The Landloper: The Romance of a Man on Foot
crowd he had left stared after him without presuming to voice taunt or
reply; there was something compelling about him.
As Farr approached the automobile its owner stopped talking and stared
at the tall stranger with some apprehension. Then the big man beckoned
unobtrusively to a policeman. It was evident that Farr was not of
the same sort as the ruck of men from among whom he had just emerged,
nevertheless he had come from among them. The lordly man in the car had
observed him moving in the group, for Farr had loomed above the heads of
the others; what he had been saying to the malcontents the big man had
not been able to hear, but he guessed.
“Some sort of sneak has been stirring up the fools in this city lately,”
the aristocrat informed the officer who came promptly to the side of the
car. “Who is this fellow coming?”
“I never saw him before, Colonel Dodd.”
“Stand by! He is going to tackle me and make a grand-stand play in front
of his gang. His clothes give him away--a loafing demagogue!”
But the tall man did not pause at the car or even glance at the
dignitary who occupied it. He seemed to have lost all interest in the
occasion. He yawned as he passed the automobile and started away across
the square.
“Here, you! You big chap!” called Colonel Dodd, promptly emboldened.
Farr halted and turned, his countenance showing mild inquiry.
“What do you mean by coming into a peaceable city and stirring up labor
troubles?”
“Have I done so?”
“You have just been mixing and mingling with those men, talking to them.
I know your kind.”
“Ah, a gentleman of keen discernment!”
“I have seen you before--you fellows with long-tailed coats and
short-horned ideas. We don't want your kind in this city!”
“I seem to have made a prompt sensation without trying to do so,”
returned Farr, meekly. “I have been in your city less than fifteen
minutes, sir!”
“You're a traveling labor-agitator, aren't you?”
“No, sir.”
“But I just saw you circulating among those men. Your rig-out shows your
character!”
“You mean these garments I wear?”
“Certainly! A frock-coat helps out your pose before an ignorant public.”
“He stole that coat from me,” squeaked a fat man, standing at a little
distance, scrubbing a torn sleeve over his grimy, sweat-streaked face.
“He picked it fair off'n my back. I have follered him to show him up as
a robber and a fake. That's so help me!”
Riotous laughter from all the listeners followed that declaration;
a glance at the tubby tramp and survey of the tall young man whose
contours fitted the garments made the fat man's assertion seem like a
huge joke.
“I can prove it!” squalled the vagrant.
“Beat it! Get out of this city!” commanded a policeman. “If you
don't we'll have you on the rock-pile. What ye mean by such guff?” He
flourished his stick and the tramp hurried away.
“It's no use,” he whined. “Grab and bluff! Him what can do it best
always wins. That's the way the world goes!”
“When I took these clothes off the back of my vanishing friend I felt
that they would make a change in my life,” stated Farr, with a smile
which provoked more laughter. “But I did not dream that they would bring
me such prominence in so short a time.” He bowed to the man in the car.
But Colonel Dodd was angry and insistent and did not join in the
merriment.
“I say you are a labor-agitator. Any man who won't go to work himself
has no right to be stirring up other workers against their own
interests. You may as well own up to me, my man. These men standing
around here know what you are--you have been talking with them. Outside
of stirring trouble, you don't work, do you?”
“Oh yes, my lord!”
There was smiling mockery in the tone, almost insolence. He seemed to
be willing to display to the rich man the same lack of respect he had
displayed to the poor men who stood near and listened to this colloquy.
“Oh, you do?” Colonel Dodd raised his voice. “Listen sharp, my men! Do
you want to be led around by the noses by a man who doesn't work? This
gentleman is going to tell us what his job is!” He sneered when he said
it.
“I am an assiduous toiler in my profession, your excellency. I am
surprised that as an employer you do not recognize a real worker when
you see one.”
This tone of raillery and this stilted manner of speech promptly caught
the fancy of the throng. The men crowded more closely and the orator on
the trough was silent.
“What do you work at?”
“I am an architect, your gracious highness.”
“Less of that insolence in the way of names, my friend! An architect,
eh? Well, what did you ever build?”
“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