_ CHAPTER X. POISON FOR THE POOR
It proved to be an amicable and satisfactory partnership between Etienne Provancher and Walker Farr and dark-eyed Zelie Dionne.
When the days were pleasant the old man kept the little girl with him out of doors on the canal bank. She did not trouble him by running about. Her long days of confinement in the attic room had accustomed her to remain quietly in one place. She sat contentedly in the shade and watched the bugs in the grass and the birds in the tree above her. In the cool of the evening she trudged along the canal bank with Farr and the play-mamma until eyes grew heavy and little feet stumbled with weariness and it was time for bed. Rainy evenings they studied the alphabet or he read to her from picture-books in blazing colors, and after a time she remembered all the stories and made believe read them to him.
He worked in the trench and looked forward impatiently to Saturday nights when the clerk came along with the pay-envelopes; there were so many things in the stores that would delight the heart of a little girl who had never had any toys except a rag doll and a broken flower-basket. Then there were pretty dresses to buy. The taste of Zelie Dionne took charge of that shopping. When he bought the first one--one that was white and fluffy--and Rosemarie walked out with him she displayed such feminine pride in fine feathers that he looked forward to future Saturdays nights and new dresses with anticipatory gusto. If one had questioned him he could have told weeks ahead just what his plans of purchases were, for he canvassed all the possibilities with the play-mamma who knew so well how to get value for a dollar--who knew the places to buy and whose needle helped to much.
It was a wicked summer for those who were doomed to the mills and the tenement-houses. The heat puffed and throbbed over the lashing machinery. The slashers seemed to spit caloric. The spinning-frames tossed it off their spindles. The looms fairly wove it into the warp. The thick, sweet, greasy air seemed to distil cotton-oil upon the faces of the workers. The nights proved to be no better than the days. The stuffy tenements gulped in the hot air of midday and held it as a person holds his breath. All the folks came out upon the little platforms that were ranged, story after story, above each other. They gasped for air in the narrow spaces between the high buildings. The stars above those narrow spaces did not sparkle and suggest coolness; they seemed to float above the hot earth like red cinders.
Every day the undertakers' wagons came "boombling" down the narrow canyons of streets between the "Blocks," for the people were dying. The little white hearse was a more frequent visitor than the rusty black one; the ranks of the children were paying the greatest toll to death.
"But we shall not worry about our Rosemarie," old Etienne told Farr. "Under the shade on the green grass she shall stay where outdoors can paint her cheeks the very fine color."
But when the old man called for her at the good woman's house one morning something else than the sun had painted the little girl's cheeks--they were flushed with fever. He told the good woman to send straight for the doctor, and went to his work much disturbed.
Later in the day the yard overseer, passing the rack, saw that the man was working with furious energy. He was even reaching out his rake to capture floating stuff before it touched the bars.
"This seems to be your busy day, Pickaroon," suggested the overseer.
"I make believe this old rack to be a good friend of mine and that the float stuff be sickness come at him--so I work hard to keep it away."
The overseer went along about his business, commenting mentally on a Frenchman's imagination.
When the big mill bells clanged the noon hour Etienne hurried to the good woman's house. The city physician had been there and had left medicine--two tumblers of it. He had hurried in and had hurried away and had been curt and brusk and had not told her what was the trouble, so the woman reported. But the child had been sleeping.
She was drowsy all that evening while Farr held her in his arms and Etienne sat near by with Zelie Dionne, ministering solicitously.
"Her cheeks are not so hot," said the young man many times. He talked hopefully to reassure himself as well as the others, for he had been dreadfully frightened when he had come from his work. Fright had trodden close on the heels of much joy--for the superintendent of the Consolidated had taken him out of the hot trench that day and had appointed him boss of twoscore Italian diggers, doubling his pay.
"I have been watching you," the superintendent told him. "You're built to boss men. What kind of a bump was it that ever slammed you down like this?"
The answer the superintendent got was a smile which put further questions out of his mind.
"No, her cheeks are not so hot," affirmed Farr when he laid her in her bed that night. "She will come along all right."
But at the end of a week languor still weighed on the child. There were circles under her eyes and her cheeks were wan, and she did not clap her hands with the old-time glee when he brought her new toys; the playthings lay beside her on the bed and invited her touch--staring eyes of dolls, beady eyes of toy dogs--without avail.
"It is the queer way of being sick," lamented the old man. "The doctor mebbe not know, because he very gruff and do not say. I think I know what may cure her--it has been done many time.
"Away up in the Canada country there is the shrine of the good Sainte Anne de Beaupre. There she stand in the middle of the big church and she hold her little grandson in her arm--the little boy Jesus. So she feel very tender toward poor, sick childs. Ah, I have seen her many time--I have seen childs healed there and made so very smart--all cure. She loves little childs.
Oui. All about her feet are short, small crutch where she has cure childs. The piece of her wrist-bone is there in the sacristy--it look like a wee scrap of some gray moss under the glass. And it cure when the good priest say the word for her. I know the way to the shrine of La Bonne Sainte Anne--I will go with the little Rosemarie and she shall sing and dance after that."
For a moment the cynical smile of the skeptic etched itself at the corners of Farr's mouth--the flash of the nature the young man had hidden during recent weeks.
He turned to Zelie Dionne and found her regarding him with grave eyes.
"It is as M'sieu' Etienne says," she assured the young man. "La Bonne Sainte listens very tenderly when the children come to her. She is good to all, but her spirit leans over the poor little children and comforts them."
"You have been there?"
"Many times, sir. It is not only the sick body that the good Sainte Anne heals--she comforts anybody who is in much sorrow--she tells the right way to go. There are many roads to take in this life--and if any one goes to her with prayer and humble soul she will guide. Ah, it is true, sir."
There was earnestness in her features and conviction in her tones and it was plain that Zelie Dionne was speaking out of the depths of her heart, and Farr remembered what old Etienne had said about the son of Farmer Leroux.
"Yes, she will lead to the right way and make all well in the end," asserted the girl. "And, most of all, she is kind and gentle to the little children."
Between her and the wistful old man Farr divided tolerant and kindly gaze.
"I believe in more things than I used to," he said. "I'm willing to admit in these days that things I do not understand may have truth in them. The doctor is not making her well. But it is a long way to that shrine."
"It is a long way, so! But I am very scare for her as she lie here all day. I will carry her very tender--on the railway car--on the big boat. The good Sainte Anne is everywhere, too. She will help."
"If faith can move mountains it ought to heal easily one poor, little toddlekins," muttered Farr.
A new doctor came the next day, a breezy young man, a talkative and frank young man, the assistant of the over-worked city physician, whose municipal duties had obliged him to take on helpers.
"I shall ask him, hey--about the shrine?" whispered Etienne to Farr while the doctor was examining the child.
"Yes; he'll be more patient with you than with me."
"And do you think that pretty soon she can go on the railway if I be very careful, good docteur?" asked the old man, wistfully, apologetically.
"Go where?"
"On the pilgrimage to the shrine of the good Sainte Anne in the Canada country."
"Don't you realize what this case is?" demanded the young physician.
"He have not say--he hurry in, he hurry out."
"You the grandfather?"
"No!"
The doctor turned on Farr.
"Father?"
"No."
"Then I can talk right out to you two. This is a case of typhoid that will be fatal in twenty-four hours. There's no use lying about it."
Old Etienne's mouth and eyes seemed to sink deep into his wrinkles, as if Time had forced him suddenly to swallow an extra score of years. He looked at Farr's blank and whitening face, and as quickly looked away.
"Break it to her grandmother," advised the doctor, nodding toward the kitchen where the good woman was at work.
"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! _