Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  “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! Tobigli, 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. Aftervorts 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—“Ahaha, 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 unprosperous 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.

  “Ahaha, Meesa Peeslay! Make a parade? Torchlight? Banda-play—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, ’lectioneerin’�
�fixin’ it right.”

  Tobigli shook his head. “Campaign?” he repeated.

  “Why—Gee, you know! Free beer, cigars, speakin’, handshakin’, 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 you! 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-tiptoe 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 puttickler 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.