In the Arena by Booth Tarkington

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Alonzo walked slowly away with the wormwood in his heart. He had not
grown up among the young people of Stackpole without similar
experiences, but it had been his youthful boast that no girl had ever
"stopped speaking" to him without reason, or "cut a dance" with him
and afterward found opportunity to repeat the indignity.

"What have I _done_ to _her?_" was perhaps the hottest cry
of his soul, for the mystery was as great as the sting of it.

It was no balm upon that sting to see her pass him at the top of the
outer steps, half an hour later, on the arm of that one of his
colleagues who had been called the "best-dressed man in the
Legislature." She swept by him without a sign, laughing that same
laugh at some sally of her escort, and they got into the black
automobile together and were whirled away and out of sight by the
impassive bundle of furs that manipulated the wheel.

For the rest of that afternoon and the whole of that night no man,
woman, or child heard the voice of Alonzo Rawson, for he spoke to
none. He came not to the evening meal, nor was he seen by any who had
his acquaintance. He entered his room at about midnight, and Trumbull
was awakened by his neighbour's overturning a chair. No match was
struck, however, and Trumbull was relieved to think that the Senator
from Stackpole intended going directly to bed without troubling to
light the gas, and that his prayers would soon be over. Such was not
the case, for no other sound came from the room, nor were Alonzo's
prayers uttered that night, though the unhappy statesman in the next
apartment could not get to sleep for several hours on account of his
nervous expectancy of them.

After this, as the day approached upon which hung the fate of the bill
which Mr. Josephus Battle was fighting, Mrs. Protheroe came to the
Senate Chamber nearly every morning and afternoon. Not once did she
appear to be conscious of Alonzo Rawson's presence, nor once did he
allow his eyes to delay upon her, though it cannot be truthfully said
that he did not always know when she came, when she left, and with
whom she stood or sat or talked. He evaded all mention or discussion
of the bill or of Mrs. Protheroe; avoided Truslow (who, strangely
enough, was avoiding _him_) and, spending upon drains and dikes
all the energy that he could manage to concentrate, burned the
midnight oil and rubbed salt into his wounds to such marked effect
that by the evening of the Governor's Reception--upon the morning
following which the mooted bill was to come up--he offered an
impression so haggard and worn that an actor might have studied him
for a makeup as a young statesman going into a decline.

Nevertheless, he dressed with great care and bitterness, and placed
the fragrant blossom of a geranium--taken from a plant belonging to
his landlady--in the lapel of his long coat before he set out.

And yet, when he came down the Governor's broad stairs, and wandered
through the big rooms, with the glare of lights above him and the
shouting of the guests ringing in his ears, a sense of emptiness beset
him; the crowded place seemed vacant and without meaning. Even the
noise sounded hollow and remote--and why had he bothered about the
geranium? He hated her and would never look at her again--but why was
she not there?

By-and-by, he found himself standing against a wall, where he had been
pushed by the press of people. He was wondering drearily what he was
to do with a clean plate and a napkin which a courteous negro had
handed him, half-an-hour earlier, when he felt a quick jerk at his
sleeve. It was Truslow, who had worked his way along the wall and who
now, standing on tiptoe, spoke rapidly but cautiously, close to his
ear.

"Senator, be quick," he said sharply, at the same time alert to see
that they were unobserved. "Mrs. Protheroe wants to speak to you at
once. You'll find her near the big palms under the stairway in the
hall."

He was gone--he had wormed his way half across the room--before the
other, in his simple amazement could answer. When Alonzo at last found
a word, it was only a monosyllable, which, with his accompanying
action, left a matron of years, who was at that moment being pressed
fondly to his side, in a state of mind almost as dumbfounded as his
own. "_Here!_" was all he said as he pressed the plate and napkin
into her hand and departed forcibly for the hall, leaving a
spectacular wreckage of trains behind him.

The upward flight of the stairway left a space underneath, upon which,
as it was screened (save for a narrow entrance) by a thicket of palms,
the crowd had not encroached. Here were placed a divan and a couple of
chairs; there was shade from the glare of gas, and the light was dim
and cool. Mrs. Protheroe had risen from the divan when Alonzo entered
this grotto, and stood waiting for him.

He stopped in the green entrance-way with a quick exclamation.

She did not seem the same woman who had put such slights upon him,
this tall, white vision of silk, with the summery scarf falling from
her shoulders. His great wrath melted at the sight of her; the pain of
his racked pride, which had been so hot in his breast, gave way to a
species of fear. She seemed not a human being, but a bright spirit of
beauty and goodness who stood before him, extending two fine arms to
him in long, white gloves.

