was reading a novel, sunning herself with feline indolence. She put the
book by with evident regret.
“Oh, Kate, has so much poise!” she lamented, breaking in on the young
man's complaints. “She is so like her father. No one except myself could
do anything with him at all. Sometime it was very hard for me! He would
set his mind and his teeth! But I always won in the end.”
“Well, go ahead and win now,” commanded the surly lover. “You are simply
letting this thing run along.”
“I know Kate's nature, Richard. It's only a matter of the right time.”
He sat down at her feet on the end of the couch.
“The time is here--now!” he told her. “I insist that you make Kate
understand. I have been patient and reasonable for a year. You have
promised me that you will bring everything around all right. Why don't
you do it?”
“But delivering a daughter into marriage isn't like delivering groceries
on order!” Her tone showed a bit of impatience. “Be reasonable!”
“I don't want to say anything to hurt your feelings, but we must get
down to cases. I'm not asking you to deliver anything to me except what
was promised long ago--promised by Kate herself. And you know what you
said when I loaned you five thousand dollars to help you save those
stocks. Excuse me, Mother Kilgour, but I can't always control my nature;
I've been in the game with the bunch for a long time and I'm naturally
suspicious--I have seen a good many chaps trimmed, and I don't propose
to have anything put over on me.”
“You are insolent and cruel,” she cried, her cheeks pale.
“I don't mean you--I believe you want to help me. But it's time to be
up and doing. She doesn't give me one good reason why she will not be
married right away. It's only jolly and putting it off.”
“But you are twitting me about the service you have done me! I am not
selling my daughter!”
“That isn't it at all! But you must agree that I have been good to
you. I want you to be a friend to me. But I don't get anything that's
definite. If this thing drags on and on the first thing I know some
fellow will come along and she'll fall for him. That's the girl nature!”
“You are talking about my daughter, Richard! She has her father's
disposition and she is true blue. She has given her promise and she will
keep it.”
“When?” he demanded, curtly.
“I can't drive her.”
“You said you could,” he insisted. “You said a year ago when I advanced
that money that you knew just how to handle her.”
“Are you going to keep twitting me about that money?”
“No; only I'm going to say that you haven't even told me about what
stocks you were protecting. You haven't said anything about repaying the
loan, Mother Kilgour. It has been a sort of general stand-off all around
for me. Hold on! I'm not making a holler! But I like to be taken in
right. I'm a Dodd, and I can't help playing to protect myself.”
“It will come around all right, Richard. You don't know Kate as I do.
I understand her because I understood her father. She is rather
self-centered. But she is romantic underneath! But you know you're so
sort--sort of--well, just a business man--so matter-of-fact. A girl like
Kate needs to be stirred--her poise shaken--something like that!”
“Lochinvar business, eh?” he sneered.
“It must be something a little bit out of the ordinary to hurry her,
Richard. Go away, please. Let me think. I have an idea. I must spend a
little time on it.”
“How much time?”
“Oh, I don't know just how much. Be patient.”
“Mrs. Kilgour, if this thing cannot be put through by you I want you to
say so. I'm at the end of that patience you're appealing to. I won't be
fooled.”
“You don't need to say that you're Colonel Dodd's nephew,” she retorted.
“You have all the family traits.”
“Well, there's one I haven't got: I loaned you five thousand dollars
without taking security--and that's the act of a good friend. Excuse me,
but I've got to speak of it--you need a little reminder. Four days from
now I'll have my marriage license from the city clerk. And when I have
it in my hands I shall come to you and shall expect that you'll do your
part.”
“I will,” she said.
“How? I want plain statements from now on.”
“I will write you a letter to-morrow,” she faltered. “I will give you
directions what to do. You'd better not come here till--till I have it
all arranged. You know what they say about absence!”
“I know what they say about a good many things. But I want something
besides say-so.”
“I will tell you in my letter what to do. Then you follow instructions.”
“I don't like to go into a thing blind. What is the plan?”
“Oh, if I tell you all about it you'll go and do something to spoil it,”
she protested, impatiently. “A woman knows about such matters better
than a man does. I will write to you at the State House. Now be
patient!”
“I'll be going before you preach any more patience to me,” he said,
sourly. “I might be provoked into saying something you won't like.”
