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.
“Yes, since you all hark for me to speak I will speak,” he declared.
“Messieurs, I am a poor man. Not wise. It is very hard for me to talk
to you. But I have been to-day up where the little children are bury--so
many of them, with their playthings on the graves. I went to take there
anodder little child, poor baby girl. I leave her there with the odder
ones--so very lonesome all of them--their modders cannot sing them to
sleep any more.”
“This is irregular,” cried the mayor. “What do you want?”
“Nottings for maself,” cried Etienne, passionately shrill in his tone
now. “But I have to ask you, masters of this city, how much longer shall
you send poison down the water-pipes to the poor folks and the
children in the tenement blocks? It is poison that has kill our little
Rosemarie--and all her life ahead! The doctor say so--and he say I
cannot understand about the rich man, why he do it. But I understand
that the childs are dying. I say you shall not sent that water--if you
do send it I will bring here the fadders who have lost their babies and
the modders of the babies.” His lips curled back in his excitement
and froth flecked his mouth. “Sacred name of God! We shall tear that
poison-factory up from the ground with our bare hands!”
“Officer, put that man out of the room,” ordered the mayor.
“Won't you listen to us?” shouted Farr. “You are the chief magistrate of
this city. You and these aldermen are the guardians of the people. Are
you going to sit there in those cushioned chairs and let a crowd of rich
assassins murder the poor people?”
Men hissed that speech.
The mayor rapped his gavel furiously.
“This is no matter to be brought up here at this time. You're slandering
honorable men, sir! We have other business.”
“Can there be any other business as important as this?”
“Put both of these men out, officer.”
“Are you and these aldermen owned by the water syndicate, as report says
you are?” cried Farr. “Look here, you men, men in this room and at the
door! This is your City Hall--these aldermen are elected by your votes.
Aren't you going to demand that the people be heard in this matter?
Don't you know that typhoid fever is killing off the children in this
city--and that poison water is the cause of it?”
“It's rotten stuff to drink--we all know that,” cried a voice. “But
there'll have to be a change in politics in this state before they'll
give us anything else.”
Two policemen elbowed their rough way to Farr and Etienne.
“The big chap is right--it's about time to have this water question
opened up, Mr. Mayor,” called another voice.
“Open it up in a legal and proper way, then,” snapped the mayor. “Go to
the law.”
“That's it--go to the law--go to the law,” jeered another. “And we'll
all be dead and the lawyers will have all our money before the thing is
decided.”
There were more hisses.
But an outburst of indorsing voices indicated that many men in that
chamber understood more or less of the political management behind the
Consolidated Water Company.
“If a thing is wrong, change it. What better law do you need than
that?” asked Farr, disregarding an officer's thumb that jerked imperious
gesture.
“When you know a little more law you won't be ignoramus enough to come
into a public hearing and try to break it up. You'd better go and study
law,” said the indignant mayor. He pounded his gavel to indicate that
the recess was over.
“I'll take your advice,” replied Farr, towering over the policeman and
vibrating his finger at his Honor. “If you hadn't found law so handy
in your own case you wouldn't forget yourself in your excitement and
recommend it to others. If we've got to fight the devil we'd better use
his weapons.”
Men shouted approval all around him.
“Clear the room,” ordered the mayor. “Everybody out!”
“Keep your hands off,” Farr advised the officer nearest him. “I'll go
without any help. I have found out that I'm only wasting my time in this
place.”
In the corridor men pressed around him. Some of them insisted on shaking
his hand. Others shouted commendation. Still others exhibited only frank
curiosity in the stalwart stranger. And others were clamorously hostile.
“By gad! If you wanted to start something you took the right way to do
it,” affirmed one of the throng.
“You showed good courage,” declared an elderly man with an earnest face.
“Some of the rest of us have tried to do something in the past. But
those who didn't have much power were either kept out or kicked out
of any office in city government or the legislature--and those who did
amount to something were gobbled up by the machine. The machine can pay.
Working for the people isn't very profitable. So I'm afraid you won't
get very far.”
“You needn't worry about that chap not getting along all right,”
remarked one of the group--but his indorsement was ironical. “He's a
construction boss for the Consolidated, and he went into that hearing
to start some kind of a back-fire. Shrewd operators--the Consolidated
folks.”
The men about Farr pulled away from him and there was considerable
malicious laughter in the crowd.
“So we see the game, even if we don't catch on to the meaning of it just
now,” said the observant one.
Farr squared his shoulders. They stared at him with fresh interest and
a bit of additional respect. They saw in him something more than a
mere popular agitator--a disturber of a municipal hearing; he must be
a trusted agent of the great political machine, executing a secret
mission.