She was anything but embarrassed. “I told you it needs two persons to enjoy this extraordinary man,” she said gayly. “To believe what he tells me would need perhaps a thousand; but one more might he at least a little help. I insist that you join us.”
“Sit down, sit down, young fellow,” Tinker said cordially, and he’ waved his hand toward a folded camp-stool leaning against the white wall of the wireless operator’s room near by. “I just been tellin’ Mrs. Mummero some simple God’s facts about a few things in my part o’ the country, and she thinks I’m makin’ ’em up. She don’t know a thing about the United States; all she saw was just New York and Boston and Philadelphia and hardly anything to speak of, of them, nothing but a few hotel clerks and some pink teas. Well, she began to talk about how much of a place Paris is — she seems to think a good deal of Paris and some the other towns they got over in Europe; — but I told her she never in her life saw a real town yet, and she never will see one unless she comes back and gets to the other side the Allegheny Mountains. I told her to come out my way and I’d show her one!” Then in his enthusiasm he leaned toward her, beaming broad admiration upon her. “I’d certainly like to take you around my city!” he said.
“Such a proposal!” she cried. “Mr. Ogle, you must stay to save me. I might accept!”
But Ogle was already moving away, and did not look back. He made up his mind to stop thinking of her, to banish her entirely from his mind, and, feeling restored to freedom by this resolution, sat down comfortably upon a coiled hawser and wondered why he had not sooner set himself at liberty by so simple an act of will. The sun was bright and under it the whole circle of the sea lay sparkling; balmy airs encompassed him; he was once more his own man. Congratulating himself upon the ease with which he had dispersed the fascination, he began to realize that he had been almost in love with Mme. Momoro. Then his chin sank, his hands clenched, and he groaned half-aloud.
“How can she?” he whispered bitterly. “How can she treat me so!”
At dinner that evening Mrs. Tinker was in great spirits. She nodded at the placid hypocrite across from her and said to Ogle: “Do you know what this wicked man has been up to? Robbing those poor gentlemen in the smoking-room again the whole livelong afternoon. Well, Libby and I’ll just have to stand it, I expect, because he stole more from ’em to-day than any time yet, and I’m going to endow a new ward in a hospital when we get back home. What’s more, the first place I’m going to look for when we land from this boat, it’s a jewellery store!”
There had been no card game at all in the smoking-room that afternoon, as Ogle knew; and he found a momentary satisfaction in the thought that Tinker’s hypocrisy was at least expensive.
But this pleasure was fleeting; the man was probably “made of money.” One day the playwright had heard the manufacturer of worsteds and Wackstle person talking of Tinker in the lounge. The two men evidently had known something about him before they encountered him on this voyage, and it was clear that they thought well of him. In fact, the worsted magnate had spoken of his “respect”: “I have a great respect for any man that can build up a really big business out of nothing the way Mr. Tinker’s done these last fifteen years with that paper company. It was just about up the spout when he got hold of it, and I understand he never borrowed a penny for it but backed it with his own capital entirely. It must be a great satisfaction to a man to feel he’s made such a position for himself in the world of business.”
Ogle thought wonderingly of this phrase, “the world of business.” He had always been aware that there was such a world and always felt about it what his father felt about it before him. His father had been a rather embittered and radical assistant professor of English; and Laurence had gone from the life of the university into what he felt was the forefront of the theatre and studio life of New York. So when he thought wonderingly of that phrase used by the worsted man, “the world of business,” his wonder was that of the mountaineer who sees pedlars greedily bargaining over their packs far below him in the haze of the plain. The world of these business men, the Tinkers and Wackstles, and worsted men, was a strange gloom, as he thought of it — a smoky twilight wherein they groped ignobly for money and incessantly babbled in their own dialects about their grubbing. To them it was a real world evidently; they passed the word from one to another when one of them got money in quantity, and they had their own murky little trading celebrities, dismal bragging beings wholly unknown on the heights above, And it was with one of these that Mme. Momoro preferred to spend hours alone!
