Book: Helen of the Old House

H >> Harold Bell Wright >> Helen of the Old House




The door of the house opened and McIver came down the steps to his
automobile. For a moment Helen stood framed against the bright light of
the interior, then the car rolled away. The door was closed.

John recalled what his father had said. Would his sister finally accept
McIver? For a long time the factory owner had been pressing his suit.
Would she marry him at last? A combination of the Ward Mill and the
McIver factory would be a mighty power in the manufacturing world. He
dismissed the thought. He wished that Helen were more like Mary. His
sister was a wonderful woman in his eyes--he was proud of her; but
again his mind went back to the workman's home and to his happy evening
there. His own home was so different. His mother! What a splendid old
man Uncle Peter was!

John Ward's musings were suddenly disturbed by a faint sound. Turning
his head, he saw the form of a man, dark and shadowy in the faint light
of the stars, moving toward the house. John held his place silently,
alert and ready. Cautiously the dark form crept forward with frequent
pauses as if to look about. Then, as the figure stood for a moment
silhouetted against a lighted window of the house, John recognized his
father.

At the involuntary exclamation which escaped the younger man Adam
whirled as if to run.

John spoke, quietly, "That you, father?"

The man came quickly to his son. With an odd nervous laugh, he said,
"Lord, boy, but you startled me! What are you doing out here at this
time of the night?"

"Just enjoying a quiet smoke and looking at the stars," John answered,
easily.

It was evident that Adam Ward was intensely excited. His voice shook
with nervous agitation and he looked over his shoulder and peered into
the surrounding darkness as if dreading some lurking danger.

"I couldn't sleep," he muttered, in a low cautious tone.
"Dreams--nothing in them of course--all foolishness--nerves are all
shot to pieces."

He dropped down on the seat beside his son, then sprang to his feet
again. "Did you hear that?" he whispered, and stooping low, he tried to
see into the shadows of the shrubbery behind John.

The younger man spoke soothingly. "There is nothing here, father, sit
down and take it easy."

"You don't know what you're talking about," retorted Adam Ward. "I tell
you they are after me--there's no telling what they will do--poison--a
gun--infernal machines through the mail--bomb. No one has any sympathy
with me, not even my family. All these years I have worked for what I
have and now nobody cares. All they want is what they can get out of
me. And you--you'll find out! I saw your car in front of Martin's again
this evening. You'd better keep away from there. Peter Martin is
dangerous. He would take everything I have away from me if he could."

John tried in vain to calm his father, but in a voice harsh with
passion he continued, and as he spoke, he moved his hands and arms
constantly with excited and vehement gestures.

"That process is mine, I tell you. The best lawyers I could get have
fixed up the patents. Pete Martin is an old fool. I'll see him in his
grave before--" he checked himself as if fearing his own anger would
betray him. As he paced up and he muttered to himself, "I built up the
business and I can tear it down. I'll blow up the Mill. I--" his voice
trailed off into hoarse unintelligible sounds.

John Ward could not speak. He believed that his father's strange fears
for the loss of his property were due to nothing more than his nervous
trouble. Peter Martin's name, which Adam in his most excited moments
nearly always mentioned in this manner, meant nothing more to John than
the old workman's well-known leadership in the Mill workers' union.

Suddenly Adam turned again to his son, and coming close asked in a
whisper, "John--I--is there really a hell, John? I mean such as the
preachers used to tell about. Does a man go from this life to the
horrors of eternal punishment? Does he, son?"

"Why, father, I--" John started to reply, but Adam interrupted him
with, "Never mind; you wouldn't know any more than any one else about
it. The preachers ought to know, though. Seems like there must be some
way of finding out. I dreamed--"

As if he had forgotten the presence of his son, he suddenly started
away toward the house.

Not until John Ward had assured himself that his father was safely in
his room and apparently sleeping at last, did he go to his own
apartment.

But the new manager of the Mill did not at once retire. He did not even
turn on the lights. For a long time he stood at the darkened window,
looking out into the night. "What was it?" he asked himself again and
again. "What was it his father feared?"

In the distance he could see a tiny spot of light shining high against
the shadowy hillside above the darkness of the Flats. It was a lighted
window in the Interpreter's hut.

