Farr glanced again at the big clock in the First National block.
He had less than one hour to wait, according to the schedule Citizen Drew had promulgated in regard to the unvarying movements of the Honorable Archer Converse. As to how this first coup in the operations of that nascent organization, the Public-spirited Press Gang, was to be managed Farr had little idea at that moment.
He decided to devote that hour to devising a plan, deciding to attempt nothing until he saw the honorable gentleman march down the club steps. A club must be sanctuary—but the streets belonged to the people.
Therefore, Farr took a walk. He went back into that quarter of the city from which he had emerged during his stroll with Citizen Drew; he felt his courage deserting him in those more imposing surroundings of up-town; he went back to the purlieus of the poor, hoping for contact that might charge him afresh with determination. He realized that he needed all the dynamics of courage in the preposterous task he had set himself.
He knew he would find old Etienne sitting on the stoop of Mother Maillet's house where the old man posted himself on pleasant summer evenings and whittled whirligigs for the crowding children—just as his peasant ancestors whittled the same sort of toys in old Normandy.
Mother Maillet's house had a yard. It was narrow and dusty, because the feet of the children had worn away all the grass. Some of the palings were off the fence, and through the spaces the little folks came and went as they liked. It was not much of a yard to boast of, but there were few open spaces in that part of the city where the big land corporation hogged all the available feet of earth in order to stick the tenement-houses closely together. Therefore, because Mother Maillet was kind, the yard was a godsend so far as the little folks were concerned. The high fence kept children off the greensward where the canal flowed. Householders who had managed to save their yards down that way were, in most cases, fussy old people who were hanging on to the ancient cottage homes in spite of the city's growth, and they shooed the children out of their yards where the flower-beds struggled under the coal-dust from the high chimneys.
But Mother Maillet did not mind because she had no flower-beds and because the palings were off and the youngsters made merry in her yard. She had two geraniums and a begonia and a rubber-plant on the window-sill in order to give the canary-bird a comfortable sense of arboreal surroundings; so why have homesick flowers out in a front yard where they must all the time keep begging the breeze to come and dust the grime off their petals? It should be understood that Mother Maillet had known whatrealflower-beds were when she was a girl in the Tadousac country.
Furthermore, Etienne Provancher always came to the yard o' fine evenings and it served as his little realm; and the door-step of the good woman's house was his throne where he sat in state among his little subjects. However, on second thought, this metaphor is not happy description; old Etienne did not rule—he obeyed.
He did not resent familiarity—he welcomed the comradeship of the children. When they called him “Pickaroon” it seemed to him that they were making a play-fellow of him.
He sat and whittled toys for them out of the pine-wood scraps which the yard foreman gave him. There were grotesque heads for rag dolls, and the good woman seemed to have unlimited rags and an excellent taste in doll-dressmaking; there were chunky automobiles with spools for wheels; there were funny little wooden men who jumped in most amusing fashion at the end of wires which were stuck into their backs. Old Etienne was always ready to sit and whittle until the evening settled down and he could see no longer, even though he held the wood and busy knife close to his eyes.
So on that evening he whittled as usual.
Walker Farr came to the yard and sat beside the old man on the door-step and was plainly thinking no agreeable thoughts while he listened to the chatter of the children.
After the darkness had come and the larger boys and girls, custodians of their tiny kin, had dragged away the protesting and whimpering little folks because it was bedtime, Zelie Dionne laid down her needlework over which she had been straining her eyes. The good woman protested often because the girl toiled so steadily with her needle after her day at the mill was ended. And on that summer evening she voiced complaint again.
“You have so many pretty gowns already! You wear one last evening—you wear anodder this evening—and still you make some more! When a young girl nigh kill herself so as to make a picture-book of her dresses I think it is time to look for some young man who seems to like the pictures. Eh?”
“Mother Angelique, I do not relish jokes which are silly,” protested the girl. “You know how the girls of our country are taught! We cannot sit with hands in our laps without being very unhappy.”
She went out and sat upon the door-step where old Etienne made way for her.
“At first I did not think I would come out, Mr. Farr,” she said. “But I have made bold to come.”
“I do not think it needs boldness to come where I am,” he returned. “I hope you are not going to make a stranger of me because I have not been very neighborly of late. I have been busy and I have been away. The boys have paid my fare up-country, and so I ran about to carry the gospel of the free water. The truckmen have volunteered in half a dozen places. We are doing a great work.”
“And yet I am afraid,” she confessed. “You are fighting men who can do you much harm. I have been asking questions so as to know more about those men. For they have threatened poor Father Etienne. I wanted to know about them. I cannot help. But can you not help, Mr. Farr? I think you are much more than you seem to be,” she added, naively.
