The Plutocrat (Tarkington)/Chapter 31
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 Bône 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 Bône 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 blatting 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 sun-gazer, who had been concealed from him by the long burnouses of this obstinate group. One of the front 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, bareheaded 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"
"Now, Mamma! Now, Hon"
"Stop it!" she cried. "Don't you dare call me that!"
Olivia moaned. "Oh, dear! Can't you ever quiet down, Mother? How many more days of this have we"
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 entrance 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 the 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 you"
"I'm not," he said in a dogged voice. "I wasn't 'hanging back.' I only wanted to see if those porters"
"Never mind! I don't want to hear"
"Oh, dear!" Olivia moaned. "Mother!"
"Nice day," Le Seyeux ventured cheerfully. "Fine ride. This our floor here. Lovely suite for you, sir. Big rooms. Fireplaces. Splendid beds. Everything good."
The apartment was as excellent as he promised; and Tinker was pleased to find a desk in the room set apart for himself. He congratulated the courier warmly upon the selection of these pleasant quarters; then surreptitiously shook his head at him as a sign to be gone upon his secret errand;—Le Seyeux gave him a look of complete reassurance on that point, and departed. A few minutes later Tinker went cautiously to the desk and sat down in a chair before it.
Mrs. Tinker called instantly from the bed where she reposed in the adjoining chamber. "What are you doing now? What do you have to be moving around so much in there for? Why can't you lie down like a Christian and let people get a little rest? Are you fixing to go out somewhere by yourself? Because if you are" The bed rustled as with a movement of preparation.
"My goodness! I'm just sitting here, Mamma! I don't want to lie down. I'm not doing any harm just sitting here, am I? Wouldn't you like to have your door closed, Hon?"
"I would not!" she replied with a decisiveness beyond argument.
He sat motionless, doing nothing whatever for several minutes; and the silence was as soothing as he hoped it would be. Presently her breathing became audible—though this was something she never believed of herself—and with slow carefulness he took from an inner pocket of his coat a small, black-bound pad of bank cheques. He cautiously removed one, slid the book back into his pocket, and, bending over the desk, wrote briefly. After that, discovering a single envelope in a pigeon-hole before him, he enclosed the written slip within it, and rose to his feet.
Across the room from him was a door opening upon a corridor. Tinker looked at it fixedly; then, moving with an elaborate delicacy, he made his way craftily over the floor in that direction.
. . . The tall lady sitting alone in the tea-room faced the doorway as he walked briskly in. A perceptible glow of additional colour came upon her cheeks, and, not speaking, she extended the hand she had ungloved for him.
Tinker shook it heartily. "You're lookin' fine!" he said. "Fine! How's your family?"
"Hyacinthe? He is happy," she answered. "As I am. Will you sit here with me?"
"About a minute," he said, glancing over his shoulder at the vacant doorway;—then, as he sat, he spoke hurriedly, but genially, "Listen! You want to get me scalped first and boiled in oil afterwards?"
"No."
"Well, I already have been scalped," he informed her. "All I'm lookin' out for now, I don't want to get boiled in oil! I told you"
She stopped him gently. "My friend, you are angry with me because you think I have stayed in Tunis to see you. You mustn't be afraid: I shall not compromise you. I know the customs and ideas of American ladies perfectly: it is amusing, but of course could be very painful. I am not stopping at this hotel on that account, because I was sure you would come here. I shall protect you, but Will you let me confess I did so very, very much wish to see you once more?"
She smiled a little sadly, and then leaning toward him, "Forgive me for wishing it," she said, and lightly patted the heavy shoulder nearer her.
At that, Tinker again looked hastily toward the doorway; but it remained vacant, and he was reassured. "Listen," he said confidentially, "I got something I want to"
"Wait," she interrupted. "I have somesing I have so wanted to say. In Biskra you wouldn't give me time to say it. You don't understand the gratitude of a woman who is taken out of purgatory, and how much she might wish to do for the man who did such a thing for her. You don't know—perhaps you wouldn't care to know—how much she might like such a man and how difficult it would be for her to think she must say good-bye to him for a last time." She had looked at him steadily as she spoke; but suddenly her fine-lashed eyelids fluttered; she looked away from him, and bit her lower lip. "You" She could not continue immediately.
"Listen!" he said hurriedly. "My family's takin' a nap, I think; but I don't know. I got to"
"Please—it's only a moment," she said; and recovered her composure at once. "I ask you to let me hope to see you in Paris when you come there."
"Sure! Sure!" he returned cordially. "I can find you in the telephone book. But right now I"
"Yes," she said. "The apartment Hyacinthe and I will take, by that time it will be upon the list. But I would write to you"
"Write?" he interrupted, staring at her incredulously. "Listen"
"No, no, no! I won't," she said. "I won't write to you. I see you don't wish it. And you are disturbed now; you are nervous. But to-morrow"
Tinker leaned a little toward her and spoke earnestly. "Look here: I've thought it over, and I realized you only told me what you needed to get that boy o' yours started in the show business, or whatever it is, and that's all I—all I lent you. What I didn't think of at the time, I just lent you the round sum, and you told me how close those old ladies you lived with were when it came down to cash. What I got to thinkin': why, you might not have enough to go on for the next few months unless you broke into the round sum you have to use for this show business. For all I know, you mightn't even have enough to pay your fare up from here to Paris, outside o' that, so I—well, this'll fix it up." He pressed the envelope he had brought with him into her hand. "Here! This'll make everything all right. You can get it cashed at the branch bank right here in Tunis to-morrow morning."
