The Plutocrat (Tarkington)/Chapter 4
THE youth to whom this adorable word was spoken, said, "Pardon," absently, and played a card. He was a slender boy of eighteen or twenty, "cameo like" in profile, Ogle thought, find ing the young Hyacinthe like Mme. Momoro in that as well as in hair and eyes and gracefulness. The son was the slighter, however, and not so tall; and there was a vertical line between his eyebrows, where a definite groove readily appeared from time to time as he concentrated his thoughts upon his cards. Otherwise his face was of an olive suavity and his reserved expressionlessness complete, though when his long-lashed eyelids were lifted, what seemed to be revealed was not at all the expected innocence of youth, but an intelligence surprisingly seasoned by precocious experience. For if, as Ogle thought, the mother was an ideal portrait of the complete woman of the world, then no less was the son a fine little picture of a man of the world already finished, lac quered and polished at eighteen.
The other two players were thin, elderly ladies in mourning, and gave the impression of being sisters, not only in the grief for which they had dressed themselves in black. Sisters in affluence, too, they appeared to be—not poor even if they owned nothing more than the rings upon their fingers. They were but background dimnesses, however, in the eyes of the three surreptitiously staring young Americans. The beautiful quality of Mme. Momoro's voice when she made it audible had settled any possible doubt about her; for no matter how pleasing the appearance of any person may be, his quality is not to be recognized until his voice is heard; and unexpected voices bring disappointment to many dreamers like poets, painters, and playwrights. But the poet and the painter and the playwright present when Mme. Momoro spoke to her son in the quiet smoking-room of the "Duumvir," heard something even lovelier than what would have sufficed to meet their expectations. Her voice was more than the confirmation of her appearance; and as for Ogle, after she had spoken he felt that to be in the same room with her was like being enclosed with some supreme work of art. He became so acutely conscious of her that it began to seem that he had known her a long time.
Macklyn was the first to turn his head from her. He finished his amber drink, touched his lips delicately with a blue-bordered handkerchief, and said almost in a whisper: "I've written a few things in French. There's nothing else so flexible. Do you speak Arabic, Mr. Ogle?"
"Arabic? No. I've never had occasion to. Why?"
"I thought the item I saw about you mentioned you were going to North Africa. One can't know the Arabs unless he speaks with them. Of course it isn't all Arabic that they speak. By no means! There are some interesting poems in the Kabyle dialects, exquisite, wistful things. I remember one beginning, 'I play my shepherd's pipe on the hillside, and my love hears it among her young goats. How her heart beats as my dulcet sounds reach her ears'—a thing like a Sicilian Pastorale. These things are of the true art; they use no punctuation or capitals, let me tell you. They are not written at all in the original, they are transmitted by word of mouth because they are just cries from the heart. Of course they become conventional when transcribed in French. I suppose you'll go among the Kabyles?"
"Probably," Ogle returned, though he had never before heard of these interesting tribes. He had decided upon his excursion impulsively, only a week before sailing, when the successof "The Pastoral Scene" appeared to be secure; and most of his preparations for the journey had been concerned with a tailor, a haberdasher, and the agent through whom he manœuvred to secure a cabin. "The Kabyles," he said thoughtfully. "I think so. Yes, I should like to learn something of them at first hand."
"You'll find them wonderful," Macklyn assured him. "A noble looking people. If you dressed them properly, for instance—though that would be a pity—they wouldn't look out of place on this boat."
Mr. Jones laughed compassionately. "Queer idea, that, Macklyn. Is it your thought that most of our fellow-countrymen on the 'Duumvir' exhibit a high degree of distinction? From what I've seen of them, they appear a pretty ordinary looking lot of people, I must say."
"Yes," Macklyn admitted, "I spoke hastily. They're on the dead level of the commonplace, with hardly a soul among them one would care ever to see again, judging by appearances and the passenger list. Except Mr. Ogle's and yours, Albert, there wasn't an American name that meant anything whatever or that one had ever heard of before. I'm afraid you're our only celebrity, Mr. Ogle."
Ogle laughed deprecatingly. "That's not always an enviable situation to be in. Conspicuousness isn't invariably pleasant, you know; but I'm afraid you're right about our fellow-passengers. I stopped in the lounge for a moment a little while ago; they appeared to be all there and it was rather a well-dressed but unstimulating assemblage—the men drinking tea unwillingly, I thought, but both women and men glad to listen to the obviousness of Puccini. This seems better up here. One isn't deafened, and the room itself is rather well done—for this sort of thing, at least. I mean the panelling and the windows aren't bad."
