Book: Helen of the Old House

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




And McIver's challenging question, "What do you know about Mary
Martin?" had raised in her mind a doubt, not of her brother and his
relationship to these old friends of their childhood, but of herself
and all the relationships that made her present life such a contrast to
her life in the old house.

With her mind and heart so full of doubts and questionings, she turned
into the familiar street and saw her brother's car still before the
Martin home.

As she went on, a feeling of strange eagerness possessed her. Her face
glowed with warm color, her eyes shone with glad anticipation, her
heart beat more quickly. As one returning to well loved home scenes
after many years in a foreign land, the daughter of Adam Ward went down
the street toward the place where she was born. In front of the old
house she stopped. The color went from her cheeks--the brightness from
her eyes.

In her swiftly moving automobile, nearly always with gay companions,
Helen had sometimes passed the old house and had noticed with momentary
concern its neglected appearance. But these fleeting glimpses had been
so quickly forgotten that the place was most real to her as she saw it
in her memories. But now, as she stood there alone, in the mood that
had brought her to the spot, the real significance of the ruin struck
her with appalling force.

Those rooms with their shattered windowpanes, their bare, rotting
casements and sagging, broken shutters appealed to her in the mute
eloquence of their empty loneliness for the joyous life that once had
filled them. The weed-grown yard, the tumbledown fence, the dilapidated
porch, and even the chimneys that were crumbling and ragged against the
sky, cried out to her in sorrowful reproach. A rushing flood of home
memories filled her eyes with hot tears. With the empty loneliness of
the old house in her heart, she went blindly on to the little cottage
next door. There was no thought as to how she would explain her unusual
presence there. She did not, herself, really know clearly why she had
come.

Timidly she paused at the white gate. There was no one in the yard to
bid her welcome. As one in a dream, she passed softly into the yard.
She was trembling now as one on the threshold of a great adventure.
What was it? What did it mean--her coming there?

Wonderingly she looked about the little yard with its bit of lawn--at
the big shade tree--the flowers--it was all just as she had always
known it. Where were they?--John and Mary and Charlie? Why was there no
sound of their voices? Her cheeks were suddenly hot with color. What if
Charlie Martin should suddenly appear! As one awakened from strange
dreams to a familiar home scene, Helen Ward was all at once back in
those days of her girlhood. She had come as she had come so many, many
times from the old house next door, to find her brother and their
friends. Her heart was eager with the shy eagerness of a maid for the
expected presence of her first boyish lover.

* * * * *

Then Peter Martin, coming around the house from the garden, saw her
standing there.

The old workman stopped, as if at the sight of an apparition.
Mechanically he placed the garden tool he was carrying against the
corner of the house; deliberately he knocked the ashes from his pipe
and placed it methodically in his pocket.

With a little cry, Helen ran to him, her hands outstretched, "Uncle
Pete!"

The old workman caught her and for a few moments she clung to him, half
laughing, half crying, while they both, in the genuineness of their
affection, forgot the years.

"Is it really you, Helen?" he said, at last, and she saw a suspicious
moisture in the kindly eyes. "Have you really come back to see the old
man after all these years?"

Then, with quick anxiety, he asked, "But what is the matter, child?
Your father--your mother--are they all right? Is there anything wrong
at your home up on the hill yonder?"

His very natural inquiry broke the spell and placed her instantly back
in the world to which she now belonged. Drawing away from him, she
returned, with characteristic calmness, "Oh, no, Uncle Pete, father and
mother are both very well indeed. But why should you think there must
be something wrong, simply because I chanced to call?"

The old workman was clearly confused at this sudden change in her
manner. He had welcomed the girl--the Helen of the old house--this
self-possessed young woman was quite a different person. She was the
princess lady of little Maggie and Bobby Whaley's acquaintance, who
sometimes condescended to recognize him with a cool little nod as her
big automobile passed him swiftly by.

Pete Martin could not know, as the Interpreter would have known, how at
that very moment the Helen of the old house and the princess lady were
struggling for supremacy.

Removing his hat and handling it awkwardly, he said, with a touch of
dignity in his tone and manner in spite of his embarrassment, "I'm glad
the folks are well, Helen. Won't you take a seat and rest yourself?"

