Mr. Richard Dodd came wooing.
He waited in his gray car at the curb in front of the First National Bank block until Kate Kilgour issued forth into the afternoon sunshine.
He called to her, holding open the side door.
“I just had to see you,” he told her. “I have come down from the capital, doing forty miles an hour. You're more precious than all the money I have locked up in the vaults.”
He did not find in her eyes any of that acclaimed glad love-light which eager lovers seek. On the contrary, Miss Kilgour made just a bit of a face at him and was distinctly petulant.
“I do not want to ride, Richard. I enjoy my walk. I need it after a day at my desk.”
“But I'm going to take you on a long ride into the country. We'll have dinner at Hillcrest Inn and we'll—”
“I'll go straight home, if you please.”
“Then come in here with me.”
“Oh, if you insist!” She said it with weary impatience.
“Are you tired?”
“Yes.”
He drove slowly. “I don't want you to work any more. You know I don't. You know how I feel. Kate, I have published our intentions of marriage.”
Her demeanor till then had been marked by tolerance, a bit pettish. Now she turned on him the indignant stare of offended womanhood.
“Richard, I have not given you permission to do that.”
“But you are going to marry me!”
“Some day. I will tell you when. I am not ready.”
“You are playing with me.”
“I am not so frivolous.”
“But why do you keep putting it off?”
“A woman who gives herself has the right to say when it shall be.”
“My God!” he raged. “I wish you would wake up.”
She did not answer.
“You don't know what love is. You won't let me touch you.”
“I suppose that your experience has qualified you, Richard,” she returned, half humorously, half scornfully.
“We are going to be married. Your mother is anxious for you to marry. I am going to tell my uncle to hunt for another secretary.”
“Be careful how you take liberties with my private business,” she warned him, sharply.
“You need somebody to take care of it for you. You have promised to be my wife. You can't give me a single good reason for waiting any longer.”
“But I intend to wait.”
He drove along in angry silence and they left the car together at the Trelawny Apartments. The car had made a detour in reaching the curb—avoiding a white wagon at the rear of which an iceman was briskly pecking in twain a cake of ice.
The girl glanced sharply at the man and turned her head when she reached the sidewalk in order to survey him more closely. The iceman, peering up at the windows to locate such signal-cards as might be visible, lowered his gaze and intercepted the girl's scrutiny. Color came into her cheeks, but she frowned as if resenting his stare and hurried into the vestibule, her lover at her heels.
“Look here, Friend Myself,” reflected Walker Farr, “it's time you woke up!” He sighed and swung a chunk of ice upon his shoulder. “But what else can I expect? Come on, Humility, and give me a soft word or two. I was hoping I'd never see her again.”
“Youse take those two front numbers—ten and twelve—Mrs. Kilgour and Mr. Knowles,” advised his helper. “Package-entrance is around behind.”
Farr toiled up the stairs, carrying one ice cube on his shoulder, with another swinging from tongs. There was but one door to the Kilgour apartment and the girl and Dodd stood in front of it; they had evidently waited in the corridor after emerging from the elevator, and the young man was detaining her, talking earnestly.
The girl opened the door with her latch-key, and with an apology he stepped in front of the pair and entered.
“Well, I'll be—” blurted Dodd. “So that's what he is—a cheap, low-lived iceman!”
Mrs. Kilgour came into her vestibule and led the way to the kitchen, for Farr stood irresolutely in the doorway, awaiting directions as to his burden. Following her, the young man noted her house-dress, beribboned over-much, her rouged face, her bleached hair, and wondered how such a woman could have beguiled Andrew Kilgour, as he felt he knew that sacrificing hero from what Citizen Drew had said.
“Say, that's the plug-ugly who insulted us in the woods. I'll never forget that face,” stormed Dodd, making no effort by lowered tones to conceal his sentiments from the iceman. “Where else am I going to run across him? He needs a horse-whipping. If there weren't ladies present I'd give him one.”
