THEY came to Bougie at sunset, and in that warm but fragile light the town seemed not so much built as made merely of colour and painted, a plaid of old rose and faint green and gray, upon its Mediterranean hillside. Here the senile British General proved too violent a pedestrian for the sedentary young American during a stroll—or what Sir William remarkably called a stroll—up and down the steeply slanting streets in the twilight. Mme. Momoro swept ahead with the tall Englishman; Lady Broadfeather and Miss Crewe, chirruping to the polite Hyacinthe, kept nearly up with them; but Ogle fell behind, and, when the dark came on, found his way back alone to the hotel, out of breath, tired, and more disgruntled than ever.
At dinner, however, he found that it was possible for him to become even more so. Upon the wine list the General discovered a red Beaune, a dear lost love of his, he said—and not only said, but copiously proved by wearing his lost love's colours, ere long, as his own complexion. Meanwhile, he became so gallant in his praise of the French lady that Miss Crewe looked faintly surprised, though Lady Broadfeather did not. Time after time, he proposed Mme. Momoro's health in the brave eighteenth-century manner, always brightly ignoring the fact that the ceremony had already been performed. "To Artemis!" he said, and visibly was pleased to think this an original inspiration. "To Artemis, light-footed on the hills, if you understand. When goddesses come to life let it be our mortal privilege to offer libations and quaff nectar to them!" He also drank to Hyacinthe, who rose and bowed, but seemed slightly embarrassed by the compliment. "To your good health, young gentleman! You are the Mozart of bridge. We must recognize precocious genius as well as goddesses." And a little later, he called Mme. Momoro's attention to an amiable-looking young couple dining at a table across the room. "Other potentates are dining in Bougie this evening besides yourself, august Artemis. Those two young people are the hereditary rulers of the old and independent principality of Fühlderstein, Prince Orthe the Eighteenth and his bride. They were staying at our hotel in Algiers last week. Curious how one encounters people again and again in this part of North Africa—or, rather, it's less curious than it is inevitable, since everybody follows the same path and makes the same stops. That reminds me, if you understand; I have a little plan for lunching by the wayside to-morrow on the road to Setif. We could have the hotel put up lunch for us and we might make a little picnic of it in the Gorge du Chabat el Ahkra, you see. If you and your son and Mr. Uh think well of it, I'll instruct the maître d'hôtel about the hampers. What do you say? Shall we make a sylvan festival—Artemis and fauns and wood-nymphs banqueting in Islam?"
Mme. Momoro, nodding and smiling, told him that nothing could be more delightful; then she gave Ogle a quick little look of appeal, as if to ask him how she could have extricated herself with any courtesy. A little later she gave him another such look when Sir William, having finished his coffee, set his cup down decisively, rubbed his hands, and exclaimed, "Madame Artemis! Master Mozart! Now to the bridge!"
Ogle made no response to either of the plaintive glances. He looked over her head, said nothing, and, as soon as the party left the table, went up to his room.
There, without turning on the light, he sat for a little while on the edge of his bed; then he got up and stood looking down upon a dim little square before the hotel, where two or three ragged Arabs and a few cats seemed to be holding inexplicable converse together. The young American at the window did not puzzle himself over the argument apparently taking place between men and animals below him; he had just solved a puzzle of his own and was not attracted to another. The significance of the presence in Bougie of the Fühlderstein bridal couple had not been wasted upon him, and neither had Sir William Broadfeather's comment upon it. "One encounters people again and again in this part of North Africa. . . . Everybody follows the same path and makes the same stops." Tinker himself didn't know where he was going—that was probably quite true; but Mme. Momoro knew. Everybody followed the same path; and of course she knew that was the path upon which Cayzac would set the Tinkers.
The young playwright began to be borne down under the conviction that his fate as a traveller, and perhaps as a human being, was inextricably bound up with that of the Tinker family. The gods of spiteful comedy, at play in the African sky, had looked down upon him and with malevolent laughter had seen to it that there should be no escape from his aversion; it was a question of a few days, perhaps of a few hours, when the Old Man of the Sea would be upon him again. There was no longer a possible doubt of Mme. Momoro's diplomacy; and Ogle underwent the experience of knowing that he was being used—not a comfortable experience for a young man by no means selfless or lacking a fair opinion of his own significance.
In the morning, if he chose, he could assert himself; he could say, "No; we aren't going to lunch with Sir William Broadfeather in the Chabat. We're not going on to Setif and Biskra and Batna and Constantine and the rest of it, looking for a person named Tinker—who has his family with him, by the way, and is therefore in no pressing need of our society. We're going back to Algiers." For a little while he thought he had determined upon this virile course and took a grim pleasure in thinking of it—until he realized that he wasn't capable of saying such a thing to Mme. Momoro. Here he fell short as an analyst: he didn't know why he wasn't capable of it; he knew only that he wasn't. But there were other reasons why he must go on as she had too adroitly planned: the concierge of the hotel had handed him a telegram from Cayzac's offices and it informed him that his rather anxiously expected letters had been received in Algiers and forwarded to Biskra. It might take them some time to be returned to Algiers; he was now within two days' easy motoring of Biskra; and the letters were growing daily more important to him.
Humiliating as it was to be used—and used by a woman to whom he had shown only the tenderest chivalry—he must continue to be used. Then, having reached this enfeebling conclusion, he thought of the Arab donkeys and their unfailing behaviour, which was what Mme. Momoro had prophesied of them. What a reproach to him! For they were ridden, yes; but at least they showed a fighting heel to the road, rider or no rider. He had none to show; and with a sickish laugh, he found himself facing a deduction that in spirit he was not their equal.
From a little distance there came on the night air a sonorous palpitation: the rolling of drums and a challenging music from the bugles of a detachment of French cavalry on the march. The sounds, so martial and stirring, roused him from his distressful reverie; and as he stepped out upon the small balcony beyond his window, bugles and drums grew louder, and men and horses began to pass a corner beyond the open square. They were but vaguely illuminated by a single street lamp, and he could see little except soldierly outlines, twinklings of metal and moving sleeknesses of light upon the horses; nothing was definite in the darkness except the clean rattle of the drums and the brazen clarity of the bugles. Then abruptly these fell silent and another music set the pace—the African oboes and tom-toms of an Arab cavalry troop following the French to barracks. The tom-toms, beating with their ominous monotony, were like a pulsation in this Arab earth, Ogle thought—a barbaric heartbeat he might have heard in that earth every moment since he had set foot in Algeria, if he had listened; and over the tom-toms the oboe pipings rose and drooped in strange quarter-tones, singing uncivilized messages in the united voices of new-born babies and old cats wailing out of Egypt.
Morose as he was, the young American on the dark balcony found himself fascinated by that wail and by the throbbing of the tom-toms. He could bear a little more of this Africa, he thought, even though he must see it in the society of a lady who was betraying him.