Chapter 7

But at the end of a week languor still weighed on the child. There were circles under her eyes and her cheeks were wan, and she did not clap her hands with the old-time glee when he brought her new toys; the playthings lay beside her on the bed and invited her touch--staring eyes of dolls, beady eyes of toy dogs--without avail.

“It is the queer way of being sick,” lamented the old man. “The doctor mebbe not know, because he very gruff and do not say. I think I know what may cure her--it has been done many time.

“Away up in the Canada country there is the shrine of the good Sainte Anne de Beaupre. There she stand in the middle of the big church and she hold her little grandson in her arm--the little boy Jesus. So she feel very tender toward poor, sick childs. Ah, I have seen her many time--I have seen childs healed there and made so very smart--all cure. She loves little childs. _Oui_. All about her feet are short, small crutch where she has cure childs. The piece of her wrist-bone is there in the sacristy--it look like a wee scrap of some gray moss under the glass. And it cure when the good priest say the word for her. I know the way to the shrine of La Bonne Sainte Anne--I will go with the little Rosemarie and she shall sing and dance after that.”

For a moment the cynical smile of the skeptic etched itself at the corners of Farr's mouth--the flash of the nature the young man had hidden during recent weeks.

He turned to Zelie Dionne and found her regarding him with grave eyes.

“It is as M'sieu' Etienne says,” she assured the young man. “La Bonne Sainte listens very tenderly when the children come to her. She is good to all, but her spirit leans over the poor little children and comforts them.”

“You have been there?”

“Many times, sir. It is not only the sick body that the good Sainte Anne heals--she comforts anybody who is in much sorrow--she tells the right way to go. There are many roads to take in this life--and if any one goes to her with prayer and humble soul she will guide. Ah, it is true, sir.”

There was earnestness in her features and conviction in her tones and it was plain that Zelie Dionne was speaking out of the depths of her heart, and Farr remembered what old Etienne had said about the son of Farmer Leroux.

“Yes, she will lead to the right way and make all well in the end,” asserted the girl. “And, most of all, she is kind and gentle to the little children.”

Between her and the wistful old man Farr divided tolerant and kindly gaze.

“I believe in more things than I used to,” he said. “I'm willing to admit in these days that things I do not understand may have truth in them. The doctor is not making her well. But it is a long way to that shrine.”

“It is a long way, so! But I am very scare for her as she lie here all day. I will carry her very tender--on the railway car--on the big boat. The good Sainte Anne is everywhere, too. She will help.”

“If faith can move mountains it ought to heal easily one poor, little toddlekins,” muttered Farr.

A new doctor came the next day, a breezy young man, a talkative and frank young man, the assistant of the over-worked city physician, whose municipal duties had obliged him to take on helpers.

“I shall ask him, hey--about the shrine?” whispered Etienne to Farr while the doctor was examining the child.

“Yes; he'll be more patient with you than with me.”

“And do you think that pretty soon she can go on the railway if I be very careful, good docteur?” asked the old man, wistfully, apologetically.

“Go where?”

“On the pilgrimage to the shrine of the good Sainte Anne in the Canada country.”

“Don't you realize what this case is?” demanded the young physician.

“He have not say--he hurry in, he hurry out.”

“You the grandfather?”

“No!”

The doctor turned on Farr.

“Father?”

“No.”

“Then I can talk right out to you two. This is a case of typhoid that will be fatal in twenty-four hours. There's no use lying about it.”

Old Etienne's mouth and eyes seemed to sink deep into his wrinkles, as if Time had forced him suddenly to swallow an extra score of years. He looked at Farr's blank and whitening face, and as quickly looked away.

“Break it to her grandmother,” advised the doctor, nodding toward the kitchen where the good woman was at work.

“But you don't know what you say,” stammered the old man.

“It so happens that I do, my man. I've been handling too many of these cases to be fooled. Why, I've got more than fifty cases of typhoid in this city--just myself.”

“But she has had sun and fresh air--on the canal bank where I tend the rack.”