As they went toward the chairs in the shade of the tree, he added, "It
is a long time since we have seen you in this part of town--walking, I
mean."

The Helen of the old house wanted to answer--she longed to cry out in
the fullness of her heart some of the things that were demanding
expression, but it was the princess lady who answered, "I saw my
brother's car here and thought perhaps he would let me ride home with
him."

The old workman was studying her now with kind but frankly
understanding eyes. "John and Mary have gone to see some of the folks
that she is looking after in the Flats," he said, slowly. "They'll be
back any minute now, I should think."

She did not know what to reply to this. There were so many things she
wanted to know--so many things that she felt she must know. But she
felt herself forced to answer with the mere commonplace, "You are all
well, I suppose, Uncle Pete?"

"Fine, thank you," he answered. "Mary is always busy with her housework
and her flowers and the poor sick folks she's always a-looking
after--just like her mother, if you remember. Charlie, he's working
late to-day--some breakdown or something that's keeping him overtime.
That brother of yours is a fine manager, Miss Helen, and," he added,
with a faint note of something in his voice that brought a touch of
color to her cheeks, "a finer man."

Again she felt the crowding rush of those questions she wanted to ask,
but she only said, with an air of calm indifference, "John has changed
so since his return from France--in many ways he seems like a different
man."

"As for that," he replied, "the war has changed most people in one way
or another. It was bound to. Everybody talks about getting back to
normal again, but as I see it there'll be no getting back ever to what
used to be normal before the war started."

She looked at him with sudden, intense interest. "How has it so changed
every one, Uncle Pete? Why can't people be just as they were before it
happened? The change in business conditions and all that, I can
understand, but why should it make any difference to--well, to me, for
example?"

The old workman answered, slowly, "The people are thinking deeper and
feeling deeper. They're more human, as you might say. And I've noticed
generally that the way the people think and feel is at the bottom of
everything. It's just like the Interpreter says, 'You can't change the
minds and hearts of folks without changing what they do.' Everybody
ain't changed, of course, but so many of them have that the rest will
be bound to take some notice or feel mighty lonesome from now on."

Helen was about to reply when the old workman interrupted her with,
"There come John and Mary now."

The two coming along the street walk to the gate did not at first
notice those who were watching them with such interest. John was
carrying a market basket and talking earnestly to his companion, whose
face was upturned to his with eager interest. At the gate they paused a
moment while the man, with his hand on the latch, finished whatever it
was that he was saying. And Helen, with a little throb of something
very much like envy in her heart, saw the light of happiness in the
eyes of the young woman who through all the years of their girlhood had
been her inseparable playmate and loyal friend.

When John finally opened the gate for her to pass, Mary was laughing,
and the clear ringing gladness in her voice brought a faint smile of
sympathy even to the face of the now coolly conventional daughter of
Adam Ward.

Mary's laughter was suddenly checked; the happiness fled from her face.
With a little gesture of almost appealing fear she put her hand on her
companion's arm.

In the same instant John saw and stood motionless, his face blank with
amazement. Then, "Helen! What in the world are you doing here?"

John Ward never realized all that those simple words carried to the
three who heard him. Peter Martin's face was grave and thoughtful. Mary
blushed in painful embarrassment. His sister, calm and self-possessed,
came toward them, smiling graciously.

"I saw your roadster and thought I might ride home with you. Uncle Pete
and I have been having a lovely little visit. It is perfectly charming
to see you again like this, Mary. Your flowers are beautiful as ever,
aren't they?"

"But, Helen, how do you happen to be wandering about in this
neighborhood alone and without your car?" demanded the still bewildered
John.

"Don't be silly," she laughed. "I was out for a walk--that is all. I do
walk sometimes, you know." She turned to Mary. "Really, to hear this
brother of mine, one would think me a helpless invalid and this part of
Millsburgh a very dangerous community."

Mary forced a smile, but the light in her eyes was not the light of
happiness and her cheeks were still a burning red.

"Don't you think we should go now, John?" suggested Helen.

The helpless John looked from Mary to her father appealingly.

"Better sit down awhile," Pete offered, awkwardly.