* * * * *

As they sat in the night on the balcony porch, Jake Vodell said harshly
to the old basket maker, "You shall tell me about this Adam Ward,
comrade. I hear many things. From what you say of your friendship with
him in the years when he was a workman in the Mill and from your
friendship with his son and daughter you must know better than any one
else. Is it true that it was his new patented process that made him so
rich?"

"The new process was undoubtedly the foundation of his success,"
answered the Interpreter, "but it was the man's peculiar genius that
enabled him to recognize the real value of the process and to foresee
how it would revolutionize the industry. And it was his ability as an
organizer and manager, together with his capacity for hard work, that
enabled him to realize his vision. It is easily probable that not one
of his fellow workmen could have developed and made use of the
discovery as he has."

Jake Vodell's black brows were raised with quickened interest. "This
new process was a discovery then? It was not the result of research and
experiment?"

The Interpreter seemed to answer reluctantly. "It was an accidental
discovery, as many such things are."

The agitator must have noticed that the old basket maker did not wish
to talk of Adam Ward's patented process, but he continued his
questions.

"Peter Martin was working in the Mill at the time of this wonderful
discovery, was he?"

"Yes."

"Oh! and Peter and Adam were friends, too?"

"Yes."

The Interpreter's guest shrugged his shoulders and scowled his
righteous indignation. "And all these years that Adam Ward has been
building up this Mill that grinds the bodies and souls of his fellow
men into riches for himself and makes from the life blood of his
employees the dollars that his son and daughter spend in wicked
luxury--all these years his old friend Peter Martin has toiled for him
exactly as the rest of his slaves have toiled. Bah! And still the
priests and preachers make the people believe there is a God of
Justice."

The Interpreter replied, slowly, "It may be after all, sir, that Peter
Martin is richer than Adam Ward."

"How richer?" demanded the other. "When he lives in a poor little
house, with no servants, no automobiles, no luxuries of any kind, and
must work every day in the Mill with his son, while his daughter Mary
slaves at the housekeeping for her father and brother! Look at Adam
Ward and his great castle of a home--look at his possessions--at the
fortune he will leave his children. Bah! Mr. Interpreter, do not talk
to me such foolishness."

"Is it foolishness to count happiness as wealth?" asked the
Interpreter.

"Happiness?" growled the other. "Is there such a thing? What does the
laboring man know of happiness?"

And the Interpreter answered, "Peter Martin, in the honorable peace and
contentment of his useful years, and in the love of his family and
friends, is the happiest man I have ever known. While Adam Ward--"

Jake Vodell sprang to his feet as if the Interpreter's words exhausted
his patience, while he spoke as one moved by a spirit of contemptuous
intolerance. "You talk like a sentimental old woman. How is it possible
that there should be happiness and contentment anywhere when all is
injustice and slavery under this abominable capitalist system? First we
shall have liberty--freedom--equality--then perhaps we may begin to
talk of happiness. Is Sam Whaley and his friends who live down there in
their miserable hovels--is Sam Whaley happy?"

"Sam Whaley has had exactly the same opportunity for happiness that
Peter Martin has had," answered the Interpreter. "Opportunity, yes,"
snarled the other. "Opportunity to cringe and whine and beg his master
for a chance to live like a dog in a kennel, while he slaves to make
his owners rich. Do you know what this man McIver says? I will tell
you, Mr. Interpreter--you who prattle about a working man's happiness.
McIver says that the laboring classes should be driven to their work
with bayonets--that if his factory employees strike they will be forced
to submission by the starvation of their women and children. Happiness!
You shall see what we will do to this man McIver before we talk of
happiness. And you shall see what will happen to this castle of Adam
Ward's and to this Mill that he says is his."

"I think I should tell you, sir," said the Interpreter, calmly, "that
in your Millsburgh campaign, at least, you are already defeated."

"Defeated! Hah! That is good! And who do you say has defeated me,
before I have commenced even to fight, heh?"

"You are defeated by Adam Ward's retirement from business," came the
strange reply.




