Book: Helen of the Old House

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HELEN OF THE OLD HOUSE


BY HAROLD BELL WRIGHT


1921




CONTENTS


BOOK ONE

THE INTERPRETER


CHAPTER

I. THE HUT ON THE CLIFF

II. LITTLE MAGGIE'S PRINCESS LADY

III. THE INTERPRETER

IV. PETER MARTIN AT HOME

V. ADAM WARD'S ESTATE

VI. ON THE OLD ROAD

VII. THE HIDDEN THING

VIII. WHILE THE PEOPLE SLEEP

IX. THE MILL

X. CONCERNING THE NEW MANAGER

XI. COMRADES

XII. TWO SIDES OF A QUESTION


BOOK TWO

THE TWO HELENS


XIII. THE AWAKENING

XIV. THE WAY BACK

XV. AT THE OLD HOUSE

XVI. HER OWN PEOPLE

XVII. IN THE NIGHT


BOOK THREE

THE STRIKE


XVIII. THE GATHERING STORM

XIX. ADAM WARD'S WORK

XX. THE PEOPLE'S AMERICA

XXI. PETER MARTIN'S PROBLEM

XXII. OLD FRIENDS

XXIII. A LAST CHANCE

XXIV. THE FLATS

XXV. McIVER's OPPORTUNITY

XXVI. AT THE CALL OF THE WHISTLE

XXVII. JAKE VODELL'S MISTAKE

XXVIII. THE MOB AND THE MILL

XXIX. CONTRACTS


BOOK FOUR

THE OLD HOUSE


XXX. "JEST LIKE THE INTERPRETER SAID"




BOOK I

THE INTERPRETER


"_Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields_."




CHAPTER I

THE HUT ON THE CLIFF


No well informed resident of Millsburgh, when referring to the
principal industry of his little manufacturing city, ever says "the
mills"--it is always "the Mill."

The reason for this common habit of mind is that one mill so
overshadows all others, and so dominates the industrial and civic life
of this community, that in the people's thought it stands for all.

The philosopher who keeps the cigar stand on the corner of Congress
Street and Ward Avenue explained it very clearly when he answered an
inquiring stranger, "You just can't think Millsburgh without thinkin'
mills; an' you can't think mills without thinkin' _the_ Mill."

As he turned from the cash register to throw his customer's change on
the scratched top of the glass show case, the philosopher added with a
grin that was a curious blend of admiration, contempt and envy, "An'
you just can't think the Mill without thinkin' Adam Ward."

That grin was another distinguishing mark of the well informed resident
of Millsburgh. Always, in those days, when the citizens mentioned the
owner of the Mill, their faces took on that curious half-laughing
expression of mingled admiration, contempt and envy.

But it has come to pass that in these days when the people speak of
Adam Ward they do not smile. When they speak of Adam Ward's daughter,
Helen, they smile, indeed, but with quite a different meaning.

The history of Millsburgh is not essentially different from that of a
thousand other cities of its class.

Born of the natural resources of the hills and forests, the first rude
mill was located on that wide sweeping bend of the river. About this
industrial beginning a settlement gathered. As the farm lands of the
valley were developed, the railroad came, bringing more mills. And so
the town grew up around its smoky heart.

It was in those earlier days that Adam Ward, a workman then, patented
and introduced the new process. It was the new process, together with
its owner's native genius for "getting on," that, in time, made Adam
the owner of the Mill. And, finally, it was this combination of Adam
and the new process that gave this one mill dominion over all others.

As the Mill increased in size, importance and power, and the town grew
into the city, Adam Ward's material possessions were multiplied many
times.

Then came the year of this story.

It was midsummer. The green, wooded hills that form the southern
boundary of the valley seemed to be painted on shimmering gauze. The
grainfields on the lowlands across the river were shining gold. But the
slate-colored dust from the unpaved streets of that section of
Millsburgh known locally as the "Flats" covered the wretched houses,
the dilapidated fences, the hovels and shanties, and everything animate
or inanimate with a thick coating of dingy gray powder. Shut in as it
is between a long curving line of cliffs on the south and a row of tall
buildings on the river bank, the place was untouched by the refreshing
breeze that stirred the trees on the hillside above. The hot,
dust-filled atmosphere was vibrant with the dull, droning voice of the
Mill. From the forest of tall stacks the smoke went up in slow,
twisting columns to stain the clean blue sky with a heavy cloud of
dirty brown.

