She was speaking of him to her friend. “I do wish he could ever learn to follow the example of a gentleman like your husband, Mrs. Shuler. Only last night I said to him, ‘For goodness’ sake, Earl,’ I said, ‘why can’t you behave a little like Mr. Shuler?’ I thought that might have a little weight with him on account of his having met Mr. Shuler at that convention in Minneapolis and his admiring him so much, besides the coincidence of happening to meet him again in a queer place like this, way off from everywhere and all; so I just said, ‘Since you admire him so much, why can’t you behave a little like he does?”’
“Mr. Shuler admires Mr. Tinker, too,” Mrs. Shuler returned warmly. “He told me he considered Mr. Tinker one of the ablest and most important men in our whole part of the country. He told me Mr. Tinker isn’t only head of the paper company, but that he owns the gas plant in your city and’s built up I don’t know how many industries all around the state. He says Mr. Tinker is just a marvellous man, and that he’s had so much success almost anybody’s head would be turned by it. My husband says that’s one reason he admires him so much, because his head isn’t turned. He’s just as simple and affable as if he wasn’t anybody much at all, and Mr. Shuler says that’s perfectly wonderful in a man that has five or six thousand people working for him in his different plants. And he says he never in his life saw a man with so much energy and—”
“Energy!” Mrs. Tinker exclaimed, interrupting. “That’s the very trouble, Mrs. Shuler. What I said to him yesterday, I said, ‘Why can’t you do the way Mr. Shuler does and go and take a nap after lunch? Why can’t you show a little common sense?’ Not he! Every place we’ve been, the first thing he’d find out would be whether they had a water-works and an electric-light plant and a sewage system; and if they had, he’d drag our poor courier to look at them with him. ‘Look here, John,’ he’ll say — he calls him ‘John Edwards’ because his real name is Jean Edouard Le Seyeux and Mr. Tinker said the only thing to do with his last name’s to forget it— ‘Look here, John,’ he’ll say, ‘I don’t care where the Romans or the Carthaginians or the Mohammedans or anybody else left some old foundation stones lying around, there’s a water-works in this town and we’re going to get up and go look at it at seven o’clock tomorrow morning, before we leave here.’ And then when they’d get through, heaven only knows what ‘pourboires he’d give all the workmen, Arabs and everybody! Even Le Seyeux shakes his head over it.” Mrs. Shuler laughed. “I guess you needn’t worry about that, Mrs. Tinker,” she said admiringly. “My husband told me that Mr. Tinker built and practically supports a big hospital and two trade-schools for workmen’s children in your city.”
“That’s very different,” Mrs. Tinker returned primly. “When it’s for good causes like that, I never make any objection; but I think it’s perfectly criminal of him to spoil all the French hotel servants the way he does — and these Arabs. What he’s done since we’ve been in this place alone makes my hair curl to think of it! Besides what he just throws around, he’s sent bournouses and red Morocco boots and tunics and brass belts and boxes and boxes of dates to every one of his department heads and foremen and—”
Olivia interrupted plaintively: “Couldn’t you stop talking about Papa — for just a little while, Mamma?”
“Yes, dear,” her mother said soothingly. “It’s a lovely sunset, and we ought to just watch it in silence. I never saw such colours in my life, — so many different shade? and all! It’s so interesting, I think, after reading ‘The Garden of Allah’, though I don’t like that place much; it seems so creepy.” She lowered her voice a little. “As I was saying, you can’t do anything with him, Mrs. Shuler. I wanted him to take a little rest to-day — not he! He got to talking to a young couple in the garden here yesterday afternoon — Austrians or Polish or something, but they speak English, he said, as well as he does himself — and he took a fancy to them and sat with them after dinner in the coffee-room and told them all about what Africa really needs in the way of American machinery and so on; — you know his way. So to-day he got ’em to go off on a long camel ride with him. He had lunch taken along on some other camels to eat somewhere in the Desert — you never saw anything more like a circus parade in your life, except it was so kind of wild looking it almost scared me. Heaven knows where they were going or when they’ll be back! He—”
Olivia interrupted again. “I give up!” she said, and she laughed. “Mrs. Shuler, if you expect to see what’s left of a Desert sunset, you’d better come down to the roof with me and leave Mother up here. Papa bought her an absolutely impossible girdle of enormous clumps of carved amber and ebony in Touggourt, and she likes it. Sometimes she won’t speak to him or of him at all; but just after he’s got her something she likes you can’t possibly stop her! You’d better come with me.”
