It proved to be an amicable and satisfactory partnership between Etienne Provancher and Walker Farr and dark-eyed Zelie Dionne.
When the days were pleasant the old man kept the little girl with him out of doors on the canal bank. She did not trouble him by running about. Her long days of confinement in the attic room had accustomed her to remain quietly in one place. She sat contentedly in the shade and watched the bugs in the grass and the birds in the tree above her. In the cool of the evening she trudged along the canal bank with Farr and the play-mamma until eyes grew heavy and little feet stumbled with weariness and it was time for bed. Rainy evenings they studied the alphabet or he read to her from picture-books in blazing colors, and after a time she remembered all the stories and made believe read them to him.
He worked in the trench and looked forward impatiently to Saturday nights when the clerk came along with the pay-envelopes; there were so many things in the stores that would delight the heart of a little girl who had never had any toys except a rag doll and a broken flower-basket. Then there were pretty dresses to buy. The taste of Zelie Dionne took charge of that shopping. When he bought the first one—one that was white and fluffy—and Rosemarie walked out with him she displayed such feminine pride in fine feathers that he looked forward to future Saturdays nights and new dresses with anticipatory gusto. If one had questioned him he could have told weeks ahead just what his plans of purchases were, for he canvassed all the possibilities with the play-mamma who knew so well how to get value for a dollar—who knew the places to buy and whose needle helped to much.
It was a wicked summer for those who were doomed to the mills and the tenement-houses. The heat puffed and throbbed over the lashing machinery. The slashers seemed to spit caloric. The spinning-frames tossed it off their spindles. The looms fairly wove it into the warp. The thick, sweet, greasy air seemed to distil cotton-oil upon the faces of the workers. The nights proved to be no better than the days. The stuffy tenements gulped in the hot air of midday and held it as a person holds his breath. All the folks came out upon the little platforms that were ranged, story after story, above each other. They gasped for air in the narrow spaces between the high buildings. The stars above those narrow spaces did not sparkle and suggest coolness; they seemed to float above the hot earth like red cinders.
Every day the undertakers' wagons came “boombling” down the narrow canyons of streets between the “Blocks,” for the people were dying. The little white hearse was a more frequent visitor than the rusty black one; the ranks of the children were paying the greatest toll to death.
“But we shall not worry about our Rosemarie,” old Etienne told Farr. “Under the shade on the green grass she shall stay where outdoors can paint her cheeks the very fine color.”
But when the old man called for her at the good woman's house one morning something else than the sun had painted the little girl's cheeks—they were flushed with fever. He told the good woman to send straight for the doctor, and went to his work much disturbed.
Later in the day the yard overseer, passing the rack, saw that the man was working with furious energy. He was even reaching out his rake to capture floating stuff before it touched the bars.
“This seems to be your busy day, Pickaroon,” suggested the overseer.
“I make believe this old rack to be a good friend of mine and that the float stuff be sickness come at him—so I work hard to keep it away.”
The overseer went along about his business, commenting mentally on a Frenchman's imagination.
When the big mill bells clanged the noon hour Etienne hurried to the good woman's house. The city physician had been there and had left medicine—two tumblers of it. He had hurried in and had hurried away and had been curt and brusk and had not told her what was the trouble, so the woman reported. But the child had been sleeping.
She was drowsy all that evening while Farr held her in his arms and Etienne sat near by with Zelie Dionne, ministering solicitously.
“Her cheeks are not so hot,” said the young man many times. He talked hopefully to reassure himself as well as the others, for he had been dreadfully frightened when he had come from his work. Fright had trodden close on the heels of much joy—for the superintendent of the Consolidated had taken him out of the hot trench that day and had appointed him boss of twoscore Italian diggers, doubling his pay.
“I have been watching you,” the superintendent told him. “You're built to boss men. What kind of a bump was it that ever slammed you down like this?”
The answer the superintendent got was a smile which put further questions out of his mind.
“No, her cheeks are not so hot,” affirmed Farr when he laid her in her bed that night. “She will come along all right.”
But at the end of a week languor still weighed on the child. There were circles under her eyes and her cheeks were wan, and she did not clap her hands with the old-time glee when he brought her new toys; the playthings lay beside her on the bed and invited her touch—staring eyes of dolls, beady eyes of toy dogs—without avail.
“It is the queer way of being sick,” lamented the old man. “The doctor mebbe not know, because he very gruff and do not say. I think I know what may cure her—it has been done many time.
“Away up in the Canada country there is the shrine of the good Sainte Anne de Beaupre. There she stand in the middle of the big church and she hold her little grandson in her arm—the little boy Jesus. So she feel very tender toward poor, sick childs. Ah, I have seen her many time—I have seen childs healed there and made so very smart—all cure. She loves little childs.Oui. All about her feet are short, small crutch where she has cure childs. The piece of her wrist-bone is there in the sacristy—it look like a wee scrap of some gray moss under the glass. And it cure when the good priest say the word for her. I know the way to the shrine of La Bonne Sainte Anne—I will go with the little Rosemarie and she shall sing and dance after that.”
For a moment the cynical smile of the skeptic etched itself at the corners of Farr's mouth—the flash of the nature the young man had hidden during recent weeks.
He turned to Zelie Dionne and found her regarding him with grave eyes.
“It is as M'sieu' Etienne says,” she assured the young man. “La Bonne Sainte listens very tenderly when the children come to her. She is good to all, but her spirit leans over the poor little children and comforts them.”