The deep-toned whistle of the Mill had barely called the workmen from
their dinner pails and baskets when two children came along the road
that for some distance follows close to the base of that high wall of
cliffs. By their ragged, nondescript clothing which, to say the least,
was scant enough to afford them comfort and freedom of limb, and by the
dirt, that covered them from the crowns of their bare, unkempt heads to
the bottoms of their bare, unwashed feet, it was easy to identify the
children as belonging to that untidy community.

One was a sturdy boy of eight or nine neglected years. On his rather
heavy, freckled face and in his sharp blue eyes there was, already, a
look of hardness that is not good to see in the countenance of a child.
The other, his sister, was two years younger--a thin wisp of a girl,
with tiny stooping shoulders, as though, even in her babyhood, she had
found a burden too heavy. With her tired little face and grave,
questioning eyes she looked at the world as if she were wondering,
wistfully, why it should bother to be so unkind to such a helpless mite
of humanity.

As they came down the worn road, side by side they chose with
experienced care those wheel ruts where the black dust lay thickest
and, in solemn earnestness, plowed the hot tracks with their bare feet,
as if their one mission in life were to add the largest possible cloud
of powdered dirt to the already murky atmosphere of the vicinity.

Suddenly they stood still.

For a long, silent moment they gazed at a rickety old wooden stairway
that, at this point in the unbroken line of cliffs, climbs zigzag up
the face of the rock-buttressed wall. Then, as if moved by a common
impulse, they faced each other. The quick fire of adventure kindled in
the eyes of the boy as he met the girl's look of understanding.

"Let's go up--stump yer," he said, with a daredevil grin.

"Huh, yer wouldn't dast."

Womanlike, she was hoping that he would "dast" and, with the true
instinct of her sex, she chose unerringly the one way to bring about
the realization of her hope.

Her companion met the challenge like a man. With a swaggering show of
courage, he went to the stairway and climbed boldly up--six full steps.
Then he paused and looked down, "I don't dast, don't I?"

From the lower step she spurred his faltering spirit, "Dare yer--dare
yer--dare yer."

He came reluctantly down two steps, "Will yer go up if I do?"

She nodded, "Uh-huh--but yer gotter go first."

He looked doubtfully up at the edge of the cliff so far above them.
"Shucks," he said, with conviction, "ain't nobody up there 'cept old
Interpreter, an' that dummy, Billy Rand. I know 'cause Skinny Davis an'
Chuck Wilson, they told me. They was up--old Interpreter, he can't do
nothin' to nobody--he ain't got no legs."

Gravely she considered with him the possible dangers of the proposed
adventure. "Billy Rand has got legs."

"He can't hear nothin', though--can't talk neither," said the leader of
the expedition. "An' besides maybe he ain't there--we might catch him
out. What d'yer say? Will we chance it?"

She looked up doubtfully toward the unknown land above. "I dunno, will
we?"

"Skinny an' Chuck, they said the Interpreter give 'em cookies--an' told
'em stories too."

"Cookies, Gee! Go ahead--I'm a-comin'."

That tiny house high on the cliff at the head of the old, zigzag
stairway, up which the children now climbed with many doubtful stops
and questioning fears, is a landmark of interest not only to Millsburgh
but to the country people for miles around.

Perched on the perilous brink of that curving wall of rocks, with its
low, irregular, patched and weather-beaten roof, and its rough-boarded
and storm-beaten walls half hidden in a tangle of vines and bushes, the
little hut looks, from a distance, as though it might once have been
the strange habitation of some gigantic winged creature of prehistoric
ages. The place may be reached from a seldom-used road that leads along
the steep hillside, a quarter of a mile back from the edge of the
precipice, but the principal connecting link between the queer
habitation and the world is that flight of rickety wooden steps.

Taking advantage of an irregularity in the line of cliffs, the upper
landing of the stairway is placed at the side of the hut. In the rear,
a small garden is protected from the uncultivated life of the hillside
by a fence of close-set pickets. Across the front of the curious
structure, well out on the projecting point of rocks, and reached only
through the interior, a wide, strongly railed porch overhangs the sheer
wall like a balcony.

With fast-beating hearts, the two small adventurers gained the top of
the stairway. Cautiously they looked about--listening, conferring in
whispers, ready for instant, headlong retreat.

The tall grasses and flowering weeds on the hillside nodded sleepily in
the sunlight. A bird perched on a near-by bush watched them with bright
eyes for a moment, then fearlessly sought the shade of the vines that
screened the side of the hut. Save the distant, droning, moaning voice
of the Mill, there was no sound.

Calling up the last reserves of their courage, the children crept
softly along the board walk that connects the landing of the stairway
with the rude dwelling. Once again they paused to look and listen.
Then, timidly, they took the last cautious steps and stood in the open
doorway. With big, wondering eyes they stared into the room.