A moment later the door opening upon the gallery clanked and she could be heard descending the spiral stairway. At the same time, Ogle became aware of a vague commotion of sounds from the direction of a dried river bed on the edge of the oasis, and, looking that way, he beheld a cloud of dust, in the midst of which were glints of barbaric colour, gleamings of brass, and the tall shapes of camels.
Mrs. Tinker’s voice sounded eagerly. “Look, Mrs. Shuler! There he is now! He’s just getting back from the Desert.”
XXI
THE DISTANT CLOUD of dust containing Tinker’s caravan, Tinker himself, his Austrian or Polish friends, Jean Edouard Le Seyeux, and others, crossed the dry bed of the Desert river, where stands the white-domed tomb of the marabout, and, making its way into Biskra, disappeared among the mud walls and palm trees of an Arab outskirt. But although temporarily invisible from the tower, its progress could still be followed by the increasing uproar travelling with it. A confusion of shrill voices, cat-like oboe pipings and the thumping of torn-toms, were commingled upon the air; and down the street before the hotel ran the wicked-eyed sellers of knives, the trinket vendors, beggars, pedlars, and flying groups of brown children in tatters, hurrying passionately toward the commotion; blind men were dragged by at a run.
Then, at a corner below the hotel, the caravan turned into view, and, with little half-naked brown boys and black boys turning somersaults in the dust before it, swung barbarically up the broad white road. In nucleus it consisted of four camels of majestic breed, loftier than other camels and imperially conscious that they were. They were attended by smaller camels, upon which sat white-robed servants, and by brown men on Arabian coursers, by hairy old men on hairier donkeys, by musicians, clamorous pedlars and beggars, by goats, dogs, poultry, and the general vociferous rabble.
Capering fantastically before the procession and beating a torn-torn, a magnificently robust gray-bearded negro conjuror roared lunatic jocosities and caught tossed coins between his teeth; — he wore a headdress three feet high of yellow skin flashing with little mirrors; his skirt of jackals’ skins leaped to his dancing, and, as he danced, he continually made convulsive obeisance to the potentate from afar, whom his prancing heralded and hoped to placate. This was Tinker, bareheaded, with a scarlet burnous over his shoulders and his trousers rucked up to his knees, riding at the head of his caravan high upon a gigantic white camel. He had been to Sidi Okba, where he had apparently bought everything that was for sale; silver-spangled shawls and scarves hung from the camels; great brass platters were borne upon them like shields; attendants carried bundles of red leather, laces, and outrageous weapons.
Up and down the street groups of tourists were standing to stare; British, wearing pith helmets, monocles, and puttees; French in white flannels and straw hats; open-mouthed Americans; mounted French officers in scarlet and blue drew rein; and from the doorway of the hotel came the landlord, the concierge, porters, waiters, immaculate Arab guides in white and brown, all deferential and hoping to be useful.
“Isn’t it perfectly awful!” Mrs. Tinker said to her friend — and yet, though she meant what she said, there was somewhere at the bottom of her voice an elusive and just detec
table little note of humorous pride. “I’ll certainly let him know what I think of him for making such a spectacle of himself! The idea of his wearing one of those red things like that! He just can’t help buying ’em wherever he sees ’em; and the trouble is, he hasn’t any self-consciousness, Mrs. Shuler. If he felt chilly he’d put it on; he hasn’t the slightest regard for appearances, because he honestly never thinks about ’em. Probably he’s lost his hat, and I do wish he’d pull his trousers down! He hasn’t the slightest idea how ridiculous he looks — and he wouldn’t care if he had.”
Ridiculous was how he looked to the burning eyes of the young man on the opposite side of the tower gallery. That is, at first Ogle thought him ridiculous; and injured vanity was not assuaged by the thought. It was to lay siege, then, to this buffoon, that Mme. Aurélie Momoro had travelled the long way from Algiers, dragging with her a spiritless serf whose hand or shoulder she patted now and then as a reward for paying the tavern bills! From her window somewhere below she was probably looking out now, and not one whit turned aside from her purpose to captivate that absurdity upon a white camel; she would care no more how ridiculous he was than she had cared how chivalrous and delicate the gulled serf had been with her!
