The Landloper: The Romance of a Man on Foot
of the workers. The nights proved to be no better than the days. The
stuffy tenements gulped in the hot air of midday and held it as a person
holds his breath. All the folks came out upon the little platforms that
were ranged, story after story, above each other. They gasped for air
in the narrow spaces between the high buildings. The stars above those
narrow spaces did not sparkle and suggest coolness; they seemed to float
above the hot earth like red cinders.
Every day the undertakers' wagons came “boombling” down the narrow
canyons of streets between the “Blocks,” for the people were dying. The
little white hearse was a more frequent visitor than the rusty black
one; the ranks of the children were paying the greatest toll to death.
“But we shall not worry about our Rosemarie,” old Etienne told Farr.
“Under the shade on the green grass she shall stay where outdoors can
paint her cheeks the very fine color.”
But when the old man called for her at the good woman's house one
morning something else than the sun had painted the little girl's
cheeks--they were flushed with fever. He told the good woman to send
straight for the doctor, and went to his work much disturbed.
Later in the day the yard overseer, passing the rack, saw that the man
was working with furious energy. He was even reaching out his rake to
capture floating stuff before it touched the bars.
“This seems to be your busy day, Pickaroon,” suggested the overseer.
“I make believe this old rack to be a good friend of mine and that the
float stuff be sickness come at him--so I work hard to keep it away.”
The overseer went along about his business, commenting mentally on a
Frenchman's imagination.
When the big mill bells clanged the noon hour Etienne hurried to the
good woman's house. The city physician had been there and had left
medicine--two tumblers of it. He had hurried in and had hurried away and
had been curt and brusk and had not told her what was the trouble, so
the woman reported. But the child had been sleeping.
She was drowsy all that evening while Farr held her in his arms and
Etienne sat near by with Zelie Dionne, ministering solicitously.
“Her cheeks are not so hot,” said the young man many times. He talked
hopefully to reassure himself as well as the others, for he had been
dreadfully frightened when he had come from his work. Fright had
trodden close on the heels of much joy--for the superintendent of
the Consolidated had taken him out of the hot trench that day and had
appointed him boss of twoscore Italian diggers, doubling his pay.
“I have been watching you,” the superintendent told him. “You're built
to boss men. What kind of a bump was it that ever slammed you down like
this?”
The answer the superintendent got was a smile which put further
questions out of his mind.
“No, her cheeks are not so hot,” affirmed Farr when he laid her in her
bed that night. “She will come along all right.”
But at the end of a week languor still weighed on the child. There were
circles under her eyes and her cheeks were wan, and she did not clap
her hands with the old-time glee when he brought her new toys; the
playthings lay beside her on the bed and invited her touch--staring eyes
of dolls, beady eyes of toy dogs--without avail.
“It is the queer way of being sick,” lamented the old man. “The doctor
mebbe not know, because he very gruff and do not say. I think I know
what may cure her--it has been done many time.
“Away up in the Canada country there is the shrine of the good Sainte
Anne de Beaupre. There she stand in the middle of the big church and she
hold her little grandson in her arm--the little boy Jesus. So she feel
very tender toward poor, sick childs. Ah, I have seen her many time--I
have seen childs healed there and made so very smart--all cure. She
loves little childs. _Oui_. All about her feet are short, small crutch
where she has cure childs. The piece of her wrist-bone is there in the
sacristy--it look like a wee scrap of some gray moss under the glass.
And it cure when the good priest say the word for her. I know the way to
the shrine of La Bonne Sainte Anne--I will go with the little Rosemarie
and she shall sing and dance after that.”
For a moment the cynical smile of the skeptic etched itself at the
corners of Farr's mouth--the flash of the nature the young man had
hidden during recent weeks.
He turned to Zelie Dionne and found her regarding him with grave eyes.
“It is as M'sieu' Etienne says,” she assured the young man. “La Bonne
Sainte listens very tenderly when the children come to her. She is good
to all, but her spirit leans over the poor little children and comforts
them.”
“You have been there?”
“Many times, sir. It is not only the sick body that the good Sainte Anne
heals--she comforts anybody who is in much sorrow--she tells the right
way to go. There are many roads to take in this life--and if any one
goes to her with prayer and humble soul she will guide. Ah, it is true,
sir.”
There was earnestness in her features and conviction in her tones and it
was plain that Zelie Dionne was speaking out of the depths of her heart,
and Farr remembered what old Etienne had said about the son of Farmer
Leroux.
“Yes, she will lead to the right way and make all well in the end,”
asserted the girl. “And, most of all, she is kind and gentle to the
little children.”
Between her and the wistful old man Farr divided tolerant and kindly
gaze.
“I believe in more things than I used to,” he said. “I'm willing to
admit in these days that things I do not understand may have truth in
them. The doctor is not making her well. But it is a long way to that
shrine.”
“It is a long way, so! But I am very scare for her as she lie here all
day. I will carry her very tender--on the railway car--on the big boat.
The good Sainte Anne is everywhere, too. She will help.”
“If faith can move mountains it ought to heal easily one poor, little
toddlekins,” muttered Farr.
A new doctor came the next day, a breezy young man, a talkative and
frank young man, the assistant of the over-worked city physician, whose
municipal duties had obliged him to take on helpers.
“I shall ask him, hey--about the shrine?” whispered Etienne to Farr
while the doctor was examining the child.
“Yes; he'll be more patient with you than with me.”
“And do you think that pretty soon she can go on the railway if I
be very careful, good docteur?” asked the old man, wistfully,
apologetically.
“Go where?”
“On the pilgrimage to the shrine of the good Sainte Anne in the Canada
country.”
“Don't you realize what this case is?” demanded the young physician.
“He have not say--he hurry in, he hurry out.”
“You the grandfather?”
“No!”
The doctor turned on Farr.
“Father?”
“No.”
“Then I can talk right out to you two. This is a case of typhoid that
will be fatal in twenty-four hours. There's no use lying about it.”
Old Etienne's mouth and eyes seemed to sink deep into his wrinkles, as
if Time had forced him suddenly to swallow an extra score of years. He
looked at Farr's blank and whitening face, and as quickly looked away.
“Break it to her grandmother,” advised the doctor, nodding toward the
kitchen where the good woman was at work.
“But you don't know what you say,” stammered the old man.
“It so happens that I do, my man. I've been handling too many of these
cases to be fooled. Why, I've got more than fifty cases of typhoid in
this city--just myself.”
“But she has had sun and fresh air--on the canal bank where I tend the
rack.”
“Sun and fresh air can't cure victims of the poison that is being pumped
through the water-mains of this city,” snapped the doctor.
“Water-mains!”
The doctor turned and stared at Farr, for the husky croak of his
exclamation had not sounded human.
“That's what I said. You can't have lived very long in this state not to
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