“You have been there?”
“Many times, sir. It is not only the sick body that the good Sainte Anne heals—she comforts anybody who is in much sorrow—she tells the right way to go. There are many roads to take in this life—and if any one goes to her with prayer and humble soul she will guide. Ah, it is true, sir.”
There was earnestness in her features and conviction in her tones and it was plain that Zelie Dionne was speaking out of the depths of her heart, and Farr remembered what old Etienne had said about the son of Farmer Leroux.
“Yes, she will lead to the right way and make all well in the end,” asserted the girl. “And, most of all, she is kind and gentle to the little children.”
Between her and the wistful old man Farr divided tolerant and kindly gaze.
“I believe in more things than I used to,” he said. “I'm willing to admit in these days that things I do not understand may have truth in them. The doctor is not making her well. But it is a long way to that shrine.”
“It is a long way, so! But I am very scare for her as she lie here all day. I will carry her very tender—on the railway car—on the big boat. The good Sainte Anne is everywhere, too. She will help.”
“If faith can move mountains it ought to heal easily one poor, little toddlekins,” muttered Farr.
A new doctor came the next day, a breezy young man, a talkative and frank young man, the assistant of the over-worked city physician, whose municipal duties had obliged him to take on helpers.
“I shall ask him, hey—about the shrine?” whispered Etienne to Farr while the doctor was examining the child.
“Yes; he'll be more patient with you than with me.”
“And do you think that pretty soon she can go on the railway if I be very careful, good docteur?” asked the old man, wistfully, apologetically.
“Go where?”
“On the pilgrimage to the shrine of the good Sainte Anne in the Canada country.”
“Don't you realize what this case is?” demanded the young physician.
“He have not say—he hurry in, he hurry out.”
“You the grandfather?”
“No!”
The doctor turned on Farr.
“Father?”
“No.”
“Then I can talk right out to you two. This is a case of typhoid that will be fatal in twenty-four hours. There's no use lying about it.”
Old Etienne's mouth and eyes seemed to sink deep into his wrinkles, as if Time had forced him suddenly to swallow an extra score of years. He looked at Farr's blank and whitening face, and as quickly looked away.
“Break it to her grandmother,” advised the doctor, nodding toward the kitchen where the good woman was at work.
“But you don't know what you say,” stammered the old man.
“It so happens that I do, my man. I've been handling too many of these cases to be fooled. Why, I've got more than fifty cases of typhoid in this city—just myself.”
“But she has had sun and fresh air—on the canal bank where I tend the rack.”
“Sun and fresh air can't cure victims of the poison that is being pumped through the water-mains of this city,” snapped the doctor.
“Water-mains!”
The doctor turned and stared at Farr, for the husky croak of his exclamation had not sounded human.
“That's what I said. You can't have lived very long in this state not to know what we're up against on the water proposition.”
“I haven't lived here long. But about the child—it can't—”
“Why, this Consolidated Company is owned by Colonel Dodd and his politicians—and they own all the city and town water systems in this state,” said the doctor, no longer interested in his patient—exploding with the violence of imprudent youth. “They boss mayors, the aldermen, the politicians—boss the governor himself. That's because they've got the machine and the money. They've got a lot of money, because they won't wake up and spend it to lay lines far enough to tap the lakes in the hills. They tap these rotten rivers at our back doors, pump poison through the mains, sell it at prices that yield them twenty percent dividends. They say the water is all right—and back it up with analyses. I say it's all wrong.”
“And you damnation doctors are letting this go on—letting folks drink poison—telling us when it's too late!” shouted Farr, purple replacing the white in his face.
“Well, the folks up-town who have got wisdom and the money buy spring-water and mineral water. All the doctors don't agree that the river is responsible for the typhoid. With the governor and the legislature bossed by Dodd and his associates, and the city governments tied up by them, and the banks taking orders from the syndicate in case any town or an independent company tries to borrow money and install a water system, and the mill corporations and the tenement-block owners all in cahoots, a crusader who expected to get anywhere in politics or make money out of his business would stand a fine and dandy show, now wouldn't he? And the most of us in this world are trying to get ahead either in business or in politics.” He snapped the catch of his little black case. “Forget what I have said, you two. I hold my job through politics. I'm apt to talk too much when I get started. But don't drink city water, no matter if Colonel Dodd's analyses do give it a clean bill.”
Farr caught him at the door, restraining him with a heavy hand.
“You stay here, don't you let that baby die. By the gods, she sha'n't die!”
“My staying will do no good, my friend. The little girl is death-struck already. It's quick work with the children. Sometimes we can bring the grown folks through. Get another doctor, if you feel like it, but I've got to keep moving—there are lots of folks waiting for me in these tenements.”
He shook off Farr's hand and hurried away.
Old Etienne stood by the bedside, gazing down on the little sufferer, closing and unclosing his shriveled hands as if he were grasping at straws of hope, dragging the depths of his soul for reassurance even as he dragged his rake in the black waters of the canal.
“The whippersnapper lied about her. Because she's a baby he won't bother,” stormed Farr. “I'll ransack this town for doctors—I'll find one who knows his business.” He tiptoed to the bed and laid tender palm against the child's cheek. “I say her face isn't as hot as it was,” he persisted. “Where can I find a doctor with gray whiskers, Etienne? That young fool doesn't know.”