“They have threatened Etienne?” demanded Farr, a sharp note in his voice.
“Ah, m'sieu', I have said nottin's to you. I am only poor old man. No matter.”
“Why didn't you say something to me?”
“It's because you might feel bad, m'sieu'. P'raps not, for I'm only poor man and don't count.”
“What have they said to you?”
“It's nottin's,” said Etienne, stubbornly. “You shall not think you got me into trouble. You did not. I would have done it maself as soon as I thought of it.”
“I command you to tell me what has been said to you, Etienne.”
“They say that I shall be discharge from the rack. They say I have talk too much to my compatriots about the poison water. But I shall talk—yes—jesso!”
“Who says so?”
“The yard boss say to me that. Oh, there's no mistake. He have the power, M'sieu' Farr. The super tell the yard boss, the mill agent tell the super, the alderman tell the mill agent, the mayor he tell the alderman.”
“And probably Colonel Symonds Dodd told the mayor,” growled Farr. “It's a great system, Etienne. Nobody too small—nobody too big!”
“But I do not care. I shall talk some more—yes, I shall talk in thehotel de villewhen you shall tell me to talk. I was scare at first and I tol' you I would not talk; but now I have found out I can talk—and I am not scare any more, and I will talk.” Pride and determination were in the old man's tones. Since that most wonderful evening in all his life when he had heard his voice as if it were the voice of another man ringing forth denunciation of those in high places, the old rack-tender had referred to that new manifestation of himself as if he were discussing another man whom he had discovered. The memory of his feat was ever fresh within him. And his meek pride was filled with much wonderment that such a being should have been hidden all the years in Etienne Provancher. Many men had called around to shake his hand and increase his wonderment as to his own ability.
“We will wait awhile,” counseled Farr, understanding the pride and treating it gently. “Stay at your work and be very quiet, Etienne, and they will not trouble you. You need your money, and I will call on you when you can help again.”
“Then I will come. I shall be sorry to see somebody have my rake and pole, but I shall come.”
A moment of silence fell between them, and during that moment a young woman passed rapidly along the sidewalk. Walker Farr shut his eyes suddenly, as a man tries to wink away what he considers an illusion, and then opened his eyes and made sure that she was what she seemed; there was no mistaking that face—it was Kate Kilgour.
He stared after her. She halted on the next corner, peered up at the dingy street light to make sure of the sign legend on its globe and then turned down an alley.
“Ba gar!” commented old Etienne, putting Farr's thoughts into words, “that be queer t'ing for such a fine, pretty lady to go down into Rose Alley, because Rose Alley ain't so sweet as what it sounds.”
Then two men came hurrying past without paying any attention to the denizens of the neighborhood who were sitting in the gloom on the stoop. The street light revealed the faces of the men as it had shown to them the girl's features. One was Richard Dodd. Unmistakably, they were following the girl. Farr heard Dodd say: “Slow up! Give her time to get there. She's headed all right.”
And Farr stared after those men, more than ever amazed.
One of them was obtrusively a clergyman—that is to say, he was cased in a frock-coat that flapped against his calves, wore a white necktie, and carried a book under his arm.
Dodd was attired immaculately in gray, and as he walked he whipped a thin cane nervously. They began to stroll soon after they had hurried past the stoop, and were sauntering leisurely when they turned into Rose Alley.
“I now say two ba gars!” exploded Etienne. “Because I been see the jailbird, Dennis Burke, all dress up like minister, go past here with the nephew of Colonel Dodd. And they go 'long after la belle mam'selle.”
“A jailbird!”
“He smart, bad man, that Dennis Burke. But he was hire by the big man to do something with the votes on election-time—so to cheat—and he get caught and so he been in the state prison. But he seem to be out all free now and convert to religion in some funny way. Eh?”
“Etienne, are you sure of what you are talking about?” demanded Farr. His voice trembled. The visit of that handsome girl to that quarter of the city—those men so patently pursuing her—there was a sinister look to the affair.
“Oh, we all know that Burke. He hire many votes in this ward for many years. He known in Marion just so well as the steeple on thehotel de ville. And that odder—that young mans, we know him, for his oncle is Colonel Dodd. Oh yes!”
“Good night, Etienne—and to you Miss Zelie!” said Farr, curtly, walking off toward the entrance of Rose Alley. He did not ask the old man to go with him. He was drawn in two directions by his emotions and stopped after he had taken a few steps. This seemed like espionage in a matter which was none of his concern. It was entirely possible that the confidential secretary of Colonel Dodd and the nephew of that gentleman might have common business even in Rose Alley and at that time of evening.
