BOSS GORGETT
I guess I've been what you might call kind of an assistant boss pretty
much all my life; at least, ever since I could vote; and I was
something of a ward-heeler even before that. I don't suppose there's
any way a man of my disposition could have put in his time to less
advantage and greater cost to himself. I've never got a thing by it,
all these years, not a job, not a penny--nothing but injury to my
business and trouble with my wife. _She_ begins going for me,
first of every campaign.
Yet I just can't seem to keep out of it. It takes a hold on a man that
I never could get away from; and when I reach my second childhood and
the boys have turned me out, I reckon I'll potter along trying to look
knowing and secretive, like the rest of the has-beens, letting on as
if I still had a place inside. Lord, if I'd put in the energy at my
business that I've frittered away on small politics! But what's the
use thinking about it?
Plenty of men go to pot horse-racing and stock gambling; and I guess
this has just been my way of working off some of my nature in another
fashion. There's a good many like me, too; not out for office or
contracts, nor anything that you can put your finger on in
particular--nothing except the _game_. Of course, it's a
pleasure, knowing you've got more influence than some, but I believe
the most you ever get out of it is in being able to help your friends,
to get a man you like a job, or a good contract, something he wants,
when he needs it.
I tell you _then's_ when you feel satisfied, and your time don't
seem to have been so much thrown away. You go and buy a higher-priced
cigar than you can afford, and sit and smoke it with your feet out in
the sunshine on your porch railing, and watch your neighbour's
children playing in their yard; and they look mighty nice to you; and
you feel kind, and as if everybody else was.
But that wasn't the way I felt when I helped to hand over to a
reformer the nomination for mayor; then it was just selfish
desperation and nothing else. We had to do it. You see, it was this
way: the other side had had the city for four terms, and, naturally,
they'd earned the name of being rotten by that time. Big Lafe Gorgett
was their best. “Boss Gorgett,” of course our papers called him when
they went for him, which was all the time; and pretty considerable of
a man he was, too. Most people that knew him liked Lafe. I did. But he
got a bad name, as they say, by the end of his fourth term as
Mayor--and who wouldn't? Of course, the cry went up all round that he
and his crowd were making a fat thing out of it, which wasn't so much
the case as that Lafe had got to depending on humouring the gamblers
and the brewers for campaign funds and so forth. In fact, he had the
reputation of running a disorderly town, and the truth is, it
_was_ too wide open.
But _we_ hadn't been much better when we'd had it, before Lafe
beat us and got in; and everybody remembered that. The “respectable
element” wouldn't come over to us strong enough for anybody we could
pick of our own crowd; and so, after trying it on four times, we
started in to play it another way, and nominated Farwell Knowles, who
was already running on an independent ticket, got out by the reform
and purity people. That is: we made him a fusion candidate, hoping to
find some way to control him later. We'd never have done it if we
hadn't thought it was our only hope. Gorgett was too strong, and he
handled the darkeys better than any man I ever knew. He had an
organization for it which we couldn't break; and the coloured voters
really held the balance of power with us, you know, as they do so many
other places near the same size, They were getting pretty well on to
it, too, and cost more every election. Our best chance seemed to be in
so satisfying the “law-and-order” people that they'd do something to
counterbalance this vote--which they never did.
Well, sir, it was a mighty curious campaign. There never really was a
day when we could tell where we stood, for certain. As anybody knows,
the “better element” can't be depended on. There's too many of 'em
forget to vote, and if the weather isn't just right they won't go to
the polls. Some of 'em won't go anyway--act as if they looked down on
politics; say it's only helping one boodler against another. So your
true aristocrat won't vote for either. The real truth is, he don't
_care_. Don't care as much about the management of his city,
State, and country as about the way his club is run. Or he's ignorant
about the whole business, and what between ignorance and indifference
the worse and smarter of the two rings gets in again and old Mr.
Aristocrat gets soaked some more on his sewer assessments. _Then_
he'll holler like a stabbed hand-organ; but he'll keep on talking
about politics being too low a business for a gentleman to mix in,
just the same!
Somebody said a pessimist is a man who has a choice of two evils, and
takes both. There's your man that don't vote.
And the best-dressed wards are the ones that fool us oftenest. We're
always thinking they'll do something, and they don't. But we thought,
when we took Farwell Knowles, that we had 'em at last. Fact is, they
did seem stirred up, too. They called it a “moral victory” when we
were forced to nominate Knowles to have any chance of beating
Gorgett. That was because it was _their_ victory.
Farwell Knowles was a young man, about thirty-two, an editorial writer
on the _Herald_, an independent paper. I'd known him all his
life, and his wife--too, a mighty sweet-looking lady she was. I'd
always thought Farwell was kind of a dreamer, and too excitable; he
was always reading papers to literary clubs, and on the speech-making
side he wasn't so bad--he liked it; but he hadn't seemed to me to know
any more about politics and people than a royal family would. He was
always talking about life and writing about corruption, when, all the
time, so it struck me, it was only books he was really interested in;
and he saw things along book lines. Of course he was a tin god,
politically.
He was for “stern virtue” only, and everlastingly lashed compromise
and temporizing; called politicians all the elegant hard names there
are, in every one of his editorials, especially Lafe Gorgett, whom
he'd never seen. He made mighty free with Lafe, referred to him
habitually as “Boodler Gorgett”, and never let up on him from one
year's end to another.
I was against our adopting him, not only for our own sakes--because I
knew he'd be a hard man to handle--but for Farwell's too. I'd been a
friend of his father's, and I liked his wife--everybody liked his
wife. But the boys overruled me, and I had to turn in and give it to
him.
Not without a lot of misgivings, you can be sure. I had one little
experience with him right at the start that made me uneasy and got me
to thinking he was what you might call too literary, or theatrical, or
something, and that he was more interested in being things than doing
them. I'd been aware, ever since he got back from Harvard, that
_I_ was one of his literary interests, so to speak. He had a way
of talking to me in a _quizzical_, condescending style, in the
belief that he was drawing me out, the way you talk to some old
book-peddler in your office when you've got nothing to do for a while;
and it was easy to see he regarded me as a “character” and thought he
was studying me. Besides, he felt it his duty to study the wickedness
of politics in a Parkhurstian fashion, and I was one of the lost.
One day, just after we'd nominated him, he came to me and said he had
a friend who wanted to meet me. Asked me couldn't I go with him right
away. It was about five in the afternoon; I hadn't anything to do and
said, “Certainly,” thinking he meant to introduce me to some friend of
his who thought I'd talk politics with him. I took that for granted so
much that I didn't ask a question, just followed along up street,
talking weather. He turned in at old General Buskirk's, and may I be
shot if the person he meant wasn't Buskirk's daughter, Bella! He'd
brought me to call on a girl young enough to be my daughter. Maybe you
won't believe I felt like a fool!
I knew Buskirk, of course (he didn't appear), but I hadn't seen Bella
since she was a child. She'd been “highly educated” and had been
living abroad a good deal, but I can't say that my visit made me
_for_ her--not very strong. She was good-looking enough, in her
thinnish, solemn way, but it seemed to me she was kind of overdressed
and too grand. You could see in a minute that she was intense and
dreamy and theatrical with herself and superior, like Farwell; and I
guess I thought they thought they'd discovered they were “kindred
souls,” and that each of them understood (without saying it) that both
of them felt that Farwell's lot in life was a hard one because
Mrs. Knowles wasn't up to him. Bella gave him little, quiet, deep
glances, that seemed to help her play the part of a person
who understood everything--especially him, and reverenced
greatness--especially his. I remember a fellow who called the sort of
game it struck me they were carrying on “those soully flirtations.”
Well, sir, I wasn't long puzzling over why he had brought _me_ up
there. It stuck out all over, though they didn't know it, and would
have been mighty astonished to think that I saw. It was in their
manner, in her condescending ways with me, in her assumption of
serious interest, and in his going through the trick of “drawing me
out,” and exhibiting me to her. I'll have to admit that these young
people viewed me in the light of a “character.” That was the part
Farwell had me there to play.
I can't say I was too pleased with the notion, and I was kind of sorry
for Mrs. Knowles, too. I'd have staked a good deal that my guess was
right, for instance: that Farwell had gone first to this girl for her
congratulations when he got the nomination, instead of to his wife;
and that she felt--or pretended she felt--a soully sympathy with his
ambitions; that she wanted to be, or to play the part of, a woman of
affairs, and that he talked over everything he knew with her. I
imagined they thought they were studying political reform together,
and she, in her novel-reading way, wanted to pose to herself as the
brilliant lady diplomat, kind of a Madam Roland advising statesmen, or
something of that sort. And I was there as part of their political
studies, an object-lesson, to bring her “more closely in touch” (as
Farwell would say) with the realities he had to contend with. I was
one of the “evils of politics,” because I knew how to control a few
wards, and get out the darkey vote almost as well as Gorgett. Gorgett
would have been better, but Farwell couldn't very easily get at him.
I had to sit there for a little while, of course, like a ninny between
them; and I wasn't the more comfortable because I thought Knowles
looked like a bigger fool than I did. Bella's presence seemed to
excite him to a kind of exaltation; he had a dark flush on his face
and his eyes were large and shiny.