After he had gone she rose and touched up her cheeks.
“The fool! They are all alike,” she muttered, viciously. “They pay. They
never forget they have paid. Then they stand with their hand out--and
just remember that they have paid. I am glad I bought this novel,” she
added, taking the book from the couch and settling herself to read. “The
woman who wrote it must have known human nature. If the plan worked in
the case of the girl she writes about it ought to work in the case of
Kate. If it doesn't it will be his fault because he has hurried me so. A
poor, persecuted woman can't do everything.”
And she applied herself to her recently discovered manual of procedure
in the case of stubbornness in a maid.
XVI
FARR HAS A VISION AND CLOSES HIS LIPS
Walker Farr put aside papers upon which he had been working since he had
eaten his modest supper, and pulled on his coat and went forth into
the evening. He strolled up one of the streets in the Eleventh Ward of
Marion, manifestly glad to be out among the people.
He stopped at the curb and hailed the driver of a truck-wagon which was
loaded down with kegs and jugs.
“Marston,” he said, when the driver halted, “it's good to see the noble
work going on.”
“Yes, and now that the babies aren't dying off so fast old Dodd's
newspapers are claiming that the new filtering-plant is doing all the
good, sir.”
“Well, it shows that our work is worth while if they're claiming it,
Marston. But we'll wake up the folks all in good time. Do what we can
for first aid, that's the idea! The people are waking up to what we're
doing. And they are waking up in other places. I took a little run up
state last week. Five other cities are going to try this co-operative
scheme of getting good water to the poor folks until something better
can be done.”
“You've got a head on you,” commended the driver. “It's a little tough
on tired horses to work at this after a day's trudging on regular
business, but my nags seem to understand what it's all about--honest
they do. I have hauled five hundred gallons this week. But I'd like
to haul old Dodd up to Coosett Lake and drown him, if it wasn't for
spoiling water that the poor folks are drinking.”
Farr shook his head and walked on.
He was a rather striking figure for a New England city as he strolled
along. It did not seem to be affectation for this man to wear a
frock-coat without a waistcoat, a flowing black tie setting off his
snowy linen. The attire seemed to belong to his physique and manner.
Women smiled at him in friendly fashion; men gave respectful and
affectionate salutation.
Soon he stepped off the street into a room where a group of men were
waiting for him, so it appeared, because they all rose when he entered.
He called the little meeting to order promptly, informing them that he
would detain them only a short time.
“I rise to make a motion,” said a man at one stage of the proceedings.
“There have been so many volunteers in the work and the folks have been
so ready to pay for real water in place of that stuff we get from the
taps, that three hundred dollars have accumulated in the treasury. We
all know that there is just one man who had been responsible for this
whole plan and has given his time and has run about our state and hasn't
charged anything but expenses for doing it all. I move we give that sum
to Mr. Farr--wishing it was more.”
The speaker was loudly applauded.
Farr was so quickly on his feet and spoke so promptly that he clipped
the man's last words.
“A moment, my friends, before that motion is seconded.” He held up his
hand and checked their protests against what his air told them. “Because
my little plan has succeeded better than I hoped is not due to me, but
to the generous co-operation of good men who have given their time. We
are saving the babies, thank God! But do you know what else we have done
by our hard toil and our devotion? We are propping up the Consolidated
Water Company in this state. Understand me! I am not attacking that
company because it is a corporation. If it were now making preparations
to pipe down to us clean water from the hills I would gladly go
on giving my time to this cause in order to help the case of the
Consolidated. But the men in control are deliberately shutting their
eyes to the real situation. Now that folks aren't dying, they claim
all the credit--when we know the credit is due to weary men who go on
working after their day's toil is over. It isn't right--it isn't just!
My friends, I have got hold of a bigger thing than I reckoned on when I
started out to wake those poison-peddlers up. Now that we are cleaning
up the typhoid, the Consolidated is simply riding on our backs--refusing
to see the real truth. If they give Marion pure water it will be only
at more exorbitant rates, because the nearest lake is twenty miles away.