“There are many wise old docteurs in the long street named Western Boulevard—they live in the big houses—but they don't come to the tenement folks.”
“One of them will come this time even if I have to lug him on my back.”
He began to search for his hat, not remembering where he had tossed it in the haste and eagerness of his arrival at the good woman's house. He did not find it readily and he rushed out bareheaded.
“The sun and the air they do no good! It is the poison water—and the poor folks of the tenements they do not know!” muttered the old man. “That is what he say?” He went to the kitchen sink and unscrewed the faucet. He sniffed and made a wry face, then he ran his thin finger into the valve-chamber. He hooked and brought forth stringy slime, held it near his nose, and groaned. “The poor folks do not know. They who ask for the votes of the slashers, the weavers, the beamers—the men of the mills—they who ask votes do not want the poor folks to know, because the votes would not be given to them who sell poison in the water,” he told the astonished good woman who had watched his act.
“I am careful about my kitchen—I am neat—I wash everything, Etienne,” she assured him, sniffing at the slime in the sink, overcome by confusion, her housewife's reputation at stake.
“Yes, but you cannot wash the souls of them dam' scoundrels who send that water through the pipes to the poor people who can buy no other,” he raged. “This is not your blame—you did not know.” He pointed his finger, quivering, dripping with the slime, at the child on the bed. “They have murder her! With this!” He slatted his finger with the gesture of one who throws off a noisome serpent.
“But I drink the water—it hasn't made me sick,” she protested.
“You—me—odders that are all dry up—tough old fools—we ought to die and we don't,” he raged, stamping back and forth across the kitchen, waving his arms. “We have been poison so much we do not notice. But the poor little childs—the young folks that die—die in these tenements all the time—and we see the white ribbons hanging from the doors, so many place every day—the poor young folks with life ahead and much to live for even down here—they are poison and they do not know! Oh,le bon Dieu! Boil dem dam' devil in hell in the water they have sell to the poor!” He stopped, shocked by these words he heard coming from his mouth, and crossed himself contritely. “But I look at her—I hear what the docteur say—I talk and I cannot help!” He staggered into the room where the child lay, and sat down in a chair and held his face in his hands.
It was an aged and somewhat unctuous physician whom Farr brought. The doctor pursed his lips and puckered his eyebrows above the little wraith who minded him not at all, lying with eyes half closed, plucking with finger and thumb at the bedclothing.
“With a bit stronger constitution—if she were a little older—Take the case of an adult—”
“Say it short,” growled Farr, clenching his fists as if he wanted to beat indulgence for the child out of the hide of the world. “I'm paying you for her life.”
“I have nothing to sell you in this case—therefore there can be no pay.” He leaned over the bed and smoothed the moist, tangled hair away from the child's brow. “I can onlygiveyou something, my friend. I give you all my sympathy. This baby is departing on a long journey, and I'm Christian enough to believe that the way will be made very smooth for the feet of little children. That's the faith of an old man.”
There were both earnestness and tenderness in his tones—the smugness of the physician was gone. He shook Farr's hand and went out of the room, treading softly.
And the next day Rosemarie's tiny fingers stopped their flutterings and she went away—somewhere!
Walker Farr would not allow the tiny body of Rosemarie to be carried away in the white hearse. In his grief he had not been able as yet to dissociate the identity of the child from the poor little tenement in which her spirit had dwelt for the few barren years of her life; it seemed to him that she would be very lonely in the white hearse. He rode to the cemetery, holding the tiny casket across his knees. There was only the one carriage—it was sufficient to carry the friends of little Rosemarie: one Walker Farr and old Etienne and play-mamma Zelie Dionne.
The rack-tender sat opposite Farr and nursed a bundle on his knees. He had wrapped it surreptitiously.
The two men sent Zelie Dionne back to the city in the carriage. But they waited beside the grave until the sexton had finished his work; Farr felt an uncontrollable impulse to wait till all was ended, as he had always waited every night till the little girl was sound asleep and tucked up in bed in the good woman's house. He sat crouched on the edge of a turfed grave, elbows on his knees, his hands clutched into his shock of hair.
After the sexton had departed, tools on his shoulder, Etienne unwrapped the bundle. He began to arrange the child's toys on the grave.
“It is as the others do—the fathers and mothers of our faith in the tenement-houses,” he explained, wistfully, to the young man. He pointed to other graves in the vicinity, short and narrow graves. Toys were spread on them, too. They were the poor treasures of dead children. The toys had been left there in the vague, helpless yearning of parents who strove to reach their human consolation beyond the grave.
Farr gazed on these pitiful memorials of the children—from those graves to the new mound which covered Rosemarie. The ache that had been in his throat for so many hours grew more excruciating. He realized that a father in those circumstances would weep, but he did not feel like shedding tears, and he was ashamed of himself for what seemed lack of something within himself. What he felt then, what he had felt ever since that young doctor had passed sentence of death was surly, bitter rancor—the anger of a man who is robbed.
“Look all around at the graves,” said Etienne, tears in his wrinkles. “I know something better since I take off that faucet. Not all the martyr die when the lion eat 'em up and the fire burn 'em; there be some martyr these day, too. And sometimes, mebbe, some man what have the power will come here and see all these poor little grave and then he go and choke the lion what eat all these poor childs.”