I got out as soon as I could, naturally, wondering what my wife would
say if she knew; and while I was fumbling around among the
knick-knacks and fancy things in the hall for my hat and coat, I heard
Farwell get up and cross the room to a chair nearer Bella, and then
she said, in a sort of pungent whisper, that came out to me
distinctly:
“My knight!” That's what she called him. “My knight!” That's what she
said.
I don't know whether I was more disgusted with myself for hearing, or
with old Buskirk who spent his whole time frittering around the club
library, and let his daughter go in for the sort of soulliness she was
carrying on with Farwell Knowles.
* * * * *
Trouble in our ranks began right away. Our nominee knew too much, and
did all the wrong things from the start; he began by antagonizing most
of our old wheel-horses; he wouldn't consult with us, and advised with
his own kind. In spite of that, we had a good organization working for
him, and by a week before election I felt pretty confident that our
show was as good as Gorgett's. It looked like it would be close.
Just about then things happened. We had dropped onto one of Lafe's
little tricks mighty smartly. We got one of his heelers fixed (of
course we usually tried to keep all that kind of work dark from
Farwell Knowles), and this heeler showed the whole business up for a
consideration. There was a precinct certain to be strong for Knowles,
where the balloting was to take place in the office-room of a
hook-and-ladder company. In the corner was a small closet with one
shelf, high up toward the ceiling. It was in the good old free and
easy Hayes and Wheeler times, and when the polls closed at six o'clock
it was planned that the election officers should set the ballot-box up
on this shelf, lock the closet door, and go out for their suppers,
leaving one of each side to watch in the room so that nobody could
open the closet-door with a pass-key and tamper with the ballots
before they were counted. Now, the ceiling over the shelf in the
closet wasn't plastered, and it formed, of course, part of the
flooring in the room above. The boards were to be loosened by a
Gorgett man upstairs, as soon as the box was locked in; he would take
up a piece of planking--enough to get an arm in--and stuff the box
with Gorgett ballots till it grunted. Then he would replace the board
and slide out. Of course, when they began the count our people would
know there was something wrong, but they would be practically up
against it, and the precinct would be counted for Gorgett.
They brought the heeler up to me, not at headquarters (I was city
chairman) but at a hotel room I'd hired as a convenient place for the
more important conferences and to keep out of the way of every
Tom-Dick-and-Harry grafter. Bob Crowder, a ward committee-man,
brought him up and stayed in the room, while the fellow--his name was
Genz--went over the whole thing.
“What do you think of it?” says Bob, when Genz finished. “Ain't it
worth the money? I declare, it's so neat and simple and so almighty
smart besides, I'm almost ashamed some of our boys hadn't thought of
it for us.”
I was just opening my mouth to answer, when there was a signal knock
at the door and a young fellow we had as a kind of watcher in the next
room (opening into the one I used) put his head in and said
Mr. Knowles wanted to see me.
“Ask him to wait a minute,” said I, for I didn't want him to know
anything about Genz. “I'll be there right away.”
Then came Farwell Knowles's voice from the other room, sharp and
excited. “I believe I'll not wait,” says he. “I'll come in there now!”
And that's what he did, pushing by our watcher before I could hustle
Genz into the hall through an outer door, though I tried to. There's
no denying it looked a little suspicious.
Farwell came to a dead halt in the middle of the room.
“I know that person!” he said, pointing at Genz, his brow mighty
black. “I saw him and Crowder sneaking into the hotel by the back way,
half an hour ago, and I knew there was some devilish--”
“Keep your shirt on, Farwell,” said I.
He was pretty hot. “I'll be obliged to you,” he returned, “if you'll
explain what you're doing here in secret with this low hound of
Gorgett's. Do you think you can play with me the way you do with your
petty committee-men? If you do, I'll _show_ you! You're not
dealing with a child, and I'm not going to be tricked or sold out of
this elec--”
I took him by the shoulders and sat him down hard on a cane-bottomed
chair. “That's a dirty thought,” said I, “and if you knew enough to
be responsible I reckon you'd have to account for it. As it is--why,
I don't care whether you apologize or not.”
He weakened right away, or, at least, he saw his mistake. “Then won't
you give me some explanation,” he asked, in a less excitable way, “why
are you closeted here with a notorious member of Gorgett's ring?”
“No,” said I, “I won't.”
“Be careful,” said he. “This won't look well in print.”
That was just so plumb foolish that I began to laugh at him; and when
I got to laughing I couldn't keep up being angry. It _was_
ridiculous, his childishness and suspiciousness. Right there was where
I made my mistake.
“All right,” says I to Bob Crowder, giving way to the impulse. “He's
the candidate. Tell him.”
“Do you mean it?” asks Bob, surprised.
“Yes. Tell him the whole thing.”
So Bob did, helped by Genz, who was more or less sulky, of course; and
is wasn't long till I saw how stupid I'd been. Knowles went straight
up in the air.
“I knew it was a dirty business, politics,” he said, jumping out of
his chair, “but I didn't _realize_ it before. And I'd like to
know,” he went on, turning to me, “how you learn to sit there so
calmly and listen to such iniquities. How do you dull your conscience
so that you can do it? And what course do you propose to follow in the
matter of this confession?”
“Me?” I answered. “Why, I'm going to send supper in to our fellows,
and the box'll never see that closet. The man upstairs may get a
little tired. I reckon the laugh's on Gorgett; it's his scheme and--”
Farwell interrupted me; his face was outrageously red. “_What!_
You actually mean you hadn't intended to expose this infamy?”
“Steady,” I said. I was getting a little hot, too, and talked more
than I ought. “Mr. Genz here has our pledge that he's not given away,
or he'd never have--”
“_Mister_ Genz!” sneered Farwell. “_Mister_ Genz has your
pledge, has he? Allow me to tell you that I represent the people, the
_honest_ people, in this campaign, and that the people and I have
made no pledges to _Mister_ Genz. You've paid the scoundrel--”
“_Here!_” says Genz.
“The scoundrel!” Farwell repeated, his voice rising and rising, “paid
him for his information, and I tell you by that act and your silence
on such a matter you make yourself a party to a conspiracy.”
“Shut the transom,” says I to Crowder.
“_I'm_ under no pledge, I say,” shouted Farwell, “and I do not
compound felonies. You're not conducting my campaign. I'm doing that,
and I don't conduct it along such lines. It's precisely the kind of
fraud and corruption that I intend to stamp out in this town, and this
is where I begin to work.”
“How?” said I.
“You'll see--and you'll see soon! The penitentiaries are built for
just this--”
“_Sh, sh!_” said I, but he paid no attention.
“They say Gorgett owns the Grand Jury,” he went on. “Well, let him!
Within a week I'll be mayor of this town--and Gorgett's Grand Jury
won't outlast his defeat very long. By his own confession this man
Genz is party to a conspiracy with Gorgett, and you and Crowder are
witnesses to the confession. I'll see that you have the pleasure of
giving your testimony before a Grand Jury of determined men. Do you
hear me? And tomorrow afternoon's _Herald_ will have the whole
infamous story to the last word. I give you my solemn oath upon it!”
All three of us, Crowder, Genz, and I, sprang to our feet. We were
considerably worked up, and none of us said anything for a minute or
so, just looked at Knowles.
“Yes, you're a little shocked,” he said. “It's always shocking to men
like you to come in contact with honesty that won't compromise. You
needn't talk to me; you can't say anything that would change me to
save your lives. I've taken my oath upon it, and you couldn't alter me
a hair's breadth if you burned me at a slow fire. Light, light, that's
what you need, the light of day and publicity! I'm going to clear this
town of fraud, and if Gorgett don't wear the stripes for this my
name's not Farwell Knowles! He'll go over the road, handcuffed to a
deputy, before three months are gone. Don't tell me I'm injuring
_you_ and the party by it. Pah! It will give me a thousand more
votes. I'm not exactly a child, my friends! On my honour, the whole
thing will be printed in to-morrow's paper!”
“For God's sake--” Crowder broke out, but Knowles cut him off.
“I bid you good-afternoon,” he said, sharply. We all started toward
him, but before we'd got half across the room he was gone, and the
door slammed behind him.
Bob dropped into a chair; he was looking considerably pale; I guess I
was, too, but Genz was ghastly.
“Let me out of here,” he said in a sick voice. “Let me out of here!”
“Sit down!” I told him.
“Just let me out of here,” he said again. And before I could stop him,
he'd gone, too, in a blind hurry.
Bob and I were left alone, and not talking any.
Not for a while. Then Bob said: “Where do you reckon he's gone?”
“Reckon who's gone?”
“Genz.”
“To see Lafe.”
“What?”
“Of course he has. What else can he do? He's gone up any way. The best
he can do is to try to square himself a little by owning up the whole
thing. Gorgett will know it all any way, tomorrow afternoon, when the
_Herald_ comes out.”
“I guess you're right,” said Bob. “We're done up along with Gorgett;
but I believe that idiot's right, he won't lose votes by playing hob
with _us_. What's to be done?”
“Nothing,” I answered. “You can't head Farwell off. It's all my fault,
Bob.”
“Isn't there any way to get hold of him? A crazy man could see that
his best friend couldn't _beg_ it out of him, and that he
wouldn't spare any of us; but don't you know of some bludgeon we could
hang up over him?”
“Nothing. It's up to Gorgett.”
“Well,” said Bob, “Lafe's mighty smart, but it looks like
God-help-Gorgett now!”
