The Landloper: The Romance of a Man on Foot
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.”
“He probably thinks he has paid his debt to the world when he hands out
his money,” stated Drew. “When he looks around and sees so many other
men holding the poor chaps upside down and shaking the dollars out of
their pockets he must think he is doing a mighty sight more than is
required of him. But sticking plasters of dollar bills onto sore places
in this state ain't curing anything.” He stopped. “I've walked with you
farther than I intended to, Mr. Farr. But somehow I wanted to talk with
you. There's a meeting of the Square Deal Club this evening at Union
Hall. I didn't know but in some way we might--It was thought you might
be going to run for office.”
“The registration-office will prove that I'm not. Pass that word!”
“I'll go back--to the meeting. It doesn't seem to be much use in holding
the meetings,” said the man. “We hear one another talk--we know we are
talking the truth. But nobody listens who can help us poor folks. Well,
I'll admit that the politicians come in and listen and promise to help
us and we give our votes; but that's all: they give nothing back to us.”
Farr broke out with a remark which seemed to have no bearing on what
Citizen Drew was saying.
“He comes out at nine o'clock, eh?”
“Who?”
“The Honorable Archer Converse. Leaves that clubhouse then, does he?”
“Regular to the tick of the clock.”
“Citizen Drew, hold your club in session until half past nine or a
little later. My experience with those meetings is that you always have
troubles enough to keep you talking for at least two hours.”
Citizen Drew glanced at the face of Farr and then at the big door of the
Mellicite Club.
“You don't mean to say--”
“I don't say anything. I seem to be in a queer state of mind to-night,
Citizen Drew.” Again there was an odd note of raillery in his voice. “A
lot of odd ideas keep coming to me. Another one had just popped into my
head. That's all! Keep your boys at the hall.”
He swung off up the street.
He turned after a few steps and saw the elderly man standing where he
had left him. Drew was a rather pathetic figure there in the brilliantly
lighted main thoroughfare, a poor, plain man from the Eleventh Ward
of the tenement-houses--this man who had been striving and struggling,
reading and studying, endeavoring to find some way out for the poor
people; some relief--something that would help. Farr knew what sort of
men were waiting in the little hall. He had attended their meetings. It
was the only resource they understood--a public meeting. They knew that
the important folks up-town held public meetings of various sorts, and
the poor folks had decided that there must be virtue in assemblages.
But nothing had seemed to come out of their efforts in the tenement
districts.
Farr stepped back to where Citizen Drew stood.
“I think I will say something to you, after all. Tell the boys in Union
Hall to be patient and I'll bring the Honorable Archer Converse around
this evening.”
He smiled into the stare of blank amazement on the man's face, flung up
a hand to check the stammering questions, and went off up the street.
“A decent man's conscience will make him keep a promise he has made to
a child or to the simple or to the helpless,” Farr told himself. “I have
undertaken a big contract, I reckon, but now that I have put myself on
record I've got to go ahead and deliver the goods. At any rate, I feel
on my mettle.” Then he smiled at what seemed to be his sudden folly. “I
think I'll have to lay it all to those nice old ladies who were foolish
enough to put that knight-errant idea into my head,” he said.
XVII
THE MADNESS OF A MIDSUMMER NIGHT
Farr glanced again at the big clock in the First National block.
He had less than one hour to wait, according to the schedule Citizen
Drew had promulgated in regard to the unvarying movements of the
Honorable Archer Converse. As to how this first coup in the operations
of that nascent organization, the Public-spirited Press Gang, was to be
managed Farr had little idea at that moment.
He decided to devote that hour to devising a plan, deciding to attempt
nothing until he saw the honorable gentleman march down the club steps.
A club must be sanctuary--but the streets belonged to the people.
Therefore, Farr took a walk. He went back into that quarter of the city
from which he had emerged during his stroll with Citizen Drew; he
felt his courage deserting him in those more imposing surroundings of
up-town; he went back to the purlieus of the poor, hoping for contact
that might charge him afresh with determination. He realized that he
needed all the dynamics of courage in the preposterous task he had set
himself.
