Chapter 12

“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.

XVII

THE MADNESS OF A MIDSUMMER NIGHT

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 what _real_ flower-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 the _hotel de ville_ when 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 the _hotel 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.