It was a rather large room, with a low-beamed ceiling of unfinished
pine boards and gray, rough-plastered walls, and wide windows. A
green-shaded student lamp with a pile of magazines and papers on the
table caught their curious eyes, and they gazed in awe at the long
shelves of books against the wall. Opposite the entrance where they
stood they saw a strongly made workbench. And beneath this bench and
piled in that corner of the room were baskets--dozens of them--of
several shapes and sizes; while brackets and shelves above were filled
with the materials of which the baskets were woven. There was very
little furniture. The floors were bare, the windows without hangings.
It was all so different from anything that these children of the Flats
had ever seen that they felt their adventure assuming proportions.

For what seemed a long time, the boy and the girl stood there,
hesitating, on the threshold, expecting something--anything--to happen.
Then the lad ventured a bold step or two into the room. His sister
followed timidly.

They were facing hungrily toward an open door that led, evidently, to
the kitchen, when a deep voice from somewhere behind them said, "How do
you do?"

Startled nearly out of their small wits, the adventurers whirled to
escape, but the voice halted them with, "Don't go. You came to see me,
didn't you?"

The voice, though so deep and strong, was unmistakably kind and
gentle--quite the gentlest voice, in fact, that these children had ever
heard.

Hesitatingly, they went again into the room, and now, turning their
backs upon the culinary end of the apartment, they saw, through the
doorway opening on to the balcony porch, a man seated in a wheel chair.
In his lap he held a half-finished basket.

For a little while the man regarded them with grave, smiling eyes as
though, understanding their fears, he would give them time to gain
courage. Then he said, gently, "Won't you come out here on the porch
and visit with me?"

The boy and the girl exchanged questioning looks.

"Come on," said the man, encouragingly.

Perhaps the sight of that wheel chair recalled to the boy's mind the
reports of his friends, Skinny and Chuck. Perhaps it was something in
the man himself that appealed to the unerring instincts of the child.
The doubt and hesitation in the urchin's freckled face suddenly gave
way to a look of reckless daring and he marched forward with the
swaggering air of an infant bravado. Shyly the little girl followed.

Invariably one's first impression of that man in the wheel chair was a
thought of the tremendous physical strength and vitality that must once
have been his. But the great trunk, with its mighty shoulders and
massive arms, that in the years past had marked him in the multitude,
was little more than a framework now. His head with its silvery white
hair and beard--save that in his countenance there was a look of more
venerable age--reminded one of the sculptor Rodin. These details of the
man's physical appearance held one's thoughts but for a moment. One
look into the calm depths of those dark eyes that were filled with such
an indescribable mingling of pathetic courage, of patient fortitude,
and of sorrowful authority, and one so instantly felt the dominant
spiritual and mental personality of this man that all else about him
was forgotten.

Squaring himself before his host, the boy said, aggressively, "I know
who _yer_ are. Yer are the Interpreter. I know 'cause yer ain't got no
legs."

"Yes," returned the old basket maker, still smiling, "I am the
Interpreter. At least," he continued, "that is what the people call
me." Then, as he regarded the general appearance of the children, and
noted particularly the tired face and pathetic eyes of the little girl,
his smile was lost in a look of brooding sorrow and his deep voice was
sad and gentle, as he added, "But some things I find very hard to
interpret."

The girl, with a shy smile, went a little nearer.

The boy, with his eyes fixed upon the covering that in spite of the
heat of the day hid the man in the wheel chair from his waist down,
said with the cruel insistency of childhood, "Ain't yer got no
legs--honest, now, ain't yer?"

The Interpreter laughed understandingly. Placing the unfinished basket
on a low table that held his tools and the material for his work within
reach of his hand, he threw aside the light shawl. "See!" he said.

For a moment the children gazed, breathlessly, at those shrunken and
twisted limbs that resembled the limbs of a strong man no more than the
empty, flapping sleeves of a scarecrow resemble the arms of a living
human body.

"They are legs all right," said the Interpreter, still smiling, "but
they're not much good, are they? Do you think you could beat me in a
race?"

"Gee!" exclaimed the boy.

Two bright tears rolled down the thin, dirty cheeks of the little
girl's tired face, and she turned to look away over the dirty Flats,
the smoke-grimed mills, and the golden fields of grain in the sunshiny
valley, to something that she seemed to see in the far distant sky.

With a quick movement the Interpreter again hid his useless limbs.

"And now don't you think you might tell me about yourselves? What is
your name, my boy?"