"No," Mr. Jones agreed. "They're rather good; not bad at all—though of course, as you say, for this sort of thing. And the quiet is really pleasant."
"Quiet?" Macklyn repeated inquiringly, and he set down his glass upon a tabouret before him. "Dear me! I'm afraid it isn't going to be. Listen."
At the lower end of the room an open door offered a view of the after deck and of the vessel's turbulent wake, a white foaming canal dividing the blue ocean almost: to the horizon. Macklyn made a gesture in this direction; but nothing upon the sea itself caused him to do so, nor for some moments did anything unusual appear beyond the open doorway. Sounds made a heralding entry there, however; sounds intended to be musical, but unsuccessful in carrying out their intention. Voices rough and loud were approaching, deluded into the belief that harmonies of tenors and bassos were produced. Four men, no longer young but still leather-lunged, were singing—or thought they were:
A-sitting by the fire,
She wants a drink o' gin
Though she knows it is a sin,
Aunt Mariar!
And for fear she'll make a row
Let's go take one for her now,
Mariar!
Mariar!
Dirty old Auntie Mariar!"
Ogle shuddered, the slight convulsive movement of his shoulders being visible to his two companions who sympathized with his distaste acutely. For therowdy outburst came with a disagreeable shock upon the quiet room where stained glass swung jewelled lights upon the dark walls, and where Mme. Momoro, taller and more serene than other women, was like some tinted statue of a seated goddess in a still temple. So, at least, she appeared to the three sensitive young artists. If she had not been there, they would have felt the uncouth sounds annoying enough, in all conscience, destroying the feeling they had themselves produced in the place by their low-toned conversation about art; but that these liquorish bellowings of "Aunt Mariar" should intrude upon such a presence as hers was an atrocity in manners but too characteristic, they thought indignantly, of some of their travelling fellow-countrymen.
Meanwhile these outlanders were coming nearer, marching evidently, and shouting their indecorous chorus in imitation of a drum-beat:
Mariar!
Bay rum in a bottle we'll buy 'er!
Mariar!
Mariar!
Dirty old Auntie Mariar!"
And, with that, chanting vociferously, regardless equally of their own appearances and of other people's prejudices, four red-faced middle-aged men marched in lock-step into the room, and, still uproarious, lined themselves against the little bar.
Their leader, a large man with a broad, smooth-shaven face, the ruddiest of all, outshouted the others. "Forget it! Let your Aunt Mariar alone for long enough to tell George, can't you? What's it goin' to be, gentlemen?"
This voice was familiar to Ogle; he recognized it. "Dear me!" he murmured. "It's 'Honey-how's-Baby' again!"
Albert Jones caught the phrase. "What? What do you mean: 'Honey-how's-Baby'?"
"There's a seasick mother and her daughter in the cabin next to mine," Ogle explained. "A person comes in there to see them, and says, 'Honey, how's Baby?' It's that man there."
"That one?" Macklyn inquired. "That's the same fellow who tried to break in with Jones and me the first night out. He told us he didn't know a soul on the ship except his wife and daughter, but he's evidently picked up some congenial bandarlogs. Look at 'em! It's our most terrible native type, and they all belong to it."
The four noisy men, busy at the bar and unconscious of the unfavourable regard bent upon them, abated little of their uproar until filled glasses stood before them. Two, with their heads close together, began to sing, "Yes, Sir, She's My Baby," while the other two, one of whom was the person recognized by the three artists as the most objectionable of all, loudly praised the Freedom of the Seas. He delivered himself of a short oration upon this subject.
"Yes, sir; it's just as you say, the folks at home don't realize that all they got to do, if they don't like Prohibition, is to step on a boat. My case, for instance; why, it's been so long since I had what you might call a regular honest-to-goodness drink I'd about forgot there was such a thing! The law is all right on land—I voted for it myself—but it's a grand thing the ocean belongs to everybody. I'd 'a' taken a trip to Europe long ago if I'd 'a' realized how much freedom there was in it. And look how Prohibition habits get into a man, though;—it's wonderful! After I introduced myself to ole Doc Taylor yonder, this afternoon, and met you two other gentlemen, what's the first thing we do? Why, Doc says he's got some stuff in his cabin, and just out o' habit, what'd we do? Why, sneaked down there with him just the way we would at home, and sat pourin' it out kind of guilty-like until we happened to remember we weren't doin' anything against the law at all and there was an open bar up here where a man had a right to do as he's a mind to, with nobody on earth to tell him he can't, except his wife; and mine's sick, poor woman, thank heaven!" He stopped the duet, putting a hand upon a shoulder of each of the singers. "Gentlemen, I got a toast to propose. Here's to the Atlantic Ocean, the sweet Land of Liberty!"
