saw several rough buildings at the edge of the lake, plainly makeshift
ice-houses. One was a new structure and the other two were old barns
which had been “darned” here and there with new material, and their
yawed sides were propped with joists. Men were loading ice upon carts;
the translucent cubes flashed in the rays of the sun.
During the process of his little crusade he had become acquainted with
the conditions in the city of Marion and he knew that the Consolidated
folks controlled the ice-supply as well as the water. They held an iron
grip by legislative charter on all the riparian rights along the river
and allowed no one else to operate an ice-field. He had seen and sniffed
the unwholesome slime which a melted cake of Consolidated ice deposited.
When he found opportunity he accosted a man in corduroy. He was a
big chap, bronzed by the sun, and Farr singled him out as the manager
because he had been directing the other workers while he toiled himself.
“It's a little business of my own,” said the man. “I have started in
independent.”
“I had thought the Consolidated had control of everything.”
“They would control everything if they could. They wouldn't let me run
my carts through the city streets if they knew how to stop me. I worked
for them fifteen years, lugging their dirty ice on my back, up stairs
and down, and I know that crowd. I don't understand much of anything but
the ice business, mister, whoever you are. But I wouldn't lug any more
of that ice into homes. I put my savings in here, every cent, hired
these barns and a shore privilege, and I'm selling clean ice. But I'm
going to lose every blamed cent! It's no use. I can't buck 'em. Excuse
me! It's no interest to you. My mouth runs away with me when I get
talking about that gang.”
He went back to the barn to help his men shift a runway.
Farr waited patiently until he was able to speak to the busy man again.
“I don't mean to bother you, sir,” he said, humbly. “But I am interested
in this proposition of yours. I have worked for the Consolidated,
myself. I was discharged because I stood up and damned their water
before the mayor and aldermen.”
“Say, I heard something about that!” cried the iceman, displaying prompt
interest and admiration. “The boys said it was good work.”
“I mention it merely to put myself right with you.”
“Then say on ahead, my friend!”
“Do you tell me you can't make a go of this?”
“I'm afraid I can't. It's a half-mile haul for me to the nearest siding.
The railroad folks don't give me any better rate than they're obliged
to--and you know why that is! And I have to have another set of carts
for the city delivery. And no capital to work with! I'm up against a
crowd that has all the money, plenty of equipment, and has its supply
right at the back door of the city--and it belongs at the back door! But
you know what the buying public is! The only reason why I have lasted is
because my old customers gave me their business and are sticking pretty
well.”
“My friend,” declared Farr, putting his hand on the shoulder bent and
ridged by many years of ice-toting, “lots of men who are making money
as missionaries are not doing half the good in the world you're doing.
You're certainly showing some of the citizens of Marion the difference
between good ice and frozen gobs of pestilence.”
“A fellow needs grit, grace, gumption, and a lot of missionary spirit to
fight what I'm fighting, mister. I ain't going to say anything about
a lot of obstacles the syndicate has put in my way. Those were to be
expected in the way of regular business competition. But you can see I
have only got limited resources here, and I can't afford a big outfit
in the city. Sometimes I have run short, the best I could do--and it's
mighty little sleep I have. And the Consolidated drivers have refused
to sell ice to anybody who has been buying of me even when mothers have
pleaded so as to keep milk for sick babies from souring. That's orders
from headquarters! You wouldn't think that the same big chaps who boss
the governor of the state would get down to such nubbins as that, eh?
But they do--that's their system. They used to tell me that it's the
only way a big syndicate can keep its grip--never leave a bar down! Yes,
sir, they have blacklisted my customers until they'll be good and give
the Consolidated a yearly contract. More than that, they pass word along
that I'll be out of business by another season and that folks who have
bought of me this year will be given the go-by next! Can you beat it?”
“Are you going to sell out to them?”
“No,” said the iceman, grimly. “There are two good reasons: I won't sell
and they won't buy. They will kill me out so that nobody else will be
encouraged to try the scheme again.”
“I want a job,” stated Farr, curtly. “I want to work for you. Give me a
place on one of your carts in the city.”
“Say, look here,” blurted the other man, frankly astonished, “you look
more like a gent than an iceman!”
“No matter what I look like. The main question is, can I lug ice? Feel
of my muscle!”