He knew he would find old Etienne sitting on the stoop of Mother
Maillet's house where the old man posted himself on pleasant summer
evenings and whittled whirligigs for the crowding children--just as his
peasant ancestors whittled the same sort of toys in old Normandy.
Mother Maillet's house had a yard. It was narrow and dusty, because the
feet of the children had worn away all the grass. Some of the palings
were off the fence, and through the spaces the little folks came and
went as they liked. It was not much of a yard to boast of, but there
were few open spaces in that part of the city where the big land
corporation hogged all the available feet of earth in order to stick the
tenement-houses closely together. Therefore, because Mother Maillet was
kind, the yard was a godsend so far as the little folks were concerned.
The high fence kept children off the greensward where the canal flowed.
Householders who had managed to save their yards down that way were, in
most cases, fussy old people who were hanging on to the ancient cottage
homes in spite of the city's growth, and they shooed the children out of
their yards where the flower-beds struggled under the coal-dust from the
high chimneys.
But Mother Maillet did not mind because she had no flower-beds and
because the palings were off and the youngsters made merry in her
yard. She had two geraniums and a begonia and a rubber-plant on the
window-sill in order to give the canary-bird a comfortable sense of
arboreal surroundings; so why have homesick flowers out in a front yard
where they must all the time keep begging the breeze to come and dust
the grime off their petals? It should be understood that Mother Maillet
had known what _real_ flower-beds were when she was a girl in the
Tadousac country.
Furthermore, Etienne Provancher always came to the yard o' fine evenings
and it served as his little realm; and the door-step of the good woman's
house was his throne where he sat in state among his little subjects.
However, on second thought, this metaphor is not happy description; old
Etienne did not rule--he obeyed.
He did not resent familiarity--he welcomed the comradeship of the
children. When they called him “Pickaroon” it seemed to him that they
were making a play-fellow of him.
He sat and whittled toys for them out of the pine-wood scraps which the
yard foreman gave him. There were grotesque heads for rag dolls, and
the good woman seemed to have unlimited rags and an excellent taste in
doll-dressmaking; there were chunky automobiles with spools for wheels;
there were funny little wooden men who jumped in most amusing fashion
at the end of wires which were stuck into their backs. Old Etienne was
always ready to sit and whittle until the evening settled down and he
could see no longer, even though he held the wood and busy knife close
to his eyes.
So on that evening he whittled as usual.
Walker Farr came to the yard and sat beside the old man on the door-step
and was plainly thinking no agreeable thoughts while he listened to the
chatter of the children.
After the darkness had come and the larger boys and girls, custodians
of their tiny kin, had dragged away the protesting and whimpering little
folks because it was bedtime, Zelie Dionne laid down her needlework over
which she had been straining her eyes. The good woman protested often
because the girl toiled so steadily with her needle after her day at the
mill was ended. And on that summer evening she voiced complaint again.
“You have so many pretty gowns already! You wear one last evening--you
wear anodder this evening--and still you make some more! When a young
girl nigh kill herself so as to make a picture-book of her dresses
I think it is time to look for some young man who seems to like the
pictures. Eh?”
“Mother Angelique, I do not relish jokes which are silly,” protested the
girl. “You know how the girls of our country are taught! We cannot sit
with hands in our laps without being very unhappy.”
She went out and sat upon the door-step where old Etienne made way for
her.
“At first I did not think I would come out, Mr. Farr,” she said. “But I
have made bold to come.”
“I do not think it needs boldness to come where I am,” he returned. “I
hope you are not going to make a stranger of me because I have not been
very neighborly of late. I have been busy and I have been away. The boys
have paid my fare up-country, and so I ran about to carry the gospel of
the free water. The truckmen have volunteered in half a dozen places. We
are doing a great work.”
“And yet I am afraid,” she confessed. “You are fighting men who can do
you much harm. I have been asking questions so as to know more about
those men. For they have threatened poor Father Etienne. I wanted to
know about them. I cannot help. But can you not help, Mr. Farr? I think
you are much more than you seem to be,” she added, naively.
“They have threatened Etienne?” demanded Farr, a sharp note in his
voice.
“Ah, m'sieu', I have said nottin's to you. I am only poor old man. No
matter.”
“Why didn't you say something to me?”