"There should be a public executioner on board every liner," Macklyn said in a low voice, but with venom. "It's just such fellows as that who make cultivated foreigners think what they do think of Americans. They think he's typical."
"Well, in a way he is," Ogle returned. "At least he's typical of his own type."
Macklyn agreed, frowning, and the three young men stared sombrely at the typical person. Typical or not, the person's appearance, though more than normally jovial under present influences, was not without some impressiveness. He had been at least mannerly enough to remove his fuzzy green cap as a recognition that ladies were present, and the brow revealed beneath his grayish sandy hair was broad, well-shaped, and even of the kind known as commanding; the blue eyes were genial but shrewd, and the other features not at all unpleasant;—on the contrary, they were harmonious and what is commonly called agreeable, in spite of the fact that they were so far from producing that impression upon the three pained observers. He was fifty, perhaps, and becoming comfortably convex, though without much risk of being defined merely as a fat man.
His toast to the ocean having been heartily honoured, he instantly commanded a refilling of the glasses. "There's only one thing wrong with this ship," he announced. "It's got oil-burning engines and conservatories and a candy store and hot and cold water and a good steam plant and orchestras and automatic watertight steel bulkheads; but it hasn't got any foot-rail on the bar. If they'd remembered to put one in, ocean life would be just perfect—perfect! But anyway, this is a lot nicer than sittin' in Doc's cabin or listening to high-brow opera music in that lobby downstairs. Let's all take our liquor with us, gentlemen, and go sit down over there on the other side of that sofa and have a nice cosy talk."
The location he proposed for this cosiness was highly unacceptable to the three critics. The divan upon which sat Macklyn and Albert Jones was double, with a high back separating the two long seats; and it was the occupation of the vacant one that the objectionable man suggested to his objectionable party. In fact, he did more than suggest it. Carrying a filled glass in one hand, and with his other propelling before him the gray-haired but obviously elated person to whom he had alluded as "Ole Doc Taylor," he urged his friends to this central position in the room, and, in doing so, passed close by the bridge table. With horror, Ogle saw the glass in the outstretched hand wavering over the silken shoulder of Mme. Momoro, and though its bearer avoided catastrophe there, the next moment he bumped heavily into the chair of the young Hyacinthe. "Excuse me, young feller," he said. "I never been to Europe before; I like the ocean fine, but I haven't learned to walk on it properly yet."
Hyacinthe rose, and, accepting this apology with a foreign formality, he bowed slightly and quickly, inclining his body from the waist; then, without any change of countenance or looking at the disturber, sat down again and played a card from his hand.
"You'd think that might put the man in his place," Macklyn muttered.
But the man was impervious; his voice filled the room. "Doc, you and Mr. Wackstle and Mr. Brown sit on the sofa. I'm goin' to take this chair where I can get a good look at you, so's I'll know you again and be able to pick you out o' the crowd whenever we all want to go somewhere for a nice song and a little conviviality. That is, if my wife only stays sick long enough, poor woman!"
Then, seeing his friends disposed as he wished, he seated himself in the deep chair facing them, and, appearing to find life genial and his surroundings benevolent, looked beamingly about the room. His glance fell upon the chilling faces of Macklyn and Albert Jones, who had turned and were looking at him over the back of the divan; and his recognition of them was cordial. "Howdy, boys!" he said, with a wave of the hand that included the frigid Ogle. "I see you never get very far away from the bar." After that, unconscious of any rebuff, as the three heads turned stonily away, his gaze moved on, and, becoming aware of Mme. Momoro, remained arrested there. "Well, you wouldn't have seen it in the old days," he said, in pointedly approving reference to her; "yet I don't know but what it's right pleasant, after all—ladies sittin' around among us and playin' cards and everything, right in the barroom."
For a moment Ogle held his breath. It was not a mitigation of the man's offence that he had no offensive intention; lightnings should have destroyed the presumptuous fool. Lightnings failing, something ought to be done about it, the playwright thought; and he had impulses to do something about it himself—and to begin by throwing the fellow out of the room, no matter how difficult that might be. Moreover, his inimical urgings were shared by his two friends; Mr. Jones muttered threateningly, while Macklyn said aloud, "I'll wring the boor's neck, if he makes any more references of that kind."
