The Landloper: The Romance of a Man on Foot
inconsiderable--and Colonel Dodd found other matters very pressing.
For one thing, those three men from Danburg had brought suit against
both Stone & Adams and the Consolidated Water Company and had engaged
as counsel no less a personage than the Honorable Archer Converse, the
state's most eminent corporation lawyer, a man of such high ideals and
such scrupulous conception of legal responsibility that he had never
been willing to accept a retainer from the great System which dominated
state affairs. Colonel Symonds Dodd feared the Honorable Archer
Converse. It was hinted that the Danburg case would involve charges of
conspiracy with intent to restrain independents, and would be used to
show up what the opponents of the Consolidated insisted was general
iniquity in finance and politics.
Colonel Dodd outwardly was not intimidated. He sent no flag of truce.
He decided to intrench and fight. He cursed when he remembered the
interview with the Danburg triumvirate.
“Under ordinary circumstances I would buy them off in the usual way,” he
informed Judge Warren. “But that damnation lunatic raved at me with all
the insults he could think of--then he up with his dirty bunch of plans
and knocked my flowers on to the floor--yes, sir, that was what the mad
bull did--he knocked my flowers on to the floor!”
And Colonel Dodd emphasized that as the crime unforgivable.
XIV
THE MATTER OF DOING WHAT ONE CAN
It was from Citizen Drew that Walker Farr heard the story of Captain
Andrew Kilgour.
Citizen Drew was the elderly man with the earnest face who had been
first to commend Farr that evening at City Hall when he and old Etienne
had made their pathetically useless foray against bulwarked privilege.
Folks in Marion who knew Citizen Drew had forgotten his given name.
In his propaganda of protest he called himself “Citizen.” He built
carriage-tops in a little shop where there were drawers stuffed with
political and economic literature, and he read and pondered during his
spare hours.
Farr sought out Citizen Drew and sat at his feet, with open ears.
For Citizen Drew knew the political history of his state, the men
concerned, their characters, their aims, their weaknesses, their
virtues, their faults--especially did he understand their faults--their
affiliations with the Machine, their attitude toward the weak; he had
followed their trails as the humble hound follows big game.
Therefore, Farr, a stranger in that land, seeking knowledge with which
to arm his resolve, went and sat with Citizen Drew and learned many
things.
Sometimes loquacity carried Citizen Drew a bit afield from the highway
of politics, and when he touched on the case of Captain Andrew Kilgour
Farr's heart thumped and his eyes glistened. For Drew prefaced the bit
of a story with this:
“I never knew Symonds Dodd to do anything toward squaring a wrong he
had committed except when he gave Kate Kilgour a fine position in his
office. And there are those who say that he was only showing more of his
selfishness when he hired her; he wanted the prettiest girl in the city
to match his office furnishings.”
“I have seen her,” said Farr, trying to be matter-of-fact. “I--I sort of
wondered!”
“Her father was a friend of mine. He was a good man. And the
Consolidated money couldn't buy him. His people were Kilgowers in
Scotland and he was a man not given to much talk, but he was willing to
let me run on, nodding his head now and then while he smoked. He was
an honest man and the best engineer in the state, and he kept his own
counsel in all things. And he showed me the Kilgower coat of arms--and
he didn't show that to many. He was no boaster. He was proud of his
people, but he used to say that it made but little difference who the
ancestors were unless the descendants copied the virtues and tried to
improve over the faults. There was a Kilgower who went down across
the border and gave himself as a hostage so that the clan might gain
time--and he knew that he would be hung--and he was. But he saved his
people. And I wish you would remember that, Mr. Farr, for it explains a
bit the state of mind of Andrew Kilgour.
“He wouldn't sell himself for the gang's dirty work--he made honest
reports. So they did for him, Mr. Farr. And he couldn't afford to have
them do for him, because his wife was vain and a spendthrift and he let
her waste and spend because he was a good and simple man when it came to
the matter of a woman's domination over him. That's the curse on strong
men--they are tender when it comes to a woman. She wasn't worthy of him,
his wife. It's the daughter who has his honesty. I think if she knew who
had done for her father she would not stay in Symonds Dodd's office. But
the gang does for a man most often without leaving the trail open when
they run away and hide.
“He would come here and sit with me and smoke and was very silent. I
knew there were debts and I knew well enough that the woman wanted him
to sell himself.
“He raked and scraped money--he sold everything of his own, his
instruments and all. He took out every cent of insurance that money
would buy. Then he put prussic acid in a capsule--a shell of salol,
I believe they said it was--so that the work of the poison would be
delayed, and he swallowed the capsule on the street and went into an
office and sat and chatted with friends and joked and laughed much more
than was his habit till at last his eyes closed and his face grew
white and he fell out of his chair upon the floor stone-dead, and never
uttered a groan.
