The Landloper: The Romance of a Man on Foot
back in his chair and gazed at the ceiling over the peak of the skeleton
structure he had erected in front of his nose with his fingers.
Colonel Dodd squinted first at his nephew and then at the bouquet on his
desk.
The nephew had been attempting by all the methods known to the appealing
male to win only one return glance from Kate Kilgour; but the young lady
held her eyes on her note-book, poised her pencil above the page, and
waited for more of that conversation and statement of which she had been
the silent recorder.
“You think you have given us all the main points of what you overheard,
do you, Mr. Dodd?” inquired the judge, turning sharp gaze on the young
man.
“I can't remember any more.”
“You think you recognized voices sufficiently well to be sure that
this person named Farr made that novel suggestion in regard to what was
called a 'water district'?”
“There was no mistaking his voice,” said Dodd, with the malevolence of
bitter recollection.
Another prolonged silence. Then the judge asked, his eyes again on the
ceiling, “Just who is this Walker Farr?”
Richard Dodd, keeping jealous espionage on all the girl's emotions and
movements saw a flush suffuse her cheeks; her hands trembled. She raised
her eyes in a quick glance and he detected eager inquiry.
“I don't know who he is,” growled the colonel.
“You'd better find out,” advised the corporation counsel.
“Why?”
“Of course this thing has been put up to me very suddenly. I can give
you only a snap judgment. But that scheme has possibilities.”
“As a lawyer you don't mean to tell me that a crazy idea like that can
be put through in this state against the combination we control?”
“It will not be a case of combination and money and politics, Colonel,
when it gets to the high court. It will be _law_. And I'm sorry you
can't tell me any more about the man who has devised the plan. I'd like
to know how he dug it out.”
“But a gang of pirates can't organize like that and confiscate our
property! We're going to tap the lakes. We're going ahead right away.
But can that fool's scheme scoop in the Consolidated Water Company?”
“That's to be found out. I am going to tell you now that I believe an
organization of citizens into an independent water district can be
made legally and be independent of other debts. Colonel Dodd, if that
opposition gets control of the next legislature you can depend upon it
that the necessary legislation will be passed. We may as well look facts
in the face: they're getting mighty restive in this state; the people
have been penned in by the Machine very effectually to date--but show
'em a place now where they can jump the fence and they're going to do
it.”
“But what's the good of paying you twenty-five thousand dollars a
year for law if you can't keep the bars up?” The tone was that of the
impatient tyrant.
“You'll please remember that this thing is likely to go to the United
States court. When you go in there you've got to leave your side-arms
of politics--pull and pocket-book--at the door. I will say this: the
Federal Constitution guarantees protection against any irregular,
illegal, or confiscatory action under state authority. That is, no
states shall pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts nor
shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without
due process of law nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the
equal protection of the laws. Now, of course, a corporation is a person
in the meaning of the law, and therefore we can carry the matter to the
United States Supreme Court, but I want to tell you that if the next
legislature enacts law permitting water districts, and the state
authorities proceed to condemn your plants, you may as well get ready to
step out from under. You are a shrewd man and you understand the spirit
of these times in regard to giving to the people their full rights in
public utilities. I say again, you'd better get a line on this Walker
Farr, because it's either a case of ignorance inspired or else he's a
deep one. He has started with a plan that can be defended by law--and
the judges in these days are handing the people's rights and property
back to them when there is a legal opportunity.”
“Why, this Farr is a nothing--nobody. Dug in our trenches for a while
until he was discharged. Briggs looked him up for me. The only man
in this city he has been at all intimate with is an old Canuck named
Provancher who tends the rack down at Gamonic Mill. You can judge him by
the company he keeps.”
“Well, he seems to be fraternizing with better men just now,” drawled
the judge. “Archer Converse, for instance!”
“The thing to do,” suggested young Dodd, still watching the girl, “is
get something on that hobo and boot him out of town or put him in jail.
It ought to be easy enough.”
“And it will be attended to,” declared the colonel, with venom. “We'll
kill that one crow and hang him up in full view of the rest of those
croakers! I'll put something over on that fellow and have all the papers
in the state print it--and high-and-mighty Converse will be so disgusted
that he'll quit and the rest of the crowd will be ashamed to keep on.
Disgrace a reformer! That's the surest play in politics! We must get
Farr!”
He turned his scowling gaze away from the flowers and found Miss Kilgour
looking at him with an expression in her eyes he had never seen there
before. Reproach and scorn seemed to mingle in the stare she gave him.
He blinked, and when he looked again she was examining the point of her
pencil; he decided that his eyesight had played him a strange prank.
“By the way, Miss Kilgour,” he informed her, “you need not remain. Make
two typewritten copies--the judge will need one.”
Richard Dodd arose when she left her chair, but she did not glance
at him. He began to speak before she had reached the door, unable to
restrain his jealous temper longer.