“Preferred” was the galling word in Ogle’s mind. For it had become clear to him that although she was “nice” to him and to Macklyn and Albert Jones, and, when she had nothing more to her taste to do, gladly made herself their gay and sympathetic companion, what she preferred was Tinker.
All in all, the young man felt that he was getting a rather severe lesson in both the variety and the singularity of human tastes and viewpoints. Upon the matter of their singularity, moreover, he received further enlightenment as he was preparing to retire, this last evening before the “Duumvi” left the Atlantic for the Mediterranean. For days he had heard nothing through the closed door between the adjoining cabin and his own, except commonplace fragments from Mrs. Tinker concerning dress, to which Olivia responded in monosyllables; but to-night the elder lady was more discursive.
“One thing I’ve been sort of disappointed about, so far,” she said. “I always heard you were likely to meet so many interesting people on these big liners, especially going to the Mediterranean. Of course most of these on board are well dressed, and they’re all well off, no question, or else how could they be here? But I certainly don’t agree with your father: he says they’re the finest lot of people he ever saw — he always says that, anyhow, wherever we go, because he always likes everybody — but I never did feel that just succeeding in business and showing it in their clothes makes people interesting. What I mean is, you can look over this whole boat and you’ll scarcely see a single intellectual face.”
The daughter’s response was characteristic of her mood. “I wouldn’t want to see it, if there were.”
“Well, I would,” Mrs. Tinker returned. “At first, from his looks, I thought that little fellow might be going to turn out right cultivated; but he hasn’t made one interesting remark the whole way over. He don’t seem to know anything about anything at all.”
There came a sharpness into the daughter’s voice. “Oh, yes, he does. He knows he’s wonderful.”
“It doesn’t look like it,” her mother returned; “the way he and his two funny-looking friends keep hanging around that adventuress! I do wish I knew who she is: I’ll bet she’s got a history behind her!”
“Perhaps in front of her,” Olivia suggested, and could be heard to yawn. “She’s beautiful.”
“She may be,” Mrs. Tinker admitted cautiously; “but she looks like a woman to me that’d always be up to something or other, you couldn’t tell what. Anyway, the thing that’s sort of disappointed me so far is, I thought there’d be so many cultivated-looking people on board, and except that second head-waiter in the dining-room with the eyeglasses, I haven’t seen a one.
The light clicked out upon that, ‘and the incensed young man heard no more. Inevitably and by every possible means, it seemed, these Tinkers, middle-class Middle Westerners, of whom he had never heard two week ago, were ruining his voyage and his temper, and actually interfering with his life; — at least, thinking of Mme. Momoro, he went so far as to put the matter in that extreme way. He could only pray for haste to Algiers and his departure from the boat and all contact with such people.
But in the morning for a time the engrossing lady made him forget his ill-humour. He stood with her upon the forward gallery of the promenade deck, and, although Macklyn and Albert Jones and other passengers stood with them and even pressed upon them, he stood nearest her, and his shoulder touched her arm. Before them the bow of the “Duumvir” flung aside a
bluer sparkle of water than they had yet known, and there opened a majestic avenue between the giant headlands of two continents. Upon the left, flat-roofed Spanish villages rose from the sea and massive square white towers stood beyond upon hills of unfamiliar shapes and colours. On the right a long parapet of ominous mountains, gray and mysterious within a veil of blue haze, ranged down the Straits as far as the eye could reach. It was to this long and somehow disturbing highland barrier that Mme. Momoro directed Ogle’s attention.
“Africa!” she said, in a low voice. “That is Africa! Anything could happen behind those mountains, one feels. The stranger it could be, the more one would expect it. These are the Pillars of Hercules; and just here, on this side, is Spain. It is barren, perhaps; yet it is beautiful and smiling, too. But there, that huge sculptured shadow in the high air — that is Africa!”
She said the word “Africa” in a way, as he thought, he had heard no word spoken before in all his life. She little more than breathed it; but it was as if she breathed the whole stories of Cleopatra and Carthage in the one lingering low sound.
“It is magnificent,” he said, deeply moved; and added in a husky voice for her ear alone: “Your thought of it, I mean. I feel your thought of it in your voice, and I understand. And you — you are more than Africa!”
