suspend conversation on private matters until I can walk out of
earshot.”
He stared straight into the eyes of the girl and once more received from
her that frank and wondering gaze which had touched him so strangely
when he had seen her first on the broad highway. His face was white
under the tan. His hands trembled as he replaced his hat. In his
heart he was saying farewell to her and his eyes expressed some of his
emotion.
“You may take your own time, sir,” said the girl. “This gentleman and
I have finished our conversation.” She passed Farr, looking him up and
down with increasing curiosity and dawning recognition, and when her
escort called to her impatiently, she caught her skirts around her and
ran toward the glade where the others of the party were chattering over
their hampers.
The lover started away slowly and sullenly on her trail, with only a
glance at this blundering stranger.
“No, they do not sing serenades under windows any more--nor has the
stone age returned with its love-making manners,” remarked Farr, his
lips trembling and his emotion still in his eyes. “There are some
manners which were worse, however, than knocking maidens down with
clubs.”
The other man snapped himself around on his heels.
“Damn you, you're that fresh hobo! I don't forget a man who shoots off
low-down sneers at me. Here! You come back here! I want to ask a few
questions, my man.”
Farr continued on his way, opening his book.
“If I ever see you again--” blustered the lover.
“I sincerely hope that will never happen,” remarked the stranger,
without turning his head. “Instinct of the purely animal sort tells me
that if our paths cross in this life it will be very bad for one or the
other.”
When Farr was in the highway he fumbled in his pocket and found the
withered rose. He tossed it away among the roadside bushes.
But after he had gone on his way for some distance he retraced his steps
and hunted in the bushes for a long time on his hands and knees until he
found the poor little keepsake.
He put it carefully into the deepest pocket he could find in his newly
acquired habiliments and trudged on down the world.
VI
A MAN ON FOOT AND A MAN IN HIS CHARIOT
A blatant orator, haranguing passionately, attracted two new auditors.
A tall young man sauntered to the edge of the little group in the square
and listened with a smile which indicated cynical half-interest.
An automobile halted on the opposite side of the group. A big man sat
alone in the tonneau.
He began to scowl as he listened.
The young man continued to smile.
The big man was plainly a personality. He was cool and crisp in summer
flannels--as immaculate as the accoutrements of his car.
In face and physique the young man was plainly not of that herd near
which he stood.
His glance crossed that of the man in the car; he met the scowl with his
smile.
Like a kiln open to the hot glare from a brassy sky or an oven where the
July caloric blazed like a blast from the open mouth of a retort--such
that day seemed Moosac Square in the heart of the cotton-mill city. High
buildings closed in its treeless, ill-paved, dirty area. The air, made
blistering by the torch of the sun, beat back and forth between the
buildings in shimmering waves.
In the center of the square the blatant orator balanced himself on a
stone trough which was arid and dust-choked. He harangued the group of
unkempt men; sweating, blinking, apathetic men; slouchy men; men who
were ticketed in attire and demeanor with all the squalid marks of
idlers, vagrants, and the unemployed.
The man on the trough was of the ilk of the men who surrounded him. His
face was flaming with the heat and with his vocal efforts. Perspiration
streamed into his eyes, his voice was hoarse with shouting, but he had
the natural eloquence of the demagogue. He was delivering the creed
of the propaganda of rebellious poverty, the complaints of the
dissatisfied, the demands of the idle agitators. He spiked his diatribe
with threats flavored by anarchy. He pointed to policemen who had taken
refuge in strips of shade which had been cast grudgingly by the high
buildings. He reminded his hearers that those policemen had just driven
them out of the tree-shaded parks. There the selfish rich folks were
loafing under the trees. Poor folks were herded down the street and were
forced to hold this meeting in that Gehenna, so he averred.
The man in the automobile muttered impatient words. Then he shouted,
breaking in on the impassioned anathema which the orator addressed to
the rich: “Stop lying to these men--stirring them up. The parks are for
the people. You can go there--all you men can go there--if you'll go
without making a disturbance.”
“If men in these days open their mouths to speak for their human rights
it's a disturbance,” retorted the demagogue. “If we go up to the park
and sit there and tremble like rabbits you rich men will let us stay
there--perhaps! But we don't have as many rights there as the rabbits,
for the rabbits are allowed to step on the grass.”
