon the dissonances of his querulous oratory caused acute anguish to a person whose suffering was already sharp enough without any assistance from camels. Laurence Ogle’s open windows in the second story of the hotel were directly opposite the white camel’s station across the road, and not sixty feet away, whereas the white camel was easily audible at six hundred. The afflicted gentleman lay upon his bed fevered and prostrated by an outrageous headache that had come upon him almost without warning during those last brief moments of tragi-comedy at Mme. Momoro’s door. Stumbling away after his expulsion, he realized that his own head, not her golden one, was the scene of an explosion; and thus he had gone woefully down the corridor to his own room; and there he fell at once upon his hed.

  His windows, long doors of glass, were open, and for a little time he preferred them to be so; then, as his head grew worse, the ejaculations of the white camel became blows of pain. He would have risen to close the windows and shut out a little of the sound; but the mere thought of lifting that stricken head of his was unendurable; he could only lie upon his back and do his wincing by clenching his hot hands. Even the light buzz of the tiny flies in the screenless room brought added pain; and when he half opened his dreary eyes he could see them, dozens of hateful little egoistic specks of life, irregularly circling about his chandelier. The chandelier was of brass, somewhat dulled, and he wished that it might have been of any other metal, except pale gold.

  Twice during that purgatorial afternoon there were great commotions outside. The first was the result of inspirations derived from the white camel by two passing donkeys and an Arab dog. The two donkeys brayed, beginning their uproarious protests with the suddenness of unpremeditated murder; the two brown camels added their raw voices to that of the white one; and the dog barked with a falsetto passion of shrillness in regular half-second intervals until even the ears and temper of some stoic Arab were impaired; the dog completed his staccato with a shriek that became faint in distance abruptly achieved. This was only a casual disturbance among the lower orders, however; but the second one, not long after the first, had a basis of human intent and calculation. Automobile engines racked the air before the principal doors of the hotel, just below Ogle’s room; there was a thumping as of trunks upon the roof of a closed car; porters were noisy in argument; there were many outcries of Arabs and French together, and a torn-torn approached hurriedly, growing louder, accompanied by a stentorian negro voice incessantly bellowing “Hi! Hi! Hi!” There was then the sudden yelling of a crowd, as upon the consummation of some expected great appearance, and then the tinkling of many thrown coins and a wild laughter that astonished the agonized listener above. Were Arabs laughing? If they were, it was the first time he had heard them.

  The automobile horns blatted insistently; the acute Arab yelling became impassioned; more and more coins tinkled. French voices cried, “Merci! Merci, monsieur!” and “You come soon back, please!” Then the little horns were heard from a distance; the torn-torn thumped jubilantly away toward the Arab quarter, growing fainter; — only the white camel did anything obnoxious; and the neighbourhood settled down to phlegmatic eventlessness in the warm February sunshine.

  The sufferer understood that a stirring and unusual departure had just taken place; it might possibly have been Orthe the Eighteenth and the Princess; but the dimensions of the disturbance indicated something much more important. Ogle became convinced that Tinker and his family had just set out upon their journey to Tunis.

  After nightfall, when a valet de chambre came to his room, he had the man bring him some tablets of aspirin, and so presently slept; but when he awoke in the morning he was still feverish, though of the pain in his head there remained only a dulled reminiscence. He felt weak, and, having no interest in anything he might accomplish by rising, remained in bed. However, he sent to the bank agency for his letters and at noon they were brought to him upon a tray of toast and coffee. Only one was of importance to him, and that was the only one he opened; — it was from the manager of “The Pastoral Scene.”

  DEAR MR. OGLE: I suppose by the time you get this if you have been receiving the New York papers you will not be surprised to hear that the bottom fell out of our business pretty disappointingly. None of us here expected anything of the sort from the way it went at the start and it is only another warning that in this business you never can tell. After those big weeks we started with and even doing fine business the worst week in the year when every one of the best attractions fell off worse than we did just before Christmas there wasn’t a man in our office wouldn’t have bet all he owned that we were set for a full season and probably two. Of course we realized our advance business had not developed the way it ought to but the way the box office showed up every night right along we were absolutely positive the advance would be coming in strong right away.

