In the Arena by Booth Tarkington

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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_?"

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