She left him to his trance for a moment, then seized both his hands in
hers and cried to him in her rapturous, low voice: "Ah, Senator, you
have come! I _knew_ you understood!"

"Yes ma'am," he whispered chokily.

She drew him to one of the chairs and sank gracefully down upon the
divan near him.

"Mr. Truslow was so afraid you wouldn't," she went on rapidly, "but I
was sure. You see I didn't want anybody to suspect that I had any
influence with you. I didn't want them to know, even, that I'd talked
to you. It all came to me after the first day that we met. You see
I've believed in you, in your power and in your reserve, from the
first. I want all that you do to seem to come from yourself and not
from me or any one else. Oh, I _believe_ in great, strong men who
stand upon their own feet and conquer the world for themselves! That's
_your_ way, Senator Rawson. So, you see, as they think I'm
lobbying for the bill, I wanted them to believe that your speech for
it to-morrow comes from your own great, strong mind and heart and your
sense of right, and not from any suggestion of mine."

"My speech!" he stammered.

"Oh, I know," she cried; "I know you think I don't believe much in
speeches, and I don't ordinarily, but a few, simple, straightforward
and vigorous words from you, to-morrow, may carry the bill through.
You've made such _progress_, you've been so _reserved_, that you'll
carry great weight--and there are three votes of the drains and dikes
that are against us now, but will follow yours absolutely. Do you
think I would have 'cut' _you_ if it hadn't been _best_?"

"But I--"

"Oh, I know you didn't actually promise me to speak, that day. But I
knew you would when the time came! I knew that a man of power goes
over _all_ obstacles, once his sense of _right_ is aroused!
I _knew_--I never doubted it, that once _you_ felt a thing
to be right you would strike for it, with all your great strength--at
all costs--at all--"

"I can't--I--I--can't!" he whispered nervously. "Don't you see--don't
you see--I--"

She leaned toward him, lifting her face close to his. She was so near
him that the faint odour of her hair came to him again, and once more
the unfortunate Senator from Stackpole risked a meeting of his eyes
with hers, and saw the light shining far down in their depths.

At this moment the shadow of a portly man who was stroking his beard
the wrong way projected itself upon them from the narrow, green
entrance to the grotto. Neither of them perceived it.

Senator Josephus Battle passed on, but when Alonzo Rawson emerged, a
few moments later, he was pledged to utter a few simple,
straightforward and vigorous words in favour of the bill. And--let the
shame fall upon the head of the scribe who tells it--he had kissed
Mrs. Protheroe!

The fight upon the "Sunday Baseball Bill," the next morning, was the
warmest of that part of the session, though for a while the reporters
were disappointed. They were waiting for Senator Battle, who was
famous among them for the vituperative vigour of his attacks and for
the kind of personalities which made valuable copy. And yet, until the
debate was almost over, he contented himself with going quietly up and
down the aisles, whispering to the occupants of the desks, and writing
and sending a multitude of notes to his colleagues. Meanwhile, the
orators upon both sides harangued their fellows, the lobby, the
unpolitical audience, and the patient presiding officer to no effect,
so far as votes went. The general impression was that the bill would
pass.

Alonzo Rawson sat, bent over his desk, his eyes fixed with gentle
steadiness upon Mrs. Protheroe, who occupied the chair wherein he had
first seen her. A senator of the opposition was finishing his
denunciation, when she turned and nodded almost imperceptibly to the
young man.

He gave her one last look of pathetic tenderness and rose.

"The Senator from Stackpole!"

"I want," Alonzo began, in his big voice: "I want to say a few simple,
straightforward but vigorous words about this bill. You may remember I
spoke against it on its second reading--"

"You did _that_!" shouted Senator Battle suddenly.

"I want to say now," the Senator from Stackpole continued, "that at
that time I hadn't studied the subject sufficiently. I didn't know the
conditions of the case, nor the facts, but since then a great light
has broke in upon me--"

"I should say it had! I saw it break!" was Senator Battle's second
violent interruption.

When order was restored, Alonzo, who had become very pale, summoned
his voice again. "I think we'd ought to take into consideration that
Sunday is the working-man's only day of recreation and not drive him
into low groggeries, but give him a chance in the open air to indulge
his love of wholesome sport--"

"Such as the ancient Romans enjoyed!" interposed Battle vindictively.

"No, sir!" Alonzo wheeled upon him, stung to the quick. "Such a sport
as free-born Americans and _only_ free-born Americans can play in
this, wide world--the American game of baseball, in which no other
nation of the _Earth_ is our equal!"

