“I expect so.” But Tinker looked at the odd round platform and still lingered. “I suppose he lived in this town here.”
“Yes, sir. Bone. It is ancient Hippo.”
“Shouldn’t think anybody’d want to have his city called either one o’ those names. Looks like he was a good citizen, though, and thought a lot of the place — wantin’ to be buried here and all. Yes, sir; any man’s city can get along without him; but no man can get along without his city!” Thoughtfully, he began to walk away, ascending the upper slope of the hill, the courier beside him. “Did that old fellow ever do anything besides what you told me, John?”
“He wrote some other books. One is called ‘The City of God.’”
“Is that so!” Tinker was strongly and favourably impressed. He paused and looked down at the roofs and gardens of Bone between the hill and sea. “Is that so? He did?” For a moment it was evident that he discovered some point of high congeniality between himself and the great Bishop: he glanced back at the tomb approvingly, then down at the town again. “Called it ‘The City of God,’ did he? Well, sir, if he thought so much o’ that’ little place, it’s a pity he couldn’t ‘a’ lived to—” But a second thought dimmed his brightened interest, and he walked on almost gloomily. “Book about spiritual matters, I expect,” he said.
“Yes, sir. Saint Augustine lived in Fifth Century also; he wrote this book in thirteen years from four hunder’ thirteen Anno Domini to four hunder’ twenty-six. In the year four hunder’ thirty the city of Hippo was besiege’ by—”
“Never mind, John,” Tinker interrupted soothingly. “You can tell us about it in the car. What time you think you’re goin’ to get us into Tunis to-morrow?”
“If we start very early in the morning we arrive by five o’clock.”
“All right,” Tinker said, and he glanced upward apprehensively.
Mrs. Tinker was leaning out of the window of the automobile, sternly watching his slow approach; her tears were vanished, and she had now gone into the second of the two moods that had been hers, to the exclusion of all others, during the entire journey from Biskra. Having wept, she was now become grim, and her eye upon her husband was that of a schoolteacher upon the worst boy in the class.
Tinker found it unbearable; — he set a powerful grip upon the arm of Le Seyeux. “Listen, John,” he said. “You say Tunis is a place where you can buy anything. Well, it better be! What I want you to do when we get to the hotel’, I want you to get there in the other car before we do, and when we come in the first thing I want you to do is to have everything ready and get the ladies up to their rooms the very minute they step into the lobby. I don’t know, but I’ve got kind of an idea there might be a reason it’d be just as well if they didn’t poke around any just at first, but went right upstairs and took a nap or something. You understand?”
“Yes, sir; but there is no reason to be uneasy: Tunis is entirely safe for ladies, especially in the French quarter. There would be no danger of any—”
“I certainly hope there isn’t, myself!” Tinker said fervently; but he seemed dubious about it, and he halted at a little distance from the automobile, keeping the courier with him. “You do as I say. You get them right up to their rooms; that’s the main thing I want you to have on your mind. And as soon as you get it done you go out and get me a couple o’ those big Arab jewellers you been talkin’ about. You tell ’em I want to see ’em at the hotel and tell ’em to bring the best they got right with ’em. You understand me, John?”
Le Seyeux comprehended with the greatest pleasure. His eyes brightened; he smiled and nodded eagerly. “Without fail! In half an hour after we arrive I will bring them to see you. They will show you some of the most splendid—”
Mrs. Tinker’s voice, shrill and strained, interrupted them. She leaned farther out of the window and fumbled with the handle of the door as if to open it and descend. “What are you talking about now?” she called fiercely. “Earl! Do you hear me? What do you have to have all these mysterious conferences about? Will you kindly inform me?”
