Kate's pleased all to pieces. Seems this gent in the paper collar has wrote an opera, and there's a party goes by the name of Impress Ario, song and dance artist, putting it on the stage at London, England. The leading woman sings base, and that's why Kate is wanted. To the only woman on earth who sings base enough, they sends this dingus and the organ-grinder. She says it's a business proposition with money in it, and wants me to come along to the Old Country. She'd have me in a collar and chain with a pink bow at my off ear, promenading in Strand Street.
She's been having a rough time here, mostly living on wild meat, without money or servants. I'd like well to see her happier; I know her music belongs to the whole world, and I've no right to hold her for any selfishness. If it's up to her to go, it's agin me to look pleased, and she shall go the day I believe in her call.
She and the tinkle dingus and the swine are at it full blast. He's screeching nil desperandum, she's thundering "Shut-ut the dooroh!" "Ting ting tong banggo!" says the puppy piano, while Mick in here howls like a moonstruck wolf. I dunno, but seems to me that when you're out at night between the stars and the mountains and the river praising God in the cañon, there's music reaching from your soul to the Almighty, and peace descending right out of Heaven. Oh, Lord, speak to my wife, and tell her there's more love right here, than in all the sham passions of all the damned operas put together. But now she's following after vain swine.
V
I made the dago bed down in here, but he flopped over to breakfast and they've been at it hammer and tongs ever since. "Tinkie tankie ping ping pee-chee-ree-ho-O! Oh! Oho! me-catamiaou-ow-yow." Cougars is kittens to it, but I'm durned ignorant, and I notice that the signor looked on while she washed up.
I didn't sorrow with Kate persuading me to drive them as far as Hundred Mile. The sound of her voice stampedes me every time, but when the dago tries to stroke my ears, he was too numerous, so I held his head in the bucket until he began to subside. I don't take to him a whole lot.
From when I'd finished the horses, till nigh on sundown, the music tapered off, and I got more and more rattled. At last I walked right in.
She'd a black dress, indecent round the shoulders, and a bright star on her brow. She stood with the swine's arms around her, until at the sight of me he shrank off, guilty as hell. There was nary a flicker of shame or fear to her, but she just stood there looking so grand and beautiful that my breath caught in my throat. "Why, Jesse," she said, her voice all soft with joy, "I'm so glad you've come to see. It's the great scene, the renunciation. Come, Salvator, from 'Thy people shall be—'"
I twisted him by the ear into my cabin, he talking along like a gramophone. I set him down on the stool, myself on the bunk, inspecting him while I cut baccy, and had a pipe. If I let him fight me with guns, she'd make a hero of him. If I hoofed him into the cold or otherwise wafted him to the dago paradise, she'd make a villain of me.
"You wrote an opery," says I.