BOOK II

THE TWO HELENS


"_O Guns, fall silent till the dead men hear
Above their heads the legions pressing on_:

* * * * *

_Bid them be patient, and some day, anon,
They shall feel earth enwrapt in silence deep;
Shall greet, in wonderment, the quiet dawn,
And in content may turn them to their sleep_."




CHAPTER XIII

THE AWAKENING


Immediately following that day when she had watched her father from the
arbor and had talked with Bobby and Maggie Whaley on the old road,
Helen Ward had thrown herself into the social activities of her circle
as if determined to find, in those interests, a cure for her discontent
and unhappiness.

Several times she called for a few minutes at the little hut on the
cliff. But she did not again talk of herself or of her father to the
old basket maker as she had talked that day when she first met the
children from the Flats. Two or three times she saw the children. But
she passed them quickly by with scarcely a nod of greeting. And yet,
the daughter of Adam Ward felt with increasing certainty that she could
never be content with the busy nothingness which absorbed the lives of
so many of her friends. Her father, since his retirement, seemed a
little better. But she could not put out of her mind the memory of what
she had seen. For her, the dreadful presence of the hidden thing always
attended him. Because she could not banish the feeling and because
there was nothing she could do, she sought relief by escaping from the
house as often as possible on the plea of social duties.

There were times when the young woman thought that her mother knew. At
times she fancied that her brother half guessed the secret that so
overshadowed their home. But Mrs. Ward and her children alike shrank
from anything approaching frankness in mentioning the Mill owner's
condition. And so they went on, feeling the hidden thing, dreading they
knew not what--deceiving themselves and each other with hopes that in
their hearts they knew were false.

The mother, brave, loyal soul, seeing her daughter's unhappiness and
wishing to protect her from the thing that had so saddened her own
life, encouraged Helen to find what relief she could in the pleasures
that kept her so many hours from home. John, occupied by the exacting
duties of his new position, needed apparently nothing more. Indeed, to
Helen, her brother's attitude toward his work, his views of life and
his increasing neglect of what she called the obligations of their
position in Millsburgh, were more and more puzzling. She had thought
that with John's advancement to the general managership of the Mill his
peculiar ideas would be modified. But his promotion seemed to have made
no sign of a change in his conception of the relationship between
employer and employee, or in his attitude toward the unions or toward
the industrial situation as a whole.

Of one thing Helen was certain--her brother had found that which she,
in her own life, was somehow missing. And so the young woman observed
her brother with increasing interest and a growing feeling that
approached envy. At every opportunity she led him to talk of his work
or rather of his attitude toward his work, and encouraged him to
express the convictions that had so changed his own life and that were
so foreign to the tenets of Helen and her class. And always their talks
ended with John's advice: "Go ask the Interpreter; he knows; he will
make it so much clearer than I can."

But with all John's absorbing interest in his work and in the general
industrial situation of Millsburgh, which under the growing influence
of Jake Vodell was becoming every day more difficult and dangerous, the
general manager could not escape the memories of that happy evening at
the Martin cottage. The atmosphere of this workman's home was so
different from the atmosphere of his own home in the big house on the
hill. There was a peace, a contentment, a feeling of security in the
little cottage that was sadly wanting in the more pretentious
residence. Following, as it did, his father's retirement from the Mill
with his own promotion to the rank of virtual ownership and his
immediate talk with Captain Charlie, that evening had reestablished for
him, as it were, the relationship and charm of his boyhood days. It was
as though, having been submitted to a final test, he was now admitted
once more, without reserve, to the innermost circle of their
friendship.

On his way to and from his office he nearly always, now, drove past the
Martin cottage. The distance was greater, it is true, but John thought
that the road was enough better to more than make up for that. Besides,
he really did enjoy the drive down the tree-arched street and past the
old house. It was all so rich in memories of his happy boyhood, and
sometimes--nearly always, in fact--he would catch a glimpse of Mary
among her flowers or on the porch or perhaps at the gate.

Occasionally this young manager of the Mill, with his strange ideas of
industrial comradeship, found it necessary to spend an evening with
these workmen who were leaders in the union that was held by his father
and by McIver to be a menace to the employer class. It in no way
detracted from the value of these consultations with Captain Charlie
and his father that Mary was always present. In fact, Mary herself was
in a position materially to help John Ward in his study of the
industrial problems that were of such vital interest to him. No one
knew better than did Pete Martin's daughter the actual living
conditions of the class of laboring people who dwelt in the Flats.
Certainly, as he watched the progress of Jake Vodell's missionary work
among them, John could not ignore these Sam Whaleys of the industries
as an important factor in his problem.

