The Landloper: The Romance of a Man on Foot
bank of the canal was green; and elms, languid in the fierce heat,
gave shade here and there with wilted leaves. The masses of brick which
inclosed the toilers within the mills puffed off tremulous heat-waves
and suggested that humanity must be baking in those gigantic ovens.
A high fence interposed between the canal and the street; the mill lawn
which extended between the canal and the shimmering brick walls was also
inclosed. Signs posted on the fence warned trespassers not to venture.
A bridge carried the street across the canal, and Farr stood there for a
time and watched the swirl of the water below. Then he sauntered on and
surveyed the expanse of mill lawn with appraising and envious gaze.
The young man climbed the canal fence, exhibiting more of his cool
contempt for authority by helping himself over the sharp spikes with
the aid of a “No Trespassing” sign. The sickly odor of raw cotton came
floating to his nostrils from the open windows. He strolled to the
head of a transverse canal which sucked water from the main stream.
A sprawling tree shaded a foot-worn plank where an old man, with bent
shoulders and a withered face, trudged to and fro, clawing down into the
black waters with a huge rake. He was the rack-tender--it was his task
to keep the ribs of the guarding rack clear of the refuse that came
swirling down with the water, for flotsam, if allowed to lodge, might
filch some of the jealously guarded power away from the mighty turbines
which growled and grunted in the depths of the wheel-pits. With rake in
one hand and a long, barbed pole in the other the old man bent over the
bubbling torrent that the rack's teeth sucked hissingly between them.
Bits of wood, soggy paper, an old umbrella, all manner of stuff which
had been tossed into the canal by lazy folks up-stream, he raked and
pulled up and piled at the end of his foot-bridge.
“Hy, yi, old Pickaroon!” came a child's shrill voice from a mill window.
“There's a tramp under your tree.”
The old man raised his head from his work at the rack.
“You must not come on dis place,” he cried, with a strong
French-Canadian accent.
“Who says so?” inquired the stranger, putting his back against the tree
and stretching out his legs.
“I--Etienne Provancher.”
“And I--my worthy alien--I am Walker Farr from Nowhere. Now that we have
been properly introduced I will sit here and rest. I am here because I
love the soothing sound of babbling waters on a hot day. Go about your
work. I'll watch you. I love surprises. Who knows what next you'll draw
forth from the depths of fate?
“I can have you arrest!” cried the old man.
The uninvited guest took off his broad-brimmed hat, laid it across
his knees, and ran his hand through his shock of brown hair; it curled
damply over his forehead and, behind, reached down nearly to his
coat-collar, hiding his tanned neck. In some men that length of hair
might have seemed affectation. It gave this man, as he sat there
uncovered, that touch of the unusual which separates the person
of strong individuality from the mere mob. Then he smiled on old
Etienne--such a warm, radiant, compelling, disarming sort of smile that
the rack-tender turned to his work again, muttering. His mouth twitched
and the crinkles in his withered face deepened.
Walker Farr found a comfortable indentation in the tree-trunk and
settled his head there.
“How much do you get a week for doing that, Etienne?” he inquired, with
cool assurance.
The old man glance sideways sharply, but the smile won him.
“Six dollaire.”
“After supporting your family, what do you do with the rest of the money
these generous mill-owners allow you?”
“I never was marry.”
The young man looked up at the mill windows where childish heads were
bobbing to and fro.
“That was poor judgment, Etienne. You might have married and have a
dozen children now, working hard for you in the mill. Just like those
children yonder.”
The old man came to the end of his foot-bridge and flung down his rake
and his pike-pole.
The sudden emotions of his Gallic forebears swept through him. His
features worked, his voice was high with passion.
“Ba gar, I don't sleep the night because I think about dem poor childs.
Dem little white face, dem arm, dem leg--all dry up--not so big as
chicken leg. And all outdoor free to odder childs--not to them childs
up dere.” He shook his fists at the mill windows. And some child who
saw the motion, getting a hasty peep from a widow, squealed, “Hi yi, old
Pickaroon!”
“It doesn't pay to get too excited over the sorrows of the world, my
friend,” drawled the young man under the tree. “It doesn't do any good;
and then somebody calls you names. I was something like you once. But
I've changed my philosophy. I have hypnotized my altruism. Now I'm
perfectly happy.”
Etienne stared without understanding these big words. But he had often
told himself that he never expected to understand Yankee speech very
well. He worked alone; he lived alone in his garret in the tenement
block; he talked but little with any person. But this young man with
the wonderful smile seemed to inspire him to talk--even to the extent of
revealing his secrets.
He lowered his voice. “Thirty year I have work here. I live way up in
the little room. Bread I eat with lard on it. It costs little. Of the
six dollaire I save much. Ah, _oui_! Hist! Not for me I save it. Ah,
_non_! To the priest I give it. To the good priest. And the poor childs
what are sick--he send 'em to the farm--to have some outdoors. But I
don't sleep the night because I think the dollaire come so slow--and so
many poor childs are sick.”
He picked up his rake and pike and went back to his labor.
The man under the tree did not lose his smile.
