Book: Helen of the Old House

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




She made a little gesture of helpless resignation. "Here I am just the
same and so much interested already that I can't tear myself away. Come
on, let's start--that is, if you really have the time to take me."

Time to take her! John Ward would have lost the largest contract he had
ever dreamed of securing rather than miss taking Helen through the
Mill.

* * * * *

With an old linen duster, which had hung in the office closet since
Adam Ward's day, to cover her from chin to shoes, and a cap that John
himself often wore about the plant, to replace her hat, they set out.

Helen's first impression, as she stood just inside the door to the big
main room of the plant, was fear. To her gentle eyes the scene was one
of terrifying confusion and unspeakable dangers.

Those great machines were grim and threatening monsters with ponderous
jaws and arms and chains that seemed all too light to control their
sullen strength. The noise--roaring, crashing, clanking, moaning,
shrieking, hissing--was overpowering in its suggestion of the
ungoverned tumult that belonged to some strange, unearthly realm.
Everywhere, amid this fearful din and these maddening terrors, flitting
through the murky haze of steam and smoke and dust, were men with sooty
faces and grimy arms. Never had the daughter of Adam Ward seen men at
work like this. She drew closer to John's side and held to his arm as
though half expecting him to vanish suddenly and leave her alone in
this monstrous nightmare.

Looking down at her, John laughed aloud and put his arm about her
reassuringly. "Great game, old girl!" he said, with a wholesome pride
in his voice. "This is the life!"

And all at once she remembered that this _was_, indeed, life--life as
she had never seen it, never felt it before. And this life game--this
greatest of all games--was the game that John played with such
absorbing interest day after day.

"I can understand now why you are not so devoted to tennis and teas as
you used to be," she returned, laughing back at him with a new
admiration in her face.

Then John led her into the very midst of the noisy scene. Carefully he
guided her steps through the seeming hurry and confusion of machinery
and men. Now they paused before one of those grim monsters to watch its
mighty work. Now they stopped to witness the terrific power displayed
by another giant that lifted, with its great arms of steel, a weight of
many tons as easily as a child would handle a toy. Again, they stepped
aside from the path of an engine on its way to some distant part of the
plant, or stood before a roaring furnace, or paused to watch a group of
men, or halted while John exchanged a few brief words with a
superintendent or foreman. And always with boyish enthusiasm John
talked to her of what they saw, explaining, illustrating, making the
purpose and meaning of every detail clear.

Gradually, as she thus went closer to this life that was at first so
terrifying to her, the young woman was conscious of a change within
herself. The grim monsters became kind and friendly as she saw how
their mighty strength was obedient always to the directing eye and hand
of the workmen who controlled them. The many noises, as she learned to
distinguish them, came to blend into one harmonious whole, like the
instruments in a great orchestra. The confusion, as she came to view it
understandingly, resolved itself into orderly movement. As she recalled
some of the things that her brother had said to her as they sat on the
back porch of the old house, her mind reached out for the larger truth,
and she thrilled to the feeling that she was standing, as it were, in
the living, beating heart of the nation. The things that she had been
schooled to hold as of the highest value she saw now for the first time
in their just relation to the mighty underlying life of the Mill. The
petty refinements that had so largely ruled her every thought and deed
were no more than frothy bubbles on the surface of the industrial
ocean's awful tidal power. The male idlers of her set were suddenly
contemptible in her eyes, as she saw them in comparison with her
brother or with his grimy, sweating comrades.

Presently John was saying, "This is where father used to work--before
the days of the new process, I mean. That bench there is the very one
he used, side by side with Uncle Pete and the Interpreter."

Helen stared at the old workbench that stood against the wall and at
the backs of the men, as though under a spell. Her father working
there!

Her brain all at once was crowded with questions to which there were no
answers. What if Adam Ward were still a workman at that bench? What if
it had been the Interpreter who had discovered the new process? What if
her father had lost his legs? What if John, instead of being the
manager, were one of those men who worked with their hands? What if
they had never left the old house next door to Mary and Charlie? What
if--

"Uncle Pete," said John, "look here and see who's with us this
afternoon."

Mary's father turned from his work and they laughed at the expression
on his face when he saw her standing there.