“It was brave work. They called it heart disease, but it's not easy
to fool insurance people. They took him out of his grave and proved
suicide--and they did not pay a dollar of insurance to his family. They
were not obliged to. The policies were new and the suicide clause let
the companies out. So he left only debts instead of twenty-five thousand
dollars. However, I say it was brave work.”
“It would have been braver to stay and face it,” blurted Farr.
“But Andrew Kilgour had a code of his own--a state of mind some of us
could not understand--the example of an ancestor. We are not all alike.
Many cannot stay and face trouble. You might be able to do it--you seem
to have a level head!”
Farr grew pale, his hands trembled on the arms of his chair, and then
he got up and marched across the little shop to the window, turning his
back on Citizen Drew.
“You told them in City Hall that you would stay here and fight,” pursued
Citizen Drew. “That is brave work.”
“I'll be much obliged to you, Citizen Drew, if you'll leave me out of
your catalogue of heroes. And I take back what I said about his facing
it. I hadn't any right to make any such comment.”
“So the girl went to work in Symonds Dodd's office and his nephew is
courting her. I hope he doesn't get Andrew Kilgour's daughter. He never
went after any other girl honestly. I have looked into this case because
I was Andrew's friend. Young Dodd wants to marry her and the mother is
helping him. But I know that rapscallion, Mr. Farr. I can't believe that
Kate Kilgour will be caught by him.”
“He has a fine position, they tell me,” said Farr, still gazing out of
the window.
“The Machine made old Peleg Johnstone state treasurer, and he doesn't
know bonds from biscuit. Colonel Dodd put in his nephew as chief clerk,
and old Peleg is a figure-head, smoking his pipe in the back office and
resting his wool-tipped boots on his desk. Oh, I know the bunch of 'em,
sir. I can tell you the inside of things. Young Dodd takes orders from
his uncle and runs the treasury. All the state's money is in the Dodd
banks on the checking-account basis--and the gang is letting it out at
six percent. Tidy little profit! And nobody to say a word, even to ask
how Richard Dodd finds so much money to spend. But that's the principal
wonder in the world, Mr. Farr--how your neighbor gets his money to blow.
Jones, Smith, Brown, and Robinson--they stand and look at one another
and ask the same question. And folks in the Eleventh Ward are even
asking me how you get your living,” added Citizen Drew, smoothing his
curiosity with a bit of jocoseness.
“I have been working in this city--doing good, hard work,” stated Farr,
moving toward the door.
“Yes, but you have been discharged.”
“I understand how it is you know so much stuff to tell me,” returned the
young man, smiling. “Well, Citizen Drew, I'm going to take the first job
that offers itself. Tell 'em that!”
“I'm glad of it,” said Citizen Drew, with blunt heartiness. “If you have
set out to do anything among the plain folks you've got to be at work in
the open, earning honest wages, or they'll suspect you. They have been
fooled too often by fakes and loafers. But since you advertised yourself
in City Hall you may find jobs a little hard to land. It's pretty much
of an air-tight proposition, Consolidated influence.”
“I have somebody looking after my interests in that line, Citizen Drew.
I'm not worrying.” He opened the door. “In fact, there are two mighty
helpful chaps whom I'm going to associate with more or less from now
on.”
“Bring 'em with you and let me know 'em. Can't have too many in a good
cause.”
“I'll bring them--but they are pretty hard to understand--rather slow
getting acquainted--lots of folks have no use for them,” said Farr,
starting down-stairs.
“What are their names?” asked the inquisitive citizen, eager for more
additions to his general stock of information.
“I'll tell you later.”
But Farr named them to himself when he was on the street.
“Chance and Humility--I hope you are going to stick by me from now on,”
he muttered. “Chance, you have led me into a queer position and into a
strange state of mind. Humility, you are helping me to understand. Now,
Chance, what have you to say to me?”
It was more of the fantastic whimsy with which Walker Farr played.
His eyes, searching the street after this challenge to Chance, beheld an
ice-wagon rumbling past. It was a neat-looking cart, painted white, and
bore the advertisement, “Crystal Pure Independent Ice Company.”
Another wagon, painted dirty yellow, followed. It was a Consolidated
ice-cart; Farr knew those carts with their loads of river-ice.
The spectacle of something which promised rivalry to that yellow cart
piqued his interest. His mood welcomed the first adventure which Chance
presented. He had found Chance playing peculiar pranks with his affairs
in the days just past.
He hurried in pursuit of the white cart and accosted the driver.
“Where can I find the manager of this company?”
“He's up at Coosett Lake this afternoon, sir.” The man was respectful.
The stranger's garb and demeanor impressed him. “The trolley will take
you pretty near it. Take a car in the square--a Halcyon Park car.”
Without canvassing the matter further Farr took the car.
He decided that it was a most comforting sensation, this abandoning his
problems to Chance! It saved so much fuss and worry.
He found the little lake at the limits of the park area--a hollow among
the hills.
Men were busy at the foot of the slope over whose crest he marched. He
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