In the Arena by Booth Tarkington

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"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?"

Some of the crowd turned to listen, and the old fellow, hopelessly
puzzled, stroked his beard with a trembling hand, and then, muttering,
"Well, young man, I expect you better excuse me," hurried away and
left the place. The next morning he found the following item tacked to
the tail of the "Legislative Gossip" column of the _Constellation_:

"UNCLE BILLY ROLLINSON HORRIFIED

"Yesterday a curious and amusing story was current among the solons at
the Nagmore Hotel. It seems that the wife of a country member of the
last legislature had been spending the day at the hotel and the wife
of a present member from the country complained to her of the greatly
increased expenditure appertaining to the cost of living in the
Capital City. 'Indeed,' replied the wife of the former member, 'that
is curious. But I suppose my husband is much more economical than
yours, for he brought home $1.500, that he'd saved out of his salary.'
As the salary is only $456, and the gentleman in question did not play
poker, much hilarity was indulged in, and there were conjectures that
the economy referred to concerned his vote upon a certain bill before
the last session, anent which the lobby pushing it were far from
economical. Uncle Billy Rollinson, the Gentleman from Wixinockee,
heard the story, as it passed from mouth to mouth, but he had no
laughter to greet it. Uncle Billy, as every one who comes in contact
with him knows, is as honest as the day is long, and the story grieved
and shocked him. He expressed the utmost horror and consternation, and
requested to be excused from speaking further upon a subject so
repugnant to his feelings. If there were more men of this stamp in
politics, who find corruption revolting instead of amusing, our
legislatures would enjoy a better fame."

Uncle Billy had always been agitated by the sight of his name in
print. Even in the Wixinockee County _Clarion_, it dumbfounded
him and gave him a strange feeling that it must mean somebody else,
but this sudden blaze of metropolitan fame made him almost giddy. He
folded the paper quickly and placed it under his coat, feeling vaguely
that it would not do to be seen reading it. He murmured feeble answers
during the day, when some of his colleagues referred to it; but when
he reached his own little room that evening, he spread it out under
his oil-smelling lamp and read it again. Perhaps he read it twenty
times over before the supper bell rang. Perhaps the fact that he was
still intent upon it accounted for his not hearing the bell, so that
his landlady had to call him.

What he liked was the phrase: "Honest as the day is long." He did not
go to the hotel that night. He went back to his room and read the
_Constellation_. He liked the _Constellation_. Newspapers
were very kind, he thought. Now and then, he would pick up his pile of
legislative bills and try to spell through the ponderous sentences,
but he always gave it up and went back to the _Constellation_. He
wondered if Hurlbut had read it. Hurlbut had. The leader had even
told the author of the item that he was glad somebody could appreciate
the kind of a man Uncle Billy was, and his value to the body politic.

"Honest as the day is long," Uncle Billy repeated to himself, in the
little room, nodding his head gravely. Then he thought for a long
while about the member who had, according to the story, gone home with
$1,500. He sat up, that evening, until almost ten o'clock. Even after
he had gone to bed, he lay awake with his eyes wide open in the
darkness, thinking of the colossal sum. If anybody should come to
_him_ and offer him all that money to vote a certain way upon a
bill, he believed he would not take it, for that would be bribery;
though Henry would be glad to have the money. Henry always needed
money; sometimes the need was imperative--once, indeed, so imperative
that the small, unfertile farm had been mortgaged beyond its value,
otherwise very serious things must have happened to Henry. Uncle Billy
wondered how offers of money to members were refused without hurting
the intending donor's feelings. And what a great deal could be done
with $1,500, if a member could get it and still be as honest as the
day is long!

About the second month of the session the floor of the House began
steadily to grow more and more tumultuous. To an unpolitical onlooker,
leaning over the gallery rail, it was often an incomprehensible
Bedlam, or perhaps one might have been reminded of an ant-heap by the
hurry-and-scurry and life-and-death haste in a hundred directions at
once, quite without any distinguishable purpose. Twenty men might be
rampaging up and down the aisles, all shouting, some of them
furiously, others with a determination that was deadly, all with arms
waving at the Speaker, some of the hands clenched, some of them
fluttering documents, while pages ran everywhere in mad haste,
stumbling and falling in the aisles. In the midst of this, other
members, seated, wrote studiously; others mildly read newspapers;
others lounged, half-standing against their desks, unlighted cigars in
their mouths, laughing; all the while the patient Speaker tapped with
his gavel on a small square of marble. Suddenly perfect calm would
come and the voice of the reading clerk drone for half an hour or
more, like a single bee in a country garden on Sunday morning.

Of all this Uncle Billy was as much a layman spectator as any tramp
who crept into the gallery for a few hours out of the cold. The hurry
and seethe of the racing sea touched him not at all, except to
bewilderment, while he was carried with it, unknowing, toward the
breakers. The shout of those breakers was already in the ears of many,
for the crisis of the session was coming. This was the fight that was
to be made on Hurlbut's "Railroad Bill," which was, indeed, but in
another sense, known as the "Breaker."

Uncle Billy had heard of the "Breaker." He couldn't have helped
that. He had heard a dozen say: "Then's when it's going to be warm
times, when that 'Breaker' comes up!" or, "Look out for that
'Breaker.' We're going to have big trouble." He knew, too, that
Hurlbut was interested in the "Breaker," but upon which side he was
for a long time ignorant.

* * * * *

Hurlbut always nodded to the old man, now, as he came down the aisle
to his own desk. He had begun that, the day after the _Constellation_
item. Uncle Billy never failed to be in his seat early in the
morning, waiting for the nod. He answered it with his usual "Howdy-do,
sir," then stroked his beard and gazed profoundly at the row of fat
volumes in front of him, swallowing painfully once or twice.

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