“The man seems to be minding his own business,” said the girl, coldly.
Farr heard her. There was a hint of contempt in her tones, and the young man humbly accepted the scorn as directed toward him. He lifted the ice into the box and received his coin from the languid woman, who seemed to pay as little heed to his presence as she did to Dodd's threats.
She seemed to be more especially interested in herself, and when Farr departed was fondling into place the masses of her hair before a mirror in the vestibule. Through the space formed by the portieres he saw Dodd reaching eager hands to the girl, her presence having apparently charmed away his thoughts of vengeance.
The iceman went humbly on his way.
He was meditating on the sacrifice of Captain Andrew Kilgour; he remembered that stalwart men are willing slaves of the weakest women. He wondered how much of the honesty of the father was in the daughter. He tried to console himself by insisting that it was not there. He had had only a limited opportunity to study Richard Dodd. However, he was convinced that his unflattering estimate of that young man was surely justified; and so certain was he that the character of Dodd must be patent to all he went back to his tasks with a lowered estimate of the girl who would select such a man as husband. And yet out of the dust of the highway the profile of her face had touched him as his heart never had been touched before; he had plucked the rose and had plodded on behind the little sister of the rose. He wondered what strange impulse had touched him. She must be merely like all the rest. Her graciousness in that first meeting had tempted him to believe that she was different. Now some consciousness, equally as intangible, suggested to him that she was selfishly selling herself for ease. His thoughts were pretty much mixed, he acknowledged. But as he went on, bearing his burdens, listening to the petty tyrants who may ruthlessly taunt the man who comes in by the back door, he was aware that he had full need of much ministration from his new friend, Humility.
In the sitting-room of the Kilgour flat Richard Dodd was telling the mother that he had made application for a marriage license.
“And I have waited long enough,” he declared. “Mother Kilgour, you must convince Kate that we are to be married within a week.”
And he gave the mother a look which made her turn pale and twist her ringed fingers nervously.
“Kate, what is the use?” she pleaded. “You are acting like a child. You love Richard. You know you love him. You tell me often that you love him! Richard is such a dear boy!” She said this fawningly, with evident intent to placate the sullen young man. Her tone, her air suggested the nervous embarrassment of a debtor who seeks to put off a creditor with flattery and fresh promises. “Now be a darling child and say that we'll have the wedding next week without any fuss or feathers.”
“I am not ready to get married, and I simply will not be married just yet,” declared the girl, her red lips compressed.
“You don't love me!” complained Dodd.
“I like you, Richard,” admitted the girl, frankly, without any coquettishness. “I have never cared for anybody else. You have been good to me, except when you were foolish.”
“Foolishness—that's what she calls being so much in love with her that I can't keep my hands off her,” said Dodd to the mother. “Mother Kilgour, you haven't talked to Kate as you should. She doesn't know what love is.”
“Oh, I'll find out all about it, and then we'll be married—when I'm ready to become a wife,” said the girl, with an indulgent smile. “All at once I'll wake up, just as you have been begging me to do, and then we'll simply run away and be married and live happily for ever after.”
“I don't like this stalling,” growled Dodd, brutally.
“I'll leave you two children together,” said the mother. “I'm sure you'll come to an understanding.” She went away, showing relief.
“Sit down here on the divan with me, sweetheart,” pleaded the young man.
But without removing her hat she went to the piano and began to play.
“Please come!” he entreated.
She smiled at him over her shoulder and made a prettymoue.
Muttering an oath of passion he leaped up, hurried across the room, and began to kiss her fiercely.
He crushed back with his lips all her protests; standing over her, he held her upon the piano-bench until by main strength and with all the force of her resentment she tore away from him.
“And now you are going to blame me because I can't help it,” he gasped.
“I don't in the least understand why normal persons can find any pleasure in that kind of folly.”
“Is your idea of loving anybody rubbing noses like Eskimos?”
