Book: Helen of the Old House

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




"_I_ ain't been sick, if that's what yer mean," returned the boy. "Mag
is, though. She's worse to-day."

His manner was sullenly defiant, as if the warmly dressed stranger had
in some way revealed herself as his enemy.

"Don't you know me, Bobby?"

"Not with yer face covered up like that, I don't."

She laughed nervously and raised her veil.

"Huh, it's you, is it? Funny--Mag's been a-talkin' about her princess
lady all afternoon. What yer doin' here?"

Before this hollow-cheeked skeleton of a boy Helen Ward felt strangely
like one who, conscious of guilt, is brought suddenly into the presence
of a stern judge.

"Why, Bobby," she faltered, "I--I came to see you and Maggie--I was at
the Interpreter's this afternoon and he told me--I mean something he
said made me want to come."

"The Interpreter, he's all right," said the boy. "So's Mary Martin."

"Aren't you just a little glad to see me, Bobby?"

The boy did not seem to hear. "Funny the way Mag talks about yer all
the time. She's purty sick all right. Peterson's baby, it died."

"Can't we go into the house and see Maggie? You must be nearly frozen
standing out here in the cold."

"Huh, I'm used to freezin'--I guess yer can come on in though--if yer
want to. Mebbe Mag 'd like to see yer."

He pushed open the door, and she followed him into the ghastly
barrenness of the place that he knew as home.

Never before had the daughter of Adam Ward viewed such naked, cruel
poverty. She shuddered with the horror of it. It was so unreal--so
unbelievable.

A small, rusty cookstove with no fire--a rude table with no cloth--a
rickety cupboard with its shelves bare save for a few dishes--two
broken-backed chairs--that was all. No, it was not all--on a window
ledge, beneath a bundle of rags that filled the opening left by a
broken pane, was a small earthen flowerpot holding a single scraggly
slip of geranium.

Helen seemed to hear again the Interpreter saying, "A girl with true
instincts for the best things of life and a capacity for great
happiness."

At Bobby's call, Mrs. Whaley came from another room.

The boy did not even attempt an introduction but stood sullenly aside,
waiting developments, and the mother in her pitiful distress evidently
failed to identify their visitor when Helen introduced herself.

"I'm pleased to meet you, ma'am," she said, mechanically, and gazed at
the young woman with a stony indifference, as though her mind, deadened
by fearful anxiety and physical suffering, refused even to wonder at
the stranger's presence in her home.

Helen did not know what to say--in the presence of this living tragedy
of motherhood she felt so helpless, so overwhelmed with the uselessness
of mere words. What right had she, a stranger from another world, to
intrude unasked upon the privacy of this home? And yet, something deep
within her--something more potent in its authority than the
conventionalities that had so far ruled her life--assured her that she
had the right to be there.

"I--I called to see Bobby and Maggie," she faltered. "I met them, you
know, at the Interpreter's."

As if Helen's mention of the old basket maker awakened a spark of life
in her pain-deadened senses, the woman returned, "Yes, ma'am--take a
chair. No, not that one--it's broke. Here--this one will hold you up, I
guess."

With nervous haste she dusted the chair with her apron. "You'd best
keep your things on. We don't have no fire except to cook by--when
there's anything to cook."

She found a match and lighted a tiny lamp, for it was growing dark.

"Bobby tells me that little Maggie is ill," offered Helen.

Mrs. Whaley looked toward the door of that other room and wrung her
thin, toil-worn hands in the agony of her mother fear. "Yes,
ma'am--she's real bad, I guess. Poor child, she's been ailin' for some
time. And since the strike--" Her voice broke, and her eyes, dry as if
they had long since exhausted their supply of tears, were filled with
hopeless misery.

"We had the doctor once before things got so bad; about the time my man
quit his work in the Mill to help Jake Vodell, it was. And the doctor
he said all she needed was plenty of good food and warm clothes and a
chance to play in the fresh country air."

She looked grimly about the bare room. "We couldn't have the doctor no
more. I don't know as it would make any difference if we could. My man,
he's away most of the time. I ain't seen him since yesterday mornin'.
And to-day Maggie's been a lot worse. I--I'm afraid--"

Helen wanted to cry aloud. Was it possible that she had asked the
Interpreter only a few hours before if there was really much suffering
in the families of the strikers? "You can see Maggie if you want,"
said the mother. "She's in there."