Well, sir, I couldn't think of anything better to do than to go around
and see Gorgett; so, after waiting long enough for Genz to see him and
get away, I went. Lafe was always cool and slow; but I own I expected
to find him flustered, and was astonished to see right away that he
wasn't. He was smoking, as usual, and wearing his hat, as he always
did, indoors and out, sitting with his feet upon his desk, and a
pleasant look of contemplation on his face.
“Oh,” says I, “then Genz hasn't been here?”
“Yes,” says he, “he has. I reckon you folks have 'most spoiled Genz's
usefulness for me.”
“You're taking it mighty easy,” I told him.
“Yep. Isn't it all in the game? What's the use of getting excited
because you've blocked us on one precinct? We'll leave that closet out
of our calculations, that's all.”
“Almighty Powers, I don't mean _that!_ Didn't Genz tell you--”
“About Mr. Knowles and the _Herald_? Oh, yes,” he answered,
knocking the ashes off his cigar quietly. “And about the thousand
votes he'll gain? Oh, yes. And about incidentally showing you and
Crowder up as bribing Genz and promising to protect him--making your
methods public? Oh, yes. And about the Grand Jury? Yes, Genz told
me. And about me and the penitentiary. Yes, he told me. Mr. Knowles is
a rather excitable young man. Don't you think so?”
“Well?”
“Well, what's the trouble?”
“Trouble!” I said. “I'd like to know what you're going to do?”
“What's Knowles going to do?”
“He's sworn to expose the whole deal, as you've just told me you knew;
one of the preliminaries to having us all up before the next Grand
Jury and sending you and Genz over the road, that's all!”
Gorgett laughed that old, fat laugh of his, tilting farther back, with
his hands in his pockets and his eyes twinkling under his last
summer's straw hat-brim.
“He can't hardly afford it, can he,” he drawled, “he being the
representative of the law and order and purity people? They're mighty
sensitive, those folks. A little thing turns 'em.”
“I don't understand,” said I.
“Well, I hardly reckoned you would,” he returned. “But I expect if
Mr. Knowles wants it warm all round, _I'm_ willing. We may be
able to do some of the heating up, ourselves.”
This surprised me, coming from him, and I felt pretty sore. “You mean,
then,” I said, “that you think you've got a line on something our boys
have been planning--like the way we got onto the closet trick--and
you're going to show _us_ up because we can't control Knowles;
that you hold that over me as a threat unless I shut him up? Then I
tell you plainly I know I can't shut him up, and you can go ahead and
do us the worst you can.”
“Whatever little tricks I may or may not have discovered,” he
answered, “that isn't what I mean, though I don't know as I'd be above
making such a threat if I thought it was my only way to keep out of
the penitentiary. I know as well as you do that such a threat would
only give Knowles pleasure. He'd take the credit for forcing me to
expose you, and he's convinced that everything of that kind he does
makes him solider with the people and brings him a step nearer this
chair I'm sitting in, which he regards as a step itself to the
governorship and Heaven knows what not. He thinks he's detached
himself from you and your organization till he stands alone.
_That_ boy's head was turned even before you fellows nominated
him. He's a wonder. I've been noticing him long before he turned up as
a candidate, and I believe the great surprise of his life was that
John the Baptist didn't precede and herald _him_. Oh, no, going
for you wouldn't stop him--not by a thousand miles. It would only do
him good.”
“Well, what _are_ you going to do? Are you going to see him?”
“No, sir!” Lafe spoke sharply.
“Well, well! What?”
“I'm not bothering to run around asking audiences of Farwell
Knowleses; you ought to know that!”
“Given it up?”
“Not exactly. I've sent a fellow around to talk to him.”
“What use will that be?”
Gorgett brought his feet down off the desk with a bang.
“_Then_ he can come to see _me_, if he wants to. D'you
think I've been fool enough not to know what sort of man I was going
up against? D'you think that, knowing him as I do, I've not been ready
for something of this kind? And that's all you'll get out of
_me_, this afternoon!”
And it was all I did.
* * * * *
It may have been about one o'clock, that night, or perhaps a little
earlier, as I lay tossing about, unable to sleep because I was too
much disturbed in my mind--too angry with myself--when there came a
loud, startling ring at the front-door bell. I got up at once and
threw open a window over the door, calling out to know what was
wanted.
“It's I,” said a voice I didn't know--a queer, hoarse voice. “Come
down.”
“Who's 'I'?” I asked.
“Farwell Knowles,” said the voice. “Let me in!”
I started, and looked down.
He was standing on the steps where the light of a street-lamp fell on
him, and I saw even by the poor glimmer that something was wrong; he
was white as a dead man. There was something wild in his attitude; he
had no hat, and looked all mixed-up and disarranged.
“Come down--come down!” he begged thickly, beckoning me with his arm.
I got on some clothes, slipped downstairs without wakening my wife,
lit the hall light, and took him into the library. He dropped in a
chair with a quick breath like a sob, and when I turned from lighting
the gas I was shocked by the change in him since afternoon. I never
saw such a look before. It was like a rat you've seen running along
the gutter side of the curbstone with a terrier after it.
“What's the matter, Farwell?” I asked.
“Oh, my God!” he whispered.
“What's happened?”
“It's hard to tell you,” said he. “Oh, but it's hard to tell.”
“Want some whiskey?” I asked, reaching for a decanter that stood
handy. He nodded and I gave him good allowance.
“Now,” said I, when he'd gulped it down, “let's hear what's turned
up.”
He looked at me kind of dimly, and I'll be shot if two tears didn't
well up in his eyes and run down his cheeks. “I've come to ask you,”
he said slowly and brokenly, “to ask you--if you won't intercede with
Gorgett for me; to ask you if you won't beg him to--to grant me--an
interview before to-morrow noon.”
“_What!_”
“Will you do it?”
“Certainly. Have you asked for an interview with him yourself?”
He struck the back of his hand across his forehead--struck hard, too.
“Have I tried? I've been following him like a dog since five o'clock
this afternoon, beseeching him to give me twenty minutes' talk in
private. He _laughed_ at me! He isn't a man; he's an iron-hearted
devil! Then I went to his house and waited three hours for him. When
he came, all he would say was that you were supposed to be running
this campaign for me, and I'd better consult with you. Then he turned
me out of his house!”
“You seem to have altered a little since this afternoon.” I couldn't
resist that.
“This afternoon!” he shuddered. “I think that was a thousand years
ago!”
“What do you want to see him for?”
“What for? To see if there isn't a little human pity in him for a
fellow-being in agony--to end my suspense and know whether or not he
means to ruin me and my happiness and my home forever!”
Farwell didn't seem to be regarding me so much in the light of a
character as usual; still, one thing puzzled me, and I asked him how
he happened to come to me.
“Because I thought if anyone in the world could do anything with
Gorgett, you'd be the one,” he answered. “Because it seemed to me he'd
listen to you, and because I thought--in my wild clutching at the
remotest hope--that he meant to make my humiliation more awful by
sending me to you to ask you to go back to him for me.”
“Well, well,” I said, “I guess if you want me to be of any use you'll
have to tell me what it's all about.”
“I suppose so,” he said, and choked, with a kind of despairing sound;
“I don't see any way out of it.”
“Go ahead,” I told him. “I reckon I'm old enough to keep my
counsel. Let it go, Farwell.”
“Do you know,” he began, with a sharp, grinding of his teeth, “that
dishonourable scoundrel has had me _watched_, ever since there
was talk of me for the fusion candidate? He's had me followed,
_shadowed_, till he knows more about me than I do myself.”
I saw right there that I'd never really measured Gorgett for as tall
as he really was. “Have a cigar?” I asked Knowles, and lit one
myself. But he shook his head and went on:
“You remember my taking you to call on General Buskirk's daughter?”
“Quite well,” said I, puffing pretty hard.
“An angel! A white angel! And this beast, this _boodler_ has the
mud in his hands to desecrate her white garments!”
“Oh,” says I.
The angel's knight began to pace the room as he talked, clinching and
unclinching his hands, while the perspiration got his hair all
scraggly on his forehead. You see Farwell was doing some suffering and
he wasn't used to it.
“When she came home from abroad, a year ago,” he said, “it seemed to
me that a light came into my life. I've got to tell you the whole
thing,” he groaned, “but it's hard! Well, my wife is taken up with our
little boy and housekeeping,--I don't complain of her, mind that--but
she really hasn't entered into my ambitions, my inner life. She
doesn't often read my editorials, and when she does, she hasn't been
serious in her consideration of them and of my purposes. Sometimes she
differed openly from me and sometimes greeted my work for truth and
light with indifference! I had learned to bear this, and more; to save
myself pain I had come to shrink from exposing my real self to
her. Then, when this young girl came, for the first time in my life I
found real sympathy and knew what I thought I never should know; a
heart attuned to my own, a mind that sought my own ideals, a soul of
the same aspirations--and a perfect faith in what I was and in what it
was my right to attain. She met me with open hands, and lifted me to
my best self. What, unhappily, I did not find at home, I found in
her--encouragement. I went to her in every mood, always to be greeted
by the most exquisite perception, always the same delicate
receptiveness. She gave me a sister's love!”
I nodded; I knew he thought so.
“Well, when I went into this campaign, what more natural than that I
should seek her ready sympathy at every turn, than that I should
consult with her at each crisis, and, when I became the fusion
candidate, that I should go to her with the news that I had taken my
first great step toward my goal and had achieved thus far in my
struggle for the cause of our hearts--reform?”