But the matter of that masquerading ballot-falsifier, just out of state prison, overcame Farr's scruples about meddling in the affairs of Kate Kilgour.
He turned the corner into the alley in season to see the two men far ahead of him; they passed out of the radiance shed by a dim light and he saw no more of them. He walked the length of the alley and was not able to locate any of the party. At its lower end the alley was closed in by houses, and it was plain that the people he sought had not passed out into another thoroughfare. He marched back, scrutinizing the outside of buildings, trying to conjecture what business the handsome girl and the two men could have in that section at that hour, and where they had entered to prosecute that business.
“I must continue to blame it all on the nice old ladies,” he told himself, smiling at the shamed zest he was finding in this hunt. “But I hope this knight-errantry will not grow to be a habit with me. I mustn't forget that I have another job on hand for nine o'clock—also knight-errantry!”
He paused under the dim light where his men had disappeared and looked at his cheap watch.
Twenty-five minutes of nine!
Then he heard a woman's protesting voice. She cried “No,no, NO!” in crescendo.
He gazed at the house from which the voice seemed to come. It was near at hand, a shabby little cottage with a thin slice of yard closed in by a dilapidated picket fence. He perceived no observers in the alley, and he stepped into the yard. The front windows were open, for the evening was warm, but no lights were visible in the house.
He heard the protesting cry again. It was more earnest.
He head the rumble of a man's voice, but could not catch the words. Whatever was happening was taking place in some rear room.
“No, I say, no! Unlock that door,” cried the voice, passionately.
Farr troubled his mind no longer with quixotic considerations about intrusion. He hoisted himself over the window-sill into the darkened front room, passed down a short corridor and, when he heard the voice once again on the inside of a door which he found locked, he immediately kicked the door open. He appeared to those in the room, heralded by an amazing crash and flying splinters.
First of all, he was astonished to find two women there; one was Miss Kilgour and the other was her mother. And there were the two men whom he had followed.
Farr swept off his hat and addressed the girl.
“I happened to be passing and heard your voice,” he said. “If you are—” He hesitated, a bit confused, realizing all at once that knight-errantry in modern days is not quite as free and easy a matter as it used to be when damsels were in distress in the ruder times of yore. “I am at your service,” he added, a bit curtly.
But she did not reply. Her attitude was tense, her cheeks were flaming, her eyes were like glowing coals.
“You lunatic, you have come slamming in here, disturbing a private wedding,” announced the man in the white tie, slapping his palm upon the book he carried.
“Get out of here!” shouted Dodd. He had dodged into a corner of the room, his face whitening, when Farr had burst in. He remained in the corner now, brandishing his cane.
The uninvited guest surveyed the young man with more composure than he had been able to command when he looked at the girl.
Etienne Provancher had fortified him with some valuable information.
“Mr. Richard Dodd, I'll apologize and walk out of here after you have explained to me why you have faked up into a parson one Dennis Burke, late of the state prison, to officiate at weddings.”
Upon the silence that followed the girl thrust an “Oh!” into which she put grief, protest, anger, consternation.
“Mother!” she cried. “Did you know? How could you allow—how did you come to do such a terrible thing?”
Her mother put her hands to her face and sat down and began to sob with hysterical display of emotion. Farr scowled a bit as he looked at her. She was overdressed. There was an artificial air about her whole appearance—even her hysterics seemed artificial.
The girl turned from her with a gesture of angry despair as if she realized, from experience, that she could expect, at that juncture, only emotion without explanation.
“Hold on here,” cried Dodd, “hold on here, everybody! This is all right. You just let me inform you, Mr. Butter-in, that Mr. Burke has full authority to solemnize a marriage. He is a notary and was commissioned at the last meeting of the governor and council. And I know that,” he added, attempting a bit of a swagger, “for I secured the commission for him myself.” He came out of his corner and shook his cane at Farr. “I want you to understand that I have political power in this state!”
“I wouldn't brag about that kind of political power, when you can use it to make notaries out of jailbirds. That must be a nice bunch you have up at your State House!”
“On your way!” Again the cane swished in front of Farr's face.
“I beg your pardon, madam,” apologized Farr, bowing to the girl. “You seem to be the only one in this room entitled to that courtesy,” he added, with a touch of his cynicism. “Am I intruding on your personal business?”
“You are not,” she answered, her eyes flashing. “I am glad you came in here. I could have stopped the wretched folly myself, but you have helped me, and I thank you.” She delivered that little speech with vigor.
“Kate!” pleaded Dodd. “This isn't fair. I meant it all right. Here's your mother here! You wouldn't be reasonable the other way. We had to do something. For the love of Heaven, be good. You know I—”
She had turned her back on him. Now she whirled and spat furious words at him, commanding him to be silent.
