The Plutocrat (Tarkington)/Chapter 25
I DID, indeed," Mrs. Tinker answered dangerously. "Indeed, I did!"
"Well, that's all right then," he returned, beaming upon her. "That's fine!"
"Oh, it is?" she said. "Indeed?"
If he had needed warning other than that of her flushed, unsmiling face, it was in her voice; and undoubtedly he realized that all was not well with him domestically. In his hand he held a long cigar, just lighted, which he was about to place between his lips; but his hand wavered upon its way, and, coughing sonorously, he dropped the cigar upon an ash tray. Then, with the ostrich optimism of uneasy men confronted by such warnings, he offered mere loquacity as an alibi for himself and a sedative for her. "Well, I certainly am glad you got my note all right," he said heartily. "You see, I been kind of anxious to try some o' this Koos Koos for quite a while, and I didn't want to miss the opportunity. I didn't want you to worry about me or anything, of course; and I thought I'd like to give this Koos Koos a trial just once—you hear so much about it and all—I thought I'd just find out for once what there was to it. John Edwards has been at me all the way down here to get me to try some. 'You needn't eat it,' he says, 'unless you like it; but just give it a try,' he says. Well, I'll tell you about it, Mamma. I don't know whether you'd like it or not, because you haven't shown much appetite for these foreign dishes so far and been missin' home cooking so much and all; but the way I look at it"
"I don't believe I care particularly to hear how you look at it, thank you," Mrs. Tinker interrupted. "Are you coming up to our rooms now?"
"Now?" Tinker said inquiringly, and he seemed to think it a debatable question. He still maintained at least outwardly the affable jauntiness with which he had entered the room; and nowhere in his expression or posture was there an admission that he perceived a hint of trouble in the air. "Now? Well, no. No, I believe not for a while, Mamma. I was thinking I'd just sit down here and have a nice smoke with Mr. Ogle. I tell you what you do, Honey: suppose you and Libby just slip up to bed, and Mr. Ogle and I'll"
"No, thank you," she said. "I'll wait for you. Were you expecting to go out again to-night?"
"Me?" He laughed indulgently. "Why, where in the world would I" Unfortunately, in his fond amusement, he extended his hand as if to pat Mrs. Tinker upon the shoulder.
She drew back, visibly incensed. "Kindly keep your hand to yourself! What makes you so interested in patting people on the shoulder all of a sudden?"
Tinker looked shocked. "Why, dearie!" he said reproachfully. "Why, Hon! Why, what in the world—why, what's disturbed you? You haven't been worried about me, have you, just because some gentlemen invited me to go and eat some of this celebrated Arab"
Olivia uttered a half-choked outcry. "Papa! You" But when he turned inquiringly to her, she found herself unable to be more explicit.
Ogle had brought his hat with him when he came into the room; it was upon an ebony tabouret near by, and he took it up. "I think I'll say good-night," he said.
But Tinker caught his arm, genially detaining him. "Going out for a walk, Mr. Ogle? Well, that's a good idea. I believe I'll just"
"I believe you'll not," Mrs. Tinker said. "Who were the gentlemen that invited you to dine with them?"
"Why, Honey, I explained all that in my note to you. I told you"
"I know what you told me," she said. "Were they the same gentlemen that sent you a note when you were up on the roof?"
"Well—practically," he said. "Practically the same."
"And then you went walking with them, didn't you? You took a walk with them through these Arab streets around here, didn't you?"
"Around here?" he repeated, and, still retaining Ogle's arm with a firm right hand, he used his left to pass a handkerchief over his brow. Then he said reflectively: "Around here," and appeared to deliberate geographically. "It would seem so," he answered. "It was in this neighbourhood—practically."
"Who were the gentlemen? What were their names?"
"Names, Honey? Why, you wouldn't know 'em if I told you. There weren't but two of 'em anyhow—besides us."
"'Us'!" Mrs. Tinker cried, and she took a step nearer him. "Us? Who do you mean by 'us'?"
At that he laughed confidently and with the heartiest indulgence for a woman's fretfulness. The unfortunate man had just determined upon a bold and radical course of action. He had been standing near Ogle when Mrs. Tinker entered the room; he had continued to stand near him, and now held him familiarly by the arm. Ogle's hat was present, which appeared to be a strongly corroborative circumstance, and Tinker's own impression was that Ogle had just come in from some outdoor excursion and had stopped casually to talk to Olivia. Moreover, Mrs. Tinker's conception of their former table companion as a harmless, dull young man would now be of service: Ogle had taken no part in the early smoking-room gayeties or subsequent card games upon the "Duumvir" and she had spoken approvingly of him, on that account, to her husband. Tinker felt that he was about to achieve a little triumph.