  Well you can’t account for it unless it was just that the public satisfied its curiosity and we didn’t have enough to hold them after that. There have been 17 openings in the short space of time since our own and they all hurt our business more or less. Some of them are freak shows that arouse more curiosity than ours but everybody is going to them just now to see if they can guess what they mean and others of the new shows are so raw that if we were getting people in on that account these new ones are so much rawer that they’re getting them all. Anyhow the whole theatrical situation is bad, except for a very few. Both of Geo. Ebert’s productions are already in the storehouse and most of
these 17 new ones will be there soon as well as some of the old standbys.

  I hope you will not think our hard luck is due to any lack of effort on my part. I had faith in your play and still think that if the theatre would have shown a more liberal policy about the guarantee we might have pulled it out. But we had to do over 10,000 to stay as I am in no position to stand any more drain on my resources and I am out a pretty heavy loss on the venture. When the theatre wouldn’t abate a cent on the guarantee they made me give them there was nothing else to do but let the company have their notices. Of course it is no use trying to do anything on the road.

  As we are closing next Saturday night and it looks like a business of only about 3,300 this week unless the Sat business pulls it up a little your royalties of course will be pretty small. This is a personal disappointment to me, as I had hoped and fully expected to be sending you big checks to spend over there but as a matter of fact I will probably have to borrow about $4,000 myself to clean up. If anything goes through to pull us a little way up out of this deep hole I will let you know but present prospects would not warrant any great confidence in it.

  I will send you a complete statement in a few days but as you would probably like to know how we stand I will give you a rough idea. I advanced you $1,000 on acct future royalties the Sat before you sailed as you will recall everything being squared between us to that date. This left you owing me the $1,000 advanced which we both fully expected would be practically covered by the next week’s royalties, but that was the week we had the drop. I figure that the total royalties due you by Sat night next when we close will amt to about $750 to $800 which will leave you owing me between $200 and $250 or somewhere around there. Anyhow you will receive the complete box office statement very soon after this and you can remit me the exact amt at your convenience.

  I am sorry I haven’t better news, but we are all pretty down in the mouth about this and the only thing we can say is that it is just the luck of the theatrical business and nobody’s fault. I would add that I have not lost faith in yourself and any time in the future if I am in a position to produce a new play and you have a script to submit I will be glad to give it my best consideration. With all good wishes I remain Yours faithfully, —— Jos. LEHKEN.

  Ogle relapsed upon his pillow. “That’s the an swer!” he murmured. “I’ve written for the Few, after all!” And the sound of his whispered laughter might have driven a nervous listener from the room.

  He had counted upon a noble brood of chickens because the first had been hatched so prettily; but, after the first, no more at all were hatched; and his mistake was serious. He had assumed with unquestioning confidence that Lehren would be sending him weekly drafts from New York — large, comfortable sums such as those few first generous weeks had produced; he had felt no doubt in the world that he would receive them regularly for a length of time so pleasantly indefinite that it had appeared to his sanguine youthfulness as virtually permanent. At least it had appeared permanent enough for him to indulge himself with one of the more expensive cabins on an expensive steamer and to embark upon an elaborate voyage with his supplies actually in hand limited to a small letter of credit — a provision just amply sufficient until his drafts should begin to arrive from Lehren. But now, until he could write another play and get it “on,” or do other kinds of writing there would be nothing. Moreover, he had paid M. Cayzac for the automobile and the chauffeur’s expenses through to Tunis in advance; the hospitality he had extended to a luxurious lady and her son had been far from niggardly; and upon his letter of credit there now remained at his disposal the sum of sixty-seven dollars.

  Out of this and some French money in his pocket-book he must settle his account at the hotel, which doubtless would include that of Mme. Momoro and her son, since they had been his guests in this inclusive manner throughout the excursion. Then he must get to a seaport, either Algiers or Tunis, and thence to Marseilles or Naples by sea, and still have enough money left to pay his passage back to New York. This was his immediate problem and the answer appeared to be of an overwhelming simplicity; — it could not be done.

  What employment, he wondered, could be found among the Saharan oases by an American playwright who knew but the one trade and had failed at that?

  How long did it take to become sophisticated as a camel driver? Could he write realism for the Ouled girls to play, since they were indeed realists too, though their ambition was frankly for the Many? And then, remembering his first talk with the poet and the painter in the smoking-room of the “Duumvir,” when they had all three posed for the statuesque French lady and for one another, airing themselves and their nonsense about Art, the prostrate Laurence groaned in sickened revulsion. It was that ancient bit of naïveté, “For the Few,” that brought this sound of nausea from him; and again his whispered laughter competed with the buzzing of the tiny Biskra flies about his chandelier. For, in his misery, he had at last asked himself a sardonic and distinctly clarifying question: What “Few” had he written for? Who actually were those Few? In the name of heaven, what did he care for Macklyn!