John looked at his watch. "I suppose we really ought to go." To Mary he
added, "Will you please tell Charlie that I will see him to-morrow?"

She bowed gravely.

Then the formal parting words were spoken, and Helen and John were
seated in the car. Mary had moved aside from the gate and stood now
very still among her flowers.

* * * * *

Before John had shifted the gears of his machine to high, he heard a
sound that caused him to look quickly at his sister. Little Maggie's
princess lady was sobbing like a child.

"Why, Helen, what in the world--"

She interrupted him. "Please, John--please, don't--don't take me home
now. I--I--Let us stop here at the old house for a few minutes. I--I
can't go just yet."

Without a word John Ward turned into the curb. Tenderly he helped her
to the ground. Reverently he lifted aside the broken-down gate and led
her through the tangle of tall grass and weeds that had almost
obliterated the walk to the front porch. Over the rotting steps and
across the trembling porch he helped her with gentle care. Very softly
he pushed open the sagging door.




CHAPTER XV

AT THE OLD HOUSE


From room to room in the empty old house the brother and sister went
silently or with low, half-whispered words. They moved softly, as if
fearing to disturb some unseen tenant of those bare and dingy rooms.
Often they paused, and, drawing close to each other, stood as if in the
very presence of some spirit that was not of their material world. At
last they came to the back porch, which was hidden from the curious
eyes of any chance observer in the neighborhood by a rank growth of
weeds and bushes and untrimmed trees.

As John Ward looked at his sister now, that expression of wondering
amazement with which he had greeted her was gone. In its place there
was gentle understanding.

With a little smile, Helen sat down on the top step of the porch and
motioned him to a seat beside her. "Won't you tell me about it, John?"
she said, softly.

"Tell you about what, Helen?"

"About everything--your life, your work, your friends." She made a
little gesture toward the cottage next door.

They could see the white gable through the screen of tangled boughs.

"What is it that has changed you so?" she went on. "Your interests are
so different now. You are so happy and contented--so--so alive--and
I"--her voice broke--"I feel as if you were going away off somewhere
and leaving me behind. I am so miserable. John, won't you tell me about
things?"

"You poor old girl!" exclaimed John with true brotherly affection.
"I've been a blind fool. I ought to have seen. That's nearly always the
way, though, I guess," he went on, reflectively. "A fellow gets so
darned interested trying to make things go right outside his own home
that he forgets to notice how the people that he really loves most of
all are getting along. It looks as though I have not been doing so much
better than poor old Sam Whaley, after all."

He paused and seemed to be following his thoughts into fields where
only he could go. Helen moved a little closer, and he came back to her.

"I never dreamed that you were feeling anything like this, sister. I
knew that you were worried about father, of course, as we all are, but
aside from that you seemed to be so occupied with your various
interests and with McIver--" He paused, then finished, abruptly, "Look
here, Helen, what about you and McIver anyway; have you given him his
answer yet?"

"Has that anything to do with it?" she answered, doubtfully. "There is
nothing that I can tell you about McIver. I don't seem to be able to
make up my mind, that is all. But McIver is only a part of the whole
trouble, John. Oh, can't you understand! How am I to know whether or
not I want to marry him or any one else until--until I have found
myself--until I know where I really belong."

He looked at her blankly for a second, then a smile broke over his
face. "By George!" he exclaimed "that is exactly what I had to do--find
myself and find where I belonged. I never dreamed that my sister might
be compelled to go through the same experience."

"Was it your army life that helped you to know?"

His face was serious now. "It was the things I saw and experienced
while in France."

"Tell me," she demanded. "I mean, tell me some of the things that you
men never talk about--the things you were forced to think and feel and
believe--that showed you your own real self--that changed you into what
you are to-day."

And because John Ward was able that afternoon to understand his
sister's need, he did as she asked. It may have been the influence of
the old house that enabled him to lay bare for her those experiences of
his innermost self--those soul adventures about which, as she had so
truly said, men never talk. Certainly he could never have spoken in
their home on the hill as he spoke in that atmosphere from which their
father and his material prosperity had so far removed them. And Helen,
as she listened, knew that she had found at last the key to all in her
brother's life that had so puzzled her.