“What kind of man would that be?” pondered Farr. At that moment he had little faith—much less faith than usual—in the decency of any human being; and for many years his faith in humankind had been expressed by a contemptuous snap of his finger.
To sit there longer and look at that fresh earth with the pathetic toys sprinkled over it was a torment his soul could not endure.
He arose and hurried away and Etienne followed him. They trudged in silence back to the city—Etienne to take his rake and pike-pole from the hands of the man who had substituted at the rack, and Farr to resume surly domination over his sweating Italians.
“The martyrs,” Etienne had called them. The notion of that stuck in Farr's brooding thoughts.
He tried to look deeper into his own heart than he had ever looked before and explain to himself just what motive had attracted him to the child in the first place; he had never been especially interested in children before. He found himself muttering, “And a little child shall lead them,” without understanding just why this child had led him so strangely.
If one Walker Farr had understood it at all and had been able to explain it to himself, he would have penetrated the mystery of the dynamics of love—the great gift to humanity that God has not seen fit to expose in its inner workings. Therefore, Farr strode here and there in the hot sun, spurred his diggers with crisp oaths, and on the heels of his profanity muttered to himself, “And a little child shall lead them.”
The tile boss of the Consolidated, whose crew was following the trench-diggers, accosted Farr, after several inspections of his lugubrious countenance.
“Don't you think you need to be cheered up a little?”
Farr scowled at him.
“I don't know what has disagreed with you, but you're certainly in a bad way,” pursued the boss. “Go up with the crowd to City Hall to-night and hear 'em open up the police scandals. Plenty of free fun for the heavy-hearted! There are about half a dozen fat cops in this city who'll be fried to a crisp on both sides, and the sound of the sizzling will be pleasant in the ears.”
“I'm not interested.”
“You will be, if you tend out. The hearing is before the mayor and the whole city government. Nothing very hefty in the way of charges—only loafing in beer-coolers during the heat of the day, spending their time chasing the labor-agitators out of the parks, and letting burglars keep house all summer in the mansions up-town while the owners are away at the seashore. It's all more or less of a joke.”
“Why don't the mayor and aldermen of this city attend to duty instead of jokes?”
“Oh, this city is run so smooth that there's nothing to do in the summer except stage a little farce comedy at City Hall.”
“Let me tell you that there's something to be investigated in this city that isn't a joke,” raged Farr, his bitter ponderings blossoming into speech.
“What's that?”
“Murder going on every day in this damnable town.”
“Well, I guess if there was any murder going on which we didn't hear about, even from our fat cops, it would be investigated, all right. What's the matter with you?”
“I'm glad now you told me about that hearing to-night,” stated Farr, ignoring the other's curiosity. “I'm glad I know when and where to locate the mayor and his men in session. I'll find out if they propose to waste the people's time hearing funny stories about policemen and are going to let murder go on while they are laughing.”
He strode away, cursing at his workmen as he tramped along the side of the ditch.
Farr knocked at the garret room of Etienne early that evening.
“I want you to come with me,” he commanded.
The old man obeyed without questions. As they walked along the streets Farr did not volunteer information. He was grimly sure that if Etienne should receive an inkling of what was expected of him the old man would not stop running until he had crossed the Canadian border.
They were ten minutes worming their way through the press that packed the corridors of City Hall. Groups were bulked at the doors admitting to the aldermen's room—men thatched against each other and overlapping like bees in a swarm at the door of a hive.
But the young man was tall and his shoulders were broad and he kept uttering the magic words, “Room for witnesses!” In his own consciousness he knew that what he should attempt to testify to that night was not on the slate, but the crowd accepted him as one of those from whom they anticipated entertainment, and allowed him to pass—and Etienne, holding to his young friend's coat, followed close and made his way before the throng could close in again.
The hearing began and progressed, and there was much laughter when the delinquencies of certain fat policemen were related—it was a free-and-easy affair—a sort of midsummer fantasy in municipal politics—a squabble between ward bosses who had become jealous in matters of the distribution of police patronage.
Walker Farr, standing against the wall of the audience-chamber, did not laugh. He was busy with thoughts of his own. This bland fooling in municipal matters while stealthy death, protected by city franchise, dripped, so he believed, from every faucet in the tenement-house district, stirred his bitter indignation. Etienne Provancher stood beside him, and the old man did not laugh, either, because he did not understand in the least what those men were talking about. And he was very uneasy, wistfully awe-stricken, hardly daring to touch with his hands the polished oak at his back. He was in the greathotel de villewhose exterior he had stared at many times without presuming or daring to enter the broad portals.
Then there came a recess while the mayor examined papers at his desk. The aldermen leaned back in their chairs with lighted cigars.
“Etienne,” whispered the young man, deep resolve thrilling him, his eyes blazing into the wondering gaze of the old man, “those men who sit behind those desks can do something to save the children and the poor folks in the tenements. But they must wake up, these men here must. You and I must try to wake them up!”
Etienne's eyes opened wide. He did not in the least comprehend how he could serve.
“I know you will not desert a friend, Etienne. I know you'll stand behind me. I know you love the children. So be a brave man now!”
The next moment Etienne was so frightened that he feared he would drop where he stood, because the young man raised his voice so that it rang through the great hall and all eyes were turned that way.
“Your honor the mayor, and gentlemen; I am a stranger here. But I humbly ask permission to address you.”
“If you are a witness in the police matter you will be called on in your turn after the recess,” stated the mayor.
