In the Arena Part 4

Knowles looked up at last, his lips working for a while before he could speak. "I'll resign now--if you'll--if you'll let me off," he said.

Gorgett shook his head. "I've got the election in my hand," he answered, "though you fellows don't know it. You've got nothing to offer me, and you couldn't buy me if you had."

At that, Knowles just sank into himself with a little, faint cry, in a kind of heap. There wasn't anything but anguish and despair _to_ him. Big tears were sliding down his cheeks.

I didn't say anything. Gorgett sat looking at him for a good while; and then his fat chin began to tremble a little and I saw his eyes s.h.i.+ning in the shadow under his old hat-brim.

He got up and went over to Farwell with slow steps and put his hand gently on his shoulder.

"Go on home to your wife," he said, in a low voice that was the saddest I ever heard. "I don't bear you any ill-will in the world. n.o.body's going to give you away."

THE ALIENS

Pietro Tobigili, that gay young chestnut vender--he of the radiant smiles--gave forth, in his warm tenor, his own interpretation of "Ach du lieber Augustine," whenever Bertha, rosy waitress in the little German restaurant, showed her face at the door. For a month it had been a courts.h.i.+p; and the merchant sang often:

_"Ahaha, du libra Ogostine, Ogostine, Ogostine!

Ahaha, du libra Ogostine, Nees coma ross."_

The acquaintance, begun by the song and Pietro's wonderful laugh, had grown tender. The chestnut vender had a way with him; he looked like the "Neapolitan Fisher Lad" of the chromos, and you could have fancied him of two centuries ago, putting a rose in his hair; even as it was, he had the ear-rings. But the smile of him it was that won Bertha, when she came to work in the little restaurant. It was a smile that put the world at its ease; it proclaimed the coming of morning over the meadows, and, taking every bystander into an April friends.h.i.+p, ran on suddenly into a laugh that was like silver, and like a strange puppy's claiming you for the lost master.

So it befell that Bertha was fascinated; that, blus.h.i.+ng, she laughed back to him, and was nothing offended when, at his first sight of her, he rippled out at once into "Ahaha, du libra Ogostine."

Within two weeks he was closing his business (no intricate matter) every evening, to walk home with her, through the September moonlight.

Then extraordinary things happened to the English language.

"I ain'd nefer can like no foreigner!" she often joked back to a question of his. "Nefer, nefer! you t'ink I'm takin' up mit a hant-orkan maan, Mister Toby?"

Whereupon he would carol out the tender taunt, "Ahaha, du libra Ogostine!"

"Yoost a hant-orkan maan!"

"No! _No_! No oragan! I am a greata--greata merchant. Vote a Republican! Polit.i.ts.h.i.+an! To-bigli, Chit.i.tzen Republican.

Naturalasize! March in a parade!"

Never lived native American prouder of his citizens.h.i.+p than this adopted one. Had he not voted at the election? Was he not a member of the great Republican party? He had eagerly joined it, for the reason that he had been a Republican in Italy, and he had drawn with him to the polls his second cousin, Leo Vesschi, and the five other Italians with whom he lived. For this, he had been rewarded by Pixley, his precinct committee-man, who allowed him to carry pink torches in three night processions.

"You keeb oud politigs," said Bertha, earnestly, one evening. "My uncle, Louie Gratz, he iss got a neighbour-lady; her man gone in politigs. After_vorts_ he git it! He iss in der bennidens.h.i.+erry two years. You know why?"

"Democrat!" shouted the chestnut vender triumphantly.

"No, sir! Yoost politigs," replied the unpartisan Bertha. "You keeb oud politigs."

_"Ahaha, du libra Ogostine, Ogostine, Ogostine!

Ahaha, du libra Ogostine, Nees coma ross."_

The song was always a teasing of her and carried all his friendly laughter at her, because of her German ways; but it became softly exultant whenever she betrayed her interest in him.

"Libra Ogostine, she afraid I go penitensh?" he inquired.

"Me!" she jeered with uneasy laughter. "_I_ ain'd care! but you--you don' look oud, you git in dod voikhouse!"

He turned upon her, suddenly, a face like a mother's, and touched her hand with a light caress.

"I stay in a workhouse sevena-hunder' year," he said gently, "you come seeta by window some-a-time."

At this Bertha turned away, was silent for a s.p.a.ce, leaning on the gate-post in front of her uncle's house, whither they were now come. Finally she answered brokenly: "I ain'd sit by no vinder for yoost a jessnut maan." This was her way of stimulating his ambition.

"Ahaha!" he cried. "You don' know? I'm goin' buy beeg stan'! Candy!

Peanut! Banan'! Make some-a-time four dollar a day! 'Tis a greata countra! Bimaby git a store! Ride a buggy! Smoke a cigar! You play piano! Vote a Republican!"