  A few minutes later he laughed once more the same self-cauterizing and voiceless laugh, for he recalled his grandiloquent bitterness of yesterday when he had told the faithless lady that he would have given her the money to establish Hyacinthe as an impresario, if she had asked him for it. He had been gloomily pleased with himself at the moment, as he realized now; he had thought to show her something of the scorn of an Armand hurling gold upon the crushed lady of the camellias, though with the background difference that there was no golden shower and that she wasn’t crushed. Nevertheless, he had felt the pleasure of making a large gesture; but suppose she had taken him up. Suppose she had said: “All right, I’ll ask for it new!”

  It was when he thought of this possibility and of his sixty-seven dollars that he laughed, and this laughter, more uncomfortable than weeping, was continued as he faced other folly of his. He had always thought a carefulness with money, or much consideration of money, the outstanding symbol of vulgarity, a viewpoint now appearing to him as a little “extreme.” More than this, he perceived that it was a viewpoint not happily compatible with an attitude of exclusiveness; — people who are happy-go-lucky with money should be also hail-fellow-well-met with other people. Happy-go-lucky may need a loan.

  As it happened, he had been so self-sufficient that the only soul in the world from whom he could hope to borrow without shame or the risk of unbearable rebuff was Albert Jones; and he had no knowledge of this old friend’s address; nor could he think of any means to obtain it; — Albert had been living in Paris most of the time since they graduated together, and his recent club affiliations in New York were those of a guest, not a member. Old proverbs, older than that most ancient of Ages, the Victorian, though it cherished them, echoed chasteningly in the mind of this modernist; and the one that most afflicted him concerned the Devil. He paraphrased it: “When the Devil was rich, the Devil a devil would be; when the Devil was bankrupt, the Devil a saint was he.” For Laurence Ogle, possessed of a proud devil all his life until now, perceived that having become bankrupt in Africa, he was in a condition of humility. He had been too exclusive; he had indeed looked with the Arabs’ eyes upon his fellow-beings. Unquestionably it was a mistake.

  He had to take account of his assets, a matter of the utmost simplicity yet involving some degree of desperation. He had the sixty-seven relics upon his letter of credit; a thin watch of white gold, some bits of gold and platinum necessary to his dress; he had his clothes and black leather bag and steamer trunk; and he had the few hundred-franc notes in his pocket-book. These, with a desk, some chairs, a four-post bed, and a case of books, in storage in New York, made the complete list of his present possessions in the material world. Then, bethinking him, he remembered that there remained to him his chartered right in M. Cayzac’s automobile. It was at his disposal, engaged to carry him to Batna and Timgad, to Constantine and Bone, all on the way to Tunis, where it woul
d finally deposit him; and this was already paid for.

  Then to Tunis he would go. He did not seek further into his motive for this decision: it was enough to say to himself that the automobile would save his railroad fare; and yet a curious little guiltiness, like the faint sly sting of some slightly poisonous insect, penetrated his consciousness as he set himself upon this course. He did not look himself over to find the small wound; he preferred to ignore it. He was doing the only sensible thing — he was sure of that — and toward the close of the afternoon he felt able to dress, and went downstairs to ask questions of the concierge.

  “It is too late for you to start to-day,” the man told him. “Besides, your chauffeur tells me you are here until to-morrow by M. Cayzac’s arrangement for Etienne’s own expenses. It is Etienne who is your chauffeur; yes, he tells me he is. So to-morrow morning you leave here nicely after breakfast; you lunch at El Kantara, a fine place; and long before dark you are in Batna, or, if you prefer, at Timgad, which is close by there. The next evening you are at Constantine, the next at Bône; then you must make another long day’s drive and you will be at Tunis. Everywhere excellent roads, and it is all perfectly simple.”

  “Yes,” Ogle said thoughtfully. “It seems so.” With a hand still feeble and a little tremulous, he passed a kerchief over his forehead. “By the way, I was ill yesterday and last evening. I suppose my friends got off all right?”