“I am not a witness in the police matter. I am here on other business.”
“There is no other business before this meeting.”
“But there should be, sir, for the business I have come on is a dreadful matter. It is a matter of life and death.”
A hush fell on those in the chamber, and the mayor and his aldermen leaned forward, staring apprehensively. They had been warned that there were dangerous labor-agitators in the city. Many meetings had been broken up by the police at the request of Colonel Dodd, president of the Consolidated Water Company, and other employers had backed him. This tall young man had startled them with his sudden outbreak.
“It is a matter, gentlemen, which concerns every man, woman, and child in this city—vitally concerns them every hour of the day—every hour they are awake. You say you have no other business now except this silly police investigation. For God's sake, wake up and attend to real business—save the people's lives. Here you are in session and here are the people to listen.”
“State your complaint. Be very brief,” commanded the mayor.
But Walker Farr, it was plain, possessed craft as well as courage; he realized that curiosity, properly tickled, will make men more patient in listening.
“First, I want to call a witness. I am not known to this city. But I have here a man whom many of you know, I'm sure, for he has stood out in plain view of a street where many pass, and has worked there for thirty years. It is Etienne Provancher.”
Several men laughed when Farr pushed the old man into view. There was a murmured chorus of “Pickaroon.”
“It's for the children—the poor folks—for the memory of our little girl,” hissed Farr in the old man's ear. “Will you go to your bed to-night—the night of the day we buried her—knowing that—you are a coward? These are only men. We must tell them so that they will know. Speak! Tell them!” He set his firm clutch around the trembling old Frenchman's arm and held him out where all could see.
“I do not know how to talk here—to so much man—to the lords of the city,” stammered the miserable old man, licking his parched lips, scared until all was black before his eyes.
The hush was profound. Men curved their palms at their ears, wondering what old Pickaroon could have to say in City Hall.
“Remember what we have left up there—in the cemetery—the poor children in their graves,” muttered Farr, again bending close to Etienne's ear.
Then, thus reminded, thus spurred, all his Gallic emotion bursting into flame in him suddenly, the old man felt the desperate resolution that often animates the humble and ignorant in great emergencies. The little ones had been martyrs—why not he? That thought flashed through the tumult in his brain.
“Yes, since you all hark for me to speak I will speak,” he declared. “Messieurs, I am a poor man. Not wise. It is very hard for me to talk to you. But I have been to-day up where the little children are bury—so many of them, with their playthings on the graves. I went to take there anodder little child, poor baby girl. I leave her there with the odder ones—so very lonesome all of them—their modders cannot sing them to sleep any more.”
“This is irregular,” cried the mayor. “What do you want?”
“Nottings for maself,” cried Etienne, passionately shrill in his tone now. “But I have to ask you, masters of this city, how much longer shall you send poison down the water-pipes to the poor folks and the children in the tenement blocks? It is poison that has kill our little Rosemarie—and all her life ahead! The doctor say so—and he say I cannot understand about the rich man, why he do it. But I understand that the childs are dying. I say you shall not sent that water—if you do send it I will bring here the fadders who have lost their babies and the modders of the babies.” His lips curled back in his excitement and froth flecked his mouth. “Sacred name of God! We shall tear that poison-factory up from the ground with our bare hands!”
“Officer, put that man out of the room,” ordered the mayor.
“Won't you listen to us?” shouted Farr. “You are the chief magistrate of this city. You and these aldermen are the guardians of the people. Are you going to sit there in those cushioned chairs and let a crowd of rich assassins murder the poor people?”
Men hissed that speech.
The mayor rapped his gavel furiously.
“This is no matter to be brought up here at this time. You're slandering honorable men, sir! We have other business.”
“Can there be any other business as important as this?”
“Put both of these men out, officer.”
“Are you and these aldermen owned by the water syndicate, as report says you are?” cried Farr. “Look here, you men, men in this room and at the door! This is your City Hall—these aldermen are elected by your votes. Aren't you going to demand that the people be heard in this matter? Don't you know that typhoid fever is killing off the children in this city—and that poison water is the cause of it?”
“It's rotten stuff to drink—we all know that,” cried a voice. “But there'll have to be a change in politics in this state before they'll give us anything else.”
Two policemen elbowed their rough way to Farr and Etienne.
“The big chap is right—it's about time to have this water question opened up, Mr. Mayor,” called another voice.
“Open it up in a legal and proper way, then,” snapped the mayor. “Go to the law.”
“That's it—go to the law—go to the law,” jeered another. “And we'll all be dead and the lawyers will have all our money before the thing is decided.”
There were more hisses.
But an outburst of indorsing voices indicated that many men in that chamber understood more or less of the political management behind the Consolidated Water Company.
“If a thing is wrong, change it. What better law do you need than that?” asked Farr, disregarding an officer's thumb that jerked imperious gesture.
“When you know a little more law you won't be ignoramus enough to come into a public hearing and try to break it up. You'd better go and study law,” said the indignant mayor. He pounded his gavel to indicate that the recess was over.
“I'll take your advice,” replied Farr, towering over the policeman and vibrating his finger at his Honor. “If you hadn't found law so handy in your own case you wouldn't forget yourself in your excitement and recommend it to others. If we've got to fight the devil we'd better use his weapons.”
Men shouted approval all around him.
“Clear the room,” ordered the mayor. “Everybody out!”