Onward sparkled the flying bow of the “Duumvir,” opening headland upon headland on the leftward shore until almost abruptly, there, gigantic before them, they beheld old Britain’s Rock climbing the brilliant sky of Spain.
“My golly! that’s familiar,” a hearty voice said from the clump of passengers behind Mme. Momoro and Ogle. “What an ad! What an ad!”
Tinker’s enthusiasm was for the genius of a commercial organization in his native country; and a moment later he was heard again jovially extolling it, in reply to a remark from Mr. Wackstle.
“Yes, sir; certainly it’s impressive; but if it hadn’t been for that ad how many people do you expect would ever ‘a’ heard of it? The only thing that disappoints me, I always thought they had their sign painted right on the Rock like it is in the pictures. I’m goin’ to sue ’em, when I get back, for false pretences. It ain’t there!”
“Pop-puhl” Mrs. Tinker, excited by these first moments in the Old World, so new to her, scolded him amiably but with a loud shrillness. “If you don’t look out, Mr. Wackstle will think you really don’t know any more than you sound like you do.”
“Well, I don’t — not much. Was this where Napoleon landed from St. Helena or something? What ever did happen around here, anyhow?”
XII
OUR HUMAN NATURE has many humorous ways to betray us, loving to cajole our eyes from knowing what they see, and leading us (especially when we travel) to mistake-what is within us for a quality of our surroundings. So it was with Mr. Laurence Ogle’s disappointment in the picturesque town of Gibraltar: he believed that he saw the place; but what he saw was a discoloration of it worked by his own mood. Macklyn and Albert Jones were to depart at once for Seville; Tinker certainly would be unable to escape from his family duties; and the playwright had hoped for a beautiful day ashore with Mme. Momoro alone, or, at the worst, with the quiet and discreet young Hyacinthe as a chaperon. Moreover, she had encouraged him in this hope, giving him a deep quick look to go with the rest of the encouragement, a look of some gravity. “We could drive to Algeciras,” she suggested, and asked gently: “You would be willing to take me into Spain?”
“Willing!” he said. “Ah, very, very far into Spain!” He told her he had always owned many bright castles there; that since he had met her he was engaged upon a new one much brighter than the old; and he was fortunate enough not to suspect that something of the kind might have been said to her before. She had been several times to Gibraltar.
This was the most of his good fortune, however, for while he waited with her, as the passengers were descending to the tender to be taken ashore, an elderly lady appeared upon deck, with her bandaged ear concealed by a mourning veil. Accompanying her were her sister and the young Hyacinthe in solicitous attendance; and at once, upon sight of this group, Mme. Momoro informed the crestfallen playwright that her plans to visit his Spanish castle were cancelled.
“But if those ladies intend to go ashore and look about, surely your son — —”
“No, no, no!” she said quickly; — she seemed to be a little shocked by the suggestion. “Mademoiselle Daurel and her sister, Mademoiselle Lucie, are our dearest friends; they are my hostesses in Algiers. We are travelling with them; we went to America with them. They are very nervous and not strong; they depend greatly upon me. I am sorry, but I must go.” He had not seen her so serious, and as she hurried away from him she gave the impression of a person who has been urged to do a frivolous thing at the sacrifice of an important one. So his new castle came down about his ears, and he went ashore carrying the ruins with him.
He said a gloomy good-bye to the painter and the poet among a mildly clamorous crowd of guides, passengers, pedlars, and drivers on the pier. Albert Jones was going to Seville “for a bit of painting perhaps,” he said; Macklyn would accompany him there and later across to Florence, where they would take an apartment or possibly a villa together. Ogle promised to find them if he came to Italy after his African adventure, and also to send them news of himself and of Mme. Momoro when he reached Algiers.
Then, unexpectedly rather regretful, he watched them as they drove away, rattling and rocking in an absurd little surrey with a gayly shabby fringed top, a gayer and shabbier driver, fringed himself at the elbows, and a feather-plumed, aged little horse spasmodically brisk in a gesture of departure. When they were out of sight Ogle bethought him of an omission — his friends had forgotten to leave an address where they might be reached by letter. However, he was not inconsolable; he hoped Algiers would offer him things more interesting to do than writing letters.