“Do you want to spread all this miserable business before this gentleman?” she demanded. “I am ashamed—ashamed! My mother to consent to such a thing!”
She turned her back on him again and walked to and fro, beating her hands together in her passion. And now ire boiled in Dodd. He directed it all at the man who had interfered.
“This is no business of yours, you loafer. I don't know who you are, but you—”
Farr grabbed the switching cane as he would have swept into his palm an annoying insect. He broke it into many pieces between his sinewy fingers and tossed the bits into Dodd's convulsed face.
“You'll know me better later on—you and your uncle, too. Ask him what I advised him to do about having his weapon loose on his hip—take the same advice for yourself.”
Then his expression altered suddenly. A disquieting jog of memory prompted him to yank out the cheap watch.
Twelve minutes to nine.
It was a long way to the foot of the steps of the Mellicite Club! And Union Hall was filled with men who were patiently waiting for him to keep his pledged word!
“I hope you'll be all right now,” he said to the girl, haste in his tones. “I'm sorry—I must go—I have an important engagement.”
Her eyes met his in level gaze, turned scornful glance at the others in the room, and then came back to his.
“Are you going in the direction of the Boulevard?” she asked him.
“Straight there.”
“Will you bother with me as far as the Boulevard?”
“If you are a good walker,” he informed her. There was strict business in her tone and cool civility in his.
“I'm going along with this gentleman, mother.”
Farr ushered her ahead of him through the shattered door.
“But I want to walk home with you, my child,” wailed the sobbing woman.
“You'd better ask Mr. Dodd to escort you. And I trust that the talk you and he will have will bring both of you to your senses.”
She hurried away up the alley with Farr, after he had unlocked the front door, finding the key on the inside.
“I am sorry I must hurry you,” he apologized, “and if you cannot keep up I must desert you when we get to a well-lighted street.”
She drove a sharp side glance at him and did not reply. Probably for the first time in her life she heard a young man declare with determination that he was in a hurry to leave her. Even a sensible young woman who is pretty must feel some sort of momentary pique because a young man can have engagements so summary and so engrossing.
He offered her his arm that they might walk faster. Her touch thrilled him. He was far from feeling the outward calm that he displayed to her.
They did not speak as they hurried.
Both were nearly breathless when they came out on the Boulevard. He saw the big clock—its hands were nearly at the right angle.
“Good night!” she gasped, and she put out her hand to him. “I thank you!”
“It was nothing,” he assured her.
When their palms met they looked into each other's eyes. It was a momentary flash which they exchanged, but in that instant both of them were thrilled with the strange, sweet knowledge that no human soul may analyze: it is the mystic conviction which makes this man or that woman different from all the rest of humankind to the one whose heart is touched.
She gave him a smile. “Are you a knight-errant?”
She hurried away before he could reply—and, though all his yearning nature strove against his man's resolution to do his duty, it could not prevail: he did not follow her as he wanted to—running after her, crying his love. But duty won out by a mere hazard of a margin because her face, as she had shown it to him at the moment of parting, possessed not merely the wonderful beauty which had so impressed him when he had first seen her—it shone with a sudden flash of emotion that glorified it.
He turned away and hurried to the foot of the steps of the Mellicite Club.
He had no time to ponder on the nature of that mystery which he had uncovered in the shabby cottage in Rose Alley nor to wonder what sort of persecution it was that could enlist a mother's aid in that grotesque fashion against her own daughter.
He had not time even to frame a plan of campaign against the man whom the patient waiters in Union Hall were expecting him to capture.
The bell in the tower was booming its nine strokes and the Honorable Archer Converse was coming down the steps from his club, erect, crisp, immaculate, dignified—tapping his cane against the stones.
Mr. Converse bestowed only a careless glance at the stranger who was waiting at the foot of the club-house steps.
The young man accosted him, not obsequiously, but frankly.
“I know you always take a turn in the park at this hour, Mr. Converse. I beg your pardon, but may I walk for a few steps with you?”
“Why do you want to walk with me?”
“It's a matter—”
“I never discuss business on the street, sir. Come to my office to-morrow.”
He marched on and Farr went along behind him.
“You heard?” demanded the attorney.
“I heard.” Farr replied very respectfully, but he kept on.
He had rushed away from the girl and had come face to face with Mr. Converse, his mind utterly barren of plan or resource. That interim on which he had counted as a time in which he might devise ways and means had been so crowded with happenings that all consideration of plans in regard to Archer Converse had been swept from his mind.
At all events, he had rendered a service in that time; he had made good use of that forty-five minutes—that reflection comforted him even while he dizzily wondered what he was to do now.