I'm not an anarchist--I want to see capital get its just reward. But
when a syndicate takes a franchise from citizens and makes them pay over
and over for what was their own the citizens have a right to rise in
self-defense. When we force the Consolidated to give us what we're
paying for--pure water--they evidently propose to make us pay for what
they call our cheek in asking.” He paused for a moment, and his smile
succeeded his earnestness. “I beg your pardon for saying 'we.' I must
remember that I'm still a stranger in this city.”
“I'll have to dispute you there,” interposed a man. “You're one of us.
And we're going to prove it to you a little later.”
“My friends,” went on Farr, “until the cities and towns of this state
own their own water-plants and take their own profits they will be
paying double tribute to a merciless crowd.”
“But we can't own our plants till the millennium, sir. There's that
five-percent-debt-limit clause in the constitution.”
Farr smiled--this time wistfully. “I've--I've had a sort of vision in
regard to that,” he said. “I don't dare to explain myself just now,
friends. It may be only a vision--but I think not. I'll not say any more
at present. I did not intend to say as much. What was on my mind when
I got up was this: I will not accept that money in the treasury--on no
account will I take it. Because I believe that strange days are coming
upon us soon in this state--days when we shall need money. Keep that
nest-egg and guard it.” He picked up his hat and started for the door.
“The meeting is adjourned,” he informed them. He smiled at them over his
shoulder in such a manner that they wondered whether he joked or was
in earnest. “Guard well that money--for the only way my vision can be
realized, I fear, is by turning this state's politics upside down, and
that will be quite a job for a rank outsider fighting Colonel Symonds
Dodd--and fighting without money. Good night!”
Men whom Walker Farr met as he strolled ducked amiable greetings. They
grinned admiringly after him as he passed on.
If a woman asked in regard to him or a stranger in the ward questioned
a native they were informed with gusto that he was “the boy who stood in
City Hall and talked turkey to the mayor and all the bunch, and said a
good word for the poor people, and twisted the tail of the Consolidated
and lost a good job doing it--and that's more than any alderman would do
for those who elected him.”
At a street corner children of the poor were dancing around a
hurdy-gurdy. Farr gave the man at the crank a handful of change and told
him to stay there and keep the kiddies happy. Shrill juvenile voices
promptly proclaimed his praises to all the neighborhood, and mothers and
fathers beamed benedictions on him from windows.
He stopped at another street corner where a dozen youths were
congregated. They were heavy-eyed, leering cubs, their hats were tipped
back, and frowzled fore-tops stuck out over their pimply faces--types of
youths whom modest girls avoid hurriedly by detours.
“Boys, folks are writing to the newspapers complaining that young chaps
are insulting girls on the street corners of Marion. But it must be
those high-toned loafers up-town. You're not up to any of that business
down here, of course.”
“None of us would ever as much as say 'shoo' to a chicken,” protested
one of the group.
“You're Dave Joyce's boy, aren't you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The fifty men he bosses at the ice-house like him because he's square.
Here's a good motto: 'Square with the boys and nice to the girls.' But
keep off the street corners, fellows, or they'll get you mixed up with
some of that masher gang.”
The Joyce boy pulled his hat forward and marshaled the retreat from the
loafing-place.
“Naw, he ain't no candidate, nuther,” he informed his associates when
they were out of hearing. “He ain't canvassing for no votes. My old man
says he ain't. He ain't a four-flusher. He's the guy that stood for the
poor folks up at City Hall and doped out the spring-water stuff.”
At the side of a street where traffic raged to and from the city's Union
Station Farr came upon two shriveled old ladies who were teetering on
the curbstones, waiting tremulously for an opportunity to cross. They
put down into the roaring street first one apprehensive foot and then
another, like children trying chilly water. The big fellow offered an
arm to each and led them safely across.
“You're a real knight-errant, sir,” squeaked one of the two, looking up
into the kindly face.
He laughed, doffed the broad-brimmed hat with a low bow, and strolled on
his way.
“Knight-errant,” he muttered, still smiling. “Guess not. They don't have
'em these days. The stories about 'em read well. Wonder what kind of a
feeling it was that started those boys off on the hike! Perhaps there
wasn't enough doing in politics. It must have been a fine game, though,
rescuing distressed damsels. And all for love and not for pay!”
A poster in the window of an empty store caught his eye just then. It
advertised a woman's-suffrage rally.