Alone after that, he strolled up into the town to make a dull day for himself. Everywhere and delighted with everything were the “Duumvir’s” passengers; and he could go nowhere but to be annoyed by their exclamations of discovery. They discovered the shops, the tea-rooms, the strange, pleasant colours of buildings and shutters,’ the incomparable sleekness of the horses held in waiting for British officers outside a club, the robed Moors from Tangiers across the way, fine old sherry, lovely gardens, and the eloquent drowsy little graveyard in the sunshine below the old town gates. Here, among the epitaphs, Ogle would have lingered, for he thought the inscriptions touching, and saw that something of England’s history was written there; but he fled from an invasion by the families of Mr. Wackstle and the worsted magnate.
Most of his fellow-travellers, he observed, were now upon a footing of cheerful acquaintance with one another; in fact, he was the only person of the whole ship’s company who went about Gibraltar alone, hailing none of his fellows and being hailed by none. This was his own choice; yet he could almost have wished that nature had made him a little less exclusive. He had always been exclusive; he had been so in college and in the career he was making for himself now in New York; but his exclusiveness, absorbed in boyhood from his lonely and satirical father, had no ordinary snobbishness in it. The assistant professor had despised “good family” almost as much as he had despised riches; and he had taught his son that the only aristocracy was one of culture — and there were only a few members, anywhere, apparently.
Laurence had never been able to look upon people generally as his fellow-men. On the contrary, he saw almost all of them as caricatures of what he felt they should have been; and since he by no means looked upon himself as a caricature, he naturally could not meet many of them upon a congenial basis of equality. Sensitive and lacking a strong consciousness of mortal fellowship, he found contact with the great majority disagreeable; almost invariably they offended some delicate prejudice of his; and, as he thought of them, they had only a surface existence, never going “deeply into life,” as he did. There was a somewhat fashionable phrase he used both
in speaking of people and in thinking of them, a complete definition forbidding all further research; and he thought nothing of applying it to a whole shipload of human beings, or, for that matter, to all the inhabitants of broad areas in his own country. Indeed it is probable that he had called more people “quite impossible” than had all of his most fastidious and talented contemporaries put together.
He belonged to a few clubs; but was exclusive within them; he went to dinners where he was a lion among ladies, as he was, too, at tea in the afternoon sometimes; and his acquaintance was principally with people who held exclusive views of literature and the arts — the only subjects upon which views were of real importance, they felt — but even among these exclusives he was exclusive. In his work in the theatre he had made not a single warm friend among the managers and actors, and only a few among the actresses. These people were his instruments and necessarily he must work with them; but he seldom became at all intimate with them. As a matter of fact, Albert Jones was the most intimate friend he had and the two were not very closely intimate, at that. Moreover, since his father’s death his nearest relatives were some cousins in Rhode Island whom he had never seen; and after he had been nearly run down by an automobile in Gibraltar, he became a little more gloomy when he thought that if he had been killed, those unknown cousins would have inherited the royalties from “The Pastoral Scene.” Probably the Rhode Island cousins and the manager of his play would have been the only people much interested; though no doubt the manager would get all the “publicity” he possibly could out of wide-spread obituaries.
Thus this lonely young man had all day grown more and more disgruntled with Gibraltar, with life, and almost with himself; and he was not the less so because the automobile that spared him by a hand’s breadth contained the Tinker family returning from an excursion into Spain as far as Algeciras. Tinker shouted jovially, waving in greeting a spiked stick decorated with gay ribbons and designed for the bedevilment of bulls. Also, he wore a bull-fighter’s hat, purchased simultaneously at the bull-ring and so strikingly incongruous upon his Midland head, that Ogle spitefully hoped Mme. Momoro would see him in it. She did, as it happened, only a moment later and under the playwright’s eye; for she came by, just then, in one of the gay, shabby little surreys, with Mlle. Daurel beside her and her son and Mile. Lucie Daurel in another surrey behind them.
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 396