“You went up to Buskirk's after the convention?” I asked.
“No; the night before.” He took his head in his hands and groaned, but
without pausing in his march up and down the room. “You remember, it
was known by ten o'clock, after the primaries, that I should receive
the nomination. As soon as I was sure, I went to her; and I found her
in the same state of exaltation and pride that I was experiencing
myself. There was _always_ the answer in her, I tell you, always
the response that such a nature as mine craves. She took both my hands
and looked at me just as a proud sister would. 'I _read_ your
news,' she said. 'It is in your face!' Wasn't that touching? Then we
sat in silence for a while, each understanding the other's joy and
triumph in the great blow I had struck for the right. I left very
soon, and she came with me to the door. We stood for a moment on the
step--and--for the first time, the only time in my life--I received
a--a sister's caress.”
“Oh,” said I. I understood how Gorgett had managed to be so calm that
afternoon.
“It was the purest kiss ever given!” Farwell groaned again.
“Who was it saw you?” I asked.
He dropped into a chair and I saw the tears of rage and humiliation
welling up again in his eyes.
“We might as well have been standing by the footlights in a theatre!”
he burst out, brokenly. “Who saw it? Who _didn't_ see it? Gorgett's
sleuth-hound, the man he sent to me this afternoon, for one; the
policeman on the beat that he'd stopped for a chat in front of the
house, for another; a maid in the hall behind us, the policeman's
sweetheart _she_ is, for another! Oh!” he cried, “the desecration!
That one caress, one that I'd thought a sacred secret between us
forever--and in plain sight of those three hideous vulgarians, all
belonging to my enemy, Gorgett! Ah, the horror of it--what _horror_!”
Farwell wrung his hands and sat, gulping as if he were sick, without
speaking for several moments.
“What terms did the man he sent offer from Gorgett?” I asked.
“_No_ terms! He said to go ahead and print my story about the closet;
it was a matter of perfect indifference to him; that he meant to print
this about me in their damnable party-organ tomorrow, in any event,
and only warned me so that I should have time to prepare Miss Buskirk.
Of course he don't care! _I'll_ be ruined, that's all. Oh, the
hideous injustice of it, the unreason! Don't you see the frightful
irony of it? The best thing in my life, the widest and deepest; my
friendship with a good woman becomes a joke and a horror! Don't you
see that the personal scandal about me absolutely undermines me and
nullifies the political scandal of the closet affair? Gorgett will
come in again and the Grand Jury would laugh at any attack on him. I'm
ruined for good, for good and all, for good and all!”
“Have you told Miss Buskirk?”
He uttered a kind of a shriek. “_No!_ I can't! How could I? What do
you think I'm made of? And there's her father--and all her relatives,
and mine, and my wife--my wife! If she leaves me--”
A fit of nausea seemed to overcome him and he struggled with it,
shivering. “My God! Do you think I can _face_ it? I've come to you for
help in the most wretched hour of my life--all darkness, darkness!
Just on the eve of triumph to be stricken down--it's so cruel, so
devilish! And to think of the horrible comic-weekly misery of it,
caught kissing a girl, by a policeman and his sweetheart, the
chambermaid! Ugh! The vulgar ridicule--the hideous laughter!” He
raised his hands to me, the most grovelling figure of a man I ever
saw.
“Oh, for God's sake, help me, help me....”
Well, sir, it was sickening enough, but after he had gone, and I
tumbled into bed again, I thought of Gorgett and laughed myself to
sleep with admiration.
When Farwell and I got to Gorgett's office, fairly early the next
morning, Lafe was sitting there alone, expecting us, of course, as I
knew he would be, but in the same characteristic, lazy attitude I'd
found him in, the day before; feet up on the desk, hat-brim tilted
'way forward, cigar in the right-hand corner of his mouth, his hands
in his pockets, his double-chin mashing down his limp collar. He
didn't even turn to look at us as we came in and closed the door.
“Come in, gentlemen, come in,” says he, not moving. “I kind of thought
you'd be along, about this time.”
“Looking for us, were you?” I asked.
“Yes,” said he. “Sit down.”
We did; Farwell looking pretty pale and red-eyed, and swallowing a
good deal.
There was a long, long silence. We just sat and watched
Gorgett. _I_ didn't want to say anything; and I believe Farwell
couldn't. It lasted so long that it began to look as if the little
blue haze at the end of Lafe's cigar was all that was going to
happen. But by and by he turned his head ever so little, and looked at
Knowles.
“Got your story for the _Herald_ set up yet?” he asked.
Farwell swallowed some more and just shook his head.
“Haven't begun to work up the case for the Grand Jury yet?”
“No,” answered Farwell, in almost a whisper, his head hanging.
“Why,” Lafe said, in a tone of quiet surprise; “you haven't given all
that up, have you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, ain't that strange?” said Lafe. “What's the trouble?”
Knowles didn't answer. In fact, I felt mighty sorry for him.
All at once, Gorgett's manner changed; he threw away his cigar, the
only time I ever saw him do it without lighting another at the end of
it. His feet came down to the floor and he wheeled round on Farwell.
“I understand your wife's a mighty nice lady, Mr. Knowles.”
Farwell's head sank lower till we couldn't see his face, only his
fingers working kind of pitifully.
“I guess you've had rather a bad night?” said Gorgett, inquiringly.
“Oh, my God!” The words came out in a whisper from under Knowles's
tilted hat-brim.
“I believe I'd advise you to stick to your wife,” Gorgett went on,
quietly, “and let politics alone. Somehow I don't believe you're the
kind of man for it. I've taken considerable interest in you for some
time back, Mr. Knowles, though I don't suppose you've noticed it until
lately; and I don't believe you understand the game. You've said some
pretty hard things in your paper about me; you've been more or less
excitable in your statements; but that's all right. What I don't like
altogether, though, is that it seems to me you've been really tooting
your own horn all the time--calling everybody dishonest and
scoundrels, to shove _yourself_ forward. That always ends in sort
of a lonely position. I reckon you feel considerably lonely, just now?
Well, yesterday, I understand you were talking pretty free about the
penitentiary. Now, that ain't just the way to act, according to my
notion. It's a bad word. Here we are, he and I”--he pointed to
me--“carrying on our little fight according to the rules, enjoying it
and blocking each other, gaining a point here and losing one there,
everything perfectly good-natured, when _you_ turn up and begin
to talk about the penitentiary! That ain't quite the thing. You see
words like that are liable to stir up the passions. It's dangerous.
You were trusted, when they told you the closet story, to regard it as
a confidence--though they didn't go through the form of pledging
you--because your people had given their word not to betray Genz. But
you couldn't see it and there you went, talking about the Grand Jury
and stripes and so on, stirring up passions and ugly feelings. And I
want to tell you that the man who can afford to do that has to be
mighty immaculate himself. The only way to play politics, whatever
you're _for_, is to learn the game first. Then you'll know how
far you can go and what your own record will stand. There ain't a man
alive whose record will stand too much, Mr. Knowles--and when you get
to thinking about that and what your own is, it makes you feel more
like treating your fellow-sinners a good deal gentler than you would
otherwise. Now _I've_ got a wife and two little girls, and my old
mother's proud of me (though you wouldn't think it) and they'd hate it
a good deal to see me sent over the road for playing the game the best
I could as I found it.”
He paused for a moment, looking sad and almost embarrassed. “It ain't
any great pleasure to me,” he said, “to think that the people have let
it get to be the game that it is. But I reckon it's good for
_you_. I reckon the best thing that ever happened to you is
having to come here this morning to ask mercy of a man you looked down
on.”
Farwell shifted a little in his chair, but he didn't speak, and
Gorgett went on:
“I suppose you think it's mighty hard that your private character
should be used against you in a political question by a man you call a
public corruptionist. But I'm in a position where I can't take any
chances against an antagonist that won't play the game my way. I had
to find your vulnerable point to defend myself, and, in finding it, I
find that there's no need to defend myself any longer, because it
makes all your weapons ineffective. I believe the trouble with you,
Mr. Knowles, is that you've never realized that politicians are human
beings. But we are: we breathe and laugh and like to do right, like
other folks. And, like most men, you've thought you were different
from other men, and you aren't. So, here you are. I believe you said
you'd had a hard night?”
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
shining 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. Nobody'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 courtship; 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 friendship, 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, blushing, 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! Polititshian! To-bigli, Chititzen Republican.
Naturalasize! March in a parade!”
Never lived native American prouder of his citizenship 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 bennidenshierry
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 space, 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 proprietorship
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 passed 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 leadership. 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.
“Hello, 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.”
“Champagne?” inquired Tobigli politely.
“Campaign, campaign,” explained Pixley. “Not much champagne in
yours!” he chuckled beneath his breath. “Blame lucky to git Chicago
bowl!”
“What is that, that campaign?”
“Why--why, it's the campaign. Workin' up public sentiment; gittin' you
boys in line, 'lect-ioneerin'--fixin' it _right_.”
Tobigli shook his head. “Campaign?” he repeated.
“Why--Gee, _you_ know! Free beer, cigars, speakin', handshaking,
paradin'--”
“Ahaha!” The merchant sprang to his feet with a shout. “Yes!
Hoor-r-ra! Vote a Republican! Dam-a Democrat!”
“That's it,” replied the committee-man somewhat languidly. “You see,
this is a Republican precinct, and it turns the ward--”
“Allaways a Republican!” vociferated Pietro. “That eesa right?”