“I'd endure that kind of loving in preference to that kind of kissing, Richard. That isn't love which you're offering—not the kind of love I want. I am going out for my walk—you filched it from me. No, I'm going alone. Go and talk with mamma, if you like.”
She escaped the clutch he made and hurried out and to the elevator.
Flushed and angry, Dodd made his way to an inner room where Mrs. Kilgour was reading a novel, sunning herself with feline indolence. She put the book by with evident regret.
“Oh, Kate, has so much poise!” she lamented, breaking in on the young man's complaints. “She is so like her father. No one except myself could do anything with him at all. Sometime it was very hard for me! He would set his mind and his teeth! But I always won in the end.”
“Well, go ahead and win now,” commanded the surly lover. “You are simply letting this thing run along.”
“I know Kate's nature, Richard. It's only a matter of the right time.”
He sat down at her feet on the end of the couch.
“The time is here—now!” he told her. “I insist that you make Kate understand. I have been patient and reasonable for a year. You have promised me that you will bring everything around all right. Why don't you do it?”
“But delivering a daughter into marriage isn't like delivering groceries on order!” Her tone showed a bit of impatience. “Be reasonable!”
“I don't want to say anything to hurt your feelings, but we must get down to cases. I'm not asking you to deliver anything to me except what was promised long ago—promised by Kate herself. And you know what you said when I loaned you five thousand dollars to help you save those stocks. Excuse me, Mother Kilgour, but I can't always control my nature; I've been in the game with the bunch for a long time and I'm naturally suspicious—I have seen a good many chaps trimmed, and I don't propose to have anything put over on me.”
“You are insolent and cruel,” she cried, her cheeks pale.
“I don't mean you—I believe you want to help me. But it's time to be up and doing. She doesn't give me one good reason why she will not be married right away. It's only jolly and putting it off.”
“But you are twitting me about the service you have done me! I am not selling my daughter!”
“That isn't it at all! But you must agree that I have been good to you. I want you to be a friend to me. But I don't get anything that's definite. If this thing drags on and on the first thing I know some fellow will come along and she'll fall for him. That's the girl nature!”
“You are talking about my daughter, Richard! She has her father's disposition and she is true blue. She has given her promise and she will keep it.”
“When?” he demanded, curtly.
“I can't drive her.”
“You said you could,” he insisted. “You said a year ago when I advanced that money that you knew just how to handle her.”
“Are you going to keep twitting me about that money?”
“No; only I'm going to say that you haven't even told me about what stocks you were protecting. You haven't said anything about repaying the loan, Mother Kilgour. It has been a sort of general stand-off all around for me. Hold on! I'm not making a holler! But I like to be taken in right. I'm a Dodd, and I can't help playing to protect myself.”
“It will come around all right, Richard. You don't know Kate as I do. I understand her because I understood her father. She is rather self-centered. But she is romantic underneath! But you know you're so sort—sort of—well, just a business man—so matter-of-fact. A girl like Kate needs to be stirred—her poise shaken—something like that!”
“Lochinvar business, eh?” he sneered.
“It must be something a little bit out of the ordinary to hurry her, Richard. Go away, please. Let me think. I have an idea. I must spend a little time on it.”
“How much time?”
“Oh, I don't know just how much. Be patient.”
“Mrs. Kilgour, if this thing cannot be put through by you I want you to say so. I'm at the end of that patience you're appealing to. I won't be fooled.”
“You don't need to say that you're Colonel Dodd's nephew,” she retorted. “You have all the family traits.”
“Well, there's one I haven't got: I loaned you five thousand dollars without taking security—and that's the act of a good friend. Excuse me, but I've got to speak of it—you need a little reminder. Four days from now I'll have my marriage license from the city clerk. And when I have it in my hands I shall come to you and shall expect that you'll do your part.”
“I will,” she said.
“How? I want plain statements from now on.”
“I will write you a letter to-morrow,” she faltered. “I will give you directions what to do. You'd better not come here till—till I have it all arranged. You know what they say about absence!”