“Mother!” Olivia said imploringly. “Please remember—”
“Be quiet, Libby; let me alone!” Mrs. Tinker became impassioned, and she renewed her inquiries to her husband as he drew nearer. “What do you have to talk to the courier so much in secret about? What are all these mysterious—”
“Now, Mamma,” he said plaintively. “Now, Honey—”
“Are you going to answer me? Who do you expect to have pat your shoulder in the next town? What are you—”
“Now, Hon—”
“Stop calling me that! What was all that secret planning you were doing just then?”
Tinker tried to look dignified and reproachful, partially succeeding. “We were talking about this Bishop,” he said. “It was the tomb of this old Bishop we went down there to look at. He was a Bishop.”
“Bishop!” The word infuriated her. “Do you have to whisper because you’re talking about a Bishop?”
“Well — —” Tinker said gently, and then, casting about for some means to set himself in the right and Mrs. Tinker in the wrong, he had an inspiration that was a misfortune. “Well — he’s dead, isn’t he?”
Mrs. Tinker leaped straightway into her other mood. She wept aloud and was with difficulty restrained by Olivia from continuing to weep in that manner through the more populous modern streets upon the site of Augustine’s ancient see of Hippo.
XXXI
TOM — TOMS were throbbing in Tar-Barca and five hundred unsmiling Arabs chattered in the open market square of caked dry mud among the trees. Hung from the dusty lower branches, shoulders of mutton, hunks of goat meat, and carcasses of kids were for sale, and there were great bloody quarters of camel, with hide, hair, and hoof unremoved; other meats also were shown, not easily identified and better for the mystery of their origin. Merchants sat cross-legged with small masses of dates upon the ground before them and dust from the road close by blowing over man and merchandise; other merchants offered to sell so much as a whole goat, lean but still alive, or even a live donkey, not well but admirable, if only for his resignation. Still others sold rusty tin cans, empty bottles, bits of brass and iron, old skins and strips of worn cloth; though there were many at the market who neither bought nor sold; and these, being idle, were the greatest talkers of all the concourse. It was they who made the most to-do over the passage through the crowd of the long automobile from Bone at noon.
In the strong sunshine where there were no trees a brown man in a tunic of rags and a headdress of tatters sat with his bare legs and feet projecting into the crowded road, so that often people and careful donkeys stepped over them; for he was too profoundly engaged to think of withdrawing obstructions from the highway. He was staring straight up into the intolerable face of the African sun, his never-winking and tearless eyes, not blind, bearing the unbearable; and at intervals of thirty seconds — intervals so unvarying that they might have been regulated by a clock — he spread wide his arms, then brought them together, clapped his hands, and uttered in a high-pitched monotone an urgent petition to Allah. For more than an hour he had been doing this, never swerving his direct stare from the supreme blaze of the disk itself, and without anyone’s paying the slightest attention to him except to step over his legs. Nothing distracted his hypnotized gaze until the arrival of the automobile from Bone on its way to Tunis.
The chattering crowd covered the road; they made way for the insistent machine slowly and with hard looks for the occupants; while the chauffeur, who was in a hurry, unremittingly urged them with his blating brass horn. They had no respect for the horn; it annoyed them; and as the automobile drove slowly through the thickest of the press they moved from its path with a more and more hostile deliberation. Finally a sullen group stepped aside with such grudging reluctance that not until too late to avoid a contact did the chauffeur see the legs of the sungazer, who had been concealed from him by the long burnouses of this obstinate group. One of the fron
t tires touched a thin brown shank in the white dust; the monotonous invocation to Allah changed abruptly to a squeal that became a shriek, and the startled devotee rolled over, writhing; — he had suffered no injury whatever.
But the Arabs instantly mobbed the automobile. They leaped upon it, screeching; they covered it hungrily; the windows filled with demon masks contorted to every expression of ferocity, and the two ladies within felt themselves enveloped in sudden nightmare. Meanwhile, the unfortunate chauffeur outside seemed in a fair way to be torn to pieces, pieces all of them minute. Shouting fiercely, himself, he had thrust his right hand into a breast pocket; but twenty impassioned brown fingers on his arm made him unable to withdraw it. Then a door of the closed interior was thrown open with a violence damaging to the indignant Arabs upon the running-board, and a big, red-faced, bare-headed man leaped out of the car and roared.