“Well,” said the other, “of course, whichever way you go, you want to
follow your precinct committee-man--that's me.”
“Yess! Vote a Republican.”
Pixley looked about the room, his little red eyes peering out cannily
from under his crooked brows at each of the sulky figures in the damp
shadows.
“You boys all vote the way Pete says?” he asked.
“Vote same Pietro,” answered Vesschi. “Allaways.”
“Allaways a Republican,” added Pietro sparkingly, with abundant
gesture. “'Tis a greata-great countra. Republican here same a
Republican at home--eena Etallee. Republican eternall! All good
Republican eena thees house! Hoor-r-ra!”
“Well,” said Pixley, with a furtiveness half habit, as he rose to go,
“of course, you want to keep your eye on your committee-man, and kind
of foller along with him, whatever he does. That's me.” He placed a
dingy bottle on the keg. “I jest dropped in to see how you boys were
gittin' along--mighty tidy little place you got here.” He changed the
stub of his burnt-out cigar to the other side of his mouth, shifting
his eyes in the opposite direction, as he continued benevolently: “I
thought I'd look in and leave this bottle o' gin fer ye, with my
compliments. I'll be around ag'in some evenin', and I reckon before
'lection day comes there may be somep'n doin'--I might have better fer
ye than a bottle. Keep your eye on me, boys, an' foller the
leader. That's the idea. So long!”
“Vote a Republican!” Pietro shouted after him gaily.
Pixley turned.
“Jest foller yer leader,” he rejoined. “That's the way to learn
politics, boys.”
Now as the rough spring wore on into the happier season, with the days
like spiced warm wine, when people on the street are no longer driven
by the weather but are won by it to loiter; now, indeed, did commerce
at Toby's new stand so mightily thrive that, when summer came, Bertha
was troubled as to the safety of Toby's profits.
“You yoost put your money by der builtun-loan 'sociation, Toby,” she
advised gently. “Dey safe ut fer you.”
“T'ree hunder' fifta dolla--_no_!” answered her betrothed. “I
keep in de pock'!” He showed her where the bills were pinned into his
corduroy waistcoat pocket. “See! Eesa _yau!_ Onna my heart, libra
Ogostine!”
“Toby, uf you ain'd dake ut by der builtun-loan, _blease_ put ut
in der bink?”
“I keep!” he repeated, shaking his head seriously. “In t'ree-four
mont' eesa five-hunder-dolla. Nobody but me eesa tross weet that
money.”
Nor could Bertha persuade him. It was their happiness he watched
over. Who to guard it as he, the dingy, precious parcel of bills? He
pictured for himself a swampy forest through which he was laying a
pathway to Bertha, and each of the soiled green notes that he pinned
in his waistcoat was a strip of firm ground he had made, over which he
advanced a few steps nearer her. And Bertha was very happy, even
forgetting, for a while, to be afraid of the smallpox, which had
thrown out little flags, like auction signs, here and there about the
city.
When the full heat of summer came, Pietro laughed at the dog-days; and
it was Bertha's to suffer in the hot little restaurant; but she smiled
and waved to Pietro, so that he should not know. Also she made him
sell iced lemonade and birch beer, which was well for the corduroy
waistcoat pocket. Never have you seen a more alluring merchant. One
glance toward the stand; you caught that flashing smile, the owner of
it a-tip-toe to serve you; and Pietro managed, too, by a light jog to
the table on which stood his big, bedewed, earthen jars, that you
became aware of the tinkle of ice and a cold, liquid murmur--what
mortal could deny the inward call and pass without stopping to buy?
There fell a night in September when Bertha beheld her lover
glorious. She had been warned that he was to officiate in the great
opening function of the campaign; and she stood on the corner for an
hour before the head of the procession appeared. On they
came--Pietro's party, three thousand strong; brass bands, fireworks,
red fire, tumultuous citizens, political clubs, local potentates in
open carriages, policemen, boys, dogs, bicycles--the procession doing
all the cheering for itself, the crowds of spectators only feebly
responding to this enthusiasm, as is our national custom. At the end
of it all marched a plentiful crew of tatterdemalions, a few bleared
white men, and the rest negroes. They bore aloft a crazy transparency,
exhibiting the legend:
“FRANK PIXLEY'S HARD-MONEY LEAGUE.
WE STAND FOR OUR PRINCIPALS.
WE ARE SOLLID!
NO FOOLING THE PEOPLE GOES!
WE VOTE AS ONE MAN FOR
TAYLOR P. SINGLETON!”
Bertha's eyes had not rested upon Toby where they innocently sought
him, in the front ranks, even scanning the carriages, seeking him in
all positions which she conceived as highest in honour, and she would
have missed him altogether, had not there reached her, out of chaotic
clamours, a clear, high, rollicking tenor:
_“Ahaha! du libra Ogostine,
Ogostine, Ogostine!
Ahaha! du libra Ogostine,
Nees coma ross!”_
Then the eager eyes found their pleasure, for there, in the last line
of Pixley's pirates, the very tail of the procession, danced Pietro
Tobigli, waving his pink torch at her, proud, happy, triumphant, a
true Republican, believing all company equal in the republic, and the
rear rank as good as the first.
“Vote a Republican!” he shouted. “Republican--Republican eternall!”
Strangely enough, a like fervid protestation (vociferated in greeting)
evoked no reciprocal enthusiasm in the breast of Mr. Pixley, when the
committee-man called upon Toby and his friends at their apartment one
evening, a fortnight later.
“That's right,” he responded languidly. “That's right in gineral, I
_should_ say. Cert'nly, in _gineral_, I ain't got no quarrel
with no man's Republicanism. But this here's kind of a put-tickler
case, boys. The election's liable to be mighty close.”
“Republican win!” laughed Toby. “Meelyun man eena parade!”
Mr. Pixley's small eyes lowered furtively. He glanced once toward the
door, stroked his stubby chin, and answered softly: “Don't you be too
sure of that, young feller. Them banks is fightin' each other ag'in!”
“Bank? Fight? W'at eesa that?” inquired the merchant, with an entirely
blank mind.
“There's one thing it _ain't_,” replied the other, in the same
confidential tone. “It ain't no two-by-four campaign. All I got to say
to you boys is: 'Foller yer leader'--and you'll wear pearl
collar-buttons!”
“Vote a Republican,” interjected Leo Vesschi gutturally.
The furtiveness of Mr. Pixley increased.
“Well--mebbe,” he responded, very deliberately. “I reckon I better
put you boys next, right now's well's any other time. Ain't nothin'
ever gained by not bein' open 'n' above-board; that's my motto, and I
ack up to it. You kin ast 'em, jest ast the boys, and you'll hear it
from each-an-dall: 'Frank Pixley's _square_!' That's what they'll
tell ye. Now see here, this is the way it is. I ain't worryin' much
about who goes to the legislature, or who's county-commissioners, nor
none o' _that. Why_ ain't I worryin'? Because it's picayune. It's
peanut politics. It ain't where the money is. No, sir, this campaign
is on the treasurership. Taylor P. Singleton is runnin' fer treasurer
on the Republican ticket, and Gil. Maxim on the Democratic. But that
ain't where the fight is.” Mr. Pixley spat contemptuously. “Pah!
whichever of 'em gits it won't no more'n draw his salary. It's the
banks. If Singleton wins out, the Washington National gits the use of
the county's money fer the term; if Maxim's elected, Florenheim's bank
gits it. Florenheim laid down the cash fer Maxim's nomination, and the
Washington National fixed it fer Singleton. And it's big money, don't
you git no wrong idea about _that_!”
“Vote a Republican,” said Toby politely.
A look of pain appeared upon the brow of the committee-man.
“I reckon I ain't hardly made myself clear,” he observed, somewhat
plaintively. “Now here, you listen: I reckon it would be kind of resky
to trust you boys to scratch the ticket--it's a mixed up business,
anyway--”
“Vote a straight!” cried Pietro, nodding his head,
cheerfully. “_Yess!_ I teach Leo; yess, teach all these”--he
waved his hands to indicate the melancholy listeners--“teach them
all. Stamp in a circle by that eagle. Vote a Republican!”
“What I was goin' to say,” went on the official, exhibiting tokens of
impatience and perturbation, “was that if we _should_ make any
switch this year, I guess you boys would have to switch straight.”
“'Tis true!” was the hearty response. “Vote a straight
Republican. Republican eternall!”
Pixley wiped his forehead with a dirty handkerchief, and scratched his
head. “See here,” he said, after a pause, to Toby. “I've got to go
down to Collins's saloon, and I'd like to have you come along. Feel
like going?”
“Certumalee,” answered Toby with alacrity, reaching for his hat.
But no one could have been more surprised than the chestnut vender
when, on reaching the vacant street, his companion glancing cautiously
about, beckoned him into the darkness of an alley-way, and,
noiselessly upsetting a barrel, indicated it as a seat for both.
“Here,” said Pixley, “I reckon this is better. Jest two men by
theirselves kin fix up a thing like this a lot quicker, and I seen you
didn't want to talk too much before _them_. You make your own
deal with 'em afterwards, or none at all, jest as you like! They'll do
whatever you say, anyway. I sized you up to run _that_ bunch,
first time I ever laid eyes on the outfit. Now see here, Pete, you
listen to me. I reckon I kin turn a little trick here that'll do you
some good. You kin bet I see that the men I pick fer my leaders--like
you, Pete--git their rights! Now here: there's you and the other six,
that's seven; it'll be three dollars in your pocket if you deliver the
goods.”