“You've got to obey the law like other citizens--you will not be allowed
to disturb decent and respectable people. You and men like you must stop
putting foolish notions in the heads of loafers in this city.”
“Then put something into our mouths--give us food. Why are we loafers?”
“Because you won't go to work. I'll give every able-bodied man here
all the work he wants. Apply at the office of the Consolidated Water
Company--now.”
“What's the work?” inquired a man in the crowd.
“Digging trenches for water-pipes. How many men want that work? Hold up
hands.”
“It ain't work for human beings in this weather,” snarled the man who
had inquired. No hands were raised.
“That's your style!” blazed the big man. The policemen had sauntered
into the square and their presence was reassuring. He stood up and began
to lecture them.
“And them's the kind of lord dukes that's running this country
to-day--own it and run it,” growled a slouchy fellow who stood near the
tall young man. “They ain't willing to give a poor man a show.”
“He has just offered you a show--all of you,” stated the young man.
“Yes, a Guinea job for white men.”
“You're picking a poor excuse for being a loafer, my friend.”
“Who says I'm a loafer?”
The young man shot out his hands and grasped the fellow's elbow and
hand. The arm was flabby, the palm was soft. He doubled back the fingers
and exhibited the palm to the crowd.
“I don't find any labor medals here, men. Is there anybody in the crowd
who can show some?” He released the struggling, cursing captive.
“What's labor medals?” inquired a bystander.
The big man was still denouncing them from his car, but the group paid
little attention now.
“Callous spots in the place where a working-man ought to wear them. And
that place isn't on the tongue.”
“Are you sneering at us because we can't get a job?”
“You're a loafer yourself, and anybody can see it,” declared another.
The young man raised his arms, showing them his palms.
“I carry a few labor medals,” he returned, curtly.
“Why ain't you on your job? The lord dukes won't give you one?”
“_When_ I work and _where_ I work is my own business, so long as I don't
beg food at back doors.”
“Do _we_?”
They had crowded around him and menaced him with murmurings and
glowering gaze.
“I should say so,” he replied, giving them an indifferent going-over
with his cold eyes. “You carry all the marks.”
Then he shouldered his way out from among them, displaying the air of
one who found further discourse unprofitable.
He strolled leisurely in the direction of the big man in the car. The
crowd he had left stared after him without presuming to voice taunt or
reply; there was something compelling about him.
As Farr approached the automobile its owner stopped talking and stared
at the tall stranger with some apprehension. Then the big man beckoned
unobtrusively to a policeman. It was evident that Farr was not of
the same sort as the ruck of men from among whom he had just emerged,
nevertheless he had come from among them. The lordly man in the car had
observed him moving in the group, for Farr had loomed above the heads of
the others; what he had been saying to the malcontents the big man had
not been able to hear, but he guessed.
“Some sort of sneak has been stirring up the fools in this city lately,”
the aristocrat informed the officer who came promptly to the side of the
car. “Who is this fellow coming?”
“I never saw him before, Colonel Dodd.”
“Stand by! He is going to tackle me and make a grand-stand play in front
of his gang. His clothes give him away--a loafing demagogue!”
But the tall man did not pause at the car or even glance at the
dignitary who occupied it. He seemed to have lost all interest in the
occasion. He yawned as he passed the automobile and started away across
the square.
“Here, you! You big chap!” called Colonel Dodd, promptly emboldened.
Farr halted and turned, his countenance showing mild inquiry.
“What do you mean by coming into a peaceable city and stirring up labor
troubles?”
“Have I done so?”
“You have just been mixing and mingling with those men, talking to them.
I know your kind.”
“Ah, a gentleman of keen discernment!”
“I have seen you before--you fellows with long-tailed coats and
short-horned ideas. We don't want your kind in this city!”
“I seem to have made a prompt sensation without trying to do so,”
returned Farr, meekly. “I have been in your city less than fifteen
minutes, sir!”
“You're a traveling labor-agitator, aren't you?”
“No, sir.”
“But I just saw you circulating among those men. Your rig-out shows your
character!”
“You mean these garments I wear?”
“Certainly! A frock-coat helps out your pose before an ignorant public.”
“He stole that coat from me,” squeaked a fat man, standing at a little
distance, scrubbing a torn sleeve over his grimy, sweat-streaked face.