"Toby!"

"Tis true!"

"Toby," she said tearfully; "Toby, you voik hart, und safe your money?"

"You help?" he whispered.

"I help--_you_!" she cried loudly. Then, with a sudden fit of sobbing, she flung open the gate and ran at the top of her speed into the house.

Halcyon the days for Pietro Tobigli, extravagant the jocularity of this betrothed one. And, as his happiness, so did his prosperity increase; the little chestnut furnace became the smallest adjunct of his affairs; for he leaped (almost at one bound) to the proprietors.h.i.+p of a wooden stand, shaped like the crate of an upright piano and backed up against the brick wall of the restaurant--a mercantile house which was closed at night by putting the lid on. All day long Toby's smile arrested pedestrians, and compelled them to buy of him, making his wares sweeter in the mouth. Bertha dwelt in a perpetual serenade: on warm days, when the restaurant doors were open, she could hear him singing, not always "Ogostine," but festal lilts of Italy, liquid and strangely sweet to her; and at such times, when the actual voice was not in her ears, still she blushed with delight to hear in her heart the thrilling echoes of his barcaroles, and found them humming cheerily upon her own lips.

Toby was to save five hundred dollars before they married, a great sum, but they were patient and both worked very hard. The winter would have fallen bitterly upon an outdoor merchant lacking Toby's confident heart, but on the coldest days, when Bertha looked out, she always found him slapping his hands, and trudging up and down in the snow in front of the little box; and, as soon as he caught sight of her--"Aha-ha, du libra Ogostine, Ogostine, Ogostine!"

She saved her own money with German persistence, and on Christmas day her present to her betrothed, in return for a coral pin, was a pair of rubber boots filled with little cakes.

Elysium was the dwelling-place of Pietro Tobigli, though, apparently, he abode in a horrible slum cellar with Leo Vesschi and the five Latti brothers. In this place our purveyor of sweetmeats was the only light. Thither he had carried his songs and his laugh and his furnace when he came from Italy to join Vesschi; and there he remained, partly out of loyalty to his un-prosperous comrades, and partly because his share of the expense was only twenty-five cents a week, and every saving was a saving for Bertha. Every evening, on the homeward walk, the affianced pair pa.s.sed the hideous stairway that led down to the cellar, and Bertha, neat soul, never failed to shudder at it. She did not know that Pietro lived there, for he feared it might distress her; nor could she ever persuade him to tell her where he lived.

Because of this mystery, upon which he merrily insisted, she affected a fear that he would some day desert her. "You don' tell me where you lif, I t'ink you goin' ran away of me, Toby. I vake opp some day; git a ledder dod you gone back home by 'Talian lady dod's grazy 'bout you!"

"Ahaha! Libra Ogostine, you believe I can make a write weet a pen-a-paper? I don' know that-a _how_. Some-a-time you _see_ that gran' palazzo where I leef. Eesa greata-great sooraprise!"

In the gran' palazzo, it was as much as he could do to keep clean his own grim little bunk in the corner. His comrades, sullen, hopeless, came at evening from ten hours' desperate shovelling, and exhibited no ambition for water or brooms, but sat hunched and silent, or morosely muttering and coughing, in the dark room with its sodden earthen floor, stained walls, and one smoky lamp.

To this uncomfortable chamber repaired, one March evening, Mr. Frank Pixley, Republican precinct committee-man, nor was its dinginess an unharmonious setting for that political brilliant. He was a pock-pitted, damp-looking, soiled little fungus of a man, who had attained to his office because, in the dirtiest precinct of the wickedest ward in the city, he had, through the operation of a befitting ingenuity, forced a recognition of his leaders.h.i.+p. From such an office, manned by a Pixley, there leads an upward ramification of wires, invisible to all except manipulators, which extends to higher surfaces. Usually the Pixley is a deep-sea puppet, wholly controlled by the dingily gilded wires that run down to him; but there are times when the Pixley gives forth initial impulses of his own, such as may alter the upper surface; for, in a system of this character, every twitch is felt throughout the whole ramification.

"h.e.l.lo, boys," the committee-man called out with automatic geniality, as he descended the broken steps. "How are ye? All here? That's good; that's the stuff! Good work!"

Only Toby replied with more than an indifferent grunt; but he ran forward, carrying an empty beer keg which he placed as a seat for the guest.

"Aha_ha_, Meesa Peeslay! Make a parade? Torchlight?

Bandaplay--ta ra, la la la? Firework? Fzzz! Boum! Eh?"

The politician responded to Toby's extravagantly friendly laughter with some mechanical cachinnations which, like an obliging salesman, he turned on and off with no effort. "Not by a dern sight!" he answered. "The campaign ain't begun yet."