“The girls would paint rally signs on a knight's tin suit these days and
send him off on an advertising trip,” was his whimsical reflection.
At that moment, with this thought of knight in armor in his mind, he was
attracted by a flare of red fire in a blacksmith shop located just off
the street. The one worker in the place was revealed by the forge fire.
The glow lighted the features of the man. There was no mistaking him--it
was Friend Jared Chick. And Farr turned off the street and went into the
shop and greeted his one-time traveling companion.
“How does thee do?” replied Jared Chick, quietly, his Quaker calm
undisturbed. He drew forth a white-hot iron and deftly hammered it into
a circle around the snout of the anvil.
“So you have given up knight-errantry and have gone back to the old job,
have you, Friend Chick?”
“No. This is a part of my service. The man who owns this shop is a good
man who works hard here all day. And after he has gone home he allows me
to work here in the evening.”
He pounded away industriously and Farr walked up to the anvil to inspect
the nature of the work, for the iron rod was assuming queer shapes.
“A new kind of armor, Friend Chick?”
If there was a bit of sarcasm in Farr's tone the Quaker paid no apparent
heed.
“No,” he said, quietly and meekly, “this is a brace for the leg of a
little lame boy. I have found many children in this city who cannot
walk. Their parents are too poor to buy braces. So I come here nights,
when the good man is away from the forge, and I make braces and carry
them with my blessing. I have some knack with the hammer. I hope to find
other ways of doing my bit of good.”
“I beg your pardon, Friend Chick,” said Farr, a catch in his voice. “I
will not bother you in your work. Good night!”
“Good night to thee!” said the Quaker, swinging at the bellows arm.
Farr went back upon the street, his head bowed. “We all have our own way
of doing it,” he pondered, contritely.
He met a man and greeted him with a friendly handclasp. It was Citizen
Drew, that elderly man with the earnest face.
And as he had in the past, he turned, caught step with Farr, and they
walked together.
Their stroll took them into the broader avenues of up-town.
As they talked, Farr caught side glances from his companion. The glances
were a bit inquisitive.
“Well, Citizen Drew,” asked the young man, “what is on your mind this
evening?”
“Since I have known you and studied you I have been thinking that you
have the spirit of knight-errantry in you,” stated Citizen Drew.
Farr laughed boyishly.
“Two very nice old ladies have just got ahead of you with that
accusation, my friend.”
“Laugh if you feel like it. But there are so few men who can do anything
unselfishly in these days that when a chap like you does come along he
gets noticed--at any rate, I notice him.” He stopped dealing in side
glances and stared at Farr fully and frankly. “Other men who would do
the things you are doing so quietly in this state have been playing
politics--and I have made it my business to watch politicians. And as
soon as men have been elected to office by fooling the people--well,
those men have simply been set into the Big Machine as new cogs. Are you
like the rest, Mr. Farr? Nobody knows where you came from. Everybody who
sees you knows you're above the jobs you have been working at. They're
talking you up for alderman in our ward. But we have been fooled so many
times!”
Farr replied to this wistful inquisition in a way there was no
misunderstanding.
“I am not a candidate for anything, Citizen Drew. And I'll tell you how
I can prove I am not. I am not a voter here. I have intentionally failed
to have myself registered. Whenever you hear another man talking me
up for office you tell him that. Therefore, it makes no difference to
anybody where I came from or what job I work at.”
Citizen Drew accepted the rebuke humbly and walked on in silence.
“You have always been fooled, you say, when you have elected men to
office. Haven't you any men in this state whom you can elect to high
office, knowing for sure that they'll stay straight?”
“No,” returned Citizen Drew.
“I'm a stranger--I don't know your big men--you do know them, and I
suppose I ought to take your word. But I don't believe you, Citizen
Drew.”
“But I told you the truth. We have big men who are honest men. But they
won't go into politics. They feel too far above the game. Therefore, how
can we elect them to office? I say I told you the truth. The men who go
out and hunt for office are the ones who work the thing for their own
profit--and that means they stand in with the bunch and the head boss.”
It was the same old lament which is everlastingly on the lips of
the voters of America! Citizen Drew had again epitomized the average
politics of the great Republic!
Walker Farr smiled--and he could express in a smile more than most men
can express in speech.
