Part 81

She looked around the offices where she worked and bitter lines were etched in her forehead and about her mouth.

The place had become hateful. She was conscious of a passionate desire to be free from the atmosphere of that central web of the Great Spider.

She bent over her work and hurried.

What was the shadow over her home?

She realized that she was not thinking clearly in the matter. She knew that impulse was driving her. But it was impulse which was uncontrollable. For a long time she had understood the sinister influence which had radiated from that office in the First National block. But it had been rather the impersonal influence of partisan politics and she had had little knowledge of the persons concerned. But, now that the situation had been so sharply pointed by recent happenings, she understood better what had gone on in the past.

This stranger, whoever he was, seemed to be fighting for the good of the people. She had heard him declare his principles boldly; she knew the selfishness of the men who opposed him. She resolved to know more.

It was close upon six o'clock when she finished the transcription.

She had given much thought to her own affairs while she had been working. And now she allowed impulse to dominate. She resolved to leave that employment which brought her into contact with Richard Dodd and where her duties required her to prepare material for the ruin of a man who seemed to be doing an unselfish duty, no matter what they said. She did not try to analyze that quixotic impulse; she merely obeyed.

She tied up the packet of manuscript, addressed it to Colonel Dodd, and slipped under the string a sealed note. In that note she resigned her position, stating that a matter of personal honor demanded that she leave instantly. She did not qualify that statement by any explanation. But she knew in her own heart just what it meant. For when she left the office she did not hasten straight home as her anxious fears prompted her; she made a detour around by Gamonic Mill in search of one Provancher, who, she had learned, tended the rack of the canal.

The thought that dominated all other thoughts and comforted her was the reflection that she was no longer the confidential secretary of Colonel Symonds Dodd, and that now she might obey certain promptings of both curiosity and conscience.

The rumble of the big turbines was stilled when she came to the fence which surrounded the rack, and old Etienne was starting away with rake and pike-pole. But when she called he came to her--wondering, much abashed, for she was by far the prettiest lady he had ever seen.

“Are you the friend of Mr. Walker Farr?” she asked, and she was even more embarrassed than he.

“I am too poor mans to be call a friend, ma'm'selle. I can just say that he is grand mans that I love.”

“Then you are the one to give him this message. Tell him that men who are fighting him in politics intend to do him great harm and that he must be very careful. Tell him that he will understand who these men are.”

“Oui, ma'm'selle. But will he understand who tell me that thing?”

Her cheeks were crimson. “No, no! He mustn't know that.”

“Then he will tell me, 'Poh, old Etienne, you know nottings what you talk about.' He is very bold mans, and he not scare very easy.”

“But he must be cautious, for these men have power. He need not be afraid of them, but he must watch carefully. You tell him that they want to make out bad things about him so that they can print them in the papers and hurt the cause he is working for. Can you remember?”

“Oui, ma'm'selle! I never forget anything what may be for his good. I will tell him.”

She hesitated for a long time and stared wistfully at the old man. She started to go away and then returned to the fence, plainly mustering her courage.

“Do you know whether there is anything--about him--which wicked men can use to hurt him?” she stammered.

“I only know about him what I know, ma'm'selle,” he replied, with a gentle smile nestling in the wrinkles of his withered face.

“Could you tell me some of the things you know?” she asked, after much effort, striving to make her voice calmly inquiring.

Old Etienne set the rake and the pike-pole against the fence. “I will be quick in what I tell you, ma'm'selle, for I have no place to ask you to take the seat. But I'm sure you will listen very well to this what I say.”

And he told her the story of Rosemarie.

But he did not go back as far as the pitiful figure on the canal bank, he made no mention of the water-soaked wad of paper which bore a mother's appeal to the world, he did not mention the key to Block Ten. He told the story of Walker Farr's devotion to a child. He did not dare to reveal to this stranger the identity of that child, because the telltale letter had been hidden from the coroner, and old Etienne stood in awe of the curt and domineering men who enforced the laws. But with simple earnestness and in halting speech he revealed the tenderness of Farr's nature and gave further testimony to her woman's understanding that this man who had come into her life possessed depths which she longed to probe.

“But the child!” she ventured, after Etienne had finished the story of how the two of them, voices in the wilderness of careless greed, had faced the masters of the city in the hotel de ville; “it seems strange that a man--that anybody should take a child and--” She hesitated.

“Oui, ma'm'selle, it seemed strange,” agreed the old man, studying her with sharp glance of suspicion--a gaze so strange that she shifted her eyes uneasily.