She rose as if to show her visitor to the room.

But Helen said, quickly, "In just a moment. Mrs. Whaley, won't you tell
me first--is there--is there no one to help you?" She asked the
question timidly, as if fearing to offend.

The other woman answered, hopelessly, "The charity ladies do a little,
and the Interpreter and Mary Martin do all they can. But you see,
ma'am, there's so many others just like us that there ain't near enough
to go 'round."

The significance of the woman's colorless words went to Helen's heart
with appalling force--"so many others just like us." This stricken home
was not then an exception. With flashing vividness her mind pictured
many rooms similar to the cold and barren apartment where she sat. She
visioned as clearly as she saw Mrs. Whaley the many other wives and
mothers with Bobbies and Maggies who were caught helplessly in the
monstrous net of the strike, as these were caught. She knew now why the
Interpreter and Billy Rand worked so hard. And again she felt her
cheeks burn with shame as when the old basket maker had said, "For
every idle hand--"

Helen Ward had been an active leader in the foreign relief work during
the war. Her portrait had even been published in the papers as one who
was devoted to the cause of the stricken women and children abroad. But
that had all been impersonal, while this--Already in her heart she was
echoing the old familiar cry of the comparative few, "If only the
people knew! If only they could be made to see as she had been made to
see! The people are not so cruel. They simply do not know. They are
ignorant, as she was ignorant."

Aloud she was saying to Bobby, as she thrust her purse in the boy's
hand, "You must run quickly, Bobby, to the nearest store and get the
things that your mother needs first, and have some one telephone for a
doctor to come at once."

To the mother she added, hurriedly, as if fearing a protest, "Please,
Mrs. Whaley, let me help. I am so sorry I did not know before. Won't
you forgive me and let me help you now?"

"Gee!" exclaimed Bobby, who had opened the purse. "Look-ee, mom! Gee!"

As one in a dream, the mother turned from the money in the boy's hand
to Helen. "You ain't meanin', ma'am, for us to use all that?"

"Yes--yes--don't be afraid to get what you need--there will be more
when that is gone."

The poor woman did not fill the air with loud cries of hysterical
gratitude and superlative prayers to God for His blessing upon this one
who had come so miraculously to her relief. For a moment she stood
trembling with emotion, while her tearless eyes were fixed upon Helen's
face with a look of such gratitude that the young woman was forced to
turn away lest her own feeling escape her control. Then, snatching the
money from the boy's hands, she said, "I had better go myself,
ma'am--Bobby can come along to help carry things. If you"--she
hesitated, with a look toward that other room--"if you wouldn't mind
stayin' with Maggie till we get back?"

A minute later and Helen was alone in that wretched house in the
Flats--alone save for the sick child in the next room.

The door to the street had scarcely closed when a wave of terror swept
over her. She started to her feet. She could not do it. She would call
Mrs. Whaley back. She would go herself for the needed things. But there
was a strength in Helen Ward that few of her most intimate friends,
even, realized; and before her hand touched the latch of the door she
had command of herself once more. In much the same spirit that her
brother John perhaps had faced a lonely night watch in Flanders fields,
Adam Ward's daughter forced herself to do this thing that had so
unexpectedly fallen to her.

For some minutes she walked the floor, listening to the noises of the
neighborhood. Anxiously she opened the door and looked out into the
fast, gathering darkness. No one of her own people knew where she was.
She had heard terrible things of Jake Vodell and his creed of
terrorism. McIver had pressed it upon her mind that the strikers were
all alike in their lawlessness. What if Sam Whaley should return to
find her there? She listened--listened.

A faint, moaning sound came from the next room. She went quickly to the
doorway, but in the faint light she could see only the shadowy outline
of a bed. Taking the lamp she entered fearfully.

Save for the bed, an old box that served as a table, and one chair,
this room was as bare as the other. With the lamp in her hand Helen
stood beside the bed.

The tiny form of little Maggie was lost under the ragged and dirty
coverlet. The child's face in the tangled mass of her unkempt hair was
so wasted and drawn, her eyes, closed under their dark lids, so deeply
sunken, and her teeth so exposed by the thin fleshless lips, that she
seemed scarcely human. One bony arm with its clawlike hand encircled
the rag doll that she had held that day when Helen took the two
children into the country.