His roar was in a tongue unknown to the persons addressed; and, in fact, the words employed were unimpressive, being merely “Get out o’ here!” But the Arabs were not aware of anything lacking in his eloquence. Never had they heard such a voice, neither one so masterful nor one so thunderous as they heard in this single great bellow. What was more, upon the very instant of its utterance the big red-faced man put his hand in his pocket, then swept that hand in a semi-circle above his head, and the air filled with glittering riches; silver coins began to shower down like Allah’s sweetest rain. The Arabs recognized a stupendous personage.
When he roared they leaped from the car; they scrambled from it; they fell from it. When he rained wealth their garments fluttered as they scrambled; and instantly there was a clear space about the machine with room for it to go forward on its way. The big man jumped upon the running-board, and put his hand in his pocket again: he shouted with laughter, and’ again there was a shining rain from heaven. Groans of thanksgiving were heard from the scramblers, and the sound might almost have been interpreted as a cheer for the personage; but even as he laughed and sought in other pockets, a clutching gloved hand, slender but imperious, drew him — jerked him, indeed — ingloriously from sight, except as he might still be seen in abrupt subjugation through the glass of the window. His laughter went from him, and his expression relapsed to a plaintive patience, for he in turn was mastered.
The automobile passed on and gratefully left the grateful market behind it. Olivia, still trembling and pallid herself, spoke severely to her mother, intending the severity as a restorative. “Mother, stop that sobbing and jerking! You’ve already got yourself to the verge of a nervous breakdown without indulging in hysterics because a few poor Arabs get a little excited for half-a-minute. We weren’t in the slightest danger.”
“We — we weren’t?” Mrs. Tinker sobbed. “Then what — what did you scream for?”
“I was startled. But right away I realized Papa would know what to do — and he certainly did.!”
Mrs. Tinker continued to weep; but her sobbing subsided, not impeding her utterance. “Yes, he knew what to do. He always does, and it’s always the same thing. The only thing on earth he knows how to do is to hand out money!”
“But it wasn’t the money that stopped them; — he just threw them the money besides. It was that tremendous yell when he told them to get out. I never heard anything like it. They knew they had to, of course. Heavens! I think it would have stopped a war.’
“He thinks he can do anything with just making a noise,” Mrs. Tinker said; and then to save her consistency she added: “And handing out money! That’s his one remedy for everything in the world — throwing people money!”
“Listen!” Tinker said; and he spoke with the feeble irascibility of a badgered man who feels that the badgering is rightful and warranted. “It works, doesn’t it? All I got to say, it works. It did, didn’t it?”
“Let me tell you,” the unhappy lady returned fiercely, “there are some times when it won’t! There are a few things you’ve done that all the money in the world wouldn’t ——
Her mother paid no attention to the remonstrance; she began to talk wildly. “I expect he’d have been glad if I’d been murdered! All those screeching faces and horrible glaring eyes — they wanted to murder me! You think you know that man, Olivia; but you don’t. If I’d been put out of the way so that he could be a fine rich widower with French adventuresses flattering him and patting his shoulder and getting him to sneak out to meals with them and—”
“Listen!” Tinker said. “There wasn’t any more chance of those people murdering you than there would be of a chicken’s murdering an elephant. They just got excited for a minute, and if John Edwards had been with us even that wouldn’t ‘a’ happened.”
“Why wasn’t he with us, then? You’re very sweet to call your wife an elephant! What did you let him start so long ahead of us for?”
“Because you weren’t ready at the time we planned to get off this morning. I wanted him to be in Tunis ahead of us so’s to see there’s no mistake about our having the rooms engaged for us You’ll be tired when you get there, and I want him to have everything fixed for you so’t you can lie right down and take a nap soon as you get there.”