“Sun and fresh air can't cure victims of the poison that is being pumped through the water-mains of this city,” snapped the doctor.

“Water-mains!”

The doctor turned and stared at Farr, for the husky croak of his exclamation had not sounded human.

“That's what I said. You can't have lived very long in this state not to know what we're up against on the water proposition.”

“I haven't lived here long. But about the child--it can't--”

“Why, this Consolidated Company is owned by Colonel Dodd and his politicians--and they own all the city and town water systems in this state,” said the doctor, no longer interested in his patient--exploding with the violence of imprudent youth. “They boss mayors, the aldermen, the politicians--boss the governor himself. That's because they've got the machine and the money. They've got a lot of money, because they won't wake up and spend it to lay lines far enough to tap the lakes in the hills. They tap these rotten rivers at our back doors, pump poison through the mains, sell it at prices that yield them twenty percent dividends. They say the water is all right--and back it up with analyses. I say it's all wrong.”

“And you damnation doctors are letting this go on--letting folks drink poison--telling us when it's too late!” shouted Farr, purple replacing the white in his face.

“Well, the folks up-town who have got wisdom and the money buy spring-water and mineral water. All the doctors don't agree that the river is responsible for the typhoid. With the governor and the legislature bossed by Dodd and his associates, and the city governments tied up by them, and the banks taking orders from the syndicate in case any town or an independent company tries to borrow money and install a water system, and the mill corporations and the tenement-block owners all in cahoots, a crusader who expected to get anywhere in politics or make money out of his business would stand a fine and dandy show, now wouldn't he? And the most of us in this world are trying to get ahead either in business or in politics.” He snapped the catch of his little black case. “Forget what I have said, you two. I hold my job through politics. I'm apt to talk too much when I get started. But don't drink city water, no matter if Colonel Dodd's analyses do give it a clean bill.”

Farr caught him at the door, restraining him with a heavy hand.

“You stay here, don't you let that baby die. By the gods, she sha'n't die!”

“My staying will do no good, my friend. The little girl is death-struck already. It's quick work with the children. Sometimes we can bring the grown folks through. Get another doctor, if you feel like it, but I've got to keep moving--there are lots of folks waiting for me in these tenements.”

He shook off Farr's hand and hurried away.

Old Etienne stood by the bedside, gazing down on the little sufferer, closing and unclosing his shriveled hands as if he were grasping at straws of hope, dragging the depths of his soul for reassurance even as he dragged his rake in the black waters of the canal.

“The whippersnapper lied about her. Because she's a baby he won't bother,” stormed Farr. “I'll ransack this town for doctors--I'll find one who knows his business.” He tiptoed to the bed and laid tender palm against the child's cheek. “I say her face isn't as hot as it was,” he persisted. “Where can I find a doctor with gray whiskers, Etienne? That young fool doesn't know.”

“There are many wise old docteurs in the long street named Western Boulevard--they live in the big houses--but they don't come to the tenement folks.”

“One of them will come this time even if I have to lug him on my back.”

He began to search for his hat, not remembering where he had tossed it in the haste and eagerness of his arrival at the good woman's house. He did not find it readily and he rushed out bareheaded.

“The sun and the air they do no good! It is the poison water--and the poor folks of the tenements they do not know!” muttered the old man. “That is what he say?” He went to the kitchen sink and unscrewed the faucet. He sniffed and made a wry face, then he ran his thin finger into the valve-chamber. He hooked and brought forth stringy slime, held it near his nose, and groaned. “The poor folks do not know. They who ask for the votes of the slashers, the weavers, the beamers--the men of the mills--they who ask votes do not want the poor folks to know, because the votes would not be given to them who sell poison in the water,” he told the astonished good woman who had watched his act.

“I am careful about my kitchen--I am neat--I wash everything, Etienne,” she assured him, sniffing at the slime in the sink, overcome by confusion, her housewife's reputation at stake.