As Helen looked all her fears vanished. She had no thought, now, of
where she was or how she came there. Deep within her she felt the
awakening of that mother soul which lives in every woman. She did not
shrink in horror from this hideous fruit of Jake Vodell's activity. She
did not cry out in pity or sorrow. She uttered no word of protest. As
she put the lamp down on the box, her hand did not tremble. Very
quietly she placed the chair beside the bed and sat down to watch and
wait as motherhood in all ages has watched and waited.

While poor Sam Whaley was busy on some mission assigned to him by his
leader, Jake Vodell, and his wife and boy were gone for the food
supplied by a stranger to his household, this woman, of the class that
he had been taught to hate, held alone her vigil at the bedside of the
workman's little girl.

A thin, murmuring voice came from the bed. Helen leaned closer. She
heard a few incoherent mutterings--then, "No--no--Bobby, yer wouldn't
dast blow up the castle. Yer'd maybe kill the princess lady--yer know
yer couldn't do that!"

Again the weak little voice sank into low, meaning less murmurs. The
tiny, clawlike fingers plucked at the coverlet. "Tain't so, the
princess lady _will_ find her jewel of happiness, I tell yer, Bobby,
jest like the Interpreter told us--cause her heart is kind--yer know
her heart is--kind--kind--"

Silence again. Some one passed the house. A dog howled. A child in the
house next door cried. Across the street a man's voice was raised in
anger.

Suddenly little Maggie's eyes opened wide. "An' the princess lady is
a-comin' some day to take Bobby and me away up in the sky to her
beautiful palace place where there's flowers and birds an' everythin'
all the time an'--an'--"

The big eyes were fixed on Helen's face as the' young woman stooped
over the bed, and the light of a glorious smile transformed the wasted
childish features.

"Why--why--yer--yer've come!"




CHAPTER XXV

McIVER'S OPPORTUNITY


When the politician stopped at the cigar stand late that afternoon for
a box of the kind he gave his admirers, the philosopher, scratching the
revenue label, remarked, "I see by the papers that McIver is still
a-stayin'."

"Humph!" grunted the politician with careful diplomacy.

The bank clerk who was particular about his pipe tobacco chimed in,
"McIver is a stayer all right when it comes to that."

"Natural born fighter, sir," offered the politician tentatively.

"Game sport, McIver is," agreed the undertaker, taking the place at the
show case vacated by the departing bank clerk.

The philosopher, handing out the newcomer's favorite smoke, echoed his
customer's admiration. "You bet he's a game sport." He punched the cash
register with vigor. "Don't give a hang what it costs the other
fellow."

The undertaker laughed.

"I remember one time," said the philosopher, "McIver and a bunch was
goin' fishin' up the river. They stopped here early in the morning and
while they was gettin' their smokes the judge--who's always handin' out
some sort of poetry stuff, you know--he says: 'Well, Jim, we're goin'
to have a fine day anyway. No matter whether we catch anything or not
it will be worth the trip just to get out into the country.' Mac, he
looked at the judge a minute as if he wanted to bite him--you know what
I mean--then he says in that growlin' voice of his, 'That may do for
you all right, judge, but I'm here to tell you that when _I_ go fishin'
_I go for fish_.'"

The cigar-store philosopher's story accurately described the dominant
trait in the factory man's character. To him business was a sport, a
game, a contest of absorbing interest. He entered into it with all the
zest and strength of his virile manhood. Mind and body, it absorbed
him. And yet, he knew nothing of that true sportsman's passion which
plays the game for the joy of the game itself. McIver played to win;
not for the sake of winning, but for the value of the winnings. Methods
were good or bad only as they won or lost. He was incapable of
experiencing those larger triumphs which come only in defeat. The
Interpreter's philosophy of the "oneness of all" was to McIver the
fanciful theory of an impracticable dreamer, who, too feeble to take a
man's part in life, contented himself by formulating creeds of weakness
that befitted his state. Men were the pieces with which he played his
game--they were of varied values, certainly, as are the pieces on a
chess table, but they were pieces on the chess table and nothing more.
All of which does not mean that Jim McIver was cruel or unkind. Indeed,
he was genuinely and generously interested in many worthy charities,
and many a man had appealed to him, and not in vain, for help. But to
have permitted these humanitarian instincts to influence his play in
the game of business would have been, to his mind, evidence of a
weakness that was contemptible. The human element, he held, must, of
necessity, be sternly disregarded if one would win.