But after all, she reflected, when he had finished, John's experience
could not solve her problem. She could not find herself in the things
that he had thought and felt.

"If only I could have been with you over there." she murmured.

"But, Helen," he cried, eagerly, "it is all right here at home. The
same things are happening all about us every day--don't you understand?
The one biggest thing that came to me out of the war is the realization
that, great and terrible though it was, it was in reality only a part
of the greater war that is being fought all the time."

She shook her head with a doubtful smile at his earnestness.

And then he tried to tell her of the Mill as he saw it in its relation
to human life--of the danger that threatened the nation through the
industrial situation--of the menace to humanity that lay in the efforts
of those who were setting class against class in a deadly hatred that
would result in revolution with all its horrors. He tried to make her
feel the call of humanity's need in the world's work, as it was felt in
the need of the world's war. He sought to apply for her the principles
of heroism and comradeship and patriotism and service to this war that
was still being waged against the imperialistic enemies of the nation
and the race.

But when he paused at last, she only smiled again, doubtfully. "You are
wonderful in your enthusiasm, John dear," she said, "and I love you for
it. I think I understand you now, and for yourself it is right, of
course, but for me--it is all so visionary--so unreal."

"And yet," he returned, "you were very active during the war--you made
bandages and lint and sweaters, and raised funds for the Red Cross. Was
it all real to you?"

"Yes," she answered, honestly, "it was very real John; it was so real
that in contrast nothing that I do now seems of any importance."

"But you never saw a wounded soldier--you never witnessed the
horrors--you never came in actual touch with the suffering, did you?"

"No."

"And yet you say the war was real to you."

"Very real," she replied.

"Do you think, Helen," he said, slowly, "that the Interpreter's
suffering would have been more real if he had lost his legs by a German
machine gun instead of by a machine in father's mill?"

"John!" she exclaimed, in a shocked tone.

"You say the suffering away over there in France was real to you," he
continued. "Well, less than a mile from this spot, I called this
afternoon on a man who is dying by inches of consumption, contracted
while working in our office. For eight years he was absent from his
desk scarcely a day. The force nicknamed him 'Old Faithful.' When he
dropped in his tracks at last they carried him out and stopped his pay.
He has no care--nothing to eat, even, except the help that the Martins
give him. Another case: A widow and four helpless children--the man was
killed in McIver's factory last week. He died in agony too horrible to
describe. The mother is prostrated, the children are hungry. God knows
what will become of them this next winter. Another: A workman who was
terribly burned in the Mill two years ago. He is blind and crippled in
the bargain--"

She interrupted him with a protesting cry, "John, John, for pity's
sake, stop!"

"Well, why are not these things right here at home as real to you as
you say the same things were when they happened in France?" he
demanded.

She did not attempt to answer his question but instead asked, gently,
"Is that why you have been going to the Flats with Mary?"

If he noticed any special significance in her words he ignored it.
"Mary visits the people in the Flats as her mother did--as our mother
used to do. She told me about some of the cases, and I have been going
with her now and then to see for myself--that is all."

Then they left the old house and drove back to their pretentious home
on the hill, where Adam Ward suffered his days of mental torture and
was racked by his nightly dreams of hell. And the dread shadow of that
hidden thing was over them all.

* * * * *

That night when John told the Interpreter of his afternoon with his
sister the old basket maker listened silently. His face was turned
toward the scene that, save for the twinkling lights, lay wrapped in
darkness before them. And he seemed to be listening to the voice of the
Mill. When John had finished, the man in the wheel chair said very
little.

But when John was leaving, the Interpreter asked, as an afterthought,
"And where was Captain Charlie this afternoon, John?"

"At the Mill," John answered. "I'm glad he wasn't at home, too; it was
bad enough as it was."

"Perhaps it was just as well," said the old basket maker. And John
Ward, in the darkness, could not see that the Interpreter was smiling.




CHAPTER XVI

HER OWN PEOPLE


"A lady to see you, sir."

John did not take his eyes from the work on his desk. "All right,
Jimmy, show her in."

The general manager read on to the bottom of the typewritten page,
signed his name to the sheet, placed it in the proper basket and turned
in his chair.