"I'm Bobby Whaley," answered the lad. "She's my sister, Maggie."

"Oh, yes," said the Interpreter. "Your father is Sam Whaley. He works
in the Mill."

"Uh-huh, some of the time he works--when there ain't no strikes ner
nothin'."

The Interpreter, with his eyes on that dark cloud that hung above the
forest of grim stacks, appeared to attach rather more importance to
Bobby's reply than the lad's simple words would justify.

Then, looking gravely at Sam Whaley's son, he said, "And you will work
in the Mill, too, I suppose, when you grow up?"

"I dunno," returned the boy. "I ain't much stuck on work. An' dad, he
says it don't git yer nothin', nohow."

"I see," mused the Interpreter, and he seemed to see much more than lay
on the surface of the child's characteristic expression.

The little girl was still gazing wistfully at the faraway line of
hills.

As if struck by a sudden thought, the Interpreter asked, "Your father
is working now, though, isn't he?"

"Uh-huh, just now he is."

"I suppose then you are not hungry."

At this wee Maggie turned quickly from contemplating the distant
horizon to consider the possible meaning in the man's remark.

For a moment the children looked at each other. Then, as a grin of
anticipation spread itself over his freckled face, the boy exclaimed,
"Hungry! Gosh! Mister Interpreter, we're allus hungry!"

For the first time the little girl spoke, in a thin, piping voice,
"Skinny an' Chuck, they said yer give 'em cookies. Didn't they, Bobby?"

"Uh-huh," agreed Bobby, hopefully.

The man in the wheel chair laughed. "If you go into the house and look
in the bottom part of that cupboard near the kitchen door you will find
a big jar and--"

But Bobby and Maggie had disappeared.

The children had found the jar in the cupboard and, with their hands
and their mouths filled with cookies, were gazing at each other in
unbelieving wonder when the sound of a step on the bare floor of the
kitchen startled them. One look through the open doorway and they fled
with headlong haste back to the porch, where they unhesitatingly sought
refuge behind their friend ha the wheel chair.

The object of their fears appeared a short moment behind them.

"Oh," said the Interpreter, reaching out to draw little Maggie within
the protecting circle of his arm, "it is Billy Rand. You don't need to
fear Billy."

The man who stood looking kindly down upon them was fully as tall and
heavy as the Interpreter had been in those years before the accident
that condemned him to his chair. But Billy Rand lacked the commanding
presence that had once so distinguished his older friend and guardian.
His age was somewhere between twenty and thirty; but his face was still
the face of an overgrown and rather slow-witted child.

Raising his hands, Billy Rand talked to the Interpreter in the sign
language of the deaf and dumb. The Interpreter replied in the same
manner and, with a smiling nod to the children, Billy returned to the
garden in the rear of the house.

Tiny Maggie's eyes were big with wonder.

"Gee!" breathed Bobby. "He sure enough can't talk, can he?"

"No," returned the Interpreter. "Poor Billy has never spoken a word."

"Gee!" said Bobby again. "An' can't he hear nothin,' neither?"

"No, Bobby, he has never heard a sound."

Too awe-stricken even to repeat his favorite exclamation, the boy
munched his cooky in silence, while Maggie, enjoying her share of the
old basket maker's hospitality, snuggled a little closer to the wheel
of the big chair.

"Billy Rand, you see," explained the Interpreter, "is my legs."

Bobby laughed. "Funny legs, I'd say."

"Yes," agreed the Interpreter, "but very good legs just the same. Billy
runs all sorts of errands for me--goes to town to sell our baskets and
to bring home our groceries, helps about the house and does many things
that I can't do. He is hoeing the garden this afternoon. He comes in
every once in a while to ask if I want anything. He sleeps in a little
room next to mine and sometimes in the night, when I am not resting
well, I hear him come to my bedside to see if I am all right."

"An' yer keep him an' take care of him?" asked Bobby.

"Yes," returned the Interpreter, "I take care of Billy and Billy takes
care of me. He has fine legs but not much of a--but cannot speak or
hear. I can talk and hear and think but have no legs. So with my
reasonably good head and his very good legs we make a fairly good man,
you see."

Bobby laughed aloud and even wee Maggie chuckled at the Interpreter's
quaint explanation of himself and Billy Rand.

"Funny kind of a man," said Bobby.

"Yes," agreed the Interpreter, "but most of us men are funny in one way
or another--aren't we, Maggie?" He looked down into the upturned face
of that tiny wisp of humanity at his side.

Maggie smiled gravely in answer.