“It may be a poor outlook for your pay--working for me,” warned the
proprietor. “And if you ever want another job in Marion you may be
blacklisted. I don't want to get you into a scrape.”
“I can't be in any worse scrape than the one I am in now. Haven't I just
told you who I am?”
“Oh, I know that! I reckon you're the same fellow. But, see here,
mister, I'm one of those simple kind of galoots--and the less a man
knows the more suspicious he is. You ain't wanting to work for me just
because you need a job!”
“I do need a job! I have spent the little money I had by me after I was
fired by the Consolidated. I had some special expenses--the funeral of
a--a friend,” he added, wistfulness in his tones. He drove his hand into
his pockets and exhibited a few small coins in his palm when he pulled
his hand out. “That's my cash--every cent of it!”
“Sure! I see it. But money's easy enough to come at by a fellow like you
when he needs it. You haven't come across all square with me yet!” It
was not mere inquisitiveness; it was the insistence of a plain man who
wanted a definite peg on which to hitch the first warp of association.
“You've got to handle money of mine,” he went on. “I'm in a tight place
and I have got to have the right men tied up with me. I wouldn't have to
ask one of those boys yonder why he wanted to lug ice. But you ain't no
ordinary slouch, mister. You don't do things--not many of 'em--unless
you've got a good reason for same.” It was the instinct of
ingenuousness. “Keep it all to yourself if you want to. But in that case
you'll have to excuse _me_!”
Farr did not hesitate. He smiled.
“You're a down-on-the-ground fellow who may be able to understand the
thing better than I do myself,” he declared. Again he put his hand on
the bent shoulder.
“You didn't break loose from a good job and start this ice business here
simply to make more money, did you?”
“Well, I've got a family to support and I wanted to make some money,
of course, but I thought it was about time to have less relics, germs,
curiosities, microbes, and general knickknacks left in ice-boxes
after the ice had melted. So I went out of the frozen museum business,
mister.” His voice softened suddenly. “We lost a little girl a year ago
last summer. Typhoid!”
“I lost a little girl--a friend,” said Farr, patting the shoulder. “It's
this way with me--What is your name?”
“Freeland Nowell.”
“Mr. Nowell, I have poked more or less fun in my life at men who claimed
to have missions. Perhaps that was because those men drew my attention
by advertising their missions loudly--and, therefore, I concluded that
all men with licenses to cure this and fix that and regulate the other
were fooling themselves or else were bluffs. But all of a sudden I have
waked up to something. I believe that any human being who isn't doing
a little something on the side to help somebody else in this life is
mighty miserable. I believe that the average sort of folks are doing
it--keeping it quiet, in most cases, perhaps. I thought I had a mission
and I stood up in your city government and advertised it and made
considerable of an ass of myself.”
“Well, it was all right one way you look at it,” said Nowell, with the
caution of the honest citizen. “But, of course, you got the stigmy put
onto you of being a crank and a disturber and you don't get nowhere!
It ain't gab and holler that does it! If talk sets folks to
thinking--that's all right, so far as it goes. But a lot of these chaps
set their mouths to going and let their hands lay crossed in their laps
and then wonder why the world doesn't get better because they have asked
it to be good.”
It was sagacity from the humble observer.
“Mr. Nowell, I don't want to be quite as lonesome in this world as I
have been,” said Farr, with earnestness. “It's an awful feeling, that!
A man can be lonely for a time and crowd down the hankering to be in the
march of honest men where he can touch elbows and be a part of things.
I see you look at me! That's right--it's queer stuff to be talking to
you.” He pondered for a moment and went on. “Queer thing, eh, for a
fellow to wake up all of a sudden--a fellow of my stamp--and want to
do some real good in the world? Well, it surprises _me_, and it would
surprise you a whole lot more if you knew me better. We won't try to
analyze the feeling. I've given up trying to do it.” He paused and his
brown eyes surveyed the blinking iceman with a quizzical appeal in them.
“That's a pretty long preface, Mr. Nowell. It ought to lead up to some
very important request. But it doesn't. I simply want a job on your
ice-cart. It will give me the best opportunity I know of to go into
homes and tell mothers to boil the water which comes out of those dirty
taps; after I unscrew the faucets I won't have to argue much. I told
Colonel Dodd in his office to look out for me! That may have been
bluster. I am a nobody. But I'm on his trail, and there is one thing
I can do to start with! I can help save the lives of a few children.