But, continuing to look down upon the caravan, as it slowly swung up the street, drawing nearer, something about it daunted the sore spirit of the watcher on the tower. Against his will, he perceived a kind of barbaric stateliness, and lost his conviction that either the procession or its master was ridiculous. Moreover, he recognized the young ‘‘Austrian or Polish” couple Mrs. Tinker had mentioned as members of this expedition. In the thin and rosy light of late sunset, riding well, no more incommoded by the swaying of his huge beast than he had been by that of the “Duumvir,” Tinker came up the street at Biskra with the Princess of Fuhlderstein upon his right hand, Orthe the Eighteenth upon his left, and the mob rioting hopefully about him as he laughed and scattered down silver coins among them.
There was something, then, not so ridiculous as formidable about the big, broad-faced Midlander; and the playwright felt the hovering of a Punic resemblance. For thus, with boys and black conjurors tumbling before him, with the rulers of States riding beside him, with torn-toms beating, and the rabble clamouring, some great scarlet-robed Carthaginian, master of six thousand slaves at home, might have ridden in from the Desert two thousand years ago. In fact, the disgruntled observer was able to perceive a further Punic resemblance, more painful: a great Carthaginian Barca — Hamilcar or his gorgeous son Hannibal — thus riding in from the Desert so long ago, might very well have encountered here a tall Beauty of the Gauls, who had travelled down from the Mediterranean seeking him everywhere and at last waiting at this oasis, sure of charming and enslaving him. Biskra might have strange surprises for industrial princes, whether of seagirt Carthage or a boosters’ town on the Midland prairie.
“I’d just like to know what he’s got to say for himself!” Mrs. Tinker exclaimed, as the caravan stopped before the hotel and her husband and his guests were assisted to descend. “Let’s go down and see, Mrs. Shuler. I only hope he’s tired enough to lie down awhile for a nap before dinner.”
Her hope was a vain one; for they were met at the base of the tower by Tinker, divested of his burnous, supplied with a hat and in lively spirits. He came briskly out upon the roof arm-in-arm with a middle-aged companion of his own sex and similar nativity. “Look here, Mamma!” he shouted. “Mr. Shuler saw what I’ve got for you downstairs, and he says his wife’s goin’ to be mighty jealous. I had ’em carried to your room for you; and you and Baby’ll find ’em laid out on your bed, I expect. You might pick out a shawl for Mrs. Shuler while you’re at it. Anyhow, you better go look at ’em.”
“There’ll be time enough for that by-and-by,” his wife returned severely. “We came up here to see the sunset and I certainly don’t want any more shawls and neither does Libby; maybe we can coax Mrs. Shuler to accept ’em all! What have you got to say for yourself — behaving like a circus clown before the whole place like that! And, by the way” — here her tone became more emphatic— “I thought you told me that young lady with the light hair was a bride.”
“She is. They’re a bride and groom on their wedding trip; they told me so.”
“Then why didn’t you let ’em ride next to each other, the way honeymoon couples like to? Why’d you have to go and push your old camel in between ’em? So you could talk to the bride better? What are their names?”
“I don’t know,” Tinker answered, and he rubbed his head. “That’s been botherin’ me all day. I asked him about fifteen times; but it was so foreign sounding, and he’d always sort of smother it when he said it, at last I gave up tryin’ to get it. Mighty nice young couple, though.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Tinker said with some tartness, “I noticed you seemed to think so — especially the bride.”
Mr. Shuler laughed waggishly. “That’s right, Mrs. Tinker, give it to him! You’ll have to keep your eye on him. I met Charlie Wackstle in Naples as my wife and I were coming down here, and he told me quite a good deal about Mr. Tinker’s capers on the steamer. You’ll have to look out for him!”
Tinker protested with an affectation of jocosity, under which a keener ear than Mr. Shuler’s might have detected a little genuine alarm: “Now, that’ll be enough, Mr. Shuler. Our friend Wackstle’s a splendid man — just splendid in every way — except he’s never spoken a word of truth since he was born. Listen! When that Wackstle came into the smoking-room and said it was a nice bright day outside, everybody there would send for their rain-coats. Listen! I’ve always believed George Washington was dead, but if Charlie Wackstle said he was, I’d telegraph to Mount Vernon and tell George I was comin’ to visit him! Listen! If Charlie Wackstle ever told the truth in his life—” He paused. An Arab servant stood before him, offering him a small white envelope. “What’s that? For me? I don’t know anybody here.” However, he accepted the missive and opened it.