That service had demanded sacrifice from him—why not demand something from that service? An idea, sudden, brazen, undefendable, even outrageous, popped into his head. He had no time for sensible planning. Mr. Converse was glancing about with the air of a citizen who would like to catch the eye of a policeman.
“I know all about you, Mr. Converse, even if you know nothing about me. I'm making a curious appeal—it's to your chivalry!”
That was appeal sufficiently novel, so the demeanor of Mr. Converse announced, to arrest even the attention of a gentleman who usually refused to allow the routine of his life to be interrupted by anything less than an earthquake. He halted and fronted this stranger.
“A man who wears that,” proceeded Farr, indicating the rosette of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion in the lapel of Mr. Converse's coat, “and wears it because it came to him by inheritance from General Aaron Converse is bound to listen to that appeal.”
“Explain, sir.”
“Do you know a Richard Dodd who is the nephew of Colonel Dodd?”
“I do, sir. You aren't asking me to assist him, are you? I will have nothing to do with him—no help from me!”
“Just a moment—wait one moment! Mr. Converse, do you know a man named Dennis Burke who has been in prison for ballot frauds?”
“I helped send him there, sir. Are you reciting the rogues' roster to me?”
“Richard Dodd has dressed Burke up as a parson and is trying to force a young woman into a marriage. I haven't time to tell you how I happened to know about this affair—but it is in Rose Alley and there's no time to waste.”
“A preposterous yarn.”
“I have just come from that house.”
“You're a young man of muscle—why didn't you stop it?”
“The girl's mother is there, backing Dodd. Mr. Converse, the cause needs a man like you—a man of law, of standing, of influence. I appeal to you to follow me.”
“A moment—a moment! I scent a ruse. I don't know you. Are you a decoy for blackmailers or robbers?” he inquired, bluntly.
Farr took off his hat and stood before the Honorable Archer Converse, his strange, slow, winning smile dawning on his face.
“I beg your pardon for interrupting your stroll,” he said, gently. “I hope you'll look at me! You may see, perhaps, that you're in error. I'll go back and kill Dodd—and come to your office to-morrow—on business—engaging you as counsel for the defense.”
“Lead the way to that house,” snapped Mr. Converse. The attitude of Farr, his forbearance, his refraining from further solicitation, his frank demeanor, won out for him. “I'm sometimes a little hasty in my remarks,” acknowledged Mr. Converse in the tone of one who felt chastened. “Are you a new-comer to our city?” he continued as they hurried away. “You must be. I should certainly have remembered you if I had ever seen you before.” It was an indirect compliment—a gentleman's careful approach to an apology.
The young man did not reply. He had conceived for this stately man a sudden hero-worship. What Citizen Drew had told him was added to his own instinct in matters of the understanding of a personality. He did not dare to stop and consider to what despicable extent he was lying to his victim. He knew if he stopped to think he would quit. Now the whole affair seemed a crazy thing. Did even his proposed ends justify this procedure?
“There's a short cut through Sanson Street,” stammered Farr, the sense of his own iniquity increasing in the same ratio in which his respect and admiration grew. The honorable gentleman traveled along at a brisk jog, evidently desiring to show his apologetic mood by exhibiting confidence in his guide.
And Farr, stealing side glances at him, was more self-accusatory, more abashed. He cherished the hope that they would be able to anticipate the departure of Dodd and the confederates from the cottage. It was not clear to him just how he would make the incident serve, anyway. He was conscious that he had grasped at any opportunity which would open the ears of the Honorable Archer Converse to a person who had accosted him on the street. Finding somebody in the house would, at least, stamp his story with verity even if it served no purpose in the main intent of Farr's efforts.
But on a well-lighted street corner the young man halted suddenly.
“It's no use,” he informed the astonished Mr. Converse. “Conscience has tripped me. I can't do it.”
“Do you mean to intimate that you have been tricking me, sir?”
“I mean to say, Mr. Converse, that I had proposed to take a half-hour or so and think up some method of honestly and properly interesting you in a matter which is very dear to me—a public matter, sir. But here is how I spent that half-hour.”
Frankly, simply, convincingly he related to his amazed listener the full story of what he had found in the cottage in Rose Alley.
“And therefore I had no time to ponder on my business with you—I simply turned from the young lady, and there you were, sir, coming down the club steps. I did the very best I could on short notice—but what I did was very crude. I apologize. I suppose, under the circumstances, I may as well say 'Good-night'!” He raised his hat.
But there was something in all this which piqued Converse's curiosity.
“Wait one moment. This is getting to be interesting.”