“Yes, but you cannot wash the souls of them dam' scoundrels who send that water through the pipes to the poor people who can buy no other,” he raged. “This is not your blame--you did not know.” He pointed his finger, quivering, dripping with the slime, at the child on the bed. “They have murder her! With this!” He slatted his finger with the gesture of one who throws off a noisome serpent.

“But I drink the water--it hasn't made me sick,” she protested.

“You--me--odders that are all dry up--tough old fools--we ought to die and we don't,” he raged, stamping back and forth across the kitchen, waving his arms. “We have been poison so much we do not notice. But the poor little childs--the young folks that die--die in these tenements all the time--and we see the white ribbons hanging from the doors, so many place every day--the poor young folks with life ahead and much to live for even down here--they are poison and they do not know! Oh, _le bon Dieu_! Boil dem dam' devil in hell in the water they have sell to the poor!” He stopped, shocked by these words he heard coming from his mouth, and crossed himself contritely. “But I look at her--I hear what the docteur say--I talk and I cannot help!” He staggered into the room where the child lay, and sat down in a chair and held his face in his hands.

It was an aged and somewhat unctuous physician whom Farr brought. The doctor pursed his lips and puckered his eyebrows above the little wraith who minded him not at all, lying with eyes half closed, plucking with finger and thumb at the bedclothing.

“With a bit stronger constitution--if she were a little older--Take the case of an adult--”

“Say it short,” growled Farr, clenching his fists as if he wanted to beat indulgence for the child out of the hide of the world. “I'm paying you for her life.”

“I have nothing to sell you in this case--therefore there can be no pay.” He leaned over the bed and smoothed the moist, tangled hair away from the child's brow. “I can only _give_ you something, my friend. I give you all my sympathy. This baby is departing on a long journey, and I'm Christian enough to believe that the way will be made very smooth for the feet of little children. That's the faith of an old man.”

There were both earnestness and tenderness in his tones--the smugness of the physician was gone. He shook Farr's hand and went out of the room, treading softly.

And the next day Rosemarie's tiny fingers stopped their flutterings and she went away--somewhere!

XI

THE LORDS OF THE CITY

Walker Farr would not allow the tiny body of Rosemarie to be carried away in the white hearse. In his grief he had not been able as yet to dissociate the identity of the child from the poor little tenement in which her spirit had dwelt for the few barren years of her life; it seemed to him that she would be very lonely in the white hearse. He rode to the cemetery, holding the tiny casket across his knees. There was only the one carriage--it was sufficient to carry the friends of little Rosemarie: one Walker Farr and old Etienne and play-mamma Zelie Dionne.

The rack-tender sat opposite Farr and nursed a bundle on his knees. He had wrapped it surreptitiously.

The two men sent Zelie Dionne back to the city in the carriage. But they waited beside the grave until the sexton had finished his work; Farr felt an uncontrollable impulse to wait till all was ended, as he had always waited every night till the little girl was sound asleep and tucked up in bed in the good woman's house. He sat crouched on the edge of a turfed grave, elbows on his knees, his hands clutched into his shock of hair.

After the sexton had departed, tools on his shoulder, Etienne unwrapped the bundle. He began to arrange the child's toys on the grave.

“It is as the others do--the fathers and mothers of our faith in the tenement-houses,” he explained, wistfully, to the young man. He pointed to other graves in the vicinity, short and narrow graves. Toys were spread on them, too. They were the poor treasures of dead children. The toys had been left there in the vague, helpless yearning of parents who strove to reach their human consolation beyond the grave.

Farr gazed on these pitiful memorials of the children--from those graves to the new mound which covered Rosemarie. The ache that had been in his throat for so many hours grew more excruciating. He realized that a father in those circumstances would weep, but he did not feel like shedding tears, and he was ashamed of himself for what seemed lack of something within himself. What he felt then, what he had felt ever since that young doctor had passed sentence of death was surly, bitter rancor--the anger of a man who is robbed.

