The Plutocrat (Tarkington)/Chapter 33
UPON the southern side of the hotel, at the height of the second story, a broad veranda ran the length of the building and overlooked the street. Under a green-and-white striped awning, great urns, green plants, painted iron chairs, and a balustrade suggested the pleasant leisures of a garden terrace; and here, in the filtered warm light beneath the awning, a critical conversation between two American travellers took place on the first afternoon in March, This interview, though not so appalling to the younger of the two as that other he had undergone only in his imagination, was nevertheless an uncomfortable one; and although both parties to it had for some days realized that it was inevitable, neither of them would have submitted to its embarrassments except as a necessity.
Ogle was pale, but Tinker the more obviously showed the nervousness he felt; and the strain upon him may have been heightened by his ceremonial costume, which included a silk hat, a tailed black coat and an annoying collar. His big comely face was flushed; he frowned, wiped his brow as he talked; and his general air was one of complaint. He made it clear that he acted under pressure. "I can't take much time to this," he said, looking at his watch as the two seated themselves near the railing. "I got an appointment pretty soon, and I don't know as there's rightly long enough to talk the proposition over with you the way it ought to be. I promised this gentleman—I don't know his name; but one of these Turkish Jew jewellery men introduced me to him and he's been to call on me a couple o' times—well, anyhow, he said he wanted to come and get me and introduce me to some Lord High Muck-a-Muck Grand Panjandrum they got here, I don't know who; but he's some kind of Persian king or other—I couldn't make out what. Anyway, I put on these clothes, and they're too warm for the weather." He glanced down with distaste upon his excellent attire, and ineffectively fanned himself with the silk hat. "Mrs. Tinker made me wear 'em," he explained discontentedly. "She don't know any more what it's all about than I do; but she was bound I had to." He lighted a cigar slowly, taking all the time he could; then he said: "Well, John Edwards tells me he's got everything fixed up for us to clear out o' here day after to-morrow. I suppose that's agreeable to you, too?"
Laurence understood that Tinker was putting off their inevitable topic as long as possible; but now as an actual supplicant the young man had more courage than he had shown as a prospective one. "It will be agreeable to me if what I have to say is agreeable to you, Mr. Tinker."
Tinker sighed heavily and audibly;—it was a groan. "Oh, murder!" he said. "I suppose we might as well get down to it. Of course Babe's told me what you want to talk to me about. Well, sir, it isn't so awful agreeable; no, sir, it's not. When you come right down to it, it's not so agreeable."
The applicant bit his lip. "I don't know that I"
"Listen!" Tinker said; and he leaned forward earnestly toward the young man. "Look here! I haven't got a word to say against your character or your family. Babe's told me everything about that and how your father was a college professor and all; and I'll admit right now, when we started on this trip I had a kind of hope that something like this might happen. Not that I wanted such a thing, you get me; but I mean on her account. She thought she liked a young fellow at home—a right bright sort of no-account young nothin' he is, at that—but I knew what he was and she didn't. He's kind of a bad egg, and I had to tell her so. Well, she knew I was tellin' her the truth, and she knew I knew what I was talkin' about; but, my soul! how it did upset her with me! Well, so my wife thought o' this trip—he kept hangin' around tryin' to see her—and I made Babe come. Of course she was in pretty low spirits, and I admit I thought it might be kind of a good thing if she'd maybe take a fancy to some first-rate young fellow, if we happened to run into anybody like that. So I don't say what's happened may not be all right. But there's several things" He paused, frowned more deeply, shook his head, and leaned back discontentedly in his chair.
"I understand from her that you have some objection to my profession," Ogle said.