This was a point scored and the cheering lasted two minutes. Then the
orator resumed:

"I say: 'Give the working-man a chance!' Is his life a happy one? You
know it ain't! Give him his one day. _Don't_ spoil it for him with
your laws--he's only got one! I'm not goin' to take up any more of
your time, but if there's anybody here who thinks my well-considered
opinion worth following I say: '_Vote for this bill_.' It is right and
virtuous and ennobling, and it ought to be passed! I say: '_Vote for
it_.'"

The reporters decided that the Senator from Stackpole had "wakened
things up." The gavel rapped a long time before the chamber quieted
down, and when it did, Josephus Battle was on his feet and had
obtained the recognition of the chair.

"I wish to say, right here," he began, with a rasping leisureliness,
"that I hope no member of this honoured body will take my remarks as
personal or unparliamentary--_but_"--he raised a big forefinger and
shook it with menace at the presiding officer, at the same time
suddenly lifting his voice to an unprintable shriek--"I say to _you_,
sir, that the song of the siren has been _heard_ in the land, and the
call of Delilah has been answered! When the Senator from Stackpole
rose in this chamber, less than three weeks ago, and denounced this
iniquitous measure, I heard him with pleasure--we _all_ heard him with
pleasure--_and_ respect! In spite of his youth and the poor quality of
his expression, _we_ listened to him. _We_ knew he was sencere! What
has caused the change in him? What _has_, I ask? I shall not tell you,
upon this floor, but I've taken mighty good care to let most of you
know, during the morning, either by word of mouth or by _note_ of
hand! Especially those of you of the drains and dikes and others who
might follow this young Samson, whose locks have been shore! _I've_
told you all about that, and more--_I've_ told you the _inside_
history of some _facts_ about the bill that I will not make public,
because I am too confident of our strength to defeat this devilish
measure, and prefer to let our vote speak our opinion of it! Let me
not detain you longer. _I_ thank you!"

Long before he had finished, the Senator from Stackpole was being held
down in his chair by Truslow and several senators whose seats were
adjacent; and the vote was taken amid an uproar of shouting and
confusion. When the clerk managed to proclaim the result over all
other noises, the bill was shown to be defeated and "killed," by a
majority of five votes.

A few minutes later, Alonzo Rawson, his neckwear disordered and his
face white with rage, stumbled out of the great doors upon the trail
of Battle, who had quietly hurried away to his hotel for lunch as soon
as he had voted.

The black automobile was vanishing round a corner. Truslow stood upon
the edge of the pavement staring after it ruefully:

"Where is Mrs. Protheroe?" gasped the Senator from Stackpole.

"She's gone," said the other.

"Gone where?"

"Gone back to Paris. She sails day after tomorrow. She just had time
enough to catch her train for New York after waiting to hear how the
vote went. She told me to tell you good-bye, and that she was
sorry. Don't stare at me Rawson! I guess we're in the same
boat!--Where are you going?" he finished abruptly.

Alonzo swung by him and started across the street. "To find Battle!"
the hoarse answer came back.

The conquering Josephus was leaning meditatively upon the counter of
the cigar-stand of his hotel when Alonzo found him. He took one look
at the latter's face and backed to the wall, tightening his grasp upon
the heavy-headed ebony cane it was his habit to carry, a habit upon
which he now congratulated himself.

But his precautions were needless. Alonzo stopped out of reaching
distance.

"You tell me," he said in a breaking voice; "you tell me what you
meant about Delilah and sirens and Samsons and inside facts! You tell
me!"

"You wild ass of the prairies," said Battle, "I saw you last night
behind them pa'ms! But don't you think I told it--or ever will! I just
passed the word around that she'd argued you into her way of thinkin',
same as she had a good many others. And as for the rest of it, I
found out where the mgger in the woodpile was, and I handed that out,
too. Don't you take it hard, my son, but I told you her husband left
her a good deal of land around here. She owns the ground that they use
for the baseball park, and her lease would be worth considerable more
if they could have got the right to play on Sundays!"

Senator Trumbull sat up straight, in bed, that night, and, for the
first time during his martyrdom, listened with no impatience to the
prayer which fell upon his ears.

"O, Lord Almighty," through the flimsy partition came the voice of
Alonzo Rawson, quaveringly, but with growing strength: "Aid Thou me to
see my way more clear! I find it hard to tell right from wrong, and I
find myself beset with tangled wires. O God, I feel that I am
ignorant, and fall into many devices. These are strange paths wherein
Thou hast set my feet, but I feel that through Thy help, and through
great anguish, I am learning!"

