The Landloper Part 31

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 a.s.semblages.

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 gra.s.s. Some of the palings were off the fence, and through the s.p.a.ces the little folks came and went as they liked. It was not much of a yard to boast of, but there were few open s.p.a.ces 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 G.o.dsend so far as the little folks were concerned.

The high fence kept children off the greensward where the ca.n.a.l 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 comrades.h.i.+p 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 sc.r.a.ps 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 fas.h.i.+on 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. n.o.body too small--n.o.body 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 pa.s.sed 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.