_ CHAPTER XXII. ENLISTING A KNIGHT-ERRANT
On his way down the stairs to the street the Honorable Archer Converse, moving more rapidly than was his wont, overtook and passed Kate Kilgour. He was too absorbed to notice even a pretty girl. She had finished her work for the day and was on her way home.
When she reached the street she observed something which interested her immensely: Mr. Converse suddenly flourished his cane to attract the attention of a man on the opposite side of the street. Then Mr. Converse called to him from the curb with the utmost friendliness in his tones. The girl passed near him and heard what he said. It was not a mere hail to an inferior. The eminent lawyer very politely and solicitously asked the tall young man across the way if he could not spare time to come to the Converse office.
She cast a look over her shoulder. The young man came across the street promptly. He was the man who had served her in her time of need!
She went on, but turned again. An uncontrollable impulse prompted her.
They were entering the door of the office-building, and the aristocratic hand of the Honorable Archer Converse was patting the shoulder of this stranger. Her cheeks flushed and she turned away hastily, for the young man caught her backward glance and returned an appealing smile.
"Who is he?" she asked herself, knowing well the chill reserve of Mr. Converse in the matter of mankind.
"Who are you?" demanded Mr. Converse, planting himself in front of the young man when they were in the private office.
The other met the lawyer's searching look with his rare smile. "The same man I was last time we met--Walker Farr."
"I have no right to pry into your private affairs, sir, but I have special reasons for wanting you to volunteer plenty of information about yourself."
For reply the young man spread his palms and silently, by his smile, invited inspection of himself.
"Yes, I see you. But the outside of you doesn't tell me what I want to know."
"It will have to speak for me."
"Look here, I have let myself be tied up most devilishly by a train of circumstances that you started, young man. I was minding my own private business until a little while ago."
"So was I, Mr. Converse."
"You're a moderately humble citizen, judged from outside looks just now. How did I allow myself to be pulled in as I've been?"
The young man's smile departed. "I asked myself that question a little while ago, sir, after I was pulled in, for I am a stranger--not even a voter here."
"Well, did you decide how it was?"
"I was led in by the hand of a helpless child--a poor little orphan girl whom I carried to the cemetery on my knees--a martyr--poisoned by that Consolidated water."
The lawyer was stirred by the intensity of feeling which the man's tones betrayed.
"And it was borne in upon me afresh, Mr. Converse, that the philosophy of the causes by which God moves this world of ours will never be understood by man."
"See here," snapped the son of the war governor, "take off your mask, Walker Farr! There's something behind it I want to see. You are an educated gentleman! What are you? Where did you come from?"
Again Farr spread out his palms and was silent.
"You are right about causes. You are one in my case. There may be some fatalism in me--but I'm impelled to use you in a great fight that I feel honor-bound to take up. Now be frank!"
"For all use you can make of me, Mr. Converse, my life starts from the minute I picked that little girl up from the floor of a tenement-house in this city. For what I was
before is so different from what I am
now that I cannot mix that identity with my affairs."
"But I cannot take a man into a matter like this unless I know all about him."
Farr rose and bowed. "I'm sorry you can't accept me at face value, sir. I'm very sorry, because I'd like to serve under such a commander as you. However, I understand your position. I don't blame you. The rule of the world is pretty binding: know a man before you associate with him. But I am as I am. There's nothing more to be said."
"You sit down," commanded Converse. "This is a case where rules of the world can be suspended. For I need the kind of man who dares to face even Symonds Dodd in his office and tell him what he is. Oh, I have just come from there," he explained in reply to Farr's stare. "He told me."
"I went merely as a voice, sir."
"But you seem to have been more than that in getting the confidence of the men in your ward. I know an organizer when I see him. I watched the faces of those men when you stepped before them. They have faith in you. That's a rare quality--the ability to inspire faith in the humble. First, faith--and then they'll follow. The movement I'm going to start needs followers, Mr. Farr! Can you do with other men what you have done with men in the Eleventh?"
"I believe I can, sir."
"Ah, you have led men in the past, have you?" Mr. Converse fired the question at him. But he did not jump Walker Farr from his equipoise. The young man took refuge behind that inscrutable smile.