A rather hazy conviction began to assure Farr that possibly chance had dealt a better stroke for him than well-considered planning. It was surely something to know that the honorable gentleman was interested.
“If you had had time to think out a method of approaching me—Let me see, your name is—”
“Farr.”
“Mr. Farr, supposing I had been amenable to your suggestions, what is it you wanted of me?”
“I wanted you to attend a public meeting,” blurted the young man. “They are men who need help—they need—”
“That's sufficient,” snapped Converse. “I am not in politics. I do not address public meetings. Mr. Farr, you would have wasted your time planning. Absolutely!”
“But is there not some appeal that—”
“Useless—useless, sir.” He tapped his cane, and his tones showed irritation. He whirled on his heels. “It is decidedly evident that you are a stranger in these parts, sir. On that account I forgive your presumption.”
At that moment a jigger-wagon rumbled to a halt near them. The corner light had revealed them to the driver.
“Mr. Farr,” called the man, “it hasn't taken long for the news of what you did at the meeting to-night to travel around among the boys. And we ain't going to let you get ahead of us, sir.”
“The more, the merrier, in a good cause,” said Farr; but he was staring regretfully at the back of Mr. Converse, who had begun his retreat.
“I want to tell you I'm on the executive committee of the State Teamsters Union, Mr. Farr. I've been talking the matter up and I can promise you that the union as a body will vote to lend horses and men to carry your spring-water free gratis. And I hope that gent who's starting up-town where the dudes are will tell 'em that there are honest men enough left to protect the poor folks from that poison water him and his rich friends are pumping out of the river to us.”
The Honorable Archer Converse halted his departure very suddenly.
“You are not referring to me, are you, my man?”
“I am if you're tied up with that Consolidated Water Company bunch,” stated the unterrified member of the proletariat.
Mr. Converse retraced his steps. He shook his cane at the driver.
“I want to inform you very distinctly, sir, that I amnotinterested in the Consolidated.”
“Dawson, apologize to this gentleman,” Farr admonished the driver.
“I'm sorry I said anything,” muttered the man. “But all dudes look alike to me,” he told himself under his breath.
Mr. Converse appeared to be considerably disturbed by the humble citizen's sneer in regard to the Consolidated matter. He addressed himself to Farr.
“I have been touched on a point where I am very sensitive,” he informed the young man. “I do not condone the policies of the Consolidated in regard to their control of franchises. Their system of operation has introduced a bad element into our finance and politics. I would be sorry to be misunderstood by the people of this state.”
“I hope you will not be misunderstood, sir,” averred Farr, with humility.
“In order to show you my stand in the matter and so that you may correct any misunderstanding among your friends in these quarters,” proceeded Mr. Converse, stiffly, “I will inform you that I am taking the case of the citizens' syndicate of Danburg on appeal up to our highest court. We hope to prove criminal conspiracy. We hope to show up some of the corruption in the state. That is why I have gone into the case.”
“I thank you for informing me. I have been trying to fight the Consolidated in my own humble way.”
The eminent lawyer came closer and was promptly interested.
“I am in search of information of all kinds, sir. Kindly explain.”
Eliminating himself as much as possible, Farr described the operations of the Co-operative Spring Water Association. But he could not eliminate the man on the box-seat of the jigger-wagon. When Farr had finished his brief explanation that loyal admirer gave in some enthusiastic testimony in regard to the man who had devised the plan and had sacrificed his time in efforts to extend the system. He kept on until Farr checked him.
“I will say, Mr. Converse, before you leave, that I'd like to have you carry away a right opinion of me. I was not trying to drag you to a mere political gathering. There are some poor men assembled just now in this quarter who need a sympathetic listener and a little good advice. They are also trying to get justice from the Consolidated and all the general oppression it represents.”
“Where are those men?” asked Converse, after a pause during which he wrinkled his brows and tapped his cane.
Farr pointed down the street. Not far away a low-hung transparency heralded “The Square Deal Club.”
Mr. Converse gazed in that direction and hesitated a few moments longer.
“You assure me that it's not a mere political rally?”
“I do, sir!”
Then the son of General Converse gallantly extended his arm.
“I'll be glad to be escorted by you, Mr. Farr,” he said. “Now that I understand this thing a bit better, I am going to break one of my rules.” As they walked along he remarked: “A man's affairs are sometimes directed and controlled for him in a most singular fashion. Little things change preconceived notions very suddenly.”
“They do, sir,” agreed Walker Farr.
A man who stood at the head of the stairs, an outpost, saw them coming and ran and opened a door ahead of them. The door admitted to a hall which was packed with men who were ranged on settees and stood in the aisles and at the sides of the big room.
“Make way for the Honorable Archer Converse,” shrieked theiravant courier, excitedly.