"Helen!"

Little Maggie's princess lady was so lovely that afternoon, as she
stood there framed in the doorway of the manager's office that even her
brother noticed.

She was laughing at his surprise, and there was a half teasing, half
serious look in her eyes that was irresistible.

"By George, you are a picture, Helen!" John exclaimed, with not a
little brotherly pride in his face and voice. "But what is the idea?
What are you down here for--all dolled up like this?"

She blushed with pleasure at his compliment. "That is very nice of you,
John; you are a dear to notice it. Are you going to ask me to sit down,
or must you put me out for interrupting?"

He was on his feet instantly. "Forgive me; I am so stunned by the
unexpected honor of your visit that I forget my manners."

When she was seated, he continued, "And now what is it? what can I do
for you, sister?"

She looked about the office--at his desk and through the open door into
the busy outer room. "Are you quite sure that you have time for me?"

"Surest thing in the world," he returned, with a reassuring smile. Then
to a man who at that moment appeared in the doorway, "All right, Tom."
And to Helen, "Excuse me just a second, dear."

She watched him curiously as he turned sheet after sheet of the papers
the man handed him, seeming to absorb the pages at a glance, while a
running fire of quick questions, short answers, terse comments and
clear-cut instructions accompanied the examination.

Helen had never before been inside the doors of the industrial plant to
which her father had literally given his life. In those old-house days,
when Adam worked with Pete and the Interpreter, she had gone sometimes
to the outer gate to meet her father when his day's work was done. On
rare occasions her automobile had stopped in front of the office. That
was all.

In a vague, indefinite way the young woman realized that her education,
her pleasures, the dresses she wore, her home on the hill, everything
that she had, in fact, came to her somehow from those great dingy,
unsightly buildings. She knew that people who were not of her world
worked there for her father. Sometimes there were accidents--men were
killed. There had been strikes that annoyed her father. But no part of
it all had ever actually touched her. She accepted it as a matter of
course--without a thought--as she accepted all of the established facts
in nature. The Mill existed for her as the sun existed. It never
occurred to her to ask why. There was for her no personal note in the
droning, moaning voice of its industry. There was nothing of personal
significance in the forest of tall stacks with their overhanging cloud
of smoke. Indeed, there had been, rather, something sinister and
forbidding about the place. The threatening aspect of the present
industrial situation was in no way personal to her except, perhaps, as
it excited her father and disturbed John.

"You've got it all there, Tom," said the manager, finishing his
examination of the papers. "Good work, too. Baird will have those
specifications on that Miller and Wilson job in to-morrow, will he?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good, that's the stuff!"

The man was smiling as he moved toward the door.

"Oh, Tom, just a moment."

Still smiling, the man turned back.

"I want you to meet my sister. Helen, may I present Mr. Conway? Tom is
one of our Mill family, you know, mighty important member, too--regular
shark at figuring all sorts of complicated calculations that I couldn't
work out in a month of Sundays." He laughed with boyish happiness and
pride in Tom's superior accomplishments.

It was a simple little incident, but there was something in it
somewhere that moved Helen Ward strangely. A spirit that was new to her
seemed to fill the room. She felt it as one may feel the bigness of the
mountains or sense the vast reaches of the ocean. These two men,
employer and employee, were in no way conscious of their relationship
as she understood it. Tom did not appear to realize that he was working
_for_ John--he seemed rather to feel that he was working _with_ John.

When the man was gone, she asked again, timidly, "Are you sure,
brother, that I am not in the way?"

"Forget it!" he cried. "Tell me what I can do for you."

"I want to see the Mill," she answered.

John did not apparently quite understand her request. "You want to see
the Mill?" he repeated.

She nodded eagerly. "I want to see it all--not just the office but
where the men work--everything."

She laughed at his bewildered expression as the sincerity of her wish
dawned upon him.

"But what in the world"--he began--"why this sudden interest in the
Mill, Helen?"

Half teasing, half laughing, she answered, "You didn't really think,
did you, John, that I would forget everything you said to me at the old
house?"

"No," he said, doubtfully. "At least, I suppose I didn't. But,
honestly, I didn't think that I had made much of an impression."

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.