GREAT MEN'S SONS

Mme. Bernhardt and M. Coquelin were playing "L'Aiglon." Toward the end
of the second act people began to slide down in their seats, shift
their elbows, or casually rub their eyes; by the close of the third,
most of the taller gentlemen were sitting on the small of their backs
with their knees as high as decorum permitted, and many were openly
coughing; but when the fourth came to an end, active resistance
ceased, hopelessness prevailed, the attitudes were those of the
stricken field, and the over-crowded house was like a college chapel
during an interminable compulsory lecture. Here and there--but most
rarely--one saw an eager woman with bright eyes, head bent forward and
body spellbound, still enchantedly following the course of the play.
Between the acts the orchestra pattered ragtime and inanities from the
new comic operas, while the audience in general took some heart. When
the play was over, we were all enthusiastic; though our admiration,
however vehement in the words employed to express it, was somewhat
subdued as to the accompanying manner, which consisted, mainly, of
sighs and resigned murmurs. In the lobby a thin old man with a
grizzled chin-beard dropped his hand lightly on my shoulder, and
greeted me in a tone of plaintive inquiry:

"Well, son?"

Turning, I recognized a patron of my early youth, in whose woodshed I
had smoked my first cigar, an old friend whom I had not seen for
years; and to find him there, with his long, dust-coloured coat, his
black string tie and rusty hat brushed on every side by opera cloaks
and feathers, was a rich surprise, warming the cockles of my
heart. His name is Tom Martin; he lives in a small country town, where
he commands the trade in Dry Goods and Men's Clothing; his speech is
pitched in a high key, is very slow, sometimes whines faintly; and he
always calls me "Son."

"What in the world!" I exclaimed, as we shook hands.

"Well," he drawled, "I dunno why I shouldn't be as meetropolitan as
anybody. I come over on the afternoon accommodation for the show.
Let's you and me make a night of it. What say, son?"

"What did you think of the play?" I asked, as we turned up the street
toward the club.

"I think they done it about as well as they could."

"That all?"

"Well," he rejoined with solemnity, "there was a heap _of_ it,
wasn't there!"

We talked of other things, then, until such time as we found ourselves
seated by a small table at the club, old Tom somewhat uneasily
regarding a twisted cigar he was smoking and plainly confounded by the
"carbonated" syphon, for which, indeed, he had no use in the world.
We had been joined by little Fiderson, the youngest member of the
club, whose whole nervous person jerkily sparkled "L'Aiglon"
enthusiasm.

"Such an evening!" he cried, in his little spiky voice. "Mr. Martin,
it does one good to realize that our country towns are sending
representatives to us when we have such things; that they wish to get
in touch with what is greatest in Art. They should do it often. To
think that a journey of only seventy miles brings into your life the
magnificence of Rostand's point of view made living fire by the genius
of a Bernhardt and a Coquelin!"

"Yes," said Mr. Martin, with a curious helplessness, after an ensuing
pause, which I refused to break, "yes, sir, they seemed to be doing it
about as well as they could."

Fiderson gasped slightly. "It was magnificent! Those two great
artists! But over all the play--the play! Romance new-born; poesy
marching with victorious banners; a great spirit breathing! Like
'Cyrano'--the birth-mark of immortality on this work!"

There was another pause, after which old Tom turned slowly to me, and
said: "Homer Tibbs's opened up a cigar-stand at the deepo. Carries a
line of candy, magazines, and fruit, too. Home's a hustler."

Fiderson passed his hand through his hair.

"That death scene!" he exclaimed at me, giving Martin up as a log
accidentally rolled in from the woods. "I thought that after 'Wagram'
I could feel nothing more; emotion was exhausted; but then came that
magnificent death! It was tragedy made ecstatic; pathos made into
music; the grandeur of a gentle spirit, conquered physically but
morally unconquerable! Goethe's 'More Light' outshone!"

Old Tom's eyes followed the smoke of his perplexing cigar along its
heavy strata in the still air of the room, as he inquired if I
remembered Orlando T. Bickner's boy, Mel. I had never heard of him,
and said so.