And it was the Helen of the old house who greeted him, and who was so
interested in what he was doing and asked so many really intelligent
questions that he was proud of her.

They had left Uncle Pete at his bench, and Helen's mind was again busy
with those unanswerable questions--so busy, in fact, that she scarcely
heard John saying, "I want to show you a lathe over here, Helen, that
is really worth seeing. It is, on the whole, the finest and most
intricate piece of machinery in the whole plant." And, he added, as
they drew near the subject of his remarks, "You may believe me, it
takes an exceptional workman to handle it. There are only three men in
our entire force who are ever permitted to touch it. They are experts
in their line and naturally are the best paid men we have."

As he finished speaking they paused beside a huge affair of black iron
and gray steel, that to Helen seemed an incomprehensible tangle of
wheels and levers.

A workman was bending over the machine, so absorbed apparently in the
complications of his valuable charge that he was unaware of their
presence.

Helen spoke close to her brother's ear, "Is he one of your three
experts?"

John nodded. "He is the chief. The other two are really
assistants--sort of understudies, you know."

At that moment the man straightened up, stood for an instant with his
eyes still on his work, then, as he was turning to another part of the
intricate mechanism, he saw them.

"Hello, Charlie!" said the grinning manager, and to his sister, "Surely
you haven't forgotten Captain Martin, Helen?"

In the brief moments that followed Helen Ward knew that she had reached
the point toward which she had felt herself moving for several
months--impelled by strange forces beyond her comprehension.

Her brother's renewed and firmly established friendship with this
playmate of their childhood years, together with the many stirring
tales that John had told of his comrade captain's life in France, could
not but awaken her interest in the boy lover whom she had, as she
believed, so successfully forgotten. The puzzling change in her
brother's life interests, has neglect of so many of his pre-war
associates and his persistent comradeship with his fellow workman, had
kept alive that interest; while Captain Martin's repeated refusals to
accept John's invitations to the big home on the hill had curiously
touched her woman's pride and at the same time had compelled her
respect.

The clash between John's new industrial and social convictions and the
class consciousness to which she had been so carefully schooled, with
its background of her father's wretched mental condition, the
unhappiness of her home and her own repeated failures to find
contentment in the privileges of material wealth, raised in her mind
questions which she had never before faced.

Her talks with the Interpreter, the slow forming of the lines of the
approaching industrial struggle, with the sharpening of the contrast
between McIver and John, her acquaintance with Bobby and Maggie,
even--all tended to drive her on in her search for the answer to her
problem.

And so she had been carried to the Martin cottage--to her talk with
John at the old house--to the Mill--to this.

As one may intuitively sense the crisis in a great struggle between
life and death, this woman knew that in this man all her disturbing
life questions were centered. Deep beneath the many changes that her
father's material success in life had brought to her, one unalterable
life fact asserted itself with startling power: It was this man who had
first awakened in her the consciousness of her womanhood. Face to face
with this workman in her father's Mill, she fought to control the
situation.

To all outward appearances she did control it. Her brother saw only a
reserved interest in his workman comrade. Captain Martin saw only the
daughter of his employer who had so coldly preferred her newer friends
to the less pretentious companions of her girlhood.

But beneath the commonplace remarks demanded by the occasion, the Helen
of the old house was struggling for supremacy. The spirit that she had
felt in the office when John talked with his fellow workmen, she felt
now in the presence of this workman. The power, the strength, the
bigness, the meaning of the Mill, as it had come to her, were all
personified in him. A strange exultation of possession lifted her up.
She was hungry for her own; she wanted to cry out: "This work is my
work--these people are my people--this man is my man!"

It was Captain Charlie who ended the interview with the excuse that the
big machine needed his immediate attention. He had stood as they talked
with a hand on one of the controls and several times he had turned a
watchful eye on his charge. It was almost, Helen thought with a little
thrill of triumph, as though the man sought in the familiar touch of
his iron and steel a calmness and self-control that he needed. But now,
when he turned to give his attention wholly to his work, with the
effect of politely dismissing her, she felt as though he had suddenly,
if ever so politely, closed a door in her face.

John must have felt it a little, too, for he became rather quiet as
they went on and soon concluded their inspection of the plant.