But the goddess-like lady herself was apparently unaware that she had been blasphemed, and her impassiveness was unmarred by the slightest access of hauteur. Her quiet gaze did not waver from her cards; there was not a flicker of eyelid, nor any deepening in the eye itself; any observer might well have concluded that she had no knowledge of the English language. And thus, the shocked but romancing playwright said to himself, did some ancestress of Mme. Momoro's look in the tumbril on the way to the guillotine, cool, untouched, and untouchable, while the canaille surged about the cart, powerless to make her conscious of them.
The canaille of the present occasion did not delay upon the subject, but, after a philanthropic smiling upon the admirable lady, went on talking: "No, sir; the old days were mighty different. Why, you take the people on this ship, for instance. You know it yourself, Mr. Wackstle. You say you been to Europe seven times, and this is the first for me; but I bet there's a mighty big difference between the passengers on this ship and the ones on the first ship you went over on. When'd you say that was?"
"Eighteen-ninety-one, Mr. Tinker."
"Tinker!" Albert Jones said bitterly, on the other side of the divan. "The creature's name is Tinker. It would be!"
The creature was continuing his dissertation: "Why, there's more big business represented on this vessel right now than what there was on every ship on all the oceans of the world in eighteen-ninety-one, Mr. Wackstle. You read over the passenger list and look at the names on it that stand for big things and accomplishment all over our country. It took my breath; darned if it didn't! I'll bet it would run into hundreds and hundreds o' millions! I tell you there's some mighty big men on this ship, gentlemen,—men I want to know before we land 'way over yonder and get all split up and goin' every which direction. For instance, you take yourself, Mr. Wackstle. Soon as I saw your name I told my wife, I told her, 'I certainly got to know that man, Mamma!' Poor woman, she was already about gone even that early, and she couldn't take much notice. But you aren't the only well-known man on this boat."
"No," Mr. Wackstle admitted, laughing modestly. "There's a dozen bigger celebrities aboard than I claim to be."
"Well, I won't say bigger," the genial Tinker went on, "but there certainly are others. Take James T. Weatheright, for instance; he's the best-known man in the whole State of New York, I expect. Weatheright's Worsteds are practically household goods all over the world. Then there's T. H. Smith, president of the G. L. and W.; Harold M. Wilson, ex-chairman of the Board of the Western Industrial Corporation; Thomas Swingey, of Swingey Brothers, Incorporated; there's both the Holebrooks of the Northwestern Trust; there's Judge Mastin, ex-general counsel for the Roanoke; J. Q. A. McLean, of the Chicago Milling Company—well, talk about an all-star aggregation, why, when you think of what's represented by a passenger list like that you almost wonder how the United States can go on running with these men out here on the ocean!"
His new friend, Wackstle, chuckled. "Well, I don't know. You've pretty well covered the list, Mr. Tinker; I don't know of anybody on board you've left out; but when you think it over, most o' the gentlemen you've named are like me, either retired or turned the management of their businesses over to other people, except Smith, of course. He's pretty active in the G. L. and W. still, and it would be a bad thing if this boat went down with him on board. As you say, there's a lot of money represented; but if this steamer did ram into something in a fog and go to the bottom, everything back home would go on just about the same, and I don't believe the public would know much difference—except for T. H. Smith and yourself maybe. He'd be the only headliner in the papers, anyhow."
"What!" Tinker exclaimed. "Why, James T. Weatheright"
"Yes, I admit there might be front-page stuff about Weatheright; but it wouldn't be heavy. Weatheright turned the worsted business over to his sons more than five years ago."
"Look here! Look here!" Tinker was not satisfied. "I don't want to blow my own horn; but I'd like to say right here and now, my town would know the difference if this ship went down. And I don't like to dispute you, Mr. Wackstle, but I guess your town and these other gentlemen's towns would, too. Why, you take even ole Doc Taylor here"
But the person he named was in no mood for so serious a discussion; and he began to sing, "Yes, Sir, She's My Baby" again, Mr. Brown joining him. Mr. Tinker looked upon them disapprovingly for a moment; then his brow cleared, and he sang, too.
On the other side of the divan the music was as little appreciated as the mystifying conversation upon celebrities had been. "Dear me!" Albert Jones complained. "There really ought to be some protection. Somebody ought to speak to the chief steward."
"It wouldn't do any good," Macklyn said gloomily. "They cater to this class of people. All of the liners are full of riffraff nowadays, because a different type of people has begun to travel, made prosperous in these last few years. What did you think of that list of 'well-known' Americans aboard, Mr. Ogle?"