“He picked it fair off'n my back. I have follered him to show him up as
a robber and a fake. That's so help me!”
Riotous laughter from all the listeners followed that declaration;
a glance at the tubby tramp and survey of the tall young man whose
contours fitted the garments made the fat man's assertion seem like a
huge joke.
“I can prove it!” squalled the vagrant.
“Beat it! Get out of this city!” commanded a policeman. “If you
don't we'll have you on the rock-pile. What ye mean by such guff?” He
flourished his stick and the tramp hurried away.
“It's no use,” he whined. “Grab and bluff! Him what can do it best
always wins. That's the way the world goes!”
“When I took these clothes off the back of my vanishing friend I felt
that they would make a change in my life,” stated Farr, with a smile
which provoked more laughter. “But I did not dream that they would bring
me such prominence in so short a time.” He bowed to the man in the car.
But Colonel Dodd was angry and insistent and did not join in the
merriment.
“I say you are a labor-agitator. Any man who won't go to work himself
has no right to be stirring up other workers against their own
interests. You may as well own up to me, my man. These men standing
around here know what you are--you have been talking with them. Outside
of stirring trouble, you don't work, do you?”
“Oh yes, my lord!”
There was smiling mockery in the tone, almost insolence. He seemed to
be willing to display to the rich man the same lack of respect he had
displayed to the poor men who stood near and listened to this colloquy.
“Oh, you do?” Colonel Dodd raised his voice. “Listen sharp, my men! Do
you want to be led around by the noses by a man who doesn't work? This
gentleman is going to tell us what his job is!” He sneered when he said
it.
“I am an assiduous toiler in my profession, your excellency. I am
surprised that as an employer you do not recognize a real worker when
you see one.”
This tone of raillery and this stilted manner of speech promptly caught
the fancy of the throng. The men crowded more closely and the orator on
the trough was silent.
“What do you work at?”
“I am an architect, your gracious highness.”
“Less of that insolence in the way of names, my friend! An architect,
eh? Well, what did you ever build?”
“I laid out Dream Avenue in the boom city of Expectation and built on
that thoroughfare a magnificent row of castles in the air. If you had a
bit more imagination I might try to sell you something in my line. But
it is useless, I see! Farewell!”
He swept off his broad-brimmed hat with a deep bow, backed away a few
steps, and bowed again and went on his way. The crowd guffawed. This
baiting of the city's labor magnate had most agreeably scratched their
itching sense of resentment.
“I don't know who that josher is, but I hate to lose him out of town,”
confided the orator on the trough to those near him.
“I never saw that fellow before, but I'll pinch him if you say so,
Colonel Dodd,” volunteered the policeman. “Do you make complaint?”
“No,” snapped the colonel, glowering on the broad back which was
swinging across the square in retreat. He told his chauffeur to drive
on.
When the car passed Farr the colonel flicked cigar ashes which alighted
in a spray of dust on the sleeve of the frock-coat.
“Bah!” said the colonel, shooting the young man a scowl.
Farr gave in return a smile, but it was not a particularly genial smile.
The young man went on his way leisurely; by his gait, by his frequent
and somewhat prolonged pauses at shop windows, by his indifferent
starings at traffic and pedestrians, it was plain that he had little of
moment on his mind.
He bought a penny glass of water at a corner kiosk.
“Do you mind telling me,” he asked the vender, “Who is Colonel Dodd of
this city? I am a stranger and I have just overheard the name.”
The man grinned. “If it wasn't for Colonel Symonds Dodd I wouldn't be
making much of a living here, selling spring-water. He is president of
the Consolidated.”
“And that means?”
“Why, it means that he is boss of the water trust that owns the system
in this city and in all the other cities and towns of this state. And
they pump all of their water out of the rivers because the lakes are so
far off, and nobody drinks that water unless he has to or don't know any
better. Colonel Dodd? Why, he bosses the whole state, they tell me.”
“I gathered that he was important,” said the young man, and walked on.
He was held up in the passing crowd at a street corner for a few moments
because a parade of some half-dozen automobiles whirled past. The cars
were decorated with banners, and the wild flowers and other spoil of
forest and field in the arms of the ladies indicated that this was a
party returning from a picnic in the suburbs.