Tinker's deep frown continued in position upon his large forehead. "I don't exactly object to it, you might say, and Babe's pretty near talked my head off about that show o' yours I saw in New York. She says you insisted on my knowin' you wrote it, and I consider that honourable and above-board with me, Mr. Ogle. Well, she's made me understand you didn't write it the way everybody seemed to be takin' it—and the way I'll have to admit I took it myself. She's told me the whole story of it a dozen times, I expect, tryin' to prove how you had to make those actors and actresses say what they did and behave the way they did; and I guess she's pretty well proved her case to me. Anyway, I believe you meant it the way she says you did. But see here" He leaned forward again and set his large hand upon Laurence's knee. "Listen! You don't have to put on any more shows like that, do you?"
Ogle ruefully shook his head. "No. Not like that!"
Tinker seemed to be somewhat relieved. He tilted back in his iron chair, put his feet upon the railing, and contemplated his cigar. "I'm glad to hear it. I can take a night off myself and see a show like that; but I wouldn't exactly care to have anybody in my own family—especially my own daughter's" He waved his hand, as Ogle tried to interrupt. "Wait a minute! I understand you didn't mean it that way; but there's too many people take it that way for anybody to want it in his own family. And another thing: Babe says the show's off now and won't ever be heard of again, so we agreed it'll be just as well if Mrs. Tinker never hears that you had anything to do with it. She never would understand! So that's all there is to say about that. Let's get on to something else."
"Very well," Ogle said in a low voice. The colour had returned to his face during this disposal of "The Pastoral Scene";—in truth, he was now as warmly flushed as Tinker, and a frown as deep as the latter's had appeared upon his forehead. "What else, if you please?"
"I understand from Babe," Tinker said, "you're going to do other kinds of writing as a regular business and try plays on the side, as it were, because you don't consider theatre work reliable enough in the way of income. She says you already have done this other work and got yourself enough established in it so't you can count on it. Well, that's all right, and I don't want you to think I haven't got any respect for literature, because I have. I don't know all this and that about it the way my wife and Babe do—I been too busy—but still I think it has its own place. I'll say this to you, Mr. Ogle: while it might 'a' seemed more satisfactory to me if you'd been in something regular and substantial, something kind of more like men's business, as you might put it, still, I'm not goin' to stand out against my daughter's happiness just because you didn't happen to be built to shine in that way."
Laurence Ogle drew a quick breath and looked briefly at the man beside him; but Tinker's troubled eyes were averted. Then the two sat in silence for some moments, preoccupied.
What preoccupied Ogle was a problem he foresaw in the long future. He was himself again;—at least, with a renewed purse, he was almost himself again; though he had suffered some enlightenments and improved his knowledge of himself. Nevertheless, in the last few minutes he had returned to his old opinion that Tinker was irrecoverably a great barbarian and the problem foreseen for the future concerned the barbarian's happiness as well as his own. Tinker often came to New York and would come oftener when his daughter lived there: Laurence trembled within when he thought of what the people he knew would think of his father-in-law, and of what they would think of himself for having such a father-in-law. They would never be able to understand that although Tinker was a barbarian, he was a great one; and the difficulty would be to conceal him from them during his visits—and also to conceal them from Tinker.
Tinker made it plain what his own preoccupation concerned. Suddenly he slapped his knee. "Well, sir," he said, "the first time I saw you if anybody'd 'a' told me you'd ever be my son-in-law I'd 'a' killed him!"
Thus the two preoccupations had not been so dissimilar in fundamentals as might have been supposed. But when the older man, having thus released his profoundest feeling, turned his head and saw the sensitive face of the younger again grow pallid under this shock, a more genial sentiment began to prevail with both of them. Tinker stretched forth his arm and set his hand upon Laurence's shoulder.
