The Plutocrat (Tarkington)/Chapter 14
THE English player of billiards who had complained so earnestly of the noise in the steam pipes was querulous about many things; daily in the table-d'hôte dining-room he could be heard fretfully instructing the maître d'hôtel upon the correct temperature for wines, upon the natural laws governing the density of soups and gruels, and upon other matters vital to happiness. No one in the large room could fail to be as well instructed as the person to whom he spoke; and his penetrating voice, high-pitched and bird-like, ran continuously in a repeated little tune always ending with a lifting note as of inquiry, though his purpose was far from being either musical or interrogative. Fair, thin, high-nosed, he suggested a fine old Colonel by Du Maurier; and Ogle, after solving a little problem concerning his name, was impressed by his distinction.
Three middle-aged ladies and a long-nosed girl, all of pleasant outdoor complexions and strong tastes for old and unshapely clothes, revolved in close orbits about the querulous gentleman, whom one of the older ladies called "my dear." The other two and the girl, however, always addressed him as "Swilliam," which was what puzzled the young American, especially as their table was near his, and he heard "Swilliam" constantly. Finally he sought enlightenment from the concierge, and was pleased to learn that his neighbour was General Sir William Broadfeather, a personage of even more important achievements than Ogle had supposed.
Sir William, with his small flock about him, was waiting for tea in one of the heavily draped Moorish public rooms of the hotel; and the playwright, returning from a drive he had taken to air himself after his encounter with the beggars, dropped into a chair across the room from the English party and tapped upon a table for a waiter.
A white-jacketed youth approached inquisitively. "Yes, gentleman?"
"Du thé," Ogle said. "Avec du toast et des petites gateaux." He had been studying a French and English "Conversation Book" in the mornings.
"Yes, gentleman," the youth returned politely. "Tea and toast and some small cakes for one. Immediately!"
He went away, leaving Ogle a little discomfited, though what had just happened was a set-back by no means uncommon among linguists. But the American, blushing, hoped that Sir William and Lady Broadfeather had not overheard the injurious dialogue. He was strongly conscious of them and conscious of himself as well, wondering if they approved of him. He hoped they did.
Tea for either himself or the English party was slow in appearing; and presently Sir William beat startlingly with a walking-stick upon a large brass tray that had been placed before him on a Moorish table of ebony and mother-of-pearl. The brass was highly resonant;—people sunning themselves on the terrace looked in through the open door, seriously concerned to discover what might be the matter; and the concierge and a porter hurried apprehensively from the office.
Sir William rose and began to pace the floor. "My dear man!" he said, addressing the concierge in a falsetto wail. "Is one to have never the slightest attention in this hotel? A most dreadful liar dressed as a waiter promised us our tea half an hour ago, and we've not got it. We've not got it!"
The concierge spoke soothingly; but Sir William would not be soothed. He repeated, "But we've not got it!" over and over again as argument in rebuttal to everything the concierge said, and when two waiters appeared with trays he still insisted in a voice that could be heard over half the hotel: "My dear man, it's all very well for you to tell us we shall get it; but I tell you we've not got it!"
He subsided then into his chair; but was insufficiently appeased, for he said, "Perfectly monstrous!" in the act of sitting; and said it again as the tea was being poured for him. "Perfectly monstrous!" One of the ladies said, "S'William," placidly, either as agreeing with him or to placate him; and at intervals, as he drank from his cup, he said, "Perfectly monstrous!" and the lady said, "S'William," in the same placid manner.
There was something fine about all this, Ogle thought; these English had no craven self-consciousness such as he found in himself. They were so secure of themselves that they were never worried by the possible opinions of spectators;—in fact, they were unconscious of spectators; they knew what they wanted and thought only of that. They had a poise founded on the centuries; a poise unattainable by his own fellow-countrymen. And while he was engaged with this thought, the fellow-countryman with whom last of all he would have had General Sir William Broadfeather and his ladies behold him conversing came breezily into the room on his way to the elevator. Ogle looked at the wall, hoping not to be recognized by the back of his head.
He looked at the wall in vain. "Well, I declare!" Tinker exclaimed. "Do you drink tea? My soul!" And he sat down cordially in a wicker chair near the playwright, who began to feel that Fate had become too ironical to be borne. This Old Man of the Sea was now fast to his shoulders upon the land; and there seemed to be no way to escape him. What Ogle wished to say was, "Let me alone! I have no desire for your society or even for your acquaintance!" But he was weakly incapable of so honest a course; he could only fall back on a feeble coldness, wholly ineffective, as he had been but too reliably informed, because Tinker blandly mistook it for mere stupidity. To one so sensitive as Ogle this was not a pleasing mistake; he would strongly have preferred to be thought brutal; but as he had no talent for open rudeness, he could only sit and suffer.