“Look all around at the graves,” said Etienne, tears in his wrinkles. “I know something better since I take off that faucet. Not all the martyr die when the lion eat 'em up and the fire burn 'em; there be some martyr these day, too. And sometimes, mebbe, some man what have the power will come here and see all these poor little grave and then he go and choke the lion what eat all these poor childs.”

“What kind of man would that be?” pondered Farr. At that moment he had little faith--much less faith than usual--in the decency of any human being; and for many years his faith in humankind had been expressed by a contemptuous snap of his finger.

To sit there longer and look at that fresh earth with the pathetic toys sprinkled over it was a torment his soul could not endure.

He arose and hurried away and Etienne followed him. They trudged in silence back to the city--Etienne to take his rake and pike-pole from the hands of the man who had substituted at the rack, and Farr to resume surly domination over his sweating Italians.

“The martyrs,” Etienne had called them. The notion of that stuck in Farr's brooding thoughts.

He tried to look deeper into his own heart than he had ever looked before and explain to himself just what motive had attracted him to the child in the first place; he had never been especially interested in children before. He found himself muttering, “And a little child shall lead them,” without understanding just why this child had led him so strangely.

If one Walker Farr had understood it at all and had been able to explain it to himself, he would have penetrated the mystery of the dynamics of love--the great gift to humanity that God has not seen fit to expose in its inner workings. Therefore, Farr strode here and there in the hot sun, spurred his diggers with crisp oaths, and on the heels of his profanity muttered to himself, “And a little child shall lead them.”

The tile boss of the Consolidated, whose crew was following the trench-diggers, accosted Farr, after several inspections of his lugubrious countenance.

“Don't you think you need to be cheered up a little?”

Farr scowled at him.

“I don't know what has disagreed with you, but you're certainly in a bad way,” pursued the boss. “Go up with the crowd to City Hall to-night and hear 'em open up the police scandals. Plenty of free fun for the heavy-hearted! There are about half a dozen fat cops in this city who'll be fried to a crisp on both sides, and the sound of the sizzling will be pleasant in the ears.”

“I'm not interested.”

“You will be, if you tend out. The hearing is before the mayor and the whole city government. Nothing very hefty in the way of charges--only loafing in beer-coolers during the heat of the day, spending their time chasing the labor-agitators out of the parks, and letting burglars keep house all summer in the mansions up-town while the owners are away at the seashore. It's all more or less of a joke.”

“Why don't the mayor and aldermen of this city attend to duty instead of jokes?”

“Oh, this city is run so smooth that there's nothing to do in the summer except stage a little farce comedy at City Hall.”

“Let me tell you that there's something to be investigated in this city that isn't a joke,” raged Farr, his bitter ponderings blossoming into speech.

“What's that?”

“Murder going on every day in this damnable town.”

“Well, I guess if there was any murder going on which we didn't hear about, even from our fat cops, it would be investigated, all right. What's the matter with you?”

“I'm glad now you told me about that hearing to-night,” stated Farr, ignoring the other's curiosity. “I'm glad I know when and where to locate the mayor and his men in session. I'll find out if they propose to waste the people's time hearing funny stories about policemen and are going to let murder go on while they are laughing.”

He strode away, cursing at his workmen as he tramped along the side of the ditch.

Farr knocked at the garret room of Etienne early that evening.

“I want you to come with me,” he commanded.

The old man obeyed without questions. As they walked along the streets Farr did not volunteer information. He was grimly sure that if Etienne should receive an inkling of what was expected of him the old man would not stop running until he had crossed the Canadian border.

They were ten minutes worming their way through the press that packed the corridors of City Hall. Groups were bulked at the doors admitting to the aldermen's room--men thatched against each other and overlapping like bees in a swarm at the door of a hive.

But the young man was tall and his shoulders were broad and he kept uttering the magic words, “Room for witnesses!” In his own consciousness he knew that what he should attempt to testify to that night was not on the slate, but the crowd accepted him as one of those from whom they anticipated entertainment, and allowed him to pass--and Etienne, holding to his young friend's coat, followed close and made his way before the throng could close in again.