"Now, don't you take that to heart," he said. "My daughter's just the world and all to me, next to her mother, of course; and I expect I'd 'a' been just as grudging whoever it was I had to give her up to. I oughtn't to of said what I just did, even if it is the God's own truth. Anyhow, I didn't feel that way long. When you came to sit at our table I didn't think you knew much, it's true; but I see Babe's right about that's only being the Eastern way you were brought up—timid and afraid you might do something wrong, or get mixed up with strangers and all. Well, in a way I began to kind of take a sort of fancy to you, because you were so quiet and modest. I tell you, modesty's something you don't see in so many young men nowadays, and yours is the main and principal thing I like about you. Yes, sir; it's what makes me think we can manage to get along with you in the family about as well as if it'd been somebody different, Mr. Ogle. Yes, sir; I'll say this much for you, myself: you're quiet and you got nice manners, and you're perfectly honourable and you 'tend to your own business, and, what's best of all, you're modest. Well, those things make up for a good deal; indeed they do. And since I got to give my daughter up, I'm glad it's to a man that's got those qualities anyhow!"
With that, his troubled face relaxed; he sent forth thick wreathings of blue smoke, and, sighing loudly, seemed almost content. Behind him, in the open French window that gave admission to this high veranda, there appeared a witness to his increased geniality: a little, ancient, hawk-nosed English lady in black taffeta and an Indian shawl. She looked thoughtfully at the figure of Tinker and at his gleaming large shoes upon the railing of the balustrade before him. "Ha!" she said to herself, but audibly. "The magnificent Goth again!" And she went away.
This was a new definition for Ogle, who already had several; but Tinker did not hear her. "Well, sir," he said, "I expect we better call it a day. You and I can get along all right because I've seen how you feel about my little girl, and I know how she feels about you. I'm glad you want to get right back to work; and we'll see you off on your steamer from Naples next week. We aren't goin' to be very long behind you gettin' back home. All I'm goin' to do is just give the family a little motor trip around Italy—Rome and Florence and Venice maybe—then we're goin' to come straight back to Naples and sail from there ourselves."
Laurence was pleasantly surprised. "I understood you were going to continue northward and sail from a French port. I thought the ladies had Paris in mind as"
"No, sir!" Tinker's tilted chair and his feet came down simultaneously with a bang. "We're not goin' anywhere near Paris," he said. "If Babe and Hon want to go to Paris, they can come over some other time—with you, maybe—and see all they want of it; but if I got anything to say about this expedition—and I think I have—we're goin' to sail from Naples!"
Both men stood up then, relieved of their heavy duty, but still a little embarrassed with each other, and Le Seyeux came from the doorway. Behind him, in the dusk of the interior, a charming head appeared;—it was Olivia's, prettily anxious.
Tinker called to her, "Come out here!"
She came, and her mother with her.
"See that?" he said. And he took Laurence's hand and gave it a hearty shake. "Satisfy you?" he said.
But unexpectedly his lips began to tremble; he swallowed painfully, and, to conceal the big tears that rose in his eyes, he turned his head away. Then he turned again to his daughter, kissed her hurriedly, and strode into the hotel without another word.
"Don't go," Mrs. Tinker called after him tremulously, "Earl, don't go."
"He must go now," Le Seyeux explained. "The gentleman has come for him down there."
"Down where?"
"You will see," the courier said; and he pointed to the street below them, where now was heard a great trampling and clanging of iron-shod hooves. "Look! You are going to see him."
They leaned upon the railing and looked down upon a many-coloured jostle of turbans, bare heads, tasselled fezzes, pith helmets, and the ragged head swathings of mendicants. These were all busily clustering about a semicircular cleared space where stood an open red touring car almost intolerable to the eye in its splendour of mirroring brass; and drawn up, facing this equipage, were a troop of cavalrymen in violent uniforms, brown men with flamboyant mustachios and long curved sabres as amazing. Their harness clanked and jangled with the nodding of the restless Arabian chargers; the fantastic crowd pressed about them, murmuring; child beggars squealed and wept;—then, at a signal invisible to the observers on the veranda, one of the troopers blew a trumpet, and a little dark old gentleman, dapper in European dress, but with a fez upon his head, came out from the hotel. And with him came the resplendent Tinker, overshadowing everything with his broad shoulders and tall hat.