"No, I expect not," rejoined Martin. "Prob'ly you wouldn't; Bickner
was Governor along in _my_ early days, and I reckon he ain't
hardly more than jest a name to you two. But _we_ kind of thought
he was the biggest man this country had ever seen, or was goin' to
see, and he _was_ a big man. He made one president, and could
have been it himself, instead, if he'd be'n willing to do a kind of
underhand trick, but I expect without it he was about as big a man as
anybody'd care to be; Governor, Senator, Secretary of State--and just
owned his party! And, my law!--the whole earth bowin' down to him;
torchlight processions and sky-rockets when he come home in the night;
bands and cannon if his train got in, daytime; home-folks so proud of
him they couldn't see; everybody's hat off; and all the most important
men in the country following at his heels--a country, too, that'd put
up consider'ble of a comparison with everything Napoleon had when he'd
licked 'em all, over there.

"Of course he had enemies, and, of course, year by year, they got to
be more of 'em, and they finally downed him for good; and like other
public men so fixed, he didn't live long after that. He had a son,
Melville, mighty likable young fellow, studyin' law when his paw
died. I was livin' in their town then, and I knowed Mel Bickner pretty
well; he was consider'ble of a man.

"I don't know as I ever heard him speak of that's bein' the reason,
but I expect it may've be'n partly in the hope of carryin' out some of
his paw's notions, Mel tried hard to git into politics; but the old
man's local enemies jumped on every move he made, and his friends
wouldn't help any; you can't tell why, except that it generally
_is_ thataway. Folks always like to laugh at a great man's son
and say _he_ can't amount to anything. Of course that comes
partly from fellows like that ornery little cuss we saw to-night,
thinkin' they're a good deal because somebody else done something, and
the somebody else happened to be their paw; and the women run after
'em, and they git low-down like he was, and so on."

"Mr. Martin," interrupted Fiderson, with indignation, "will you kindly
inform me in what way 'L'Aiglon' was 'low-down'?"

"Well, sir, didn't that huntin'-lodge appointment kind of put you in
mind of a camp-meetin' scandal?" returned old Tom quietly. "It did
me."

"But--"

"Well, sir, I can't say as I understood the French of it, but I read
the book in English before I come up, and it seemed to me he was
pretty much of a low-down boy; yet I wanted to see how they'd make him
out; hearin' it was, thought, the country over, to be such a great
_play_; though to tell the truth all I could tell about
_that_ was that every line seemed to end in 'awze'; and 't they
all talked in rhyme, and it did strike me as kind of enervatin' to be
expected to believe that people could keep it up that long; and that
it wasn't only the boy that never quit on the subject of himself and
his folks, but pretty near any of 'em, if he'd git the chanst, did the
same thing, so't almost I sort of wondered if Rostand wasn't that
kind."

"Go on with Melville Bickner," said I.

"What do you expect," retorted Mr. Martin with a vindictive gleam in
his eye, "when you give a man one of these here spiral staircase
cigars? Old Peter himself couldn't keep straight along one subject if
he tackled a cigar like this. Well, sir, I always thought Mel had a
mighty mean time of it. He had to take care of his mother and two
sisters, his little brother and an aunt that lived with them; and
there was mighty little to do it on; big men don't usually leave much
but debts, and in this country, of course, a man can't eat and spend
long on his paw's reputation, like that little Dook of Reishtod--"

"I beg to tell you, Mr. Martin--" Fiderson began hotly.

Martin waved his bony hand soothingly.

"Oh, I know; they was money in his mother's family, and they give him
his vittles and clothes, and plenty, too. _His_ paw didn't leave
much either--though he'd stole more than Boss Tweed. I suppose--and,
just lookin' at things from the point of what they'd _earned_,
his maw's folks had stole a good deal, too; or else you can say they
were a kind of public charity; old Metternich, by what I can learn,
bein' the only one in the whole possetucky of 'em that really
_did_ anything to deserve his salary--" Mr. Martin broke off
suddenly, observing that I was about to speak, and continued:

"Mel didn't git much law practice, jest about enough to keep the house
goin' and pay taxes. He kept workin' for the party jest the same and
jest as cheerfully as if it didn't turn him down hard every time he
tried to git anything for himself. They lived some ways out from town;
and he sold the horses to keep the little brother in school, one
winter, and used to walk in to his office and out again, twice a day,
over the worst roads in the State, rain or shine, snow, sleet, or
wind, without any overcoat; and he got kind of a skimpy, froze-up look
to him that lasted clean through summer. He worked like a mule, that
boy did, jest barely makin' ends meet. He had to quit runnin' with the
girls and goin' to parties and everything like that; and I expect it
may have been some hard to do; for if they ever _was_ a boy loved
to dance and be gay, and up to anything in the line of fun and
junketin' round, it was Mel Bickner. He had a laugh I can hear
yet--made you feel friendly to everybody you saw; feel like stoppin'
the next man you met and shakin' hands and havin' a joke with him.

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