Part 5

“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.

He lowered his voice. “Thirty year I have work here. I live way up in the little room. Bread I eat with lard on it. It costs little. Of the six dollaire I save much. Ah, _oui_! Hist! Not for me I save it. Ah, _non_! To the priest I give it. To the good priest. And the poor childs what are sick--he send 'em to the farm--to have some outdoors. But I don't sleep the night because I think the dollaire come so slow--and so many poor childs are sick.”

He picked up his rake and pike and went back to his labor.

The man under the tree did not lose his smile.

“Yonder is a brand of altruism that cannot be hypnotized or modified like Knight Chick's, I fear,” he muttered. “You'd have to hit it on the head--kill it with sticks! And my definition of philanthropy has always been, 'giving away something you don't want in order to get yourself advertised.' Etienne is interesting. He is the only philanthropist I have even found who will eat lard instead of butter so as to save more for his philanthropy.” Now his smile grew hard. “Don't dare to open your eyes, Altruism,” he commanded. “I saw the lids quiver a minute ago while that old man was talking, but remember you're hypnotized.”

He saw the rack-tender lay down his pike so as to give both hands to his big rake.

He was pulling at something heavier than the ordinary flotsam--something far below the surface of the water. At last it broke through the black surface of the turbid flood. To Walker Farr, glancing carelessly, it seemed like a bedraggled bundle of rags with something white at the end.

“You come help, m'sieu',” called old Etienne. “It is a dead woman.”

Together they pulled the rake's dread burden slowly up the bars of the rack.

“You seem pretty cool about this,” gasped the young man.

“It is no new thing. Many drown themselves--they drown in the canal so they will be found. Women and girls, they drown themselves. So! Help me carry her.”

Farr gazed down on her after she had been laid on the canal bank. She was young, but thin and work-worn.

“Weaver,” commented old Etienne, laying back on her breast one of the hands he had lifted. “There's the marks on the fingers where she have tie so many knots so quick.”

There was a key on her breast; it was secured by a cord that passed out of sight between the buttons on her waist. Farr stooped and pulled on the key. A folded paper came with the key; the other end of the cord was tied around the paper.

“You must not--it is for the coroner,” protested Etienne. “I know the law--I have drag up so many.”

“My besetting sin is curiosity,” declared the young man, his calm impertinence unruffled. He pulled the wet paper from the noose of the cord. “We'll read this together.”

“I cannot read,” confessed the rack-tender. “You shall read it to me.” His little black eyes gleamed now with curiosity of his own. “I shall be glad to hear. The coroner he never read to me.”

The water had spread the ink and spotted the paper, but Farr was able to decipher the missive. He read aloud:

“'My head has grown bad since my husband died. It is grief, the awful heat, the work at the looms. They said if I would give my little girl away she could go to the country and grow well. But I could not give her up for ever. I could not earn the money to send her to board. I could not earn the money except to buy us bread here in the tenement block. And my bad head has been telling me it's best to kill myself and take her with me. So I kill myself before my head grows so bad that I might take away my little girl's life. It belongs to her and I hope she may be happy. Will somebody take her and give her happiness? It is wicked to kill myself, but my head is so bad I cannot think out the right way to do. This is the key to the room in Block Ten.

“'MRS. ELISIANE SIROIS.

“'Her name is Rosemarie.'”

Walker Farr finished reading and stared into the glittering eyes of the old man.

Etienne Provancher swore roundly and furiously--the strange, hard oaths that his ancestors had brought from the Normandy of the seventeenth century.

“So you shall see--it is as I have say.” He shook his fists again at the mill. Its open windows vomited the staccato chatterings of the myriad looms. “It chews up the poor people. Hear its dam' teeth go chank--chank--chank!”

“The Gallic imagination is always active,” said Farr, joggling the key at the end of the cord and eyeing it with peculiar interest. “But in this case it seems to picture conditions pretty accurately. I wonder just what a visitor would find inside the door that this key fits!”

“You shall go tell them at the office of the mill,” commanded Etienne. “Tell them they have killed another. They will telephone for the coroner. I will give the paper and the key when he come.” He held out his hand. “It is the law.”