“Keep your hands off,” Farr advised the officer nearest him. “I'll go without any help. I have found out that I'm only wasting my time in this place.”
In the corridor men pressed around him. Some of them insisted on shaking his hand. Others shouted commendation. Still others exhibited only frank curiosity in the stalwart stranger. And others were clamorously hostile.
“By gad! If you wanted to start something you took the right way to do it,” affirmed one of the throng.
“You showed good courage,” declared an elderly man with an earnest face. “Some of the rest of us have tried to do something in the past. But those who didn't have much power were either kept out or kicked out of any office in city government or the legislature—and those who did amount to something were gobbled up by the machine. The machine can pay. Working for the people isn't very profitable. So I'm afraid you won't get very far.”
“You needn't worry about that chap not getting along all right,” remarked one of the group—but his indorsement was ironical. “He's a construction boss for the Consolidated, and he went into that hearing to start some kind of a back-fire. Shrewd operators—the Consolidated folks.”
The men about Farr pulled away from him and there was considerable malicious laughter in the crowd.
“So we see the game, even if we don't catch on to the meaning of it just now,” said the observant one.
Farr squared his shoulders. They stared at him with fresh interest and a bit of additional respect. They saw in him something more than a mere popular agitator—a disturber of a municipal hearing; he must be a trusted agent of the great political machine, executing a secret mission.
“You're right—I have been working for the Consolidated,” he admitted in tones that all could hear.
“Move on! Get outdoors! Clear this corridor—all of you,” shouted a captain of police who had come hurrying up from down-stairs and had taken command of the situation.
The crowd began to surge on, following Farr.
“I went to work digging in their trenches because I struck this town on my uppers and needed the money—needed it quick. I was promoted to be a boss. But I want to tell you now, gentlemen, that I do not work for the Consolidated.”
“I reckon you're right,” said somebody. “I just overheard a man telephoning to the superintendent about you—and if I'm any judge of a conversation you arenotworking for the Consolidated. Not any more!”
“I'm sorry you're going to leave the city,” lamented the elderly man. “We need chaps like you.”
“I'm not going to leave the city.”
“You might just as well,” counseled one of the bystanders, “after what you said in that hearing. If you get a job in this city after this you'll be a good one!”
When they were outside City Hall, Farr waited for a moment on the steps. Etienne, still trembling after that most terrible experience of his placid life, pressed close at the young man's side.
“Will all you gentlemen please take a good look at me so that you'll know me when you see me again?” invited the ex-boss for the Consolidated.
They stared at him. His face was well lighted by the arc-light under the arch of the door.
“I am not a labor-leader, nor a walking delegate, nor a politician, nor an anarchist. You men go home and unscrew the faucets in your kitchens, take a good sniff, and pull the slime out of the valve. Then remember that the mayor and aldermen of this city wouldn't listen to me to-night in the Hall that the tax-payer's money built. Also remember that a little later they will listen to me. Gentlemen, my name is Walker Farr. I'm going to stay here in this city. Good night.”
As usual at nine-thirty in the afternoon, the big tower clock on the First National Bank building in the city of Marion pointed the finger of its minute-hand straight downward.
As usual, at this hour, as he had done for many years, Colonel Symonds Dodd eased himself down from the equipage that brought him to his office. This day the vehicle was his limousine car.
In view of the fact that Colonel Dodd owned the First National block the big clock seemed to point its finger at him with the bland pride of a flunky in a master. It seemed to say, “Behold! The great man is here!”
Colonel Dodd was never embarrassed when fingers were pointed at him wherever he went. If a man is lord of finance and politics in his state he expects to be pointed out.
When he stepped from his car he carried in his arms, with great tenderness, a long parcel which was carefully wrapped in tissue-paper. He always carried a similar parcel when he came to his office. Each morning the gardener of the Dodd estate laid choice flowers on the seat of that vehicle which had been chosen to convey the master to the city.
Colonel Dodd coddled the long parcel with the care a nurse would have bestowed on an infant—but he kicked his fat leg clumsily at an urchin who got in his way on the sidewalk. A college professor of Marion happened to be passing at the moment and saw the act and knew what the colonel was carrying in his arms. The professor made a mental note of fresh material for his lecture on “The Psychological Phenomena of the Bizarre in the Emotions.” The professor had just met a woman wheeling a cat out in a baby-carriage.
The doctor had advised exercise for the colonel—a small amount. The colonel toilsomely climbed the one flight of stairs to his office. That was his daily quota of exercise.
A little man with a beak of a nose was waiting in the corridor and hastened to unlock a door marked “Private,” and the colonel went in, and the little man locked the door and tiptoed down the corridor to the general offices.
Before he removed his hat Colonel Dodd carefully stripped the tissue-paper from the damp flowers. There were two huge bouquets. He set these into vases of ornate bronze, one on each end of his desk. He patted and stroked the flowers until they appeared to best advantage. He stood back and bestowed affectionate regard on them. No human being had ever reported the receipt of such a look from Colonel Symonds Dodd. It was rather astonishing to find softness in him in respect to flowers. He seemed as hard as a block of wood. He had a squat, square body and his legs seemed to be set on the corners of that body. His square face was smooth except for a wisp of whisker, minute as a water-color brush, jutting from under his pendulous lower lip.
He hung up his hat and stood for a moment before a massive mirror. The report in Marion was that he stood before that mirror and made up his expression to suit the character of a day's business.