Very confident now in his superiority over the Interpreter, whose deaf
and dumb legs were safely out of sight in the garden back of the house,
Bobby finished the last of his cookies, and began to explore.
Accompanying his investigations with a running fire of questions, he
fingered the unfinished basket and the tools and material on the table,
examined the wheel chair, and went from end to end of the balcony
porch. Hanging over the railing, he looked down from every possible
angle upon the rocks, the stairway and the dusty road below.
Exhausting, at last, the possibilities of the immediate vicinity, he
turned his inquiring gaze upon the more distant landscape.

"Gee! Yer can see a lot from here, can't yer?"

"Yes," returned the Interpreter, gravely, "you can certainly see a lot.
And do you know, Bobby, it is strange, but what you see depends almost
wholly on what you are?"

The boy turned his freckled face toward the Interpreter. "Huh?"

"I mean," explained the Interpreter, "that different people see
different things. Some who come to visit me can see nothing but the
Mill over there; some see only the Flats down below; others see the
stores and offices; others look at nothing but the different houses on
the hillsides; still others can see nothing but the farms. It is funny,
but that's the way it is with people, Bobby."

"Aw--what are yer givin' us?" returned Bobby, and, with an unmistakably
superior air, he faced again toward the scene before them. "I can see
the whole darned thing--I can."

The Interpreter laughed. "And that," he said, "is exactly what every
one says, Bobby. But, after all, they don't see the whole darned
thing--they only think they do."

"Huh," retorted the boy, scornfully, "I guess I can see the Mill, can't
I?--over there by the river--with the smoke a-rollin' out of her
chimneys? Listen, I can hear her, too."

Faintly, on a passing breath of air, came the heavy droning, moaning
voice of the Mill.

"Yes," agreed the Interpreter, with an odd note in his deep, kindly
voice, "I can nearly always hear it. I was sure you would see the
Mill."

"An' look-ee, look-ee," shouted the boy, forgetting, in his quick
excitement, to maintain this superior air, "look-ee, Mag! Come here,
quick." With energetic gestures he beckoned his sister to his side.
"Look-ee, right over there by that bunch of dust, see? It's our
house--where we live. That there's Tony's old place on the corner. An'
there's the lot where us kids plays ball. Gee, yer could almost see mom
if she'd only come outside to talk to Missus Grafton er somethin'!"

From his wheel chair the Interpreter watched the children at the porch
railing. "Of course you would see your home," he said, gravely. "The
Mill first, and then the place where you live. Nearly every one sees
those things first. Now tell what else you see."

"I see, I see--" The boy hesitated. There was so much to be seen from
the Interpreter's balcony porch.

The little girl's thin voice piped up with shrill eagerness, "Look at
the pretty yeller fields an' the green trees away over there across the
river, Bobby. Gee, but wouldn't yer just love to be over there
an'--an'--roll 'round in the grass, an' pick flowers, an' everything?"

"Huh," retorted Bobby. "Look-ee, that there's McIver's factory up the
river there. It's 'most as big as the Mill. An' see all the stores an'
barber shops an' things downtown--an' look-ee, there's the courthouse
where the jail is an'--"

Maggie chimed in with, "An' all the steeples of the churches--an'
everythin'."

"An' right down there," continued the boy, pointing more toward the
east where, at the edge of the Flats, the ground begins to rise toward
the higher slope of the hills, "in that there bunch of trees is where
Pete Martin lives, an' Mary an' Captain Charlie. Look-ee, Mag, yer can
see the little white house a-showin' through the green leaves."

"You know the Martins, do you?" asked the Interpreter.

"You bet we do," returned Bobby, without taking his gaze from the scene
before him, while Maggie confirmed her brother's words by turning to
look shyly at her new-found friend. "Pete and Charlie they work in the
Mill. Charlie he was a captain in the war. He's one of the head guys in
our union now. Mary she used to give us stuff to eat when dad was
a-strikin' the last time."

"An' look-ee," continued the boy, "right there next to the Martins' yer
can see the old house where Adam Ward used to live before the Mill made
him rich an' he moved to his big place up on the hill. I know 'cause I
heard dad an' another man talkin' 'bout it onct. Ain't nobody lives in
the old house now. She's all tumbled down with windows broke an'
everything. I wonder--" He paused to search the hillside to the east.
"Yep," he shouted, pointing, "there she is--there's the castle--there's
where old Adam an' his folks lives now. Some place to live I'd say.
Gee, but wouldn't I like to put a chunk o' danermite er somethin' under
there! I'd blow the whole darned thing into nothin' at all an that old
devil Adam with it. I'd--"

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