“I know what they say about a good many things. But I want something besides say-so.”
“I will tell you in my letter what to do. Then you follow instructions.”
“I don't like to go into a thing blind. What is the plan?”
“Oh, if I tell you all about it you'll go and do something to spoil it,” she protested, impatiently. “A woman knows about such matters better than a man does. I will write to you at the State House. Now be patient!”
“I'll be going before you preach any more patience to me,” he said, sourly. “I might be provoked into saying something you won't like.”
After he had gone she rose and touched up her cheeks.
“The fool! They are all alike,” she muttered, viciously. “They pay. They never forget they have paid. Then they stand with their hand out—and just remember that they have paid. I am glad I bought this novel,” she added, taking the book from the couch and settling herself to read. “The woman who wrote it must have known human nature. If the plan worked in the case of the girl she writes about it ought to work in the case of Kate. If it doesn't it will be his fault because he has hurried me so. A poor, persecuted woman can't do everything.”
And she applied herself to her recently discovered manual of procedure in the case of stubbornness in a maid.
Walker Farr put aside papers upon which he had been working since he had eaten his modest supper, and pulled on his coat and went forth into the evening. He strolled up one of the streets in the Eleventh Ward of Marion, manifestly glad to be out among the people.
He stopped at the curb and hailed the driver of a truck-wagon which was loaded down with kegs and jugs.
“Marston,” he said, when the driver halted, “it's good to see the noble work going on.”
“Yes, and now that the babies aren't dying off so fast old Dodd's newspapers are claiming that the new filtering-plant is doing all the good, sir.”
“Well, it shows that our work is worth while if they're claiming it, Marston. But we'll wake up the folks all in good time. Do what we can for first aid, that's the idea! The people are waking up to what we're doing. And they are waking up in other places. I took a little run up state last week. Five other cities are going to try this co-operative scheme of getting good water to the poor folks until something better can be done.”
“You've got a head on you,” commended the driver. “It's a little tough on tired horses to work at this after a day's trudging on regular business, but my nags seem to understand what it's all about—honest they do. I have hauled five hundred gallons this week. But I'd like to haul old Dodd up to Coosett Lake and drown him, if it wasn't for spoiling water that the poor folks are drinking.”
Farr shook his head and walked on.
He was a rather striking figure for a New England city as he strolled along. It did not seem to be affectation for this man to wear a frock-coat without a waistcoat, a flowing black tie setting off his snowy linen. The attire seemed to belong to his physique and manner.
Women smiled at him in friendly fashion; men gave respectful and affectionate salutation.
Soon he stepped off the street into a room where a group of men were waiting for him, so it appeared, because they all rose when he entered.
He called the little meeting to order promptly, informing them that he would detain them only a short time.
“I rise to make a motion,” said a man at one stage of the proceedings. “There have been so many volunteers in the work and the folks have been so ready to pay for real water in place of that stuff we get from the taps, that three hundred dollars have accumulated in the treasury. We all know that there is just one man who had been responsible for this whole plan and has given his time and has run about our state and hasn't charged anything but expenses for doing it all. I move we give that sum to Mr. Farr—wishing it was more.”
The speaker was loudly applauded.
Farr was so quickly on his feet and spoke so promptly that he clipped the man's last words.