Mr. Shuler cackled gayly. “Billy-dues already! It’s certainly a little suspicious how heavy he puts it on about Wackstle being such a prevaricator. You’ll have to keep your eye on him, Mrs. Tinker!”
“Indeed I know that,” she said. “Who on earth would be writing to you in a place like this, Earl?” He put the note in his pocket, laughing evasively. “Oh, it’s what Mr. Shuler said,” he returned. “It’s a billy-doo. I can’t keep ’em away from me!”
She frowned. “I asked you who’s it from.”
“Now, Honey!” Then he laughed louder. “I believe you think it’s from that little, light-haired bride. Well, on my word, it’s not; — as a matter of fact, it’s about something entirely different.”
“Well, what?”
“Maybe I’ll tell you some day, maybe not, Mamma.” He became fondly taunting, as if humouring Mr. Shuler’s joke. “Anyhow I got to go ‘tend to something.”
With that he moved toward the stairway to descend; but she detained him. “What do you have to—”
“Oh, it’s nothing, only I got to look after it myself. See you downstairs pretty soon.”
“But I want to know—” She checked herself and stood looking after him as he disappeared. Then she turned to her companions. “I know it’s that note,” she said.
“You’ll have to keep your eye on him,” Mr.
Shuler repeated, unable to part with this humorous device. “Somebody’s probably trying to get him away from you, Mrs. Tinker.”
“Somebody’s probably trying to get him away from some money. Somebody’s always after him for that!”
“Well, he’s still a pretty good-looking man, Mrs. Tinker. You’ll have to keep your eyes open.”
“Indeed, I’ll do that!” she said; and this, for a time, was the last heard from her by the young man upon the gallery overhead. She moved away with her friends to occupy some chairs at a distance from the tower, and only the indistinguishable murmur of their talk was audible.
XXII
THE ROSY
INCANDESCENCE of the Pink Cheek had grown fainter and duller, until now, with sun and short afterglow both gone, the great spur was no more than a cloud of gray ashes lying upon the darkened plain. In the Desert, nearer, were the low brown tents of some Nomads whose supper fires glowed in garnet points against the dun-coloured sand. So were there hot little points burning in the gloomy soul of the lonely young man upon the tower. His dream was “all over,” he said to himself — for it is the habit of young gentlemen of his age to speak to themselves of their dreams — but even as he came to this dream’s end he was not quite sure what it was that he had dreamed.
What had he asked of her? This he asked of himself, and elicited no immediate reply. He had spoken to her of marriage, regretting that her convictions did not permit her to entertain the idea; but when she had twice answered — apparently with mere gayety, to be sure — that she did not boast of her invitations, he had not increased the number of them. Asking her to marry him had been no serious part of his plans; but he sadly suspected that if she had wished him to ask her she could have made him. His feeling for her, until it began to alter, had been a delighted kind of reverence; she fascinated him and allured him; but what he had liked best was looking up to her, seeing her as a beautiful, wise-spoken, oracular statue, gracefully empedestalled above him. And as he thought of her thus — as he had first thought of her on the “Duumvir” — he found the answer to his question. What had he wanted of her? He had wanted her to let him worship her. And so this playwright, who in his trade practised “unmitigated realism,” confronted his romantic idealism at last upon a minaret rising over a Saharan oasis. He found life impossible because a woman indefinitely older, but indeed definitely more experienced than himself, had been too practical to allow him to continue his worship of her. He tried to be fair to her; she had given him glimpses of agony when she spoke of her life with Mlle. Daurel; and he understood that to escape from some of the hardships of life many people will strive more wildly than to escape death; but such salvation as she played for in this flight to Biskra was grotesque. And so was his adoration grotesque; for he had asked to worship a woman whose one desperate desire was money. Then, too impulsively, his eyes were brimmed against the young twilight stars, and he would have shed actual tears of self-pity; but he saved himself from this climax of imbecility by paying himself, in a whisper of extortionate painfulness, what was really a great compliment, though he did not mean it so.
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 406