That's all! I'll be following my new motto. Will you give me the job?”
“I sure will,” declared Nowell, heartily. “If I don't know when a man is
talking rock-bottom to me, then it's my own fault. When do you want to
go to work?”
“Now.”
Nowell gave the new man's garments a disparaging side glance.
“You look more as if you was going out to preach instead of deliver ice.
But I can fix that if you're busted, my friend. You slip off that
coat and help here till we're loaded. Then ride into the city on the
freight-car and tell any one of my men to give you the overalls and
jumper I left hanging in my stable office.”
In this fashion it came about that Farr that day was riding on an
ice-wagon in Marion, learning his route. A red-headed youth who was
nursing an ice-pick wound in a bundled-up foot served as guide and
driver and spotted the “Crystal Pure” cards propped here and there in
windows, mutely signaling the household needs. With zestful complacency,
and with secret enjoyment in being allowed to “team” this chap who
looked and talked like a “nob,” the youth allowed Farr to do all the
work.
The route took in many apartment-houses of the city.
The labor was muscle-racking. In most cases there were stairs to climb.
He stood, sagging under his burden, till chests were cleared by
the housewives or sluggish maids. He discovered that the iceman was
considered a fair and logical butt for all the forenoon grouches of the
kitchen. Women complained querulously that the ice dripped on the clean
floor, or that the piece was not up to the twenty-cent piece delivered
by the other company, or that he was late, or he had not had his eyes
about him the day before or else he would have seen the card.
On numerous occasions he was obliged to carry a piece of ice back
down-stairs to his cart and exchange it for a piece of another size and
price. He received no apology in such cases; he was tartly informed that
he ought to have common sense enough to know what was wanted in that
house. In other cases, the mistress of the apartments turned him from
the door and explained with entire lack of interest in his long climb
that the card had been left up by oversight--the chest had been filled
the day before.
And at two places sharp-tongued women would not allow him to enter,
frankly stating that icemen were too dirty creatures to allow inside the
door of a respectable house; the women received their ten-cent cubes in
pans and slammed the door in his face.
And through all this Farr preserved his smile.
In this slavery, tongue-lashed by fretful women, sweating under his
burden, he was happy; he could not account for it and did not attempt
to, but he knew it. He accepted the situation.
He received rewards enough to fortify his resolution.
A motherly woman asked him to wait a moment and she mixed for him a
glass of lemonade. That gave him an opportunity to say a few words
to her about drinking-water, modestly and deferentially. She was
interested, and he showed her what the guilty faucet of her tap held in
concealment.
And he saw that she was shocked and after he had warned her he asked
her to tell all the other women whom she knew. She promised to bring the
matter up in her sewing-club.
“And even the fussy women,” he told himself, as he plodded back to his
cart, encouraged by his first experiment, “if I keep calm, if I keep
smiling--I shall find my chance to say something to them after a time.”
A fresh doughnut was given to him by a maid who smiled up at his manly
good looks approvingly, and he was very grateful, for his breakfast had
been a meager one because he had barely enough small coins to make a
jingle in his pocket.
The maid gasped affrightedly when he showed her what was in the faucet,
and immediately set on water to boil to supply the bottles in the
ice-chest.
Furthermore, the maid stated that she knew many other maids who would be
glad to know about such a dreadful thing, and that she would have a word
to say to them on the way to Sunday mass and back.
Farr began to understand more clearly what can be accomplished by a lone
voice, carrying a gospel which can be backed and illustrated by signs
and wonders.
“I'll have them listening to me yet,” he pondered. “I'll never say
another unkind word about a woman's tongue.”
Colonel Symonds Dodd flashed past the ice-cart that afternoon in his
limousine.
Farr laughed aloud at the humor of a thought which occurred to him:
he reflected that he would like to behold Colonel Dodd's face and hear
Colonel Dodd's remarks if somebody told that gentleman that the man
before whom he had quailed and grown pale was now starting what the man
believed was a more effective assault on the dynasty than even a whole
car-load of dynamite bombs could make, even if they were exploded in all
the Consolidated reservoirs. The remarks which would entertain, so Farr
pondered, would come when the colonel was informed that the assault
consisted of a lone iceman making talk to women in kitchens.