"Tea!" Tinker repeated with loud incredulity. "I thought hardly anybody except women and English people did that. There's some English people got rooms near us on our floor, and they were havin' tea on their porch up there yesterday afternoon when I was tryin' to take a nap;—I didn't see 'em, but something must 'a' gone wrong, or it didn't come in time maybe. My glory! You'd 'a' thought they were being murdered. There was one tin-voiced old fellow—my soul! You could 'a' heard him cackling a half-a-mile!" He threw back his head and laughed noisily; then became somewhat more serious, as if doubtfully seeking information that must prove whimsical if true. "Tea! You like it, do you?"
"Certainly."
"Well, that's funny," Tinker said reflectively, and his seriousness increased. "Listen!" he said. "Ain't this the doggonedest place you ever did see? Look at that sewer where we met you this afternoon, for instance. Why, the United States army ought to come over here and clean it up! If we had a sink of iniquity and disease and dirt and crime like that right in the middle of my town, it'd last just about fifteen minutes! We went all through part of it after we left you, and our courier told us it was the best part. My soul and whiskers! He's a mighty nice man, though—for a foreigner. He's a full-blooded Frenchman; name's John Edwards. That old darkey we had cake-walkin' around with us stuck to us all over the show: he was the nearest to a human being I saw in the whole place. I liked him; he was the only soul we met that had a laugh in him; the rest of 'em looked as if they'd cut your throat for a plugged nickel. Full-blooded nigger he is: not an Arab at all; this John Edwards says he belongs to some nigger tribe of sorcerers or something; but all the sorcering he did for us was to beat his drum and yell 'Toulamond' and pass the hat—he did that often enough! Funny about you being in our hotel all this time and us not knowin' it. I expect it must be because we been eatin' in the restaurant and you in the tabble dutt. John Edwards says that's the way to pronounce it, 'tabble dutt.' That's right, isn't it, 'tabble dutt'?"
"I believe nearly so."
"In our country," Tinker went on, "of course we most always call it 'table doat'; but this John Edwards says it's 'dutt'—or pretty near like that any way; and he ought to know, because he's a full-blooded Frenchman. He speaks English pretty well, too; but I been talkin' to him for about three days now, and listen! that isn't like talkin' to somebody that knows what the Pirates did to the Senators last season! No, sir! My! but it's a relief to get with somebody from God's country again! How're you standin' it: all this bottled water and buyin' your own soap and everybody jabbering around in foreign languages with all this 'We, we,' and 'Mon doo' and 'Mercy, mercy!' and everything? You gettin' along all right?"
This he asked in the sympathetic tone of a hospital patient who puts such an inquiry to a fellow-sufferer from the same disease; and he seemed to take Ogle's brief "Quite well" as sufficient reply; for he went on: "Well, I haven't got any fleas yet, myself; but my wife, she says she's found one or two on her. She likes it over here, though. She kept goin' on this afternoon about how 'picturesque and foreign' it all was and everything; and the only time she got dampened at all was just a little while after we left you this afternoon. We ran right spang into a smell—well, I've smelled smells; but this one—oh, Boy! I turned around to this John Edwards. 'Listen!' I told him. 'Get us out o' here! I don't care about how picturesque and historical everything is and all, get us out o' here.' You talk about smells, why, as long as I've lived, never in my life did I!" He paused, leaned over and put his hand solemnly upon Ogle's knee. "Son, when I get home if anybody ever tries to tell me anything about smells, I'm goin' to say: 'Listen! Don't try to talk to me on that topic, because I've met the King!'"
When Tinker called him "Son," Ogle glanced wretchedly across the room at the English party to whom the hearty Midland voice could not fail to be audible; but they were preoccupied with their own affairs. General Broadfeather had discovered that some marmalade he had ordered was not quite to his taste. "A bit tweaky," he pronounced it; and one of the ladies disagreed with him. "Tweaky? You're too funny, S'William!"
Tinker, too, had paused to listen to this simple little dialogue, and his untrained Midland ear failed to identify it as being of his own language. The pronunciations were unfamiliar to him, the cadenced inflections confusing. "A bit tweaky" he heard as "beet tweekeh" and "you're too funny" as "yaw tewfenneh." The strange sounds and the people, as strange to him as what they uttered, interested him a little.
"French family, I expect," he said, his glance resting upon them speculatively, and, while Ogle's flesh crept in horror, he added in his big voice casually: "Funny names they got for each other. Seems she called that old bird 'Swillum.' What you suppose it means in our language, 'Swillum'? I never"
But Ogle clutched his arm. "Hush!" he whispered. "They're English. My heavens! Haven't you got any eyes and ears? English!"
"Think so?" Tinker responded, mildly surprised; and he added, "We got a Jew in my town was born and grew up in England; he talks kind of funny, too, even yet. Mighty smart man though. Insurance." He took a cigar from his pocket and lighted it, apparently as a sort of punctuation marking the change of subject. "Well, sir, this John Edwards tells me there's been a lot of history happened around this neighbourhood. He says there's been ancient Romans and Spaniards and Turks and Mohammedans and pretty much everybody all over this part of Europe."
"This isn't Europe." Ogle corrected him with some sharpness. "This is Africa."