“No! no!” said Pietro in earnest protestation. “We seven a good
Republican. We vote a Republican--same las' time, all a time. Eesa not
a need to pay us to vote a Republican. You save that a money, Meesa
Peaslay.”
“You don't understand,” groaned Pixley, with an inclination to weep
over the foreigner's thick-headedness. “There's a chance fer a big
deal here for all the boys in the precinck. Gil. Maxim's backers'll
pay _big_ fer votes enough to swing it. The best of 'em don't
know where they're at, I tell you. Now here, you see here”--he took an
affectionate grip of Pietro's collar--“I'm goin' to have a talk with
Maxim's manager to-morrow, I've had one or two a'ready, and I'll put
up the price all round on them people. It's no more'n right, when you
count up what we're doin' fer them. Look here, you swing them six in
line and march 'em up, and all of ye stamp the rooster instead of the
eagle this time, and help me to show Maxim that Frank Pixley's there
with the goods, and I'll hand you a five-dollar bill and a full box o'
_ci_gars, see?”
Pietro nodded and smiled through the darkness. “Stamp that eagle!” he
answered, “Eesa all _right_, Meesa Peasley. Don't you have
afraid. We all seven a good Republican! Stamp that eagle! Hoor-r-ra!
Republican _eternall_!”
Pixley was left sitting on the barrel, looking after the light figure
of the young man joyously tripping back to the cellar, and turning to
wave a hand in farewell from the street.
“Well, I _am_ damned!” the politician remarked, with unwitting
veracity. “Did the dern Dago bluff me, does he want more, er did he
reely didn't un'erstand fer honest?” Then, as he took up his way,
crossing the street at the warning of some red and green smallpox
lanterns, “I'll git those seven votes, though, _someway_. I'm out
fer a record this time, and I'll _git_ 'em!”
Bertha went with her fiancé to select the home that was to be
theirs. They found a clean, tidy, furnished room, with a canary bird
thrown in, and Toby, in the wild joy of his heart, seized his
sweetheart round the waist and tried to force her to dance under the
amazed eyes of the landlady.
“You yoost behafed awful!” exclaimed the blushing waitress that
evening, with tears of laughter at the remembrance.
She was as happy as her lover, except for two small worries that she
had: she feared that her uncle, Louie Gratz, with whom she lived, or
one of her few friends, might, when they found she was to marry Toby,
allude to him as a “Dago,” in which case she had an intuition that he
would slap the offender; and she was afraid of the smallpox, which had
caused the quarantine of two shanties not far from her uncle's house.
The former of her fears she did not mention, but the latter she spoke
of frequently, telling Pietro how Gratz was panic-stricken, and talked
of moving, and how glad she was that Toby's “gran' palazzo” was in
another quarter of the city, as he had led her to believe. Laughing
her humours almost away, he told her that the red and green lanterns,
threatening murkily down the street, were for only wicked ones, like
that Meesa Peaslay, for whom she discovered, Pietro's admiration had
diminished. And when she thought of the new home--far across the city
from the ugly flags and lanterns--the tiny room with its engraving of
the “Rock of Ages” and its canary, she forgot both her troubles
entirely; for now, at last, the marvellous fact was assured: the five
hundred dollars was pinned into the waistcoat pocket, lying upon
Pietro's heart day and night, the precious lump that meant to him
Bertha and a home. The good Republican set election-day for the
happiest holiday of his life, for that would be his wedding-day.
He left her at her own gate, the evening before that glorious day, and
sang his way down the street, feeling that he floated on the airy
uplift of his own barcarole beneath sapphire skies, for Bertha had put
her arms about him at last.
“Toby,” she said, “lieber Toby, I am so all-lofing by you--you are
sitch a good maan--I am so--so--I am yoost all-_lofing_ by you!”
And she cried heartily upon his shoulder. “Toby, uf you ain'd here for
me to-morrow by eckseckly dwelf o'glock, uf you are von minutes late,
I'm goin' yoost fall down deat! Don' you led nothings happen mit you,
Toby.”
And she had whispered to him, in love with his old tender mockery of
her, to sing “Libra Ogostine” for her before he said good-night.
Mr. Pixley, again seated upon the barrel which he had used for his
interview with Toby, beheld the transfigured face of the young man as
the chestnut vender passed the mouth of the alley, and the
committee-man released from his soul a burdening profanity in the ear
of his companion and confidant, a policeman who would be on duty in
Pixley's precinct on the morrow, and who had now reported for
instructions not necessarily received in a too public rendezvous.
“After I talked to him out here on this very barrel,” said Pixley, his
anathema concluded, “I raised the bid on him; yessir, you kin skin me
fer a dead skunk if I didn't offer him ten dollars and a box of
_cigars_ fer the bunch; and him jest settin' there laughin' like
a plumb fool and tellin' me I didn't need to worry, they'd all vote
Republican fer nothin'! Talked like a parrot: 'Vote a Republican!
Republican eternal!' _Republican_! Faugh, he don't know no more
why he's a Republican than a yeller dog'd know! I went around
to-night, when he was out, thought mebbe I could fix it up with the
others. No, _sir_! Couldn't git nothing out of 'em except some
more parrot-cackle: 'Vote same Petro. All a good Republican!' It's
enough to sicken a man!”
“Do we need his gang bad?” inquired the policeman deferentially.
“I need everybody bad! This is a good-sized job fer me, and I want to
do it right. Throwin' the precinck to Maxim is goin' to do me
_some_ wrong with the Republican crowd, even if they don't git on
that it was throwed; and I want to throw it _good_! I couldn't
feel like I'd done right if I didn't. I've give my word that they'll
git a majority of sixty-eight votes, and that'll be jest twicet as
much in my pocket as a plain majority. And I want them seven Dagoes!
I've give up on _votin_' 'em; it can't be done. It'd make a saint
cuss to try to reason with 'em, and it's no good. They can't be
fooled, neither. They know where the polls is, and they know how to
vote--blast the Australian ballot system! The most that can be done is
to keep 'em away from the polls.”
“Can't you git 'em out of town in the morning?”
“D'you reckon I ain't tried that? _No_, sir! That Dago wouldn't
take a pass to _heaven_! Everything else is all right. Doc
Morgan's niggers stays right here and _votes_. I _know_ them
boys, and they'll walk up and stamp the rooster all right, all
right. Them other niggers, that Hell-Valley gang, ain't that kind; and
them and Tooms's crowd's goin' to be took out to Smelter's ice-houses
in three express wagons at four o'clock in the morning. It ain't goin'
to cost over two dollars a head, whiskey and all. Then, Dan Kelly is
fixed, and the Loo boys. Mike, I don't like to brag, and I ain't
around throwin' no bokays at myself as a reg'lar thing, but I want to
say right, here, there ain't another man in this city--no, nor the
State neither--that could of worked his precinck better'n I have
this. I tell you, I'm within five or six votes of the majority they
set for their big money.”
“Have you give the Dagoes up altogether?”
“No, by----!” cried the committee-man harshly, bringing his dirty fist
down on the other's knee. “Did you ever hear of Frank Pixley
weakenin'? Did you ever see the man that said Frank Pixley wasn't
game?” He rose to his feet, a ragged and sinister silhouette against
the sputtering electric light at the alley mouth. “Didn't you ever
hear that Frank Pixley had a barrel of schemes to any other man's
bucket o' wind? What's Frank Pixley's repitation, lemme ast you that?
I git what I go after, don't I? Now look here, you listen to me,” he
said, lowering his voice and shaking a bent forefinger earnestly in
the policeman's face; “I'm goin' to turn the trick. And I _ought_
to do it, too. That there Pete, he ain't worth the powder to blow him
up--you couldn't learn him no politics if you set up with him night
after night fer a year. Didn't I _try? Try_? I dern near bust my
head open jest thinkin' up ways to make the flathead _see_. And
he wouldn't make no effort, jest set there and parrot out 'Vote a
Republican!' He's ongrateful, that's what he is. Well, him and them
other Dagoes are goin' to stay at home fer two weeks, beginnin'
to-night.”
“I'll be dogged if I see how,” said the policeman, lifting his helmet
to scratch his head.
“I'll show you how. I don't claim no credit fer the idea, I ain't
around blowin' my own horn too often, but I'd like fer somebody to
jest show me any other man in this city could have thought it out! I'd
like to be showed jest one, that's all, jest one! Now, you look here;
you see that nigger shanty over there, with the smallpox lanterns
outside?”
The policeman shivered slightly. “Yes.”
“Look here; they're rebuildin' the pest-house, ain't they?”
“Yes.”
“Leavin' smallpox patients in their own holes under quarantine guard
till they git a place to put 'em, ain't they?”
“Yes.”
“You know how many niggers in that shack?”
“Four, ain't they?”
“Yessir, four of 'em. One died to-night, another's goin' to, another
ain't tellin' which way he's goin' yit; and the last one, Joe
Cribbins, was the first to take it; and he's almost plumb as good as
ever ag'in. He's up and around the house, helpin' nurse the sick ones,
and fit fer hard labour. Now look here; that nigger does what I
_tell_ him and he does it quick--see? Well, he knows what I want
him to do to-night. So does Charley Gruder, the guard over
there. Charley's fixed; I seen to that; and he knows he ain't goin' to
lose no job fer the nigger's gittin' out of the back winder to go make
a little sociable call this evening.”