“However,” said the iceman to himself, as he checked a nick in a
ten-cent cube at the back of his cart. “I hold that my new motto is all
right, and old Etienne will indorse it, and he knows what self-sacrifice
consists of. It isn't rolling up your eyes and folding your hands and
saying, 'What can I do?' It's saying, 'I'll do what I can!'--and then
keeping your hands busy!”
XV
WHEN A MAID IS COY
Mr. Richard Dodd came wooing.
He waited in his gray car at the curb in front of the First National
Bank block until Kate Kilgour issued forth into the afternoon sunshine.
He called to her, holding open the side door.
“I just had to see you,” he told her. “I have come down from the
capital, doing forty miles an hour. You're more precious than all the
money I have locked up in the vaults.”
He did not find in her eyes any of that acclaimed glad love-light which
eager lovers seek. On the contrary, Miss Kilgour made just a bit of a
face at him and was distinctly petulant.
“I do not want to ride, Richard. I enjoy my walk. I need it after a day
at my desk.”
“But I'm going to take you on a long ride into the country. We'll have
dinner at Hillcrest Inn and we'll--”
“I'll go straight home, if you please.”
“Then come in here with me.”
“Oh, if you insist!” She said it with weary impatience.
“Are you tired?”
“Yes.”
He drove slowly. “I don't want you to work any more. You know I don't.
You know how I feel. Kate, I have published our intentions of marriage.”
Her demeanor till then had been marked by tolerance, a bit pettish. Now
she turned on him the indignant stare of offended womanhood.
“Richard, I have not given you permission to do that.”
“But you are going to marry me!”
“Some day. I will tell you when. I am not ready.”
“You are playing with me.”
“I am not so frivolous.”
“But why do you keep putting it off?”
“A woman who gives herself has the right to say when it shall be.”
“My God!” he raged. “I wish you would wake up.”
She did not answer.
“You don't know what love is. You won't let me touch you.”
“I suppose that your experience has qualified you, Richard,” she
returned, half humorously, half scornfully.
“We are going to be married. Your mother is anxious for you to marry. I
am going to tell my uncle to hunt for another secretary.”
“Be careful how you take liberties with my private business,” she warned
him, sharply.
“You need somebody to take care of it for you. You have promised to be
my wife. You can't give me a single good reason for waiting any longer.”
“But I intend to wait.”
He drove along in angry silence and they left the car together at
the Trelawny Apartments. The car had made a detour in reaching the
curb--avoiding a white wagon at the rear of which an iceman was briskly
pecking in twain a cake of ice.
The girl glanced sharply at the man and turned her head when she reached
the sidewalk in order to survey him more closely. The iceman, peering up
at the windows to locate such signal-cards as might be visible, lowered
his gaze and intercepted the girl's scrutiny. Color came into her
cheeks, but she frowned as if resenting his stare and hurried into the
vestibule, her lover at her heels.
“Look here, Friend Myself,” reflected Walker Farr, “it's time you woke
up!” He sighed and swung a chunk of ice upon his shoulder. “But what
else can I expect? Come on, Humility, and give me a soft word or two. I
was hoping I'd never see her again.”
“Youse take those two front numbers--ten and twelve--Mrs. Kilgour and
Mr. Knowles,” advised his helper. “Package-entrance is around behind.”
Farr toiled up the stairs, carrying one ice cube on his shoulder, with
another swinging from tongs. There was but one door to the Kilgour
apartment and the girl and Dodd stood in front of it; they had evidently
waited in the corridor after emerging from the elevator, and the young
man was detaining her, talking earnestly.
The girl opened the door with her latch-key, and with an apology he
stepped in front of the pair and entered.
“Well, I'll be--” blurted Dodd. “So that's what he is--a cheap,
low-lived iceman!”
Mrs. Kilgour came into her vestibule and led the way to the kitchen, for
Farr stood irresolutely in the doorway, awaiting directions as to his
burden. Following her, the young man noted her house-dress, beribboned
over-much, her rouged face, her bleached hair, and wondered how such
a woman could have beguiled Andrew Kilgour, as he felt he knew that
sacrificing hero from what Citizen Drew had said.
“Say, that's the plug-ugly who insulted us in the woods. I'll never
forget that face,” stormed Dodd, making no effort by lowered tones to
conceal his sentiments from the iceman. “Where else am I going to run
across him? He needs a horse-whipping. If there weren't ladies present
I'd give him one.”