The hearing began and progressed, and there was much laughter when the delinquencies of certain fat policemen were related--it was a free-and-easy affair--a sort of midsummer fantasy in municipal politics--a squabble between ward bosses who had become jealous in matters of the distribution of police patronage.

Walker Farr, standing against the wall of the audience-chamber, did not laugh. He was busy with thoughts of his own. This bland fooling in municipal matters while stealthy death, protected by city franchise, dripped, so he believed, from every faucet in the tenement-house district, stirred his bitter indignation. Etienne Provancher stood beside him, and the old man did not laugh, either, because he did not understand in the least what those men were talking about. And he was very uneasy, wistfully awe-stricken, hardly daring to touch with his hands the polished oak at his back. He was in the great _hotel de ville_ whose exterior he had stared at many times without presuming or daring to enter the broad portals.

Then there came a recess while the mayor examined papers at his desk. The aldermen leaned back in their chairs with lighted cigars.

“Etienne,” whispered the young man, deep resolve thrilling him, his eyes blazing into the wondering gaze of the old man, “those men who sit behind those desks can do something to save the children and the poor folks in the tenements. But they must wake up, these men here must. You and I must try to wake them up!”

Etienne's eyes opened wide. He did not in the least comprehend how he could serve.

“I know you will not desert a friend, Etienne. I know you'll stand behind me. I know you love the children. So be a brave man now!”

The next moment Etienne was so frightened that he feared he would drop where he stood, because the young man raised his voice so that it rang through the great hall and all eyes were turned that way.

“Your honor the mayor, and gentlemen; I am a stranger here. But I humbly ask permission to address you.”

“If you are a witness in the police matter you will be called on in your turn after the recess,” stated the mayor.

“I am not a witness in the police matter. I am here on other business.”

“There is no other business before this meeting.”

“But there should be, sir, for the business I have come on is a dreadful matter. It is a matter of life and death.”

A hush fell on those in the chamber, and the mayor and his aldermen leaned forward, staring apprehensively. They had been warned that there were dangerous labor-agitators in the city. Many meetings had been broken up by the police at the request of Colonel Dodd, president of the Consolidated Water Company, and other employers had backed him. This tall young man had startled them with his sudden outbreak.

“It is a matter, gentlemen, which concerns every man, woman, and child in this city--vitally concerns them every hour of the day--every hour they are awake. You say you have no other business now except this silly police investigation. For God's sake, wake up and attend to real business--save the people's lives. Here you are in session and here are the people to listen.”

“State your complaint. Be very brief,” commanded the mayor.

But Walker Farr, it was plain, possessed craft as well as courage; he realized that curiosity, properly tickled, will make men more patient in listening.

“First, I want to call a witness. I am not known to this city. But I have here a man whom many of you know, I'm sure, for he has stood out in plain view of a street where many pass, and has worked there for thirty years. It is Etienne Provancher.”

Several men laughed when Farr pushed the old man into view. There was a murmured chorus of “Pickaroon.”

“It's for the children--the poor folks--for the memory of our little girl,” hissed Farr in the old man's ear. “Will you go to your bed to-night--the night of the day we buried her--knowing that--you are a coward? These are only men. We must tell them so that they will know. Speak! Tell them!” He set his firm clutch around the trembling old Frenchman's arm and held him out where all could see.

“I do not know how to talk here--to so much man--to the lords of the city,” stammered the miserable old man, licking his parched lips, scared until all was black before his eyes.

The hush was profound. Men curved their palms at their ears, wondering what old Pickaroon could have to say in City Hall.

“Remember what we have left up there--in the cemetery--the poor children in their graves,” muttered Farr, again bending close to Etienne's ear.

Then, thus reminded, thus spurred, all his Gallic emotion bursting into flame in him suddenly, the old man felt the desperate resolution that often animates the humble and ignorant in great emergencies. The little ones had been martyrs--why not he? That thought flashed through the tumult in his brain.