Then he sat down at his desk and stuck a pudgy finger on one button of a battery of buttons.
A girl entered with a promptitude which showed that she had been waiting for the summons.
He did not look up at her. His gaze was on one of the bouquets.
She brought a portfolio and packets of letters all neatly docketed.
His salutation was merely, “Miss Kilgour.” Colonel Dodd did not deal in many “Good-mornings.” It was also reported in Marion and the state that his stock of urbanity was so small he was compelled to expend it very thriftily. He certainly did not waste any of it on his office help. He might have afforded at least one glance at the girl, for she was extremely pretty. Still another report in Marion was to the effect that he had selected Kate Kilgour as his secretary as the final artistic touch to the beauty of his private office in order that he might have a perfect ensemble. She did seem, so far as his interest in her went, to be only a part of that ensemble which he occasionally swept carelessly with his gaze—he reserved all his intimate admiration for the bouquets.
She laid his “Strictly Personal” letters on his fresh blotter.
She sat down and began to read the business letters aloud, not waiting for his orders to begin. It was her daily routine, business transacted as Colonel Dodd wished it to be transacted—crisply, promptly, directly.
He dictated replies, usually laconic, even curt, as soon as she had finished each letter. His eyes were on the flowers as he talked.
When the letters were finished she retired with her portfolio and her notes, the thick carpet muffling the sound of her withdrawal.
After he had slit the envelopes of his personal correspondence and had read the contents the colonel pushed another button. The little man who had been waiting in the corridor slipped edgewise in at the door. He was thin and elderly and his knob of a head, set well down on his pinched shoulders, had peering eyes on each side of that beak of a nose. When he walked across the room his long arms were behind him under his coat-tails and held them extended, and he bore some resemblance to a bird. In fact, one did not require much imagination to note resemblance to a bird in Peter Briggs—many folks likened him to a woodpecker—for he flitted to and fro in Colonel Dodd's anteroom, among those awaiting audience, tapping here and rapping there with the metaphorical beak of questions, starting up the moths and grubs of business which men who came and waited hid under the bark of their demeanor.
“Seventeen, Colonel Dodd. Five for real business; twelve of them are sponges.”
“The five?”
“Chief Engineer Snell of the Consolidated, Dr. Dohl of the State Board of Health, the three promoters of the Danburg Village Water system.”
“Send in Snell.”
Engineer Snell did not sit in the presence of his president, nor did the president ask him to sit.
“Briggs tells me the Danburg men are here.”
“They're waiting out there, Colonel Dodd.”
“Quitting?”
“I don't think so—just yet. They look too mad. I gave 'em the harpoon in good shape, as is usual, but I didn't expect they'd run here so soon. Thought they would flop a little longer.”
“They got their poke from Stone & Adams yesterday afternoon, did they?”
“Yes, Colonel. My report to Stone & Adams showed that the Danburg plan of levels is faulty, that their unions are not up to contract, that their station and pumps are inefficient for the demands. So Stone & Adams had to tell 'em that their bonds were turned down.”
“Do you know whether they have tried another banking-house yet?”
“I don't believe they have had time, Colonel.”
“But such fellows always do try. Their banging in here on me so quickly looks a little irregular. In business, you know, Snell, if you tie a tin can to a dog and he runs and ki-yi's, that's perfectly natural and you can sit back and wait for nature to take its course. If the dog doesn't run, but sits down and gnaws the string in two—then look out for the dog.”
“I must admit they're coming here sudden after their jolt. They look mad. But I figure they must have quit. The jolt was a hard one, for Stone & Adams had been leading 'em on—according to orders.”
The colonel stared at a bouquet.
“Have you got your other report—the side report—in shape for me to get a hasty idea? If they have come here with a proposition—want to quit and cover themselves, I need information right now.”
Engineer Snell laid papers on the desk. He proceeded to explain.
“If you don't feel you have time to go over it—don't want to keep the Danburg crowd waiting—I can tell you that the plant is pretty nearly all right. So much all right that you can afford to slip 'em a couple of thousand apiece on top of what they have already spent. I don't suppose you want 'em to holler too loud. I can tell you that Davis, Erskine, and Owen—those men out there—are cleaned out. They have put in all their ready money. They were depending on Stone & Adams for the first instalment from the bonds, so as to take up some thirty-day notes and pay bills due on material.”
Colonel Dodd meditated, pulling on his wisp of whisker.
“It's one thing to encourage enterprise in this state—it's another thing to be everlastingly paying rake-offs to local promoters who grab a franchise when we're not looking and then hold us up. I don't want to hurt the Danburg men. But my stockholders expect certain things of me and it's about time men in this state understand that we propose to control the water question. Snell, you go and talk to those Danburg men like a father to children. Send them in here smoothed down and we'll do the right thing by them.”
He signaled for Briggs and told him to admit Dr. Dohl.
The doctor, chairman of the State Board of Health, was a chubby man with a tow-colored, fan-shaped beard. He sat down and sprung his eye-glasses on his bulgy nose and drew out a package of manuscript.
“Colonel, I have felt it my duty to write a special chapter on the typhoid situation in this state for the report of the State Board of Health.”
“Very well, Doctor.” The colonel was curt and his tone admitted nothing of his sentiments.
“DO you care to listen to it? It rather vitally concerns the Consolidated Water Company.”