“The man seems to be minding his own business,” said the girl, coldly.
Farr heard her. There was a hint of contempt in her tones, and the young
man humbly accepted the scorn as directed toward him. He lifted the ice
into the box and received his coin from the languid woman, who seemed to
pay as little heed to his presence as she did to Dodd's threats.
She seemed to be more especially interested in herself, and when Farr
departed was fondling into place the masses of her hair before a mirror
in the vestibule. Through the space formed by the portieres he saw Dodd
reaching eager hands to the girl, her presence having apparently charmed
away his thoughts of vengeance.
The iceman went humbly on his way.
He was meditating on the sacrifice of Captain Andrew Kilgour; he
remembered that stalwart men are willing slaves of the weakest women. He
wondered how much of the honesty of the father was in the daughter. He
tried to console himself by insisting that it was not there. He had
had only a limited opportunity to study Richard Dodd. However, he was
convinced that his unflattering estimate of that young man was surely
justified; and so certain was he that the character of Dodd must be
patent to all he went back to his tasks with a lowered estimate of the
girl who would select such a man as husband. And yet out of the dust of
the highway the profile of her face had touched him as his heart never
had been touched before; he had plucked the rose and had plodded on
behind the little sister of the rose. He wondered what strange impulse
had touched him. She must be merely like all the rest. Her graciousness
in that first meeting had tempted him to believe that she was different.
Now some consciousness, equally as intangible, suggested to him that she
was selfishly selling herself for ease. His thoughts were pretty
much mixed, he acknowledged. But as he went on, bearing his burdens,
listening to the petty tyrants who may ruthlessly taunt the man who
comes in by the back door, he was aware that he had full need of much
ministration from his new friend, Humility.
In the sitting-room of the Kilgour flat Richard Dodd was telling the
mother that he had made application for a marriage license.
“And I have waited long enough,” he declared. “Mother Kilgour, you must
convince Kate that we are to be married within a week.”
And he gave the mother a look which made her turn pale and twist her
ringed fingers nervously.
“Kate, what is the use?” she pleaded. “You are acting like a child. You
love Richard. You know you love him. You tell me often that you love
him! Richard is such a dear boy!” She said this fawningly, with evident
intent to placate the sullen young man. Her tone, her air suggested the
nervous embarrassment of a debtor who seeks to put off a creditor with
flattery and fresh promises. “Now be a darling child and say that we'll
have the wedding next week without any fuss or feathers.”
“I am not ready to get married, and I simply will not be married just
yet,” declared the girl, her red lips compressed.
“You don't love me!” complained Dodd.
“I like you, Richard,” admitted the girl, frankly, without any
coquettishness. “I have never cared for anybody else. You have been good
to me, except when you were foolish.”
“Foolishness--that's what she calls being so much in love with her
that I can't keep my hands off her,” said Dodd to the mother. “Mother
Kilgour, you haven't talked to Kate as you should. She doesn't know what
love is.”
“Oh, I'll find out all about it, and then we'll be married--when I'm
ready to become a wife,” said the girl, with an indulgent smile. “All
at once I'll wake up, just as you have been begging me to do, and then
we'll simply run away and be married and live happily for ever after.”
“I don't like this stalling,” growled Dodd, brutally.
“I'll leave you two children together,” said the mother. “I'm sure
you'll come to an understanding.” She went away, showing relief.
“Sit down here on the divan with me, sweetheart,” pleaded the young man.
But without removing her hat she went to the piano and began to play.
“Please come!” he entreated.
She smiled at him over her shoulder and made a pretty _moue_.
Muttering an oath of passion he leaped up, hurried across the room, and
began to kiss her fiercely.
He crushed back with his lips all her protests; standing over her, he
held her upon the piano-bench until by main strength and with all the
force of her resentment she tore away from him.
“And now you are going to blame me because I can't help it,” he gasped.
“I don't in the least understand why normal persons can find any
pleasure in that kind of folly.”
“Is your idea of loving anybody rubbing noses like Eskimos?”
“I'd endure that kind of loving in preference to that kind of kissing,
Richard. That isn't love which you're offering--not the kind of love I
want. I am going out for my walk--you filched it from me. No, I'm going
alone. Go and talk with mamma, if you like.”
She escaped the clutch he made and hurried out and to the elevator.