“What!” exclaimed the policeman, startled; “Charley ain't goin' to let
that nigger out!”
“Ain't he? Oh, you needn't worry, he ain't goin' _fur_! All he's
waiting fer is fer you to give the signal.”
“Me!” The man in the helmet drew back.
“Yessir, you! You walk out there and lounge up towards the drug-store
and jest look over to Charley and nod twice. Then you stand on the
corner and watch and see what you see. When you _see_ it, you
yell fer Charley and git into the drug store telephone, and call up
the health office and git their men up here and into that Dago cellar
like hell! The nigger'll be there. They don't know him, and he'll just
drop in to try and sell the Dagoes some policy tickets. You understand
_me_?”
“Mother Mary in heaven!” The policeman sprang up. “What are you going
to do?”
“What am I going to do?” shrilled the other, the light of a monstrous
pride in his little eyes. “I'm goin' to quarantine them Dagoes fer
fourteen days. They'll learn some politics before I git through with
'em. Maybe they'll know enough United States language to foller their
leader next time!”
“By all that's mighty, Pixley,” said the policeman, with an admiration
that was almost reverence, “you _are_ a schemer!”
“Mein Gott!” screeched Bertha's uncle, snapping his teeth fiercely on
his pipe-stem, as he flung open the door of the girl's room. “You want
to disgraze me mit der whole neighbourhoot, 'lection night? Quid ut!
Stob ut! Beoples in der streed stant owidside und litzen to dod
grying. You _voult_ goin' to marry mit a Dago mens, voult you!
Ha, ha! Soife you right! He run away!” The old man laughed unamiably.
“Ha, ha! Dago mens foolt dod smard Bertha. Dod's pooty tough. But,
bei Gott, you stop dod noise und ect lige a detzent voomans, or you
goin' haf droubles mit your uncle Louie Gratz!”
But Bertha, an undistinguishable heap on the floor of the unlit room,
only gasped brokenly for breath and wept on.
“Ach, ach, ach, lieber Gott in Himmel!” sobbed Bertha. “Why didn't
Toby come for me? Ach, ach! What iss happened mit Toby? Somedings iss
happened--I _know_ ut!”
“Ya, ya!” jibed Gratz; “somedings iss heppened, I bet you! Brop'ly
he's got anoder vife, dod's vot heppened! Brop'ly _leffing_ ad
you mit anoder voomans! Vot for dit he nefer tolt you vere he lif? So
you voultn't ketch him; dod's der reason! You're a pooty vun,
_you_ are! Runnin' efter a doity Dago mens! Bei Gott! you bedder
git oop und back your glo'es, und stob dod gryin'. I'm goin' to mofe
owid to-morrow; und you kin go verefer you blease. I ain'd goin' to
sday anoder day in sitch a neighbourhoot. Fife more smallpox lanterns
yoost oop der streed. I'm goin' mofe glean to der oder ent of der
city. Und you can come by me or you can run efter your Dago mens und
his voomans! Dod's why he dittn't come to marry you, you grazy--ut's a
voomans!”
“No, _no_,” screamed Bertha, stopping her ears with her
forefingers. “Lies, lies, lies!”
A slatternly negro woman dawdled down the street the following
afternoon, and, encountering a friend of like description near the
cottage which had been tenanted by Louie Gratz and his niece, paused
for conversation.
“Howdy, honey,” she began, leaning restfully against the
gate-post. “How's you ma?”
“She right spry,” returned the friend. “How you'self an' you good
husban', Miz Mo'ton?”
Mrs. Morton laughed cheerily. “Oh, he enjoyin' de 'leckshum. He 'uz on
de picnic yas'day, to Smeltuh's ice-houses; an' 'count er Mist'
Maxim's gittin' 'lected, dey gi'n him bottle er whiskey an' two
dollahs. He up at de house now, entuhtainin' some ge'lemenfrien's
wi'de bones, honey.”
“Um hum.” The other lady sighed reflectively. “I on'y wisht my po'
husban' could er live to enjoy de fruits er politics.”
“Yas'm,” returned Mrs. Morton. “You right. It are a great intrus' in
a man's life. Dat what de ornator say in de speech f'm de back er de
groce'y wagon, yas'm, a great intrus' in a man's life. Decla'h, I
b'lieve Goe'ge think mo' er politics dan he do er me! Well ma'am,” she
concluded, glancing idly up and down the street and leaning back more
comfortably against the gatepost, “I mus' be goin' on my urrant.”
“What urrant's dat?” inquired the widow.
“Mighty quare urrant,” replied Mrs. Morton. “Mighty quare urrant,
honey. You see back yon'eh dat new smallpox flag?”
“Sho.”
“Well ma'am, night fo' las', dat Joe Cribbins, dat one-eye nigger what
sell de policy tickets, an's done be'n havin' de smallpox, he crope
out de back way, when's de gyahd weren't lookin', an', my Lawd, ef dey
ain't ketch him down in dat Dago cellar, tryin' sell dem Dagoes policy
tickets! Yahah, honey!” Mrs. Morton threw back her head to
laugh. “Ain't dat de beatenest nigger, dat one-eyed Joe?”
“What den, Miz Mo'ton?” pursued the listener.
“Den dey quahumteem dem Dagoes; sot a gyahd dah: you kin see him
settin' out dah now. Well ma'am, 'cordin' to dat gyahd, one er dem
Dagoes like ter go inter fits all day yas'day. Dat man hatter go in
an' quiet him down ev'y few minute'. Seem 't he boun' sen' a message
an' cain't git no one to ca'y it fer him. De gyahd, he cain't go; he
willin' sen' de message, but cain't git nobody come nigh enough de
place fer to tell 'em what it is. 'Sides, it 'leckshum-day, an' mos'
folks hangin' 'roun' de polls. Well ma'am, dis aft'noon, I so'nter'n
by, an' de gyahd holler out an' ask me do I want make a dollah, an' I
say I do. I ain't 'fraid no smallpox, done had it two year' ago. So I
say I take de message.”
“What is it?”
“Law, honey, it ain't wrote. Dem Dago folks hain't got no writin' ner
readin'. Dey mo' er less like de beasts er de fiel'. Dat message by
word er mouf. I goin' tell nuffin 'bout de quahumteem. I'm gotter
say: 'Toby sen' word to liebuh Augustine dat she needn' worry. He li'l
sick, not much, but de doctah ain' 'low him out fer two weeks; an'
'mejutly at de en' er dat time he come an' git her an' den kin go on
home wheres de canary bu'd is.' Honey, you evah hyuh o' sich a
foolishness? But de gyahd, he say de message gotter be ca'yied dass
dataways.”
“Lan' name!” ejaculated the widow. “Who dat message to?”
“Hit to a Dutch gal.”
“My Lawd!” The widow lifted amazed hands to heaven. “De impidence er
dem Dagoes! _Little_ mo' an' dey'll be sen'in' messages to you
er me!--What her name?”
“Name Bertha Grass,” responded Mrs. Morton, “an', nigh as I kin make
out, she live in one er dese little w'ite-paint cottages, right 'long
yere.”
“Yas'm! I knows dat Dutch gal, ole man Grass, de tailor, dass his
niece. W'y, dey done move out dis mawn, right f'um dis ve'y house you
stan'in in front de gate of. De ole man skeered er de smallpox, an' he
mad, too, an' de neighbuhs ask him whuh he gwine, he won't tell; so
mad he won't speak to nobody. None on 'em 'round hyuh knows an' dey's
considabul cyu'us 'bout it, too. Dey gone off in bofe d'rections--him
one way, her 'nother. 'Peah lak dey be'n quollun!”
“Now look at dat!” cried Mrs. Morton dolefully. “Look at dat! Ain't
dat de doggonest luck in de wide worl'! De gyahd he say dat Dago
willin' pay fifty cents a day fo' me to teck an' bring a message eve'y
mawn' tell de quahumteem took off de cellar. Now dat Dutch gal gone
an' loss dat money fo' me--movin' 'way whuh nobody cain't fine 'er!”
“Sho!” laughed the widow. “Ef I'se in you place, Miz Mo'ton, an' you's
in mine, dat money sho'lly, sho'lly nevah would be los', indeed hit
wouldn't. I dass go in t' de do' an' tu'n right 'roun' back ag'in an'
go down to dat gyahd an' say de Dutch gal 'ceive de message wid de
bes' er 'bligin' politeness an' sent her kine regyahds to de Dago man
an' all inquirin' frien's, an' hope de Dago man soon come an' git
'er. To-morrer de same, nex' day de same--”
“Lawd, ef dat ain't de beatenest!” cried Mrs. Morton
delightedly. “Well, honey, I thank you long as I live, 'cause I
nevah'd a wuk dat out by myself an de livin' worl', an' I sho does
needs de money. I'm goin' do exackly dass de way you say. Dat man he
ain' goin' know no diffunce till he git out--an' den, honey,” she let
loose upon the quiet air a sudden, great salvo of laughter, “dass let
him fine Lize Mo'ton!”
Bertha went to live in the tiny room with the canary bird and the
engraving of the “Rock of Ages.” This was putting lime to the canker,
but, somehow, she felt that she could go to no other place. She told
the landlady that her young man had not done so well in business as
they had expected, and had sought work in another city. He would come
back, she said.