“I have a natural hankering--sometimes--to break the law,” affirmed the young man. “I feel that fatal curiosity of mine stirring again, Friend Etienne. I will send the coroner. But coroners love mysteries. If we give him the letter it will take all the spice out of this affair. Let's make him happy--he can drag out the inquest and give his friends a long job on the jury.” He smiled and started away, shaking his head when the old man protested shrilly. “Better say nothing about this letter and the key. You'll get into trouble for letting a stranger come in here and carry away evidence. Better keep out of the law, Etienne.” He grabbed the “No Trespassing” sign for a hand-hold and climbed over the fence. “I'll come back and tell you, Etienne. But keep mum,” he advised.

“It is his smile--it makes me break the law,” mumbled the old man.

VIII

THE KEY TO A DOOR IN BLOCK TEN

Walker Farr gave the first policeman--a fat and sweltering individual--a piece of gruesome news and in return casually asked the location of Block Ten.

The policeman grudgingly growled the information over his shoulder while waiting for the station to answer the call from his box.

The young man, taking his time, found the place at last, one in an interminable row of tenement-houses, all identical in structure and squalor, bearing the mark of corporation niggardliness in their cheap lumber and stingy accommodations.

The hallway that Farr entered was narrow and stifling--stale odors of thousands of dead-and-gone boiled dinners mingled there, and a stairway with a greasy handrail invited him. The key bore a number. He hunted till he found a room, far up, flight after flight. Through open doors he saw here and there aged women or doddering old men who were guardians of dirty babes who tumbled about on the bare floors.

“Either too old to run a loom or too young to lug a bobbin,” Farr informed himself; “that's why they aren't in the mill.”

Old folks and babes stared at him without showing interest.

No one looked at him when he opened the door in which the key fitted.

He stepped in quickly and closed and locked the door behind him.

It was a little room and pitifully bare, and it was under the roof, and the ceiling slanted across it so sharply that the young man, tall above the average, was compelled to bow his head.

A little girl, a wraith of a child, pale with the pallor of a prisoner, hardly more than a toddler, sat on the floor and stared up at the intruder, frozen, silent, immobile with the sudden, paralyzing terror that grasps the frightened child. Pathetically poor little playthings were scattered about her: a doll fashioned from gingham and cotton-waste, makeshift dishes of pasteboard, a doll-carriage made from a broken flower-basket with spools for wheels. The man who entered saw all with one glance and understood that here in this bare room this child had been compelled to drag out the weary hours alone while the mother had toiled. Here now the child waited patiently for--for that water-soaked bundle, with the white, dead face, that lay on the canal bank waiting for the coroner.

And when he realized it and saw this and looked down on that lonely, patient, wistful little creature making the best shift she could with those pitiable playthings, something came up from that man's breast into his throat. He had not supposed he had any of it left in his soul--it was tender, agonizing, heartrending pity.

She still stared at him, terrorized. Probably she had never seen any face come in at that door except her mother's.

His pity must have given Walker Farr a hint of how to deal with this frightened child. He did not speak to her. He made no move toward her.

He smiled!

But it was not the smile he had given the fat plutocrat in the automobile, nor yet the jocular radiance he had displayed to old Etienne. It was such a smile as the man had never smiled before--and he realized it. He did not want to smile. He wanted to weep. But he brought that smile from tender depths in his soul--depths he had not known of before--and tears came with the smile.

Before that time the lines in his face had fitted the smile of the cynic, the grimace of banter, of irony and insolence. But the strange glory that now glowed upon his features came there after the mightiest effort he had ever made to control his feelings and his expression.

He smiled!

In that smile he soothed, he promised, he appealed. Then when he saw the tense expression of fear fade away he smiled more broadly--he provoked reply in kind. And slowly upon the child's face an answering smile began to dawn--little crinkles at the corners of the drooping mouth, little flickerings in the blue eyes, until at last the two beaming faces pledged--on the part of the man tender protection, on the part of the child unquestioning confidence.

But he said no word--he dared not trust his voice.

He went down on his knees cautiously, her smile welcoming him now.