“So thoughtful!” she said with sarcasm. “Send the courier ahead the one time when we need him to protect us, and leave us alone among these wild—”
“Wild?” Tinker interrupted, and he laughed ruefully. “Mamma, if they were just one millionth as wild as you been lately—”
Olivia foresaw how unfortunate the effect of this sally was to be, and impulsively she clapped her hand over her father’s mouth. She was too late: Mrs. Tinker again was seized with a loud and convulsive sobbing.
“Oh, lawsy! Oh, my landy me!” Tinker groaned. “And we’re goin’ to be late gettin’ into Tunis besides! We’re certainly in for one day of it!”
They were indeed; and poor Mrs. Tinker’s condition remained emotional throughout the long afternoon of swift travel through a strange landscape. They passed among hills of golden brown sand, and toward sunset came into a vast and curiously tawny country, once congenial to lions later bewildered in the shouting oval amphitheatres of Carthage and of Rome. Beyond this, in the twilight, lay a wide gray plain with mountain profiles like gigantic haphazard cuttings of blue cardboard set along the horizon; — night fell before the travellers were across these levels. Then presently the wide road began to jolt them incessantly; the surface was rough from the traffic it had borne, and they knew they were near a populous city.
When at last they came into it they seemed within a city shaped out of the stuff that Eastern dreams are made of; coloured even in the night with pigments brushed up from the melting of Scheherazade’s jewels and dwelt in by hordes of actors dressed for the wildest of pantomime extravanganzas. Orange-lighted low doorways showed green-faced people in striped gowns, sitting cross-legged upon the floor, stiff as idols; within dark doorways turbaned gnomes were silhouetted crouching over sparks like the sparks in the hearts of rubies; sudden Arabian Night vistas opened and closed, showing arched tunnels rosily lighted and fantastic crowds tossing silently, fiery with colour; — then the car would glide through a street all dark, where pale domes rose vaguely in the starlight, and great palm fronds drooped along white walls; while from hidden gardens hautboys sang their ancient themes of cats in rapture, cats in despair, cats in love.
— . — . Le Seyeux waited anxiously at the en trance to the large hotel in the French quarter; and he understood, even better than his employer did, why it was advisable for Mrs. Tinker to ascend immediately to the apartment ready for her. She was more than willing; and as she passed through the entrance hallway to, the elevator, with the courier talking eagerly beside her, fatigue and Le Seyeux together happily prevented her from being as observant as she might have been. Her daughter, too, was tired, and failed to see what the courier had ‘seen and what Tinker now saw with undeniable yet conflicting emotions. He entered the hotel a few steps behind the others, which was fortunate, since’ otherwise Mrs. Tinker might have noticed th
e slight change in his expression as he happened to glance toward a wide open doorway upon his left. This doorway gave to view one end of a large public room where tea tables were set about a broad central space of polished floor used for dancing. The dancers and the tea-drinkers had all departed except one; for the dinner-hour now approached, and even the one person who lingered had long since done with tea. In fact, after lingering to supplement the more innocuous beverage with a tiny glass of white cordial, she was in the act of drawing on a doffed glove as she frowningly preparing to depart. She was a tall lady in cloth of gold and brown velvet of Venice, and of an aspect so superb that she might have been thought Olympian rather than Parisian.
As the newly arrived travellers passed through the hallway she turned toward the open double doors; then, when they had gone by, she slowly drew off the glove she had partially replaced upon her right hand, and leaned back again in her comfortable chair.
Mrs. Tinker waited at the elevator for her husband to enter it before her. “What’s the matter?” she said querulously. “What are you hanging back for? Never mind! Get in! Get in before I do; certainly!” And after he had meekly complied and the elevator was in motion, “What are you so red in the face for?” she inquired tartly. “What are “I’m not,” he said in a dogged voice. “I wasn’t ‘hanging back.’ I only wanted to see if those porters—”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 415