The Landloper by Holman Day (ereader ebook .txt) 📖

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 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