"Sure it is!" Tinker laughed and rubbed the back of his head. "My wife tells me that about a dozen times a day. I haven't forgot my geography, I guess; but you always hear people talk about goin' to Europe, and you're always expectin' to go there yourself some day, so I can't seem to get it out o' my head this is Europe. Well, I expect it's a good deal the same thing in the long run—both of 'em just dirt and old ruins and backward kind of people mainly, I guess. I leave it to my wife and Babe to know all about the history and picturesqueness of it. She and Babe certainly have read up on it, too, though Babe won't say much. She" he checked himself, chuckling a little painfully. "I expect I got to quit calling her 'Babe.' She certainly gave it to me red hot for calling her that in front of you this afternoon!"
He chuckled again, but without much mirth, and for a moment or two his cheerfulness of expression was gone; he looked troubled. "I'm afraid she isn't havin' as good a time as I kind of hoped she would," he said, almost as if to himself; then with renewed briskness he asked, to the young man's surprise: "You seen anything o' Mrs. Mummero since you been here?"
"No," Ogle replied shortly; and prompted by a sudden queer suspicion, he said: "Have you?"
Then, with a pained alarm that became all too quickly an unhappy conviction, he saw the broad and comely face before him heighten in colour and become illuminated by a surreptitious amusement. "I'll tell you," Tinker said unctuously;—"but don't you ever breathe it to a soul: my wife would just fairly scalp me alive. Mrs. Mummero certainly knows her way around! She took me a drive day before yesterday to see some monkeys, about fifty or sixty miles, I guess; and yesterday she got me to come and eat lunch with her at a hotel up over the hill here."
"What?" Ogle gasped. "You say she"
"She's a wonder!" Tinker said earnestly. "You talk about brains; why, that woman's got more brains in her little finger than a whole Bankers' Convention in their heads. She's"
He was interrupted. His daughter, coming from behind him, touched his shoulder. "Mother wants you to come and dress."
"Murder!" he exclaimed, jumping up guiltily. "How long you been standin' there? Did you hear what I"
"I did not," she said brusquely. "I'm not interested in what you say."
"Well, that's lucky—sometimes," he returned; and favouring the playwright with a companionable wink, he said affably, "See you later," and went away.
Olivia turned to go with him; but, as if it were distasteful to her to walk with him even so far as the elevator, she swung about toward the opposite door, hesitated, and after a moment, came back to Ogle. He had risen upon her advent and was still standing, staring pallidly after Tinker.
"I don't think you understood what I said to you this afternoon, Mr. Ogle."
"What?" he said blankly; then amended his manners. "I beg your pardon. Will you have some tea?"
"No, thank you. I tried to tell you something when we met you in the Arab quarter this afternoon, but I don't think you understood. You were looking at my father. I don't think you paid any attention to what I was trying to say, you were so busy despising him."
"I beg your pardon!" he said again. "I think you are mistaken."
"Do you?" She uttered a short and rueful laugh. "We won't argue it; I understand perfectly. I'm not very decent to him myself, and of course you know it—you'd be blind if you didn't;—but I don't despise him, though perhaps I hate him. That's my own affair. What I wanted to tell you was that I shouldn't have said what I did, the last night on the 'Duumvir,' if I'd thought I'd ever see you again."
"I know that," he said. "You told me so then."
At this she drew an audible quick breath and her eyes opened wide. "I suppose you think I'm merely making it an excuse to speak to you again!"
"Not at all. I meant I understood that you wouldn't have expressed your opinion of me except as a valedictory. You didn't need to explain it again."
"I did need to!" she said in a low voice, fiercely. "You might have thought I knew you were leaving the ship here, and so might see me again. You might have thought I said it only to make you think about me. Girls do that sort of thing sometimes; you might have thought that."
He was nervous; what he had learned from Tinker had dazed him, and now Tinker's daughter irritated him. "Believe me," he said; "I haven't been thinking of it at all, and it's not very probable that I ever shall."
Her cheeks as well as her eyes showed her resentment then, and some violets at her breast moved to her quickened breathing. She gave a half-smothered little outcry. "Oh! How much you're like them! We're going away to-morrow, and this time I know I'll never see you again, so I can add a little to what I told you on the boat. How much you're like those people we saw to-day."
"Am I? What people?"
"Those horrible creatures in that Arab slum," she said. "I thought of it when we got among them to-day and they were all staring at us. You have just their look in your eyes when you look at my father or my mother—or at me!"
Then, with her own eyes not smouldering now, but seeming fairly to blaze blue flame into his, in her hot scorn of him, she turned on her heel and left him.
He abandoned his tea as it was, half consumed, and went out, furious, to the terrace. She had succeeded in making him so angry that for a few moments he almost forgot the shock her father had given him; but as he paced up and down in the falling dusk, his temper cooled in one direction and began to grow warm in another. The insults of the bad-mannered American girl were easier to bear than the unfathomable double-dealing of the exquisite French lady.
Thus, this shift of temper having rapidly taken place, the heat within him grew fiercer and fiercer until, an hour later, he was angrier with Mme. Momoro than he had ever been with anyone in all his life before. At least, that was his own unhappy impression of his state of mind.