“A moment, my friends, before that motion is seconded.” He held up his hand and checked their protests against what his air told them. “Because my little plan has succeeded better than I hoped is not due to me, but to the generous co-operation of good men who have given their time. We are saving the babies, thank God! But do you know what else we have done by our hard toil and our devotion? We are propping up the Consolidated Water Company in this state. Understand me! I am not attacking that company because it is a corporation. If it were now making preparations to pipe down to us clean water from the hills I would gladly go on giving my time to this cause in order to help the case of the Consolidated. But the men in control are deliberately shutting their eyes to the real situation. Now that folks aren't dying, they claim all the credit—when we know the credit is due to weary men who go on working after their day's toil is over. It isn't right—it isn't just! My friends, I have got hold of a bigger thing than I reckoned on when I started out to wake those poison-peddlers up. Now that we are cleaning up the typhoid, the Consolidated is simply riding on our backs—refusing to see the real truth. If they give Marion pure water it will be only at more exorbitant rates, because the nearest lake is twenty miles away. I'm not an anarchist—I want to see capital get its just reward. But when a syndicate takes a franchise from citizens and makes them pay over and over for what was their own the citizens have a right to rise in self-defense. When we force the Consolidated to give us what we're paying for—pure water—they evidently propose to make us pay for what they call our cheek in asking.” He paused for a moment, and his smile succeeded his earnestness. “I beg your pardon for saying 'we.' I must remember that I'm still a stranger in this city.”
“I'll have to dispute you there,” interposed a man. “You're one of us. And we're going to prove it to you a little later.”
“My friends,” went on Farr, “until the cities and towns of this state own their own water-plants and take their own profits they will be paying double tribute to a merciless crowd.”
“But we can't own our plants till the millennium, sir. There's that five-percent-debt-limit clause in the constitution.”
Farr smiled—this time wistfully. “I've—I've had a sort of vision in regard to that,” he said. “I don't dare to explain myself just now, friends. It may be only a vision—but I think not. I'll not say any more at present. I did not intend to say as much. What was on my mind when I got up was this: I will not accept that money in the treasury—on no account will I take it. Because I believe that strange days are coming upon us soon in this state—days when we shall need money. Keep that nest-egg and guard it.” He picked up his hat and started for the door. “The meeting is adjourned,” he informed them. He smiled at them over his shoulder in such a manner that they wondered whether he joked or was in earnest. “Guard well that money—for the only way my vision can be realized, I fear, is by turning this state's politics upside down, and that will be quite a job for a rank outsider fighting Colonel Symonds Dodd—and fighting without money. Good night!”
Men whom Walker Farr met as he strolled ducked amiable greetings. They grinned admiringly after him as he passed on.
If a woman asked in regard to him or a stranger in the ward questioned a native they were informed with gusto that he was “the boy who stood in City Hall and talked turkey to the mayor and all the bunch, and said a good word for the poor people, and twisted the tail of the Consolidated and lost a good job doing it—and that's more than any alderman would do for those who elected him.”
At a street corner children of the poor were dancing around a hurdy-gurdy. Farr gave the man at the crank a handful of change and told him to stay there and keep the kiddies happy. Shrill juvenile voices promptly proclaimed his praises to all the neighborhood, and mothers and fathers beamed benedictions on him from windows.
He stopped at another street corner where a dozen youths were congregated. They were heavy-eyed, leering cubs, their hats were tipped back, and frowzled fore-tops stuck out over their pimply faces—types of youths whom modest girls avoid hurriedly by detours.
“Boys, folks are writing to the newspapers complaining that young chaps are insulting girls on the street corners of Marion. But it must be those high-toned loafers up-town. You're not up to any of that business down here, of course.”
“None of us would ever as much as say 'shoo' to a chicken,” protested one of the group.
“You're Dave Joyce's boy, aren't you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The fifty men he bosses at the ice-house like him because he's square. Here's a good motto: 'Square with the boys and nice to the girls.' But keep off the street corners, fellows, or they'll get you mixed up with some of that masher gang.”
The Joyce boy pulled his hat forward and marshaled the retreat from the loafing-place.
“Naw, he ain't no candidate, nuther,” he informed his associates when they were out of hearing. “He ain't canvassing for no votes. My old man says he ain't. He ain't a four-flusher. He's the guy that stood for the poor folks up at City Hall and doped out the spring-water stuff.”
At the side of a street where traffic raged to and from the city's Union Station Farr came upon two shriveled old ladies who were teetering on the curbstones, waiting tremulously for an opportunity to cross. They put down into the roaring street first one apprehensive foot and then another, like children trying chilly water. The big fellow offered an arm to each and led them safely across.