"Well," sighed the lawyer, after a pause, "it's the dictum that one must be as wise as a serpent in politics, therefore I am picking out a man who will probably give a good account of himself. But it's a crazy performance of mine--going into this thing--and I may as well plunge to the extent of lunacy. Mr. Farr, the rebellious unrest in this state must be organized. We need a house-cleaning. We need the humbler voters! The men with interests are too well taken care of by the Machine to be interested. I want you to go out and hunt for sore spots and get to the voters just as you have in your ward. Find the right men in each town and city to help you. You must know many on account of your work for your water association. The fight will be financed--you need have no worry about that. Perhaps you have organized political revolts before," pursued Converse, still craftily probing. "Then you'll tell me what honorarium you expect."
"My expenses--nothing more, sir. If I had any money laid by I would pay my own way."
"I think," stated Mr. Converse, warming with the spirit of combat, glancing up at the portrait of the war governor, "that we'll be able to surprise some of the fat toads of politicians in this state, sitting so comfortably under their cabbage-leaves. You're a stranger, young man, and as you go about your work the regular politicians will simply blink at you and will not understand, I hope, provided you go softly. It is very silly of me to be in this affair, sir. But a man of my age must have peace of mind, and that infernal meeting in your ward awoke me. Furthermore," he added, displaying the acrimony that even a good man requires to spur him to honest fighting, "a cheap politician only lately flipped my card insolently and referred in slighting tones to my honored father." He rose and gave Farr his hand. "I'll have assembled here in my office at ten o'clock to-morrow morning some gentlemen who will stand for decency in public affairs as soon as they have been waked up. You will please attend that conference, Mr. Farr. We have only a short month before the state convention, and we must bring there at least a respectable number of delegates whom Symonds Dodd cannot bribe or browbeat."
"Most extraordinary--most extraordinary!" mused the Honorable Archer Converse, when he was alone. "From that meeting--to an investigation--from Dodd--to this young man--I have been leaping from crag to crag like a mountain-goat, never stopping to take breath. And here I haven't even been able to find out just who he is--and they do say I'm the best cross-examiner in this state! However, I'll show Symonds Dodd that I'm not to be sneered at, even if I have to hire Patagonians in this campaign."
Even chivalry must needs be spiced with a little strictly personal animosity to achieve its best results!
Colonel Symonds Dodd, laboriously climbing into his limousine in front of the First National block, scowled at a young man because the man grinned at him so broadly as he passed along. In his general indifference and contempt for the humble the colonel did not search his memory and did not recognize this person as the young man who had appealed to him in his office. The face seemed familiar and had some sort of an unpleasant recollection connected with it; therefore the colonel scowled. He was far from realizing that this person carried on his palm the warmth from a hand-clasp which, just a moment before, had ratified an agreement to dynamite the Dodd political throne.
If some seer had risen beside his chariot to predict disaster the colonel would have shriveled him with a contemptuous look. For the Consolidated Water Company had that day been intrenched more firmly than ever in its autocracy by a decision handed down from the Supreme Court. A city had hired the best of lawyers and had fought desperately for the right to have pure water. But the law, as expounded by the judges, had held as inexorable the provision that no city or town in the state could extend its debt limit above the legal five percent of its valuation, no matter for what purpose. The city sought for some avenue, some plan, some evasion, even, so that it might take over the water system and give its people crystal water from the lakes instead of the polluted river-water. The city pointed to typhoid cases, to slothful torpor on the part of the water syndicate. But the court could only, in the last analysis, point to the law--and that law in regard to debt limit was rooted in the constitution of the state--and a law fortified by the constitution is seldom dislodged.
Backed by law, bulwarked by political power, owning men and money-bags, Colonel Dodd rode home with great serenity. He had even forgotten his rather tempestuous half-hour with the Honorable Archer Converse. As a matter of fact, gentlemen of the aristocracy of the state who prided themselves on their ancestry were considered by Colonel Dodd to be impracticable cranks; he despised the poor and hated the proud--and called himself a self-made man. And Colonel Dodd was firmly convinced that nobody could
unmake him.
He strolled among his flower-beds that evening.
Walker Farr sat in his narrow chamber and pored over interlined manuscripts. At last he shook the papers above his head, not gaily, but with grim bitterness.
"That plan will stand law, and no other lawyer ever thought of it!" he cried, aloud. "You've got an iron clutch on those cities and towns, Colonel Dodd, but I've got something that will pry your fingers loose!" He threw the papers from him and set his face in his hands. "And they ask me who I am and I can't tell them," he sobbed. _