So it happened, curiously enough, that Helen herself was led to call at
the little home next door to the old house where she had lived in those
years of her happy girlhood.

* * * * *

Helen was downtown that afternoon on an unimportant shopping errand.
She had left the store after making her purchases and was about to
enter her automobile, when McIver, who chanced to be passing, stopped
to greet her.

There was no doubting the genuineness of the man's pleasure in the
incident, nor was Helen herself at all displeased at this break in what
had been, so far, a rather dull day.

"And what brings you down here at this unreasonable hour?" he asked;
"on Saturday, too? Don't you know that there is a tennis match on at
the club?"

"I didn't seem to care for the tennis to-day somehow," she returned.
"Mother wanted some things from Harrison's, so I came downtown to get
them for her."

He caught a note in her voice that made him ask with grave concern,
"How is your father, Helen?"

She answered, quickly, "Oh, father is doing nicely, thank you." Then,
with a cheerfulness that was a little forced, she asked in turn, "And
why have you deserted the club yourself this afternoon?"

"Business," he returned. "There will be no more Saturday afternoons off
for me for some time to come, I fear." Then he added, quickly, "But
look here, Helen, there is no need of our losing the day altogether.
Send your man on, and come with me for a little spin. The roadster is
in the next block. I'll take you home in an hour and get on back to my
office."

Helen hesitated.

"The ride will do you good."

"Sure you can spare the time?"

"Sure. It will do me good, too."

"And you're not asking me just to be nice--you really want me?"

"Don't you know by this time whether I want you or not?" he returned,
in a tone that brought the color to her cheeks. "Please come!"

"All right," she agreed.

When they were seated in McIver's roadster, she added, "I really can't
deny myself the thrilling triumph of taking a business man away from
his work during office hours."

"You take my thoughts away from my work a great many times during
office hours, Helen," he retorted, as the car moved away. "Must I wait
much longer for my answer, dear?"

She replied, hurriedly, "Please, Jim, not that to-day. Let's not think
about it even."

"All right," he returned, grimly. "I just want you to know, though,
that I am waiting."

"I know, Jim--and--and you are perfectly wonderful but--Oh, can't we
forget it just for an hour?"

As if giving himself to her mood, McIver's voice and manner changed.
"Do you mind if we stop at the factory just a second? I want to leave
some papers. Then we can go on up the river drive."

* * * * *

An hour later they were returning, and because it was the prettiest
street in that part of Millsburgh, McIver chose the way that would take
them past the old house.

John Ward's machine was standing in front of the Martin cottage.

McIver saw it and looked quickly at his companion. There was no need to
ask if Helen had recognized her brother's car.

The factory owner considered the new manager of the Mill a troublesome
obstacle in his own plans for making war on the unions. He felt, too,
that with John now in control of the business, his chances of bringing
about the combination of the two industries were materially lessened.
He had wondered, at times, if it was not her brother's influence that
caused Helen to put off giving him her final answer to his suit.

When he saw that Helen had recognized John's car, he remarked, with an
insinuating laugh, "Evidently I am not the only business man who can be
lured from his office during working hours."

"Jim, how can you?" she protested. "You know John is there on business
to see Charlie or his father."

"It is a full hour yet before quitting time at the Mill," he returned.

She had no reply to this, and the man continued with a touch of
malicious satisfaction, "After all, Helen, John is human, you know, and
old Pete Martin's daughter is a mighty attractive girl."

Helen Ward's cheeks were red, but she managed to control her voice, as
she said, "Just what do you mean by that, Jim?"

"Is it possible that you really do not know?" he countered.

"I know that my brother, foolish as he may be about some things, would
never think of paying serious attention to the daughter of one of his
employees," she retorted, warmly.

"That is exactly the situation," he returned. "No one believes for a
moment that the affair is serious on John's part."

The color was gone from Helen's face now. "I think you have said too
much not to go on now, Jim. Do you mean that people are saying that
John is amusing himself with Mary Martin?"