“Three cheers for the Honorable Archer Converse,” called a voice, and all the men came on to their feet and yelled lustily.
The distinguished guest climbed upon the platform—Farr close at his heels. The young man placed a chair for the lawyer and remained standing. He raised his hand to command silence.
“This is rather unexpected, boys. But this distinguished man happened to be passing our hall to-night and has dropped in on us in a purely informal manner. It's a great honor, and I want to say to him for all of us that the old Square Deal Club is mighty grateful. I ask you to rise, gentlemen of the club.”
All came to their feet again.
“Bow your heads and for thirty seconds of deep silence pay your respect and veneration to the memory of our great war governor, General Aaron Converse.”
The Honorable Archer Converse looked forth over those bowed and bared heads. The most of them were gray heads, and toil-worn hands were clasped in front of those men. And when at last the faces were raised to his there was an appealing earnestness in their gaze which touched him poignantly.
“Boys, the son of that great man is present. How will you express your admiration and respect for him?”
They cheered again tumultuously.
Farr walked to the edge of the platform.
“It is kind and generous of Mr. Converse to consent to step in here for a few moments this evening. I will leave the meeting in his hands.”
There was a hush for a moment. Then the guest carried his chair to the extreme front edge of the platform.
“I don't know just what sort of meeting this is—I have not been fully informed,” he said, very crisply. “But I want it distinctly understood that I am not here to make any speech. Your faces indicate that you are very much in earnest in regard to the business you are met to consider. I am assured that this is no mere political rally?”
“No,” somebody replied.
“I'm glad of that. I am not in politics. The political mess grows to be nastier every year. But what are you here for? Come, now! Come! Let's talk it over.” He was a bit brusque, but his tone was kindly.
A man who stood up in the middle of the hall was rather shabby in his attire, but he had the deep eyes of one who thinks.
“Honored sir,” he said, “I don't stand up as one presuming to speak for all the rest. But I have talked with many men. I know what some of us want. We don't expect that laws or leaders will make lazy men get ahead in the world or that victuals can be legislated into the cupboard without a man gets out and hustles for 'em. I have worked at a bench ever since I was fourteen. I expect to work there until I drop out. I don't want any political office. I couldn't fill one. But why is it that the only men who get into office are the kind who turn around and get rich selling off property which belongs to all of us—I mean the franchises for this, that, and the other?” He sat down.
A thin man in the front row got up.
“Honorable Archer Converse, one franchise that was given away by those men years ago was the right to furnish water to this city. A private concern got hold of that franchise. It holds the right to-day. It saves money by pumping its water out of the Gamonic River. Saves money and wastes lives. The Board of Health's reports show that there were eleven hundred cases of typhoid fever in this city last year. In my family my mother and two of my children died. I shiver every time I touch a tap—but spring-water that can be depended on costs us at the grocer's a dollar for a five-gallon carboy—and my wages are only ten dollars a week. There are lakes twenty miles from this city. Pure water there for all of us! But every tap drips sewage from the Gamonic River. Haven't we got any leaders who will make that water company pump health instead of death?”
“They sent 'Tabulator' Burke up for ballot frauds,” said a voter who stood up in a far corner. “But anybody in this city understands well enough that the judge who sent him to state prison knew who the real chaps were, knew how much the real ones paid 'Tabulator' to take the whole blame. And the governor knows it all and has just reappointed that judge.”
The Honorable Archer Converse sat very straight in his chair and listened to those men. He continued to sit straight and listened to others. The men dealt in no diatribe. There was no raving, there was no anarchistic sentiments. They arose, uttered their grievances gloomily but without passion, and sat down.
One elderly man stood up and raised both hands.
“I came across the sea to this country, sir. I came because I could have my little share in the government where I paid taxes and labored—I could vote here. It's the only public privilege I have. But, O God, give us some one to vote for!”
“I sympathize with your feelings,” replied Mr. Converse. “But you are talking to the wrong man. I'm not in politics.”
“By the gods, you will be if my nerve only holds out,” Farr told himself.
Another man sprang to his feet. He spoke quietly, but his very repression made him more effective.
“What's the good of voting till men like you do get into politics, Mr. Converse, and give us leaders who will use their power to help the people who voted for them? I'm sick of voting. I'm teamed up to the polls by ward workers—and I know just why those men are in the game and who they're working for. What do you suppose Colonel Dodd cares which side carries this city, or which side carries the state? He and his crowd stand to win, whatever party gets in. You can't beat 'em. Business is business, no matter what politics may be! The city money is wasted just the same, the policy game is let run for the benefit of the rich men who back it, all the grafts go right on. You can't fool me any longer. They stir us poor chaps up at election-time, we rush to the polls and vote, and sometimes think we are accomplishing something. But what we're doing is simply boosting out some fellow who has made his pile and putting in another who wants office so that he can fill his own pockets by selling our common rights out to the same men. I say, you can't beat it!”