She woke from troubled dreams each morning to stifle her sobbing in
the pillow. “Ach, Toby, coultn't you sented me yoost one word, you
_might_ sented me yoost one word, yoost one, to tell me what has
happened mit you! Ach, Toby, Toby!”
The canary sang happily; she loved it and tended it, and the gay
little prisoner tried to reward her by the most marvellous trilling in
his power, but her heart was the sorer for every song.
After a time she went back drearily to the kraut-smelling restaurant,
to the work she had thought to leave forever, that day when Toby had
not come for her. She went out twenty times every morning, and oftener
as it wore on towards evening, to look at his closed stand, always
with a choking hope in her heart, always to drag leaden feet back into
the restaurant. Several times, her breath failing for shame, she
approached Italians in the street, or where there was one to be found
at a stand of any sort she stopped and made a purchase, and asked for
some word of Toby--without result, always. She knew no other way to
seek for him.
One day, as she trudged homeward, two coloured women met on the
pavement in front of her, exchanged greetings, and continued for a
little way together.
“How you enjoyin' you' money, dese fine days, Miz Mo'ton?” inquired
one, with a laugh that attested to the richness of the joke between
the two.
“Law, honey,” answered the other, “dat good luck di'n' las' ve'y
long. Dey done shut off my supplies.”
“No!”
“Yas'm, dey sho did. Dat man done tuck de smallpox; all on 'em ketched
it, ev'y las' one, off'n dat no 'count Joe Cribbins, an' now dat dey
got de new pes'-house finish', dey haul 'em off yon'eh, yas'day.
Reckon dat ain' make no diffunce in my urrant runnin'. Dat Dago man,
he outer he hade two day fo' dey haul 'em away, an' ain' sen' no mo'
messages. So dat spile _my_ job! Hit dass my luck. Dey's sho' a
voodoo on Lize Mo'ton!”
Bertha, catching but fragments of this conversation, had no
realization that it bore in any way upon the mystery of Toby; and she
stumbled homeward through the twilight with her tired eyes on the
ground.
When she opened the door of the tiny room, the landlady's lean black
cat ran out surreptitiously. The bird-cage lay on the floor, upside
down, and of its jovial little inhabitant the tokens were a few yellow
feathers.
Bertha did not know until a month after, when Leo Vesschi found her at
the restaurant and told her, that out in the new pest-house, that
other songster and prisoner, the gay little chestnut vender, Pietro
Tobigli, had called lamentably upon the name of his God and upon
“Libra Ogostine,” and now lay still forever, with the corduroy
waistcoat and its precious burden tightly clenched to his breast. Even
in his delirium they had been unable to coax or force him to part from
it for a second.
THE NEED OF MONEY
Far back in his corner on the Democratic side of the House, Uncle
Billy Rollinson sat through the dragging routine of the legislative
session, wondering what most of it meant. When anybody spoke to him,
in passing, he would answer, in his gentle, timid voice, “Howdy-do,
sir.” Then his cheeks would grow a little red and he would stroke his
long, white beard elaborately, to cover his embarrassment. When a vote
was taken, his name was called toward the last of the roll, so that he
had ample time, after the leader of his side of the House, young
Hurlbut, had voted, to clear his throat several times and say “Aye” or
“No” in quite a firm voice. But the instant the word had left his lips
he found himself terribly frightened, and stroked his beard a great
many times, the while he stared seriously up at the ceiling, partly to
avoid meeting anybody's eye, and partly in the belief that it
concealed his agitation and gave him the air of knowing what he was
about. Usually he did not know, any more than he knew how he had
happened to be sent to the legislature by his county. But he liked
it. He liked the feeling of being a person to be considered; he liked
to think that he was making the laws of his State. He liked the
handsome desk and the easy leather chair; he liked the row of fat,
expensive volumes, the unlimited stationery, and the free penknives
which were furnished him. He enjoyed the attentions of the coloured
men in the cloakroom, who brushed him ostentatiously and always called
him (and the other Representatives) “Senator,” to make up to
themselves for the airs which the janitors of the “Upper House”
assumed. Most of these things surprised him; he had not expected to
be treated with such liberality by the State and never realized that
he and his colleagues were treating themselves to all these things at
the expense of the people, and so, although he bore off as much
note-paper as he could carry, now and then, to send to his son, Henry,
he was horrified and dumbfounded when the bill was proposed
appropriating $135,000 for the expenses of the seventy days' session
of the legislature.
He was surprised to find that among his “perquisites” were passes
(good during the session) on all the railroads that entered the State,
and others for use on many inter-urban trolley lines. These, he
thought, might be gratifying to Henry, who was fond of travel, and had
often been unhappy when his father failed to scrape up enough money to
send him to a circus in the next county. It was “very accommodating
of the railroads,” Uncle Billy thought, to maintain this pleasant
custom, because the members' travelling expenses were paid by the
State just the same; hence the economical could “draw their mileage”
at the Treasurer's office, and add it to their salaries. He
heard--only vaguely understanding--many joking references to other
ways of adding to salaries.
Most of the members of his party had taken rooms at one of the hotels,
whither those who had sought cheaper apartments repaired in the
evening, when the place became a noisy and crowded club, admission to
which was not by card. Most of the rougher man-to-man lobbying was
done here; and at times it was Babel.
Through the crowds Uncle Billy wandered shyly, stroking his beard and
saying, “Howdy-do, sir,” in his gentle voice, getting out of the way
of people who hurried, and in great trouble of mind if any one asked
him how he intended to vote upon a bill. When this happened he looked
at the interrogator in the plaintive way which was his habit, and
answered slowly: “I reckon I'll have to think it over.” He was not in
Hurlbut's councils.
There was much bustle all about him, but he was not part of it. The
newspaper reporters remarked the quiet, inoffensive old figure
pottering about aimlessly on the outskirts of the crowd, and thought
Uncle Billy as lonely as a man might well be, for he seemed less a
part of the political arrangement than any member they had ever seen.
He would have looked less lonely and more in place trudging alone
through the furrows of his home fields in a wintry twilight.
And yet, everybody liked the old man, Hurlbut in particular, if Uncle
Billy had known it; for Hurlbut watched the votes very closely and was
often struck by the soundness of Representative Rollinson's
intelligence in voting.
In return, Uncle Billy liked Hurlbut better than any other man he had
ever known--except Henry, of course. On the first day of the session,
when the young leader had been pointed out to him, Uncle Billy's
humble soul was prostrate with admiration, and when Hurlbut led the
first attack on the monopolistic tendencies of the Republican party,
Representative Rollinson, chuckling in his beard at the handsome
youth's audacity, himself dared so greatly as to clap his hands
aloud. Hurlbut, on the floor, was always a storm centre: tall,
dramatic, bold, the members put down their newspapers whenever his
strong voice was heard demanding recognition, and his “Mr. Speaker!”
was like the first rumble of thunder. The tempest nearly always
followed, and there were times when it threatened to become more than
vocal; when, all order lost, nine-tenths of the men on the other side
of the House were on their feet shouting jeers and denunciations, and
the orator faced them, out-thundering them all, with his own cohorts,
flushed and cheering, gathered round him. Then, indeed, Uncle Billy
would have thought him a god, if he had known what a god was.
Sometimes Uncle Billy saw him in the hotel lobby, but he seemed always
to be making for the elevator in a hurry, with half-a-dozen people
trying to detain him, or descending momentarily from the stairway for
a quick, sharp talk with one or two members, their heads close
together, after which Hurlbut would dart upward again.
Sometimes the old man sat down at one of the writing tables, in a
corner of the lobby, and, annexing a sheet of the hotel note-paper,
“wrote home” to Henry. He sat with his head bent far over, the broad
brim of his felt hat now and then touching the hand with which he kept
the paper from sliding; and he pressed diligently upon his pen,
usually breaking it before the letter was finished. He looked so like
a man intent upon concealment that the reporters were wont to say:
“There's Uncle Billy humped up over his guilty secret again.”
The secret usually took this form:
“Dear Son Henry:
“I would be glad if you was here. There is big doings. Hurlbut give
it to them to-day. He don't give the Republicans no rest, he lights
into them like sixty you would like to see him. They are plenty nice
fellows in the Republicans too but they lay mighty low when Hurlbut
gets after them. He was just in the office but went out. He always has
a segar in his mouth but not lit. I expect hes quit. I send you
enclosed last week's salary all but $11.80 which I had to use as
living is pretty high in our capital city of the state. If you would
like some of this hotel writing paper better than the kind I sent you
of the General Assembly I can send you some the boys say it is free. I
think it is all right you sold the calf but Wilkes didn't give you
good price. Hurlbut come in while I was writing then. You bet he can
always count on Wm. Rollinson's vote.
“Well I must draw to a dose, Yours truly
“Your father.”
“Wm. Rollinson” was not aware that he was known to his colleagues and
the lobby and the Press as “Uncle Billy” until informed thereof by a
public print. He stood, one night, on the edge of a laughing group,
when a reporter turned to him and said:
“The _Constellation_ would like to know Representative
Rollinson's opinion of the scandalous story that has just been told.”
The old man, who had not in the least understood the story, summoned
all his faculties, and, after long deliberation, bent his plaintive
eyes upon the youth and replied:
“Well, sir, it's a-stonishing, a-stonishing!”
“Think it's pretty bad, do you?”