She looked down at the envelope in her hand and shook her head slowly. "I can't take it. It is dear of you to offer it. Of course if there were any way I could" She paused and looked at him inquiringly.
"Why, sure," he said. "That boy of yours'll pay it all off after he gets goin'. You put that in your bag. Do as I tell you!"
But she still shook her head. "No, I can't"
"Listen!" he said. "My family isn't any too sound a sleeper, and I got to get back upstairs or I'm liable to be in the creek where the cows can't wade it. John Edwards told me there's a steamer from here to Marseilles to-morrow."
She looked at him gravely. "You wish me to take it?"
"Murder, yes!" he said; and they both rose.
"You wish" she began tremulously, and faltered.
"Look here!" he said. "Give me that!" He took from her the envelope she held loosely in her long fingers, and from the table a little bag of meshed gold and platinum that lay beside her glove. "Here!" He opened the bag, put the envelope within it and snapped the clasp shut. Then he thrust the glove and the bag both into her hands. "There!" he said, beaming upon her. "You take that, and get your young son down to the ticket-office as quick as you can to-morrow morning. And then, for heaven's sake, get out o' here!"
This enthusiasm startled her; and again her remarkable eyelashes fluttered. "You want me not to see you again—at all—until you come to Paris?"
"Well, I should say I did!" he said. "I don't want to be walked on with spiked shoes all the rest o' my life just because it happens you're the finest lookin' woman in the world! That's the trouble: if you were a little homelier, I guess I could make out to see more of you; but the way it is—why, you're about eight-hundred per cent. too good-lookin', Mrs. Mummero!" And with that, beaming upon her more cordially than ever, he lifted his large right hand and brought it down with a hearty and sounding slap upon her lovely velvet back, squarely between the shoulders. "You know it!" he said.
She stared at him wide-eyed, amazed. For an instant a line appeared upon her forehead;—it faded and she seemed to be lost in an inward wondering. Then, slowly, she began to smile, and her gaze became one of the truest utter admiration and fondness. "I think I adore you," she said. "I shall be at sea to-morrow, as you command me." And without any farewell whatever, she turned and swept from him with her splendid gliding swiftness;—she walked straight out of the room and out of the hotel.
Alone in the big room, Tinker waited for one minute by his watch, which he took from his pocket to observe; then, with a debonair easiness of manner, he strolled back into the entrance hallway. Mrs. Tinker was just stepping out of the elevator.
Her expression was both grim and anxious; but it became merely indignant as she caught sight of her husband. She came toward him, hurried, nervous, and threatening, walking as rapidly as she could on her high heels and in her tight skirt. "That was a nice trick!" she said. "Slip out the minute I was beginning to get just a little bit of rest after nearly having my back broken in two on that horrible road we took because you didn't know any better than send Le Seyeux ahead where he couldn't be any use to us. Where've you been?"
"Now, look here, Honey!" Tinker remonstrated. "Can't a man even go get his hair cut without your"
"You haven't had your hair cut."
"Well, I didn't say I had. Can't you give me time enough to tell you I'm lookin' for the barber-shop?"
"You don't need to find it. If you want a barber, you can tell them to send one up to your room."
"Now, Mamma"
"You get in that elevator," Mrs. Tinker said dangerously.
The bright-eyed Arab boy in charge of the elevator giggled pleasantly; and Tinker, though becoming desperate under so much discipline, felt it might be best to comply with his wife's desire.
"Well" he said resignedly; but at that moment, glancing round, he began to hope. The relief to which he trusted was in sight. Le Seyeux, radiant with pleasure, had just made his appearance, coming in from the street, and with him were three men of solemn presence, followed by three Arab servants in cleanest white. Two of the three solemn men were graybeards; one of these two wore silken robes striped like a barber's pole; and the other, whose majestic white beard hung to his waist, was in black and saffron, gloriously embroidered in orange, green, and gold. The third of the jewel merchants was a warped and wrinkled yellow person in an English frock coat, pale lilac trousers, an embroidered velvet waistcoat and a fez. The three paused aloof while Le Seyeux came forward.
Tinker became urgent in his plea to his wife. "Listen! I'll be upstairs in half an hour. I can't go now."
"Why can't you?"
"Well" He glanced toward the three merchants. "I got business with those gentlemen."
"Business!" Mrs. Tinker said angrily. "What's it about? A Fancy Dress Party?"
"Honest, I have, Honey," he insisted; and he was cunning enough to add mysteriously: "You might be sorry some day! I mean you might be sorry if you kept me from a conference with those gentlemen. Mightn't she, John?"
"I think it would be certain," Le Seyeux said, with laughter intentionally sly. "I am sure if you talk to them everybody is going to be very happy—oh, very happy, Madame Tinker!"
Mrs. Tinker looked undecided; and perhaps she caught some inkling of what was in the wind. In spite of herself her voice became more moderate, even almost friendly. "Well, you see that he gets upstairs in time enough to dress," she said. "I'll trust him to you, Mr. Le Seyeux."
She was borne aloft alone; and Tinker, with a great sigh of relief, turned to the waiting magicians who were to assist in the dispersal of his troubles. It may have been true, as his wife said, that he had but the one remedy for everything; but, on the other hand, as he himself said, it usually "worked."