“But you don't know what you say,” stammered the old man.
“It so happens that I do, my man. I've been handling too many of these cases to be fooled. Why, I've got more than fifty cases of typhoid in this city--just myself.”
“But she has had sun and fresh air--on the canal bank where I tend the rack.”
“Sun and fresh air can't cure victims of the poison that is being pumped through the water-mains of this city,” snapped the doctor.
“Water-mains!”
The doctor turned and stared at Farr, for the husky croak of his exclamation had not sounded human.
“That's what I said. You can't have lived very long in this state not to know what we're up against on the water proposition.”
“I haven't lived here long. But about the child--it can't--”
“Why, this Consolidated Company is owned by Colonel Dodd and his politicians--and they own all the city and town water systems in this state,” said the doctor, no longer interested in his patient--exploding with the violence of imprudent youth. “They boss mayors, the aldermen, the politicians--boss the governor himself. That's because they've got the machine and the money. They've got a lot of money, because they won't wake up and spend it to lay lines far enough to tap the lakes in the hills. They tap these rotten rivers at our back doors, pump poison through the mains, sell it at prices that yield them twenty percent dividends. They say the water is all right--and back it up with analyses. I say it's all wrong.”
“And you damnation doctors are letting this go on--letting folks drink poison--telling us when it's too late!” shouted Farr, purple replacing the white in his face.
“Well, the folks up-town who have got wisdom and the money buy spring-water and mineral water. All the doctors don't agree that the river is responsible for the typhoid. With the governor and the legislature bossed by Dodd and his associates, and the city governments tied up by them, and the banks taking orders from the syndicate in case any town or an independent company tries to borrow money and install a water system, and the mill corporations and the tenement-block owners all in cahoots, a crusader who expected to get anywhere in politics or make money out of his business would stand a fine and dandy show, now wouldn't he? And the most of us in this world are trying to get ahead either in business or in politics.” He snapped the catch of his little black case. “Forget what I have said, you two. I hold my job through politics. I'm apt to talk too much when I get started. But don't drink city water, no matter if Colonel Dodd's analyses do give it a clean bill.”
Farr caught him at the door, restraining him with a heavy hand.
“You stay here, don't you let that baby die. By the gods, she sha'n't die!”
“My staying will do no good, my friend. The little girl is death-struck already. It's quick work with the children. Sometimes we can bring the grown folks through. Get another doctor, if you feel like it, but I've got to keep moving--there are lots of folks waiting for me in these tenements.”
He shook off Farr's hand and hurried away.
Old Etienne stood by the bedside, gazing down on the little sufferer, closing and unclosing his shriveled hands as if he were grasping at straws of hope, dragging the depths of his soul for reassurance even as he dragged his rake in the black waters of the canal.
“The whippersnapper lied about her. Because she's a baby he won't bother,” stormed Farr. “I'll ransack this town for doctors--I'll find one who knows his business.” He tiptoed to the bed and laid tender palm against the child's cheek. “I say her face isn't as hot as it was,” he persisted. “Where can I find a doctor with gray whiskers, Etienne? That young fool doesn't know.”
“There are many wise old docteurs in the long street named Western Boulevard--they live in the big houses--but they don't come to the tenement folks.”
“One of them will come this time even if I have to lug him on my back.”
He began to search for his hat, not remembering where he had tossed it in the haste and eagerness of his arrival at the good woman's house. He did not find it readily and he rushed out bareheaded.
“The sun and the air they do no good! It is the poison water--and the poor folks of the tenements they do not know!” muttered the old man. “That is what he say?” He went to the kitchen sink and unscrewed the faucet. He sniffed and made a wry face, then he ran his thin finger into the valve-chamber. He hooked and brought forth stringy slime, held it near his nose, and groaned. “The poor folks do not know. They who ask for the votes of the slashers, the weavers, the beamers--the men of the mills--they who ask votes do not want the poor folks to know, because the votes would not be given to them who sell poison in the water,” he told the astonished good woman who had watched his act.
“I am careful about my kitchen--I am neat--I wash everything, Etienne,” she assured him, sniffing at the slime in the sink, overcome by confusion, her housewife's reputation at stake.
“Yes, but you cannot wash the souls of them dam' scoundrels who send that water through the pipes to the poor people who can buy no other,” he raged. “This is not your blame--you did not know.” He pointed his finger, quivering, dripping with the slime, at the child on the bed. “They have murder her! With this!” He slatted his finger with the gesture of one who throws off a noisome serpent.
“But I drink the water--it hasn't made me sick,” she protested.
“You--me--odders that are all dry up--tough old fools--we ought to die and we don't,” he raged, stamping back and forth across the kitchen, waving his arms. “We have been poison so much we do not notice. But the poor little childs--the young folks that die--die in these tenements all the time--and we see the white ribbons hanging from the doors, so many place every day--the poor young folks with life ahead and much to live for even down here--they are poison and they do not know! Oh, _le bon Dieu_! Boil dem dam' devil in hell in the water they have sell to the poor!” He stopped, shocked by these words he heard coming from his mouth, and crossed himself contritely. “But I look at her--I hear what the docteur say--I talk and I cannot help!” He staggered into the room where the child lay, and sat down in a chair and held his face in his hands.
It was an aged and somewhat unctuous physician whom Farr brought. The doctor pursed his lips and puckered his eyebrows above the little wraith who minded him not at all, lying with eyes half closed, plucking with finger and thumb at the bedclothing.
“With a bit stronger constitution--if she were a little older--Take the case of an adult--”
“Say it short,” growled Farr, clenching his fists as if he wanted to beat indulgence for the child out of the hide of the world. “I'm paying you for her life.”
“I have nothing to sell you in this case--therefore there can be no pay.” He leaned over the bed and smoothed the moist, tangled hair away from the child's brow. “I can only _give_ you something, my friend. I give you all my sympathy. This baby is departing on a long journey, and I'm Christian enough to believe that the way will be made very smooth for the feet of little children. That's the faith of an old man.”
There were both earnestness and tenderness in his tones--the smugness of the physician was gone. He shook Farr's hand and went out of the room, treading softly.
And the next day Rosemarie's tiny fingers stopped their flutterings and she went away--somewhere!
XI
THE LORDS OF THE CITY
Walker Farr would not allow the tiny body of Rosemarie to be carried away in the white hearse. In his grief he had not been able as yet to dissociate the identity of the child from the poor little tenement in which her spirit had dwelt for the few barren years of her life; it seemed to him that she would be very lonely in the white hearse. He rode to the cemetery, holding the tiny casket across his knees. There was only the one carriage--it was sufficient to carry the friends of little Rosemarie: one Walker Farr and old Etienne and play-mamma Zelie Dionne.
The rack-tender sat opposite Farr and nursed a bundle on his knees. He had wrapped it surreptitiously.
The two men sent Zelie Dionne back to the city in the carriage. But they waited beside the grave until the sexton had finished his work; Farr felt an uncontrollable impulse to wait till all was ended, as he had always waited every night till the little girl was sound asleep and tucked up in bed in the good woman's house. He sat crouched on the edge of a turfed grave, elbows on his knees, his hands clutched into his shock of hair.
After the sexton had departed, tools on his shoulder, Etienne unwrapped the bundle. He began to arrange the child's toys on the grave.
“It is as the others do--the fathers and mothers of our faith in the tenement-houses,” he explained, wistfully, to the young man. He pointed to other graves in the vicinity, short and narrow graves. Toys were spread on them, too. They were the poor treasures of dead children. The toys had been left there in the vague, helpless yearning of parents who strove to reach their human consolation beyond the grave.