At the office door, Helen paused and turned to look back, as if
reluctant to leave the scene that had now such meaning for her, while
her brother stood silently watching her. Not until they were back in
the manager's office and Helen was ready to return to the outside world
did John Ward speak.

Facing her with his straightforward soldierly manner, he said,
inquiringly, "Well?"

She returned his look with steady frankness. "I can't tell you what I
think about it all now, John dear. Sometime, perhaps, I may try. It is
too big--too vital--too close. I am glad I came. I am sorry, too."

So he took her to her waiting car.

For a moment he stood looking thoughtfully after the departing machine
and then, with an odd little smile, went back to his work.




CHAPTER XVII

IN THE NIGHT


Helen knew, even as she told the chauffeur to drive her home, that she
did not wish to return just then to the big house on the hill. Her mind
was too crowded with thoughts she could not entertain in the atmosphere
of her home; her heart was too deeply moved by emotions that she
scarcely dared acknowledge even to herself.

She thought of the country club, but that, in her present mood, was
impossible. The Interpreter--she was about to tell Tom that she wished
to call at the hut on the cliff, but decided against it. She feared
that she might reveal to the old basket maker things that she wished to
hide. She might go for a drive in the country, but she shrank from
being alone. She wanted some one who could take her out of
herself--some one to whom she could talk without betraying herself.

Not far from the Mill a number of children were playing in the dusty
road.

Helen did not notice the youngsters, but Tom, being a careful driver,
slowed down, even though they were already scurrying aside for the
automobile to pass. Suddenly she was startled by a shrill yell.
"Hello, there! Hello, Miss!"

Bobby Whaley, in his frantic efforts to attract her attention, was
jumping up and down, waving his cap and screeching like a wild boy,
while his companions looked on in wide-eyed wonder, half in awe at his
daring, half in fear of the possible consequence.

To the everlasting honor and glory of Sam Whaley's son, the automobile
stopped. The lady, looking back, called, "Hello, Bobby!" and waited
expectantly for him to approach.

With a look of haughty triumph at Skinny and Chuck, the lad swaggered
forward, a grin of overpowering delight at his achievement on his
dirty, freckled countenance.

"I am so glad you called to me," Helen said, when he was close. "I was
just wishing for some one to go with me for a ride in the country.
Would you like to come?"

"Gee," returned the urchin, "I'll say I would."

"Do you think your mother would be willing for you to go?"

"Lord, yes--ma, she ain't a-carin' where we kids are jest so's we ain't
under her feet when she's a-workin'."

"And could you find Maggie, do you think? Perhaps she would enjoy the
ride, too."

Bobby lifted up his voice in a shrill yell, "Mag! Oh--oh--Mag!"

The excited cry was caught up by the watching children, and the
neighborhood echoed their calls. "Mag! Oh, Mag! Somebody wants yer,
Mag! Come a-runnin'. Hurry up!"

Their united efforts were not in vain. From the rear of a near-by house
little Maggie appeared. A dirty, faded old shawl was wrapped about her
tiny waist, hiding her bare feet and trailing behind. A sorry wreck of
a hat trimmed with three chicken feathers crowned her uncombed hair,
and the ragged remnants of a pair of black cotton gloves completed her
elegant costume. In her thin little arms she held, with tender mother
care, a doll so battered and worn by its long service that one wondered
at the imaginative power of the child who could make of it anything but
a shapeless bundle of dirty rags.

"Get a move on yer, Mag!" yelled the masterful Bobby, with frantic
gestures. "The princess lady is a-goin' t' take us fer a ride in her
swell limerseen with her driver 'n' everything."

For one unbelieving moment, little Maggie turned to the two miniature
ladies who, in costumes that rivaled her own, had come to ask the cause
of this unseemly disturbance of their social affair. Then, at another
shout from her brother, she discarded her finery and, holding fast to
her doll with true mother instinct, hurried timidly to the waiting
automobile.

On that day when Helen had sent her servant to take them for a ride,
these children of the Flats had thought that no greater happiness was
possible to mere human beings. But now, as they sat with their
beautiful princess lady between them on the deep-cushioned seat, and
watched the familiar houses glide swiftly past, even Bobby was silent.
It was all so unreal--so like a dream. Their former experience was so
far surpassed that they would not have been surprised had the
automobile been suddenly transformed into a magic ship of the air, with
Tom a fairy pilot to carry them away up among the clouds to some
wonderful sunshine castle in the sky.