While his fellow townsmen were discussing him at the cigar stand, and
men everywhere in Millsburgh were commenting on his determination to
break the strikers to his will at any cost, McIver, at his office, was
concluding a conference with a little company of his fellow employers.

It was nearly dark when the conference finally ended and the men went
their several ways. McIver, with some work of special importance
waiting his attention, telephoned that he would not be home for dinner.
He would finish what he had to do and would dine at the club later in
the evening.

The big factory inside the high, board fence was silent. The night came
on. Save for the armed men who guarded the place, the owner was alone.

Absorbed in his consideration of the business before him, the man was
oblivious of everything but his game. An hour went by. He forgot that
he had had no dinner. Another hour--and another.

He was interrupted at last by the entrance of a guard.

"Well, what do you want?" he said, shortly, when the man stood before
him.

"There's a woman outside, sir. She insists that she must see you."

"A woman!"

"Yes, sir."

"Who is she?"

"I don't know."

"Well, what does she look like?"

"I couldn't see her face, she's got a veil on."

The factory owner considered. How did any one outside of his home know
that he was in his office at that hour? These times were dangerous.
"Vodell is likely to try anything," he said, aloud. "Better send her
about her business."

"I tried to," the guard returned, "but she won't go--says she is a
friend of yours and has got to see you to-night."

"A friend! Huh! How did she get here?"

"In a taxi, and the taxi beat it as soon as she got out."

Again McIver considered. Then his heavy jaw set, and he growled, "All
right, bring her in--a couple of you--and see that you stand by while
she is here. If this is a Vodell trick of some sort, I'll beat him to
it."

Helen, escorted by two burly guards, entered the office.

McIver sprang to his feet with an exclamation of amazement, and his
tender concern was unfeigned and very comforting to the young woman
after the harrowing experience through which she had just passed.

Sending the guards back to their posts, he listened gravely while she
told him where she had been and what she had seen.

"But, Helen," he cried, when she had finished, "it was sheer madness
for you to be alone in the Flats like that--at Whaley's place and in
the night, too! Good heavens, girl, don't you realize what a risk you
were taking?"

"I had to go, Jim," she returned.

"You had to go?" he repeated. "Why?"

"I had to see for myself if--if things were as bad as the Interpreter
said. Oh, can't you understand, Jim, I could not believe it--it all
seemed so impossible. Don't you see that I had to know for sure?"

"I see that some one ought to break that meddlesome old basket maker's
head as well as his legs," growled McIver indignantly. "The idea of
sending you, Adam Ward's daughter, of all people, alone into that nest
of murdering anarchists."

"But the Interpreter didn't send me, Jim," she protested. "He did not
even know that I was going. No one knew."

"I understand all that," said McIver. "The Interpreter didn't send
you--oh, no--he simply made you think that you ought to go. That's the
way the tricky old scoundrel does everything, from what I am told."

She looked at him steadily. "Do you think, Jim, the Interpreter's way
is such a bad way to get people to do things?"

"Forgive me," he begged humbly, "but it makes me wild to think what
might have happened to you. It's all right now, though. I'll take you
home, and in the future you can turn such work over to the regular
charity organizations." He was crossing the room for his hat and
overcoat. "Jove! I can't believe yet that you have actually been in
such a mess and all by your lonesome, too."

She was about to speak when he stopped, and, as if struck by a sudden
thought, said, quickly, "But Helen, you haven't told me--how did you
know I was here?"

She explained hurriedly, "The doctor sent a taxi for me and I
telephoned your house from a drug store. Your man told me you expected
to be late at the office and would dine at the club. I phoned the club
and when I learned that you were not there I came straight on. I--I had
to see you to-night, Jim. And I was afraid if I phoned you here at the
office you wouldn't let me come."

McIver evidently saw from her manner that there was still something in
the amazing situation that they had not yet touched upon. Coming back
to his desk, he said, "I don't think I understand, Helen. Why were you
in such a hurry to see me? Besides, don't you know that I would have
gone to you, at once, anywhere?"

"I know, Jim," she returned, slowly, as one approaching a difficult
subject, "but I couldn't tell you what I had seen. I couldn't talk to
you about these things at home."

"I understand," he said, gently, "and I am glad that you wanted to come
to me. But you are tired and nervous and all unstrung, now. Let me take
you home and to-morrow we will talk things over."