“You're a real knight-errant, sir,” squeaked one of the two, looking up into the kindly face.
He laughed, doffed the broad-brimmed hat with a low bow, and strolled on his way.
“Knight-errant,” he muttered, still smiling. “Guess not. They don't have 'em these days. The stories about 'em read well. Wonder what kind of a feeling it was that started those boys off on the hike! Perhaps there wasn't enough doing in politics. It must have been a fine game, though, rescuing distressed damsels. And all for love and not for pay!”
A poster in the window of an empty store caught his eye just then. It advertised a woman's-suffrage rally.
“The girls would paint rally signs on a knight's tin suit these days and send him off on an advertising trip,” was his whimsical reflection.
At that moment, with this thought of knight in armor in his mind, he was attracted by a flare of red fire in a blacksmith shop located just off the street. The one worker in the place was revealed by the forge fire. The glow lighted the features of the man. There was no mistaking him—it was Friend Jared Chick. And Farr turned off the street and went into the shop and greeted his one-time traveling companion.
“How does thee do?” replied Jared Chick, quietly, his Quaker calm undisturbed. He drew forth a white-hot iron and deftly hammered it into a circle around the snout of the anvil.
“So you have given up knight-errantry and have gone back to the old job, have you, Friend Chick?”
“No. This is a part of my service. The man who owns this shop is a good man who works hard here all day. And after he has gone home he allows me to work here in the evening.”
He pounded away industriously and Farr walked up to the anvil to inspect the nature of the work, for the iron rod was assuming queer shapes.
“A new kind of armor, Friend Chick?”
If there was a bit of sarcasm in Farr's tone the Quaker paid no apparent heed.
“No,” he said, quietly and meekly, “this is a brace for the leg of a little lame boy. I have found many children in this city who cannot walk. Their parents are too poor to buy braces. So I come here nights, when the good man is away from the forge, and I make braces and carry them with my blessing. I have some knack with the hammer. I hope to find other ways of doing my bit of good.”
“I beg your pardon, Friend Chick,” said Farr, a catch in his voice. “I will not bother you in your work. Good night!”
“Good night to thee!” said the Quaker, swinging at the bellows arm.
Farr went back upon the street, his head bowed. “We all have our own way of doing it,” he pondered, contritely.
He met a man and greeted him with a friendly handclasp. It was Citizen Drew, that elderly man with the earnest face.
And as he had in the past, he turned, caught step with Farr, and they walked together.
Their stroll took them into the broader avenues of up-town.
As they talked, Farr caught side glances from his companion. The glances were a bit inquisitive.
“Well, Citizen Drew,” asked the young man, “what is on your mind this evening?”
“Since I have known you and studied you I have been thinking that you have the spirit of knight-errantry in you,” stated Citizen Drew.
Farr laughed boyishly.
“Two very nice old ladies have just got ahead of you with that accusation, my friend.”
“Laugh if you feel like it. But there are so few men who can do anything unselfishly in these days that when a chap like you does come along he gets noticed—at any rate, I notice him.” He stopped dealing in side glances and stared at Farr fully and frankly. “Other men who would do the things you are doing so quietly in this state have been playing politics—and I have made it my business to watch politicians. And as soon as men have been elected to office by fooling the people—well, those men have simply been set into the Big Machine as new cogs. Are you like the rest, Mr. Farr? Nobody knows where you came from. Everybody who sees you knows you're above the jobs you have been working at. They're talking you up for alderman in our ward. But we have been fooled so many times!”
Farr replied to this wistful inquisition in a way there was no misunderstanding.
“I am not a candidate for anything, Citizen Drew. And I'll tell you how I can prove I am not. I am not a voter here. I have intentionally failed to have myself registered. Whenever you hear another man talking me up for office you tell him that. Therefore, it makes no difference to anybody where I came from or what job I work at.”
