“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 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.”