“You don't blame us for all these typhoid cases, do you?”
“No, sir—not for all of them.”
“Why blame us for any of them? Our analyses show that we're giving clean water. How about dirty milkmen and the sanitary arrangements in these tenement-houses and all such? It's the fashion to blame a corporation for everything bad that happens in this world.”
“We have placed blame on milkmen where any blame is due,” stated Dr. Dohl. He tapped his manuscript. “But I have spent considerable of my department's money in making a house-to-house canvass, tracing the sources. The man before meguessed. I have madesure! Colonel Dodd, the Consolidated water is pretty poisonous stuff these days.”
“What's the matter in this state all of a sudden?” snapped the colonel. “I am told that a lunatic almost broke up our city government meeting the other night, shouting that the Consolidated is trying to poison folks. You're too level-headed a man to get into that class, Dr. Dohl.”
“I'll allow you to set me down in any class which seems fitting from your point of view,” replied the doctor, stiffly. “But if that lunatic, as you call him, got an angle-worm or a frog's leg out of his tap I don't blame him for breaking up a meeting of the city government which will tolerate the water which is being pumped through the city mains just now.”
“We're working on the filtering-plant—it will be all right in a little while. It got out of hand before we realized it,” said the colonel, now a bit apologetic.
“In this crisis your filter amounts to about that!” The doctor snapped a pudgy finger into a plump palm. “The river-water in this state has been poisoned. You must go into the hills—to the lakes, Colonel Dodd.”
“You don't mean to say that you recommend that in your report, Doctor?”
“Absolutely—emphatically.”
“Without stopping to think of the millions it will cost my company to build over its plants?”
“It has come to a point where it isn't a question of money, Colonel.”
“We can't afford it.”
“Then let the cities and towns of the state buy in their water-plants and do it.”
“Good Jefferson! Don't you know that every city and town in this state where we have a water-plant has already exceeded its debt limit of five percent?”
“Do I understand you as intimating, Colonel Dodd, that there is no help for this present condition of affairs?”
“Look here—I'm neither a Herod nor a Moloch, even if some of the crack-brained agitators in this state will have it that way,” protested the magnate, with heat. “Are you going to print that report before you have given us time to turn around?”
“With one hundred deaths a day from typhoid fever in this state, Colonel, that matter of time becomes mighty important.”
“Look here, Dohl, don't you remember that it was my indorsement that gave you your job?”
“I do, Colonel Dodd. But I'm a physician, not a politician.”
“I see you're not,” retorted the colonel, dryly. “But you're a member of our political party, and you know that the Consolidated and its associate interests are the backbone of that party. There are a lot of soreheads in this state, and we're having a devil of a time to hold 'em in line. Every savings-bank in this state, furthermore, holds bonds of the Consolidated. Do you want to start a panic? You've got to be careful how you touch the first brick standing in a row. Dohl, you leave that report with me. I'll go over it. I'll take the matter up with the directors. We'll move as fast as possible.”
The doctor hesitated, stroking the folds of his manuscript.
“You're not doubting my word, are you?” demanded the colonel.
“No, sir!” Even the physician's sense of duty did not embolden him to persist under this scowl of the man of might.
The colonel took the document from Dr. Dohl's relaxing hands and shoved it into a pigeonhole of the big desk.
“You must understand that pipe-lines to lakes cannot be laid in a minute as a child strings straws, Doctor,” admonished the magnate.
“Do you propose to lay lines to the lakes, Colonel? I need to throw a little sop to my conscience if my report is delayed.”
“Everything right will be done in good time, Dr. Dohl. I will proceed as rapidly as possible, considering that the law, finance, and politics are all concerned. As you are leaving,” he added, giving his visitor the blunt hint that the interview was over, “I must draw your attention to the fact that if you bludgeon the Consolidated with a report like this it may be a long time before we can move in the matter. You'll only scare the banks and set the cranks to yapping. Just remember that you're a state officer and have a weighty responsibility to your party and to financial interests.”
Dr. Dohl went away. He sourly realized that he was only a cog in the big machine; that for a moment he had threatened to develop a rough edge and start a squeak, but the big file had been used on him. It had been used on many another of the State House cogs, as he well knew. Responsibility as to his party! Safety and sanity in regard to financial interests! He knew that these talismanic words had been used to control even the lords in national politics. He departed from the Presence, muttering his rebellion, but fully conscious that a political Samson in modern days made but a sorry spectacle of himself when he started to pull down the pillars of the party temple.
He continued to mutter when he walked through the anteroom.
Most of the men who waited there had faces as lowering as the visage which Dr. Dohl displayed.
The doctor had not lost all faith in his own fearlessness and rectitude of motive, but he was obliged to acknowledge to himself that just then he was a rather weak champion.
“However, I'd like to lay eyes on the sort of man who can unjoint this devilish combination of politics and law and finance,” he informed himself, trying to justify his own retreat.
His eyes, in passing, swept a stranger.
The stranger was a tall young man with wavy hair and brown eyes. He sat patiently, nursing a broad-brimmed black hat on his knees.
“I'd like to see that man!” repeated Dr. Dohl, mentally, sugar-coating his disgust at his own weakness.
If mortal man were gifted with prescience Dr. Dohl would have stared out of countenance the tall young man who sat on a bench in the outer office of the state's overlord and nursed a broad-brimmed hat upon his knees.