"Us?" he repeated, continuing his easy laughter, and then, to his daughter's almost hysterical dismay, and to the horror of the owner of the arm he clasped, he explained heartily: "Why, Mr. Ogle and me. That's who I mean by 'us.' It's simple enough, isn't it, Mamma?"
"Indeed it is!" she returned; and she delivered a terrible blow. "Mr. Ogle was walking with you and those other gentlemen 'around here' while he was up on the roof talking to Libby this afternoon, was he?"
It staggered him, and his bright look began to fade pathetically. "Walking with me?" he said. "Walking with me? When do you mean, dearie?"
"I mean when you were walking with those gentlemen who invited you to dinner. Mr. Ogle was with you then, too, wasn't he?"
"Oh, you mean then?" Tinker exclaimed, and he brightened again, in his relief. "No, no! He wasn't there then. No! What I was talking about was only this Koos Koos affair. No; he didn't go walking with us."
"Are you sure? Are you sure it wasn't Mr. Ogle you were walking with?" She stepped closer to him, and her voice, growing louder and sharper, threatened to break. "Wasn't it Mr. Ogle you were sitting with up on the boat-deck all afternoon every day on the steamer? I'm sure it must have been Mr. Ogle that patted your shoulder for you on a public corner this afternoon."
He stared at her incredulously. "Patted my shoulder?" he murmured. "On a public corner?" It seemed to daze him that she should have used the word "public," and he repeated it as in deep perplexity. "Public? Did you say a public corner, Mamma?" Then, with a visible effort, he became reproachful and spoke with a quiet severity. "I'm afraid you're a little confused. I never said I sat on the boat-deck with Mr. Ogle or anybody else, or that he's been patting my shoulder on a public corner; and I should be pleased to be informed who's been talking such nonsense to you. I only alluded to Mr. Ogle's being at this Koos Koos affair."
"He was?" she cried. "You dare to stand there and tell me he was with you?"
Tinker's grasp of the playwright's arm tightened in one of those appealing signals not uncommon when men, battling with ladies, become desperate. "Why, I'll leave it to him, himself," he said. "You tell her, Ogle."
But Ogle was spared this suddenly projected ordeal; Mrs. Tinker uttered a cry of rage, and, relapsing into an easy chair, at once became vehemently hysterical. Olivia darted upon her, scolding her, exhorting her to remember that this public room was no place for emotional explosions, while Tinker stared goggling at the stricken woman, and said over and over, in pained remonstrance: "Now, Mamma! Now, Honey!"
She was stricken, but loudly voluble. "You turn your wicked eyes on yourself!" she cried. "Don't you look at me! Don't you dare look at me! You awful thing, don't you dare call me Honey! I'm not! I'm not! I'm not"
She was screaming, and voices were heard outside. Olivia pointed to the door by which her mother had entered the room. "Get her upstairs," she cried to her father. "You can go this way, and probably nobody'll see you. Somebody's coming! Get her out!"
"Let me help," Ogle said, and moved toward Mrs. Tinker.
"Never mind, young man," Tinker returned brusquely. He reached his wife's side in two strides and stooped over her.
She beat him furiously with her open hands. "Don't you touch me! You let me alone! Don't you touch me, you terrible, terrible, terrible"
"Open that door!" Tinker said sharply, and, as Olivia rushed to obey, he took his wife up in his arms as if she were of no weight at all, tossed her over his shoulder while she still beat him frantically, and strode out through the open doorway. Ogle, dumbfounded, had a last glimpse of them as they disappeared down an ill-lighted corridor toward a stairway: Mrs. Tinker's head and arms were swinging loosely upon the ruthless back of her husband, somewhat as if she had been a wild animal's skin worn by a savage chieftain. Her hair had come down, and she seemed in a state of collapse.
Olivia closed the door just as the concierge and an Arab dragoman opened the one opposite.
"Is something the matter?" the concierge inquired.
Olivia smiled pleasantly and shook her head. "No. Only some people laughing." And when the two men had withdrawn, she turned wanly to Ogle. "Too bad to let you in for this! But please do remember" She stopped and half laughed, half sobbed. "Poor Papa! He's so outrageous—and so"
"So what?"
"So good!" she said. "That's what I wanted you to remember—in spite of his outrageousness. But he's in for it now just as much as if he wasn't! Poor Mamma! What a terrible family you must think us!"
"I don't," he said honestly. "I'm too terrible myself to be thinking anybody else is."
"No, you're not." For a second she looked him lustrously in the eyes. Then she laughed lamentingly. "I must run after them, and see how many tortoise-shell hairpins I can find on the way."
"Couldn't I"
"No, no!" She gave him her hand quickly, laughed again; and with an upward glance somehow imparting her meaning that she alluded to Mme. Momoro, "You have your own troubles," she said, and departed hurriedly.