Citizen Drew accepted the rebuke humbly and walked on in silence.
“You have always been fooled, you say, when you have elected men to office. Haven't you any men in this state whom you can elect to high office, knowing for sure that they'll stay straight?”
“No,” returned Citizen Drew.
“I'm a stranger—I don't know your big men—you do know them, and I suppose I ought to take your word. But I don't believe you, Citizen Drew.”
“But I told you the truth. We have big men who are honest men. But they won't go into politics. They feel too far above the game. Therefore, how can we elect them to office? I say I told you the truth. The men who go out and hunt for office are the ones who work the thing for their own profit—and that means they stand in with the bunch and the head boss.”
It was the same old lament which is everlastingly on the lips of the voters of America! Citizen Drew had again epitomized the average politics of the great Republic!
Walker Farr smiled—and he could express in a smile more than most men can express in speech.
“An original idea has just occurred to me, Citizen Drew,” he said, with humorous drawl in his tones. “I'm sure nothing like it has ever been thought of before. There ought to be a new party formed in this country—a party outside all the others. No, not a party, exactly! What should I call it? You see, the idea has just come to me, and I'm floundering a little.” His tone was still jocular. “You're right about most of the able and big men staying out of politics except when the highest offices are passed around. Now, how's this for a scheme? Organize a loyal band and call it—well, say the Purified Political Privateers, the Sanctified Kidnappers, the People's Progressive and Public-spirited Press Gang. Go around and grab the Great and the Good who insist on minding their private business and who are letting the country be gobbled up—just go and grab 'em right up by the scruff of the neck and fling them into politics head over heels. They would sputter and froth and flop for a little while—and then they'd strike out and swim. They couldn't help swimming! They'd know that the folks were looking on. And then a lot of the sinking and drowning poor devils, like you and me and the folks in the tenements, could grab onto the Great and the Good and ask 'em to tow us safely ashore; and by that time their pride and their dander would be up and they'd swim all the harder—with the other folks looking on. Hah! An idea, eh? You see, I feel rather imaginative and on the high pressure and in a mood for adventure this evening! Probably because the nice old ladies called me a knight-errant.”
Citizen Drew was not ready with comment on this amazing suggestion. He clawed his hand into his sparse hair and wrinkled his forehead in attempt to decide whether or not he ought to resent this playful retort to his lament. The next moment he dealt Farr a swift jab in the ribs with his elbow.
“Take a good look at this man coming,” he mumbled.
The oncomer was close upon them, and in spite of the dusk Farr's sharp gaze took him all in.
In garb and mien he was a fine type of the American gentleman who is marked by a touch of the old school. There was a clean-cut crispness about him; the white mustache and the hair which matched it looked as if they would crackle if rubbed. His eyes were steely blue, and he held himself very erect as he walked, and he tapped the pavement briskly with his cane.
He passed them, marched up the steps of a large building, and disappeared through a door which a boy in club uniform held open for him.
“That man,” explained Citizen Drew, complacently displaying his boasted knowledge of public men in minute detail, “is the Honorable Archer Converse, whose father was General Aaron Converse, the war governor of this state. Lawyer, old bach, rich, just as crisp in talk as he is in looks, just as straight in his manners and morals and honesty as he is in his back, arrives every night at the Mellicite Club for his dinner on the dot of eight”—Citizen Drew waved his hand at the illuminated circle of the First National clock—“leaves the club exactly at nine for a walk through the park, then marches home, plays three games of solitaire, and goes to bed.”
“I know him!” stated Farr.
Citizen Drew's air betrayed a bit of a showman's disappointment.
“I never saw him before—never heard of him. But I mean I know him now after your description—know his nature, his thoughts. You have a fine touch in your size-ups, Citizen Drew.”
“I've studied 'em all.”
“What has he done in politics?”
“Never a thing. He is one of the kind I was complaining about. Too high-minded.”
“But, ho, how a man like that would swim if he were once thrown in!” declared Farr.
