Chapter 11

“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 pretty _moue_.

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.

XVI

FARR HAS A VISION AND CLOSES HIS LIPS

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.