"Well," he returned, coolly, "what else can the people think when they
see him going there so often; when they see the two together, wandering
about the Flats; when they hear his car tearing down the street late in
the evening; when they see her every morning at the gate watching for
him to pass on his way to work? Your brother is not a saint, Helen. He
is no different, in some ways, from other men. I always did feel that
there was something back of all this comrade stuff between him and
Charlie Martin. As for the girl, I don't think you need to worry about
her. She probably understands it all right enough."

"Jim, you must not say such things to me about Mary! She is not at all
that kind of girl. The whole thing is impossible."

"What do you know about Mary Martin?" he retorted. "I'll bet you have
never even spoken to her since you moved from the old house."

Helen did not speak after this until they were passing the great stone
columns at the entrance to the Ward estate, then she said, quietly,
"Jim, do you always believe the worst possible things about every one?"

"That's an odd thing for you to ask," he returned, doubtfully, as they
drove slowly up the long curving driveway. "Why?"

"Because," she answered, "it sometimes seems to me as if no one
believed the best things about people these days. I know there is a
world of wickedness among us, Jim, but are we all going wholly to the
bad together?"

McIver laughed. "We are all alike in one thing, Helen. No matter what
he professes, you will find that at the last every man holds to the
good old law of 'look out for number one.' Business or pleasure, it's
all the same. A man looks after his own interests first and takes what
he wants, or can get, when and where and how he can."

"But, Jim, the war--"

He laughed cynically. "The war was pure selfishness from start to
finish. We fed the fool public a lot of patriotic bunk, of course--we
had to--we needed them. And the dear people fell for the sentimental
hero business as they always do." With the last word he stopped the car
in front of the house.

When Helen was on the ground she turned and faced him squarely. "Jim
McIver, your words are an insult to my brother and to ninety-nine out
of every hundred men who served under our flag, and you insult my
intelligence if you expect me to accept them in earnest. If I thought
for a minute that you were capable of really believing such abominable
stuff I would never speak to you again. Good-by, Jim. Thank you so much
for the ride."

Before the man could answer, she ran up the steps and disappeared
through the front door.

But McIver's car was no more than past the entrance when Helen appeared
again on the porch. For a moment she stood, as if debating some
question in her mind. Then apparently, she reached a decision. Ten
minutes later she was walking hurriedly down the hill road--the way
Bobby and Maggie had fled that day when Adam Ward drove them from the
iron fence that guarded his estate. It was scarcely a mile by this road
to the old house and the Martin cottage.




CHAPTER XIV

THE WAY BACK


That walk from her home to the little white cottage next door to the
old house was the most eventful journey that Helen Ward ever made. She
felt this in a way at the time, but she could not know to what end her
sudden impulse to visit again the place of her girlhood would
eventually lead.

As she made her way down the hill toward that tree-arched street, she
realized a little how far the years had carried her from the old house.
She had many vivid and delightful memories of that world of her
childhood, it is true, but the world to which her father's material
success had removed her in the years of her ripening womanhood had come
to claim her so wholly that she had never once gone back. She had
looked back at first with troubled longing. But Adam Ward's determined
efforts to make the separation of the two families final and complete,
together with the ever-increasing bitterness of his strange hatred for
his old workman friend, had effectually prevented her from any attempt
at a continuation of the old relationship. In time, even the thought of
taking so much as a single step toward the intimacies from which she
had come so far, had ceased to occur to her. And now, suddenly, without
plan or premeditation, she was on her way actually to touch again, if
only for a few moments, the lives that had been so large a part of the
simple, joyous life which she had known once, but which was so foreign
to her now.

Nor was it at all clear to her why she was going or what she would do.
As she had observed with increasing interest the change in her
brother's attitude toward the pleasures that had claimed him so wholly
before the war, she had wondered often at his happy contentment in
contrast to her own restless and dissatisfied spirit. McIver's words
had suddenly forced one fact upon her with startling clearness: John,
through his work in the Mill, his association with Captain Charlie and
his visits to the Martin home, was actually living again in the
atmosphere of that world which she felt they had left so far behind. It
was as though her brother had already gone back.

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