As if he had not spoken, she said, steadily, "I wanted to tell you
about the terrible, terrible condition of those poor people, Jim. I
thought you ought to know about them exactly as they are and not in a
vague, indefinite way as I knew about them before I went to see for
myself."

The man moved uneasily. "I do know about the condition of these people,
Helen. It is exactly what I expected would happen."

She was listening carefully. "You expected them to--to be hungry and
cold and sick like that, Jim?"

"Such conditions are always a part of every strike like this," he
returned. "There is nothing unusual about it, and it is the only thing
that will ever drive these cattle back to their work. They simply have
to be starved to it."

"But John says--"

He interrupted. "Please, Helen--I know all about what John says. I know
where he gets it, too--he gets it from the Interpreter who gave you
this crazy notion of going alone into the Flats to investigate
personally. And John's ideas are just about as practical."

"But the mothers and children, Jim?"

"The men can go back to work whenever they are ready," he retorted.

"At your terms, you mean?" she asked.

"My terms are the only terms that will ever open this plant again. The
unions will never dictate my business policies, if every family in
Millsburgh starves."

She waited a moment before she said, slowly, "I must be sure that I
understand, Jim--do you mean that you are actually depending upon such
pitiful conditions as I have seen to-night to give you a victory over
the strikers?"

The man made a gesture of impatience. "It is the principle of the thing
that is at stake, Helen. If I yield in this instance it will be only
the beginning of a worse trouble. If the working class wins this time
there will be no end to their demands. We might as well turn all our
properties over to them at once and be done with it. This strike in
Millsburgh is only a small part of the general industrial situation.
The entire business interests of the country are involved."

Again she waited a little before answering. Then she said, sadly, "How
strange! It is hard for me to realize, Jim, that the entire business
interests of this great nation are actually dependent upon the poor
little Maggie Whaleys."

"Helen!" he protested, "you make me out a heartless brute."

"No, Jim, I know you are not that. But when you insist that what I saw
to-night--that the suffering of these poor, helpless mothers and their
children is the only thing that will enable you employers to break this
strike and save the business of the country--it--it does seem a good
deal like the Germans' war policy of frightfulness that we all
condemned so bitterly, doesn't it?"

"These things are not matters of sentiment, Helen. Jake Vodell is not
conducting his campaign by the Golden Rule."

"I know, Jim, but I could not go to Jake Vodell as I have come to
you--could I? And I could not talk to the poor, foolish strikers who
are so terribly deceived by him. Don't you suppose, Jim, that most of
the strikers think they are right?"

The man stirred uneasily. "I can't help what they think. I can consider
only the facts as they are."

"That is just what I want, Jim," she cried. "Only it seems to me that
you are leaving out some of the most important facts. I can't help
believing that if our great captains of industry and kings of finance
and teachers of economics and labor leaders would consider _all_ the
facts they could find some way to settle these differences between
employers and employees and save the industries of the country without
starving little girls and boys and their mothers."

"If I could have my way the government would settle the difficulty in a
hurry," he said, grimly.

"You mean the soldiers?"

"Yes, the government should put enough troops from the regular army in
here to drive these men back to their jobs."

"But aren't these working people just as much a part of our government
as you employers? Forgive me, Jim, but your plan sounds to me too much
like the very imperialism that our soldiers fought against in France."

"Imperialism or not!" he retorted, "the business men of this country
will never submit to the dictatorship of Jake Vodell and his kind. It
would be chaos and utter ruin. Look what they are doing in other
countries."

"Of course it would," she agreed, "but the Interpreter says that if the
business men and employers and the better class of employees like Peter
Martin would get together as--as John and Charlie Martin are--that Jake
Vodell and his kind would be powerless."

He did not answer, and she continued, "As I understand brother and the
Interpreter, this man Vodell does not represent the unions at all--he
merely uses some of the unions, wherever he can, through such men as
Sam Whaley. Isn't that so, Jim?"

"Whether it is so or not, the result is the same," he answered. "If the
unions of the laboring classes permit themselves to be used as tools by
men like Jake Vodell they must take the consequences."

He rose to his feet as one who would end an unprofitable discussion.
"Come, Helen, it is useless for you to make yourself ill over these
questions. You are worn out now. Come, you really must let me take you
home."

"I suppose I must," she answered, wearily.

He went to her. "It is wonderful for you to do what you have done
to-night, and for you to come to me like this. Helen--won't you give me
my answer--won't you--?"

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