The Honorable Archer Converse seemed to find his position on the platform uncomfortable. He rose suddenly and stepped down on the floor. He went among the men. He grasped the hands that were outstretched to him. He realized that he had scant encouragement for these men. The meeting had given him new light. He knew considerable about the old days, and in the old days of politics men flocked to rallies. They harkened humbly to speeches from their leaders, and swallowed the sugar-coated facts, and listened to bands, and joined the torch-light parades, and voted according to party lines, and thought they had done well; the surface of things was nicely slicked over.
He understood that out of the ease with which the mob could be herded, with others doing their thinking for them, had grown politics as a business—with the big interests dominating both parties—and no one realized how it had all come about better than Converse. This new spirit, however, rather surprised him, for he had been keeping aloof from politics. These men who crowded about him were not mere dumb, driven voters in the mass—they were individuals who were thinking, who were demanding, who were seeking a leader that would consider them as citizens to be served, not chattels to be sold to the highest bidder. His keen lawyer's insight understood all this!
“I'm a butcher down in the stock-yards, Mr. Converse,” said one man, who pressed forward. “We've got trained bulls there who tole the cattle along into the slaughter-pens. I've got tired of being a steer in politics and following these old trained bulls.”
Converse worked his way through the press to the door, Farr at his heels.
When they were on the street the honorable gentleman turned sharply toward the Boulevard.
“I haven't any spirit or taste to-night for moonlight in the park, sir! A nice trick you played on me.”
“I wanted you to get a first-hand notion of a state of affairs, Mr. Converse.”
“But you ought to understand my temperament better—you ought to know it's going to stick in my mind, worry me, vex me, set me to seeking for remedies. It's just as if I'd been retained on a case. I feel almost duty-bound to pitch in.”
“It's strange how a man gets pulled into a thing sometimes—into something he had no idea of meddling with,” philosophized Farr, blandly. “That's the way it has happened in my case.”
“It has, eh?” demanded Mr. Converse, sharply. He had tacitly accepted the young man's companionship for the walk back to the Boulevard. “Now, look here! Just who are you?”
“My name is Farr and I'm nothing.”
“You needn't bluff me—you're a politician—a candidate for something.”
“I'm not even a voter in this state. It's men like you, sir, who ought to be candidates for the high offices.”
“My sainted father trained me to respect self-sacrifice, Mr. Farr. But for a clean man to try to accomplish things for the people in politics these days isn't self-sacrifice—it's martyrdom. The cheap politicians heap the fagots, the sneering newspapers light the fire and keep blowing it with their bellows, and the people stand around and seem to show a sort of calm relish in watching the operation. And when it is all over not a bit of good has been done.”
“I'm afraid I have wasted an evening for you, sir. I'm sorry. I hoped the troubles of those men, when you heard them at first hand, would interest you.”
“Interest me! Confound it all, you have wrecked my peace of mind! I knew it all before. But I'm selfish, like almost everybody else. I kept away where I couldn't hear about these things. Now, if I sleep soundly to-night I'll be ashamed to look up at my father's portrait when I walk into my office to-morrow morning. Why didn't you have better sense than to coax me into your infernal meeting?” He rapped his cane angrily against the curbstone as he strode on. “And the trouble with me is,” continued Mr. Converse, with much bitterness, “I know the conditions are such in this state that a meeting like that can be assembled in every city and town—and the complaints will be just and demand help. But there's no organization—it's only blind kittens miauling. It's damnable!”
“But this is the kind of country where some mighty quick changes can be made when the people do get their eyes open,” suggested the young man.
Mr. Converse merely grunted, tapping his cane more viciously.
They were on the frontier of the Eleventh Ward now. The brighter lights of the avenues of up-town blazed before them.
“Then you will not go into politics?” inquired Farr.
“I'd sooner sail for India with a cargo of hymn-books and give singing-lessons to Bengal tigers.”
“Good night, sir,” said Farr. He halted on the street corner which marked the boundary of the ward.
“Good night, sir!” replied Mr. Converse, striding on.
The young man watched him out of sight. He heard the angry clack of the cane on the stones long after the Honorable Archer Converse had turned the next corner.
“Maxim in the case of a true gentleman,” mused Farr: “tap his conscience on the shoulder, point your finger at the enemy, say nothing, simply stand back and give conscience plenty of elbow-room—it needs no help. There, by the grace of God, goes the next governor of this state.”