“Uncle Symonds, pass the word to that old Provancher, through the
superintendent of the Gamonic, that unless he comes across with all the
stuff he knows about that Farr he'll be fired. And I've got a hunter out
on my own account. It will be easy enough to catch the skunk and strip
off his pelt.”
Miss Kilgour closed the door behind her with a sharper click than she
had ever given its latch before. She hurried to her typewriter in her
little room and began to work with all her energy.
She was so busy and her machine clattered so viciously that she did not
hear Richard Dodd when he entered. He leaned over her.
“Have you talked with your mother yet? Has she given you some
advice?” he asked. His jealousy still fired him and his tone was not
conciliatory.
The contempt in the glance she flung upward at him roused him to
passion. In the state of mind in which he then was he made no allowances
for her ignorance of conditions in her mother's case. He knew what he
had done for Mrs. Kilgour's sake, and this attitude on the daughter's
part pricked him like wilful ingratitude.
He put his hands on the keyboard of the typewriter and stopped her work.
“I love you, Kate, and you have known it for a long time. I tried to
show you how much I loved you. I know I did a foolish thing. But I loved
you.” He almost sobbed the protestation. “I've been in hell's torment
since it happened. I've been a fool all the way through, but I won't be
a fool any more if you'll take pity on me.”
She did not speak. Her silent, utter contempt stung more deeply and
surely than words.
“If you insist on being so high above, I'm going to bring you down a
little,” he sneered. “I hate to do it, but you've got to be shown
where your real friends are. I have given your mother a chance to say
something to you, and say it right. But she hasn't done it, and I don't
propose to be made the goat.” In his anger he was not choice in his
language. “You go home and ask her whether or not she owes me five
thousand dollars. Oh, you needn't open your eyes at me in that style!
It's time we all got down to cases in this thing, Kate. I've waited for
her long enough. She has simply fluffed me along. Now she has got to do
her part.”
“Have you lost your mind?” she demanded.
“No! But I lost five thousand dollars when I loaned it to your mother.
Kate, she told me she had a stock deal on--that she would be able to pay
it back. Listen! I may as well go the limit with you. I took money that
wasn't mine so that I could help your mother out--it was because I loved
you. Now you realize how much I have loved you. I protected your mother.
And now, by the gods, if you and she don't come to the scratch in this
thing and do right by me I'll show up why she had to be protected,
and after that you'll never draw a happy breath again in your life. I
advised you to talk with your mother once before. This time you'd better
to it.”
She leaned back in her chair, white and trembling, for his tones carried
conviction.
“I have hated to open this thing up, Kate. I have waited a long time,
hoping you'd understand that I would make a good husband--that I
deserved to have you. I'm only speaking out now so that you'll wake up.
You've got to stand by the man who has stood by you. Go talk with your
mother!”
After he had hurried out she went back to her work, but her fingers
could only fumble at the keys. By effort of will persons of strong
character can compose themselves after disaster has been confirmed;
but impending disaster that is hinted at--guessed at--is a menace which
paralyzes. She was endeavoring to write down what Richard Dodd had
revealed of the plans of Walker Farr. She understood that the mighty
power of the state machine was now doubling its fist over the head of
the stranger who had come into her life in such peculiar fashion. At the
same moment she was cowering under the threat of something she did not
fully understand.
And from the Dodds--uncle and nephew--came the menace which loomed over
both of them.
Then to her came Peter Briggs, who had been summoned to a conference in
the inner office; by direction of his chief he had been reading to Judge
Warren certain entries penciled in the note-book which he guarded with
the elastic band.
“The governor wants you to add these items to the record, so that the
judge can have a copy,” said Mr. Briggs to the confidential secretary.
“The subject isn't a very genteel one, Miss Kilgour, but orders are
orders, and you'll have to excuse me.”
And Mr. Briggs kept snapping the elastic band nervously while he
dictated, carefully looking away from the young woman.
In such manner Kate Kilgour learned of the existence of Zelie Dionne and
of the child whom Walker Farr had protected; Mr. Briggs's zeal in the
interest of his employer had made him a partisan in that affair, with
easy conscience regarding the matter of the details. The bald record
showed that Farr and the girl had cared for the child between them, had
nursed it with grief and solicitude, had borne it to the plot of land
where the little graves were crowded so closely. Mr. Briggs complacently
avoided dates and age and the minuter details. He even pleaded the case,
having caught a cue from Colonel Dodd; his record left the impression
that Walker Farr, who had come from nowhere--nobody knew when--had lived
in Marion unknown and unnoticed at the time when he had compassed the
ruin of a confiding girl.
“A scalawag, and a bad one!” commented Mr. Briggs, closing his
note-book. “And of course there's worse to come! Posing as a
reformer--that's the way such renegades work the thing. A new game for
every new place!”
And Kate Kilgour, remembering the vagrant on the broad highway, wrote
down the arraignment of this person, trying to understand her emotions.
Her own eyes had seen him garbed as a tramp, plainly a homeless nomad.