He passed through a group of reverent and gorgeous merchants, the sellers of jewels, of perfumes, of amber, of ivory, of silks, of velvet brocades, of embroideries, of wrought metals, of glass, of ostrich feathers, of inlaid ebony and sandal-wood, of carved jade, and of domed bird-cages. He acknowledged their salutations heartily as he stepped into the car; the dapper Eastern gentleman got in beside him; the trumpet sounded again, and the pageant began to move.
Half of the cavalry troop galloped forward, clearing the street; the other half split into two sections, one on each side of the automobile, and thus with a glorious clattering and a noble pomposity of colour, the astounding procession came beneath the eyes of the watchers upon the veranda.
But there was something that astonished Laurence Ogle more than the procession did; and that was the humourless calm of Mrs. Tinker, though Olivia laughed delightedly. "Gracious!" the daughter said, "it's almost like the day he had to escort those French marshals and admirals and people up Jefferson Avenue to the stand in the Court House Yard."
"Who's that with him?" Mrs. Tinker inquired of the courier, and a slight frown appeared upon her forehead. "I mean the funny little man he's got in the car with him."
"I think it is a Pasha, who lives here," Le Seyeux answered. "I don't know certainly. I think he wish to take Mr. Tinker to meet the Bey of Tunis."
"Who's he?"
"The Bey? Well, he is suppose' to be the ruler of this country," the courier explained. "That is to say, he governs it excellently under the advice of the French. But he has his own army, you see, and most of it is taking care of Mr. Tinker to-day, I think. Look! He sees us!"
The cavalcade had passed down the length of the veranda; but Tinker, conscious of the eyes upon him from on high, looked back over his shoulder and communicated with the friendly watchers by means of a wink easily visible at the distance. Not feeling this to be sufficient, however, he stood up, removed his hat and waved it sweepingly. Then, with the strange security against being understood that foreign soil affords so many of his compatriots, in the use of their native tongue, he employed a bit of street currency from home to express his evidently jocular sentiments. "Good-bye, folks!" he bellowed at the top of his big voice. "I don't know where I'm goin', but I'm on my way!"
"I do wonder," Mrs. Tinker said fretfully, "what that Bey, or whoever he is, wants of him."
But the courier protested. "No, no! He will want nothing. It will be that he has heard of Mr. Tinker since he has come here, and he feels he would like to speak with him and maybe especially"—Le Seyeux paused, coughed explosively, then completed his thought—"and maybe especially he wish to look at him!"
Mrs. Tinker shook her head. "No; I know he wants something. They always do."
With Olivia's light and gentle hand upon his arm, her betrothed leaned forward to watch the glittering car and its gorgeous outriders as they passed on down the street in a thin cloud of dust of their own creation. Tinker's whole course across Barbary had been like this, a jocose kind of pageantry, Laurence thought. And, in the end, what was the man? "Barbarian," "Carthaginian," "Goth," he had been called; but with qualifications: a barbarian, but a great one; a Carthaginian, but a great one;—a Goth, the little old English lady had just said; but she called him a magnificent one.
"Wave to him, Mother!" Olivia cried. "Look at him! He's still showing off for us—to make us laugh. Wave to him, Mother!"
As she said, Tinker was still standing up in the car, and gloriously waving his shining hat. The sun was behind him, outlining him in dusty fire; and his figure, now at a distance, seemed to rise above the tossing heads of the chargers about him and beyond him like that of some mockingly triumphant charioteer riding home to glory in the arena of the Circus Maximus. After all, it was Medjila who had been right, Laurence thought;—here was neither Carthaginian nor barbaric Goth, or if he was, he was above all other things, the New Roman. Then, all at once, that problem for the future appeared less difficult, and the young man felt it might not be so important, after all, to conceal Tinker from the Macklyns and Albert Joneses.
For, in the cloud of dust against the sun, the powerful and humorous figure, still standing and waving as it rode on toward long-conquered Carthage, seemed to have become gigantic.
The end