It is true that Bobby's conscience stirred uneasily when he felt an arm
steal gently about him and he was drawn a little closer to the princess
lady's side. A feller with a proper pride does not readily permit such
familiarities. It had been a long time since any one had put an arm
around Bobby--he did not quite understand.

But as for that, the princess lady herself did not quite understand
either. Perhaps the sight of little Maggie and her play lady friends so
elegantly costumed for their social function had suddenly convinced her
that these children of the Flats were of her world after all. Perhaps
the shouting children had awakened memories that banished for the
moment the sadness of her grown-up years. Or it may have been simply
the way that wee Maggie held her battered doll. It may have been that
the mother instinct of this wistful mite of humanity quickened in the
heart of the young woman something that was deeper, more vital, more
real to her womanhood than the things to which she had so far given
herself. As the Helen of the old house had longed to cry aloud in the
Mill her recognition of her man, she hungered now with a strange woman
hunger for the feel of a child in her arms.

And so, with no care for her gown, which was sure to be ruined by this
contact with the grime of the Flats, with no question as to what people
might think, with no thought for class standards or industrial
problems, the daughter of Adam Ward took the children of Sam Whaley in
her arms and carried them away from the shadow of that dark cloud that
hung always above the Mill. From the smoke and dust and filth of their
heritage, she took them into the clean, sunny air of the hillside
fields and woods. From the hovels and shanties of their familiar haunts
she took them where birds made their nests and the golden bees and
bright-winged butterflies were busy among their flowers. From the
squalid want and cruel neglect of their poverty she took them into a
fairyland that was overflowing with the riches that belong to
childhood.

And then, when the sun was red above the bluff where the curving line
of cliffs end at the river's edge, she brought them back.

For some reason that has never been made satisfactorily clear by the
wise ones who lead the world's thinking, Bobby and Maggie must always
be brought back to their home in the Flats, the princess lady must
always return to her castle on the hill.

* * * * *

Charlie Martin was unusually quiet when he returned home from his work
that day. The father mentioned Helen's visit to the Mill, and Mary had
many questions to ask, but the soldier workman, usually so ready to
talk and laugh with his sister, answered only in monosyllables or
silently permitted the older man to carry the burden of the
conversation.

When supper was over and it was dark, Charlie, saying that he thought
he ought to attend Jake Vodell's street meeting that evening, left the
house.

But Captain Charlie did not go to hear the agitator's soap-box oration
that night. For an hour or more, under cover of the darkness, the
workman sat on the porch of the old house next door to his home.

He had pushed aside the broken gate and made his way up the
weed-tangled walk so quietly that neither his sister nor his father,
who were on the porch of the cottage, heard a sound. So still was he
that two neighborhood lovers, who paused in their slow walk, as if
tempted by the friendly shadow of the lonely old place, did not know
that he was there. Then at something her father said, Mary's laugh rang
out, and the lovers moved on.

A little later Captain Charlie stole softly out of the yard and up the
street in the direction from which Helen had come the day of her visit
to the old house. When the sound of his feet on the walk could not be
heard at the cottage, the workman walked briskly, taking the way that
led toward the Interpreter's hut.

One who knew him would have thought that he was going for an evening
call on the old basket maker. He saw the light of the little house on
the cliff presently, and for a moment walked slowly, as if debating
whether or not he should go on as he had intended. Then he turned off
from the way to the Interpreter's and took that seldom used road that
led up the hill toward the home of Adam Ward. With a strong, easy
stride he swung up the grade until he came to the corner of the iron
fence. Slowly and quietly he moved on now in the deeper shadows of the
trees. When he could see the gloomy mass of the house unobstructed
against the sky, he stopped.

The lower floor was brightly lighted. The windows above were dark. With
his back against the trunk of a tree Captain Charlie waited.

An automobile came out between the stone columns of the big gate and
thundered away down the street with reckless speed. Adam Ward, thought
the man under the tree--even John never drove like that. And he
wondered where the old Mill owner could be going at such an hour of the
night.