“He never even tended out on a caucus.”
“I know the style when I see it,” pursued Farr. He did not look at Citizen Drew. He was talking as much to himself as to his companion. “Spirit of a crusader harnessed by every-day habit! Righteousness in a rut! Achievement timed to the tick of the clock. But, once in, how he would swim!”
“Think how our affairs would swing along with a man like that at the head of the state!”
“Why hasn't he been put at the head?”
“I have been in delegations that have gone to him”—he waved his hand—“he said he couldn't think of being mixed into political messes.”
“He looked on you wallowing in muddy water and you invited him in. I don't blame him for not jumping.”
“He's a good man,” insisted Citizen Drew. “He gives more money to the poor than any other man in town. The only way I found that out is by having a natural nose for finding out things. He doesn't say anything about it.”
“How he would swim!” repeated Farr. “Steady and strong and straight toward the shore, Citizen Drew, and he wouldn't kick away the poor drowning devils, either.”
“He probably thinks he has paid his debt to the world when he hands out his money,” stated Drew. “When he looks around and sees so many other men holding the poor chaps upside down and shaking the dollars out of their pockets he must think he is doing a mighty sight more than is required of him. But sticking plasters of dollar bills onto sore places in this state ain't curing anything.” He stopped. “I've walked with you farther than I intended to, Mr. Farr. But somehow I wanted to talk with you. There's a meeting of the Square Deal Club this evening at Union Hall. I didn't know but in some way we might—It was thought you might be going to run for office.”
“The registration-office will prove that I'm not. Pass that word!”
“I'll go back—to the meeting. It doesn't seem to be much use in holding the meetings,” said the man. “We hear one another talk—we know we are talking the truth. But nobody listens who can help us poor folks. Well, I'll admit that the politicians come in and listen and promise to help us and we give our votes; but that's all: they give nothing back to us.”
Farr broke out with a remark which seemed to have no bearing on what Citizen Drew was saying.
“He comes out at nine o'clock, eh?”
“Who?”
“The Honorable Archer Converse. Leaves that clubhouse then, does he?”
“Regular to the tick of the clock.”
“Citizen Drew, hold your club in session until half past nine or a little later. My experience with those meetings is that you always have troubles enough to keep you talking for at least two hours.”
Citizen Drew glanced at the face of Farr and then at the big door of the Mellicite Club.
“You don't mean to say—”
“I don't say anything. I seem to be in a queer state of mind to-night, Citizen Drew.” Again there was an odd note of raillery in his voice. “A lot of odd ideas keep coming to me. Another one had just popped into my head. That's all! Keep your boys at the hall.”
He swung off up the street.
He turned after a few steps and saw the elderly man standing where he had left him. Drew was a rather pathetic figure there in the brilliantly lighted main thoroughfare, a poor, plain man from the Eleventh Ward of the tenement-houses—this man who had been striving and struggling, reading and studying, endeavoring to find some way out for the poor people; some relief—something that would help. Farr knew what sort of men were waiting in the little hall. He had attended their meetings. It was the only resource they understood—a public meeting. They knew that the important folks up-town held public meetings of various sorts, and the poor folks had decided that there must be virtue in assemblages. But nothing had seemed to come out of their efforts in the tenement districts.
Farr stepped back to where Citizen Drew stood.
“I think I will say something to you, after all. Tell the boys in Union Hall to be patient and I'll bring the Honorable Archer Converse around this evening.”
He smiled into the stare of blank amazement on the man's face, flung up a hand to check the stammering questions, and went off up the street.
“A decent man's conscience will make him keep a promise he has made to a child or to the simple or to the helpless,” Farr told himself. “I have undertaken a big contract, I reckon, but now that I have put myself on record I've got to go ahead and deliver the goods. At any rate, I feel on my mettle.” Then he smiled at what seemed to be his sudden folly. “I think I'll have to lay it all to those nice old ladies who were foolish enough to put that knight-errant idea into my head,” he said.