“Would you mind telling me,” asked Farr of the policeman who was
guarding the corner, “who that young man is--the one there in the gray
automobile?”
“With the bleached blonde and the pretty girl?” asked the officer. “Oh,
that's Colonel Dodd's nephew--Dicky Dodd. Of course you know who the
colonel is.”
“Yes,” said Farr. He opened his mouth to ask another question, for the
policeman seemed to be of the obliging sort. Then he closed his lips
resolutely and marched along.
“What's the use?” he muttered. “Two dark eyes and a red mouth--and I am
almost forgetting how to be a philosopher.”
Farther down the city thoroughfare he met one who had claimed to be
a philosopher. It was Jared Chick, stalking along the sidewalk in his
home-made armor. He held a box of stove-polish in one hand and a brush
in the other, and as he strolled he was giving his corselet and such
parts of the armor as he could handily reach a glossy coat--a gleaming
and burnished surface. On his helmet in place of a crest Knight Chick
bore aloft a metal banneret inscribed, “Invincible Stove Polish.”
“And the mission?” asked Farr, halting his quondam companion, who had
been too intent upon his business to pay heed to passers.
“I find thee changed, and no doubt thee, too, finds me changed,” sighed
Mr. Chick.
The mouth of an alley between high buildings afforded a retreat and the
breeze blew there fitfully, and Mr. Chick stepped to that oasis of shade
in the glare of sunshine.
“I have been obliged to modify my mission in some degree. I must confess
that to thee,” he said. “This is a strange and wicked world.”
“Didn't you know it before you gave up a good blacksmith business to go
out in the hot sun and suffer torment, all for nothing?”
“It is very hard work,” acknowledged Chick, showing his flushed and
streaming face under his vizor. “If I were not used to the fires of the
forge I think I would fall down and die. But I must keep on.”
“But you are simply an advertising-sign.”
“I have modified my mission. I have not given up, however. I will tell
thee! I found a man beside the way--a man who had been drinking strong
waters and whose pockets had been turned wrong side out. So I took him
to a tavern and I sat with him through the night, and nursed him when he
suffered, and revealed my mission when he awoke. 'I am out to do good
to all men,' I told him, and he searched through his pockets with
blasphemy, and he said that I had done him--and he haled me before
the court, and the judge said that no man could publicly profess such
disinterestedness and escape suspicion, because people in these days
are all looking for the main chance. So he did not believe me and he
sentenced me to the jail. But a good Samaritan interceded for me and
took me from behind the bars, and now in the spirit of gratitude I am
repaying him; he makes and sells this stove-polish.”
“That man is evidently shrewd in business and a good advertiser,”
commented Farr.
“I find that I get along much better in the world,” asserted the
knight-errant. “Now that I carry an advertising-sign my armor attracts
no rude mobs. I can go abroad and do good to a foolish world; I can use
the stipend my good benefactor allows to me for my work and I can help
poor folks here and there. Therefore, I am content with my modified
mission. Is thee more at peace with the world?”
“I ought to be, after hearing you say that _you_ are contented,” said
Farr, with irony.
“Thee has manifestly improved thy condition, so I observe.”
“It often happens in this world, Friend Chick, that the sleeker we are
on the outside, the more ragged we are within. I think I'll move on. I
might say something to jar your sense of sublime content. I'd be sorry
to do that. Real contentment is a rare thing and must be handled very
carefully.”
“I fear thee loves thyself too much,” chided the Quaker. “Affection for
somebody might make thee happy, my friend.”
Farr choked back the comment that occurred to him in regard to love and
walked away.
VII
THE RAKE WHICH GROPED IN DARK WATERS
The afternoon was waning, but the hot bowl of the sky seemed to shut
down over the city more closely.
Farr held to the shaded sides of the streets, and yearned for a patch of
green and a tree and its shade.
At last he came into a section of the city where vast mills, one
succeeding another in rows which vanished in the distance, clacked
their everlasting staccato of hurrying looms, venting clamor from
the thousands of open windows. A canal of slow-moving, turbid water
intersected the city and fed its quota of power to each mill. The fenced
bank of the canal was green; and elms, languid in the fierce heat,
gave shade here and there with wilted leaves. The masses of brick which
inclosed the toilers within the mills puffed off tremulous heat-waves
and suggested that humanity must be baking in those gigantic ovens.