Ogle, who had grown a little red during the enumeration of celebrities, was nevertheless able to laugh in response to the direct question. "Quite a blow to my vanity, I'm afraid. You said I was for the many, Mr. Macklyn. This seems to indicate I'm for the few, after all, like you and Albert Jones."
The sombre Macklyn took him literally. "I shouldn't mind, if I were you. At least you can say you never sought the bauble reputation in the Provincial's mouth—or, happily, that you never obtained it. Naturally, this sort of thing would not be entertained by 'The Pastoral Scene!'"
By an interesting coincidence he learned within a few moments that he was mistaken. The song behind him drew to a rather hoarse conclusion; a steward brought a tray of copious fresh supplies, prepared at the bar; then the talkative Tinker began a fresh discourse, this time inspired by the recent effort to be musical.
"Yes, sir; that's a mighty good song; I like 'Aunt Mariar' better, though—more homelike. I heard some nice music in New York. Got there three days before we sailed and went to shows every night. Two nights it was to musical shows; they had a lot of good music in 'em, cheerful you know, not sad stuff nobody can understand like that Italian orchestra was playin' down there in the lobby awhile ago—and more good-lookin' girls than you ever saw in your life! I don't know where these New York managers find 'em all. Seems like every time I come to New York they've got more of 'em and prettier ones and better dancers. The last night, though, we went to a show without any music, a play—oh, Boy!"
"Was it good?"
"'Good'?" Tinker repeated in a peculiar tone; and he whistled. "I don't know how they get away with it!"
"Raw, you mean?" Dr. Taylor inquired with warm interest.
"Listen!" Tinker said. "My wife wanted to get up and go out right in the middle of the first act; and I pretty near had to hold her down; but after that she was willing to stay to see just how far they would go. Besides, nobody there knew us and we didn't have our daughter with us. A friend of mine from my city had been to it, and he told me I oughtn't to miss it. Well, sir, it would pretty near make a horse blush; and some of the stuff they pulled—well, the gallery laughed right out! What was funny to me, though, most of 'em downstairs sat as solemn as an egg and never turned a hair. If you'd told me a few years ago I'd ever hear such talk outside of some old left-over livery-stable in the backwoods I'd 'a' thought you were crazy! They tell me they're pretty nearly all like that in New York now; but they'll have to go some to beat this one! It was certainly what you might call spicy. Yes, sir, some rancid!"
"Comedy?" Mr. Wackstle asked.
"No, it didn't seem meant to be. They came out with these things lookin' as serious as a postman in a blizzard: that's what made the gallery laugh, I guess. No; you wouldn't call it a comedy, though the hero of it ran off with his daughter-in-law, a right good-lookin' actress; but she took an overdose of laudanum or something and died, so it didn't seem meant for a comedy."
"What was the name of it?"
"Peculiar name," Tinker replied. "Pasturage—something like 'The Pasturage Scene.' No; that wasn't it, not 'Pasturage.' I remember—they called it 'The Pastoral Scene.' That's it. High-brow name; but when you come to what some of 'em said in it—oh, Boy! not so high-brow!"
The flush upon the outraged playwright's cheek had deepened. He sat scorching with rage and the desire to kill. This, then, was what an unspeakable Tinker saw in a work of art that had cost its creator so many days and nights of anguished composition! Ogle's staring eye was fixed upon the continuing serenity of Mme. Momoro. She could not help hearing the loud voice uttering these horrible and unctuous innuendos, and upon such a woman nothing was lost. If she had not herself seen the play, and had nothing to judge it by except this description, and he should be presented to her as the author of "The Pastoral Scene" The thought was suffocating, and he was not comforted by the realization that his two colleagues in art were internally raging with him. As it was impossible to walk round a divan and choke a man to death in a steamer's smoking-room, Ogle rose to his feet.
"I think I'll go and dress for dinner," he said huskily.
Jones and Macklyn got up as he did. "Yes," the latter said. "This place has become sheerly unbearable."
The three went to the open door, where Ogle half-paused for a cross-shoulder murderous glance at the unconscious Tinker. The beautiful bridge player sat imperturbable in floating veils of cigar smoke from the divan, which was again turbulent in song. The execrable Tinker, standing, and with a fountain pen for a baton, was apparently conducting a large orchestra. And even outside upon the deck, the fugitive artists were pursued by the hateful chorus:
Mariar!
Bay rum in a bottle we'll buy 'er!
Mariar!
Mariar!
Dirty old Auntie Mariar!"