Still he waited.

Suddenly a light flashed out from the windows of an upper room. A
moment, and the watcher saw the form of a woman framed in the casement
against the bright background. For some time she stood there, her face,
shaded by her hands, pressed close to the glass, as if she were trying
to see into the darkness of the night. Then she drew back. The shade
was drawn.

Very slowly Captain Charlie went back down the hill.




BOOK III

THE STRIKE


"_O flashing muzzles, pause, and let them see
The coming dawn that streaks the sky afar;
Then let your mighty chorus witness be
To them, and Caesar, that we still make war_."




CHAPTER XVIII

THE GATHERING STORM


In the weeks immediately following her visit to the Mill, Helen Ward
met the demands of her world apparently as usual. If any one noticed
that she failed to enter into the affairs of her associates with the
same lively interest which had made her a leader among those who do
nothing strenuously, they attributed it to her father's ill health. And
in this they were partially right. Ever since the day when she half
revealed her fears to the Interpreter, the young woman's feeling that
her father's ill health and the unhappiness of her home were the result
of some hidden thing, had gamed in strength. Since her meeting with
Captain Charlie there had been in her heart a deepening conviction
that, but for this same hidden thing, she would have known in all its
fullness a happiness of which she could now only dream.

More frequently than ever before, she went now to sit with the
Interpreter on the balcony porch of that little hut on the cliff. But
Bobby and Maggie wished in vain for their princess lady to come and
take them again into the land of trees and birds and flowers and
sunshiny hills and clean blue sky. Often, now, she went to meet her
brother when his day's work was done, and, sending Tom home with her
big car, she would go with John in his roadster. And always while he
told her of the Mill and led her deeper into the meaning of the
industry and its relation to the life of the people, she listened with
eager interest. But she did not go again to the Martin cottage or visit
the old house.

Once at the foot of the Interpreter's zigzag stairway she met Captain
Martin and greeted him in passing. Two or three times she caught a
glimpse of him among the men coming from the Mill as she waited for
John in front of the office. That was all. But always she was conscious
of him. When from the Interpreter's hut she watched the twisting
columns of smoke rising from the tall stacks, her thoughts were with
the workman who somewhere under that cloud was doing his full share in
the industrial army of his people. When John talked to her of the Mill
and its meaning, her heart was glad for her brother's loyal comradeship
with this man who had been his captain over there. The very sound of
the deep-toned whistle that carried to Adam Ward the proud realization
of his material possessions carried to his daughter thoughts of what,
but for those same material possessions, might have been.

For relief she turned to McIver. There was a rocklike quality in the
factory owner that had always appealed to her. His convictions were so
unwavering--his judgments so final. McIver never doubted McIver. He
never, in his own mind, questioned what he did by the standards of
right and justice. The only question he ever asked himself was, Would
McIver win or lose? Any suggestion of a difference of opinion on the
part of another was taken as a personal insult that was not to be
tolerated. Therefore, because the man was what he was, his class
convictions were deeply grounded, fixed and certain. In the turmoil of
her warring thoughts and disturbed emotions Helen felt her own balance
so shaken that she instinctively reached out to steady herself by him.
The man, feeling her turn to him, pressed his suit with all the ardor
she would permit, for he saw in his success not only possession of the
woman he wanted, but the overthrow of John's opposition to his business
plans and the consequent triumph of his personal material interests and
the interests of his class. But, in spite of the relief she gained from
the strength of McIver's convictions, some strange influence within
herself prevented her from yielding. She probably would yield at last,
she told herself drearily--because there seemed to be nothing else for
her to do.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, from his hut on the cliff, the Interpreter watched the
approach of the industrial storm.

The cloud that had appeared on the Millsburgh horizon with the coming
of Jake Vodell had steadily assumed more threatening proportions until
now it hung dark with gloomy menace above the work and the homes of the
people. To the man in the wheel chair, looking out upon the scene that
lay with all its varied human interests before him, there was no bit of
life anywhere that was not in the shadow of the gathering storm. The
mills and factories along the river, the stores and banks and interests
of the business section, the farms in the valley, the wretched Flats,
the cottage homes of the workmen and the homes on the hillside, were
all alike in the path of the swiftly approaching danger.

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