A high fence interposed between the canal and the street; the mill lawn
which extended between the canal and the shimmering brick walls was also
inclosed. Signs posted on the fence warned trespassers not to venture.
A bridge carried the street across the canal, and Farr stood there for a
time and watched the swirl of the water below. Then he sauntered on and
surveyed the expanse of mill lawn with appraising and envious gaze.
The young man climbed the canal fence, exhibiting more of his cool
contempt for authority by helping himself over the sharp spikes with
the aid of a “No Trespassing” sign. The sickly odor of raw cotton came
floating to his nostrils from the open windows. He strolled to the
head of a transverse canal which sucked water from the main stream.
A sprawling tree shaded a foot-worn plank where an old man, with bent
shoulders and a withered face, trudged to and fro, clawing down into the
black waters with a huge rake. He was the rack-tender--it was his task
to keep the ribs of the guarding rack clear of the refuse that came
swirling down with the water, for flotsam, if allowed to lodge, might
filch some of the jealously guarded power away from the mighty turbines
which growled and grunted in the depths of the wheel-pits. With rake in
one hand and a long, barbed pole in the other the old man bent over the
bubbling torrent that the rack's teeth sucked hissingly between them.
Bits of wood, soggy paper, an old umbrella, all manner of stuff which
had been tossed into the canal by lazy folks up-stream, he raked and
pulled up and piled at the end of his foot-bridge.
“Hy, yi, old Pickaroon!” came a child's shrill voice from a mill window.
“There's a tramp under your tree.”
The old man raised his head from his work at the rack.
“You must not come on dis place,” he cried, with a strong
French-Canadian accent.
“Who says so?” inquired the stranger, putting his back against the tree
and stretching out his legs.
“I--Etienne Provancher.”
“And I--my worthy alien--I am Walker Farr from Nowhere. Now that we have
been properly introduced I will sit here and rest. I am here because I
love the soothing sound of babbling waters on a hot day. Go about your
work. I'll watch you. I love surprises. Who knows what next you'll draw
forth from the depths of fate?
“I can have you arrest!” cried the old man.
The uninvited guest took off his broad-brimmed hat, laid it across
his knees, and ran his hand through his shock of brown hair; it curled
damply over his forehead and, behind, reached down nearly to his
coat-collar, hiding his tanned neck. In some men that length of hair
might have seemed affectation. It gave this man, as he sat there
uncovered, that touch of the unusual which separates the person
of strong individuality from the mere mob. Then he smiled on old
Etienne--such a warm, radiant, compelling, disarming sort of smile that
the rack-tender turned to his work again, muttering. His mouth twitched
and the crinkles in his withered face deepened.
Walker Farr found a comfortable indentation in the tree-trunk and
settled his head there.
“How much do you get a week for doing that, Etienne?” he inquired, with
cool assurance.
The old man glance sideways sharply, but the smile won him.
“Six dollaire.”
“After supporting your family, what do you do with the rest of the money
these generous mill-owners allow you?”
“I never was marry.”
The young man looked up at the mill windows where childish heads were
bobbing to and fro.
“That was poor judgment, Etienne. You might have married and have a
dozen children now, working hard for you in the mill. Just like those
children yonder.”
The old man came to the end of his foot-bridge and flung down his rake
and his pike-pole.
The sudden emotions of his Gallic forebears swept through him. His
features worked, his voice was high with passion.
“Ba gar, I don't sleep the night because I think about dem poor childs.
Dem little white face, dem arm, dem leg--all dry up--not so big as
chicken leg. And all outdoor free to odder childs--not to them childs
up dere.” He shook his fists at the mill windows. And some child who
saw the motion, getting a hasty peep from a widow, squealed, “Hi yi, old
Pickaroon!”
“It doesn't pay to get too excited over the sorrows of the world, my
friend,” drawled the young man under the tree. “It doesn't do any good;
and then somebody calls you names. I was something like you once. But
I've changed my philosophy. I have hypnotized my altruism. Now I'm
perfectly happy.”
Etienne stared without understanding these big words. But he had often
told himself that he never expected to understand Yankee speech very
well. He worked alone; he lived alone in his garret in the tenement
block; he talked but little with any person. But this young man with
the wonderful smile seemed to inspire him to talk--even to the extent of
revealing his secrets.