“Yonder is a brand of altruism that cannot be hypnotized or modified
like Knight Chick's, I fear,” he muttered. “You'd have to hit it on the
head--kill it with sticks! And my definition of philanthropy has always
been, 'giving away something you don't want in order to get yourself
advertised.' Etienne is interesting. He is the only philanthropist I
have even found who will eat lard instead of butter so as to save more
for his philanthropy.” Now his smile grew hard. “Don't dare to open your
eyes, Altruism,” he commanded. “I saw the lids quiver a minute ago while
that old man was talking, but remember you're hypnotized.”
He saw the rack-tender lay down his pike so as to give both hands to his
big rake.
He was pulling at something heavier than the ordinary flotsam--something
far below the surface of the water. At last it broke through the black
surface of the turbid flood. To Walker Farr, glancing carelessly, it
seemed like a bedraggled bundle of rags with something white at the end.
“You come help, m'sieu',” called old Etienne. “It is a dead woman.”
Together they pulled the rake's dread burden slowly up the bars of the
rack.
“You seem pretty cool about this,” gasped the young man.
“It is no new thing. Many drown themselves--they drown in the canal so
they will be found. Women and girls, they drown themselves. So! Help me
carry her.”
Farr gazed down on her after she had been laid on the canal bank. She
was young, but thin and work-worn.
“Weaver,” commented old Etienne, laying back on her breast one of the
hands he had lifted. “There's the marks on the fingers where she have
tie so many knots so quick.”
There was a key on her breast; it was secured by a cord that passed out
of sight between the buttons on her waist. Farr stooped and pulled on
the key. A folded paper came with the key; the other end of the cord was
tied around the paper.
“You must not--it is for the coroner,” protested Etienne. “I know the
law--I have drag up so many.”
“My besetting sin is curiosity,” declared the young man, his calm
impertinence unruffled. He pulled the wet paper from the noose of the
cord. “We'll read this together.”
“I cannot read,” confessed the rack-tender. “You shall read it to me.”
His little black eyes gleamed now with curiosity of his own. “I shall be
glad to hear. The coroner he never read to me.”
The water had spread the ink and spotted the paper, but Farr was able to
decipher the missive. He read aloud:
“'My head has grown bad since my husband died. It is grief, the awful
heat, the work at the looms. They said if I would give my little girl
away she could go to the country and grow well. But I could not give her
up for ever. I could not earn the money to send her to board. I could
not earn the money except to buy us bread here in the tenement block.
And my bad head has been telling me it's best to kill myself and take
her with me. So I kill myself before my head grows so bad that I might
take away my little girl's life. It belongs to her and I hope she may
be happy. Will somebody take her and give her happiness? It is wicked to
kill myself, but my head is so bad I cannot think out the right way to
do. This is the key to the room in Block Ten.
“'MRS. ELISIANE SIROIS.
“'Her name is Rosemarie.'”
Walker Farr finished reading and stared into the glittering eyes of the
old man.
Etienne Provancher swore roundly and furiously--the strange, hard oaths
that his ancestors had brought from the Normandy of the seventeenth
century.
“So you shall see--it is as I have say.” He shook his fists again at the
mill. Its open windows vomited the staccato chatterings of the
myriad looms. “It chews up the poor people. Hear its dam' teeth go
chank--chank--chank!”
“The Gallic imagination is always active,” said Farr, joggling the key
at the end of the cord and eyeing it with peculiar interest. “But in
this case it seems to picture conditions pretty accurately. I wonder
just what a visitor would find inside the door that this key fits!”
“You shall go tell them at the office of the mill,” commanded Etienne.
“Tell them they have killed another. They will telephone for the
coroner. I will give the paper and the key when he come.” He held out
his hand. “It is the law.”
“I have a natural hankering--sometimes--to break the law,” affirmed the
young man. “I feel that fatal curiosity of mine stirring again, Friend
Etienne. I will send the coroner. But coroners love mysteries. If we
give him the letter it will take all the spice out of this affair. Let's
make him happy--he can drag out the inquest and give his friends a long
job on the jury.” He smiled and started away, shaking his head when the
old man protested shrilly. “Better say nothing about this letter and
the key. You'll get into trouble for letting a stranger come in here and
carry away evidence. Better keep out of the law, Etienne.” He grabbed
the “No Trespassing” sign for a hand-hold and climbed over the fence.
“I'll come back and tell you, Etienne. But keep mum,” he advised.
“It is his smile--it makes me break the law,” mumbled the old man.
VIII
THE KEY TO A DOOR IN BLOCK TEN
Walker Farr gave the first policeman--a fat and sweltering individual--a
piece of gruesome news and in return casually asked the location of
Block Ten.
The policeman grudgingly growled the information over his shoulder while
waiting for the station to answer the call from his box.
The young man, taking his time, found the place at last, one in an
interminable row of tenement-houses, all identical in structure and
squalor, bearing the mark of corporation niggardliness in their cheap
lumber and stingy accommodations.
The hallway that Farr entered was narrow and stifling--stale odors of
thousands of dead-and-gone boiled dinners mingled there, and a stairway
with a greasy handrail invited him. The key bore a number. He hunted
till he found a room, far up, flight after flight. Through open doors he
saw here and there aged women or doddering old men who were guardians of