“An original idea has just occurred to me, Citizen Drew,” he said, with
humorous drawl in his tones. “I'm sure nothing like it has ever
been thought of before. There ought to be a new party formed in this
country--a party outside all the others. No, not a party, exactly!
What should I call it? You see, the idea has just come to me, and I'm
floundering a little.” His tone was still jocular. “You're right about
most of the able and big men staying out of politics except when
the highest offices are passed around. Now, how's this for a scheme?
Organize a loyal band and call it--well, say the Purified Political
Privateers, the Sanctified Kidnappers, the People's Progressive and
Public-spirited Press Gang. Go around and grab the Great and the Good
who insist on minding their private business and who are letting the
country be gobbled up--just go and grab 'em right up by the scruff
of the neck and fling them into politics head over heels. They would
sputter and froth and flop for a little while--and then they'd strike
out and swim. They couldn't help swimming! They'd know that the folks
were looking on. And then a lot of the sinking and drowning poor devils,
like you and me and the folks in the tenements, could grab onto the
Great and the Good and ask 'em to tow us safely ashore; and by that
time their pride and their dander would be up and they'd swim all the
harder--with the other folks looking on. Hah! An idea, eh? You see,
I feel rather imaginative and on the high pressure and in a mood for
adventure this evening! Probably because the nice old ladies called me a
knight-errant.”
Citizen Drew was not ready with comment on this amazing suggestion.
He clawed his hand into his sparse hair and wrinkled his forehead in
attempt to decide whether or not he ought to resent this playful retort
to his lament. The next moment he dealt Farr a swift jab in the ribs
with his elbow.
“Take a good look at this man coming,” he mumbled.
The oncomer was close upon them, and in spite of the dusk Farr's sharp
gaze took him all in.
In garb and mien he was a fine type of the American gentleman who is
marked by a touch of the old school. There was a clean-cut crispness
about him; the white mustache and the hair which matched it looked as
if they would crackle if rubbed. His eyes were steely blue, and he held
himself very erect as he walked, and he tapped the pavement briskly with
his cane.
He passed them, marched up the steps of a large building, and
disappeared through a door which a boy in club uniform held open for
him.
“That man,” explained Citizen Drew, complacently displaying his boasted
knowledge of public men in minute detail, “is the Honorable Archer
Converse, whose father was General Aaron Converse, the war governor of
this state. Lawyer, old bach, rich, just as crisp in talk as he is in
looks, just as straight in his manners and morals and honesty as he is
in his back, arrives every night at the Mellicite Club for his dinner on
the dot of eight”--Citizen Drew waved his hand at the illuminated circle
of the First National clock--“leaves the club exactly at nine for a walk
through the park, then marches home, plays three games of solitaire, and
goes to bed.”
“I know him!” stated Farr.
Citizen Drew's air betrayed a bit of a showman's disappointment.
“I never saw him before--never heard of him. But I mean I know him now
after your description--know his nature, his thoughts. You have a fine
touch in your size-ups, Citizen Drew.”
“I've studied 'em all.”
“What has he done in politics?”
“Never a thing. He is one of the kind I was complaining about. Too
high-minded.”
“But, ho, how a man like that would swim if he were once thrown in!”
declared Farr.
“He never even tended out on a caucus.”
“I know the style when I see it,” pursued Farr. He did not look at
Citizen Drew. He was talking as much to himself as to his companion.
“Spirit of a crusader harnessed by every-day habit! Righteousness in a
rut! Achievement timed to the tick of the clock. But, once in, how he
would swim!”
“Think how our affairs would swing along with a man like that at the
head of the state!”
“Why hasn't he been put at the head?”
“I have been in delegations that have gone to him”--he waved his
hand--“he said he couldn't think of being mixed into political messes.”
“He looked on you wallowing in muddy water and you invited him in. I
don't blame him for not jumping.”
“He's a good man,” insisted Citizen Drew. “He gives more money to the
poor than any other man in town. The only way I found that out is by
having a natural nose for finding out things. He doesn't say anything
about it.”
“How he would swim!” repeated Farr. “Steady and strong and straight
toward the shore, Citizen Drew, and he wouldn't kick away the poor
drowning devils, either.”