Book: Helen of the Old House

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




Those old-house days had been joyous and carefree. Her school years,
too, had been filled with delightful and satisfying activities. After
her graduation she had been content with the gayeties and triumphs of
the life to which she had been arbitrarily removed by her father and
the new process, and for which she had been educated. She had felt the
need of nothing more. Then came the war, and, in her brother's
enlistment and in her work with the various departments of the women
forces at home, she had felt herself a part of the great world
movement. But now when the victorious soldiers--brothers and
sweethearts and husbands and friends--had returned, and the days of
excited rejoicing were past, life had suddenly presented to her a
different front. It would have been hard to find in all Millsburgh, not
excepting the most wretched home in the Flats, a more unhappy and
discontented person than this young woman who was so unanimously held
to have everything in the world that any one could possibly desire.

Slowly she turned to climb the zigzag stairway to the Interpreter's
hut.




CHAPTER III

THE INTERPRETER


The young woman announced her presence at the open door of the hut by
calling, "Are you there?"

The deep voice of the Interpreter answered, "Helen! Here I am,
child--on the porch. Come!" As she passed swiftly through the house and
appeared in the porch doorway, he added, "This is a happy surprise,
indeed. I thought you were not expected home for another month. It
seems ages since you went away."

She tried bravely to smile in response to the gladness in her old
friend's greeting. "I had planned to stay another month," she said,
"but I--" She paused as if for some reason she found it hard to explain
why she had returned to Millsburgh so long before the end of the summer
season. Then she continued slowly, as if remembering that she must
guard her words, "Brother wrote me that they were expecting serious
labor troubles, and with father as he is--" Her voice broke and she
finished lamely, "Mother is _so_ worried and unhappy. I--I felt that I
really ought not to be away."

She turned quickly and went to stand at the porch railing, where she
watched the cloud of dust that marked the progress of Bobby and Maggie
through the Flats.

"I can't understand father's condition at all," she said, presently,
without looking at the Interpreter. "He is so--so--" Again she paused
as if she could not find courage to speak the thought that so disturbed
her mind.

From his wheel chair the Interpreter silently watched the young woman
who was so envied by the people. And because the white-haired old
basket maker knew many things that were hidden from the multitude, his
eyes were as the eyes of the Master when He looked upon the rich young
ruler whom He loved.

Then, as if returning to a thought that had been interrupted by the
unwelcome intrusion of a forbidden subject, Helen said, "I can't
understand how you tolerate such dirty, rude and vicious little animals
as those two children."

The Interpreter smiled understandingly at the back of her very becoming
and very correctly fashioned hat. "You met my little friends, did you?"

"I did," she answered, with decided emphasis, "at the foot of your
stairs, and I was forced to listen to the young ruffian's very frank
opinion of me and of all that he is taught to believe I represent. I
wonder _you_ did not hear. But I suppose you can guess what he would
say."

"Yes," said the man in the wheel chair, gently, "I can guess Bobby's
opinion of you, quite as accurately as Bobby guesses your opinion of
him."

At that she turned on him with a short laugh that was rather more
bitter than mirthful. "Well, the little villain is guessing another
guess just now. I sent Tom to take them for a ride in the car."

"And why did you do that?"

She waited a little before she answered. "I don't know exactly. Perhaps
it was your Helen of the old house that did it. She may have been a
little ashamed of me and wanted to make it up to them. I am afraid I
really wasn't very kind at first."

"I see," said the Interpreter, gravely.

"There might possibly have been the shade of another reason," she
continued, after a moment, and there was a hint of bitterness in her
voice now.

"Yes?"

"Yes, it is conceivable, perhaps, that, in spite of the prevailing
opinions of such people, even _I_ might have felt a wee bit sorry for
the poor kiddies--especially for the girl. She is such a tiny,
tired-looking mite."

The old basket maker was smiling now, as he said, "I have known for a
long time that there were _two_ Helens. Little Maggie, it seems, has
found still another."

"How interesting!"

"Yes, Maggie has discovered, somehow, that you are really a beautiful
princess, living on most intimate terms with the fairies. She will
think so more than ever now."

The young woman laughed at this. "And the boy--what do you suppose _he_
will think after his ride with Tom in the limousine?"

The Interpreter shook his head doubtfully. "Bobby will probably reserve
his judgment for a while, on the possible chance of another ride in
your car."

"Tell me about them," said Helen.

"Are you really interested?"

She flushed a little as she answered, "I am at least curious."

"Why?"

"Perhaps because of your interest in them," she retorted. "Who are
they?"

The Interpreter did not answer for a moment; then, with his dark eyes
fixed on the heavy cloud of smoke that hung above the Mill and
overshadowed the Flats, he said, slowly, "They are Sam Whaley's
children. Their father works--when he works--in your father's Mill. I
knew both Sam and his wife before they were married. She was a bright
girl, with fine instincts for the best things of life and a capacity
for great happiness. Sam was a good worker in those days, and their
marriage promised well. Then he became interested in the wrong sort of
what is called socialism, and began to associate with a certain element
that does not value homes and children very highly. The man is honest,
and fairly capable, up to a certain point; but there never was much
capacity there for clear thinking. He is one of those who always follow
the leader who yells the loudest and he mistakes vituperation for
argument. He is strong on loyalty to class, but is not so particular as
he might be when it comes to choosing his class. And so, for several
years now, in every little difference between the workmen and the
management, Sam has been too ready to quit his job and let his wife and
children go hungry for the good of the cause, while he vociferates
loudly against the cruelty of all who refuse to offer their families as
sacrifice on the altar of his particular and impracticable ideas."

"And his wife--the mother of his children--the girl with fine instincts
for the best things and a capacity for great happiness--what of her?"
demanded Helen.

The Interpreter pointed toward the Flats. "She lives down there," he
said, sadly. "You have seen her children."

The young woman turned again to the porch railing and looked down on
the wretched dwellings of the Flats below.

"It is strange," she said, presently, as if speaking to herself, "but
that poor woman makes me think of mother. Mother is like that, isn't
she? I mean," she added, quickly, "in her instincts and in her capacity
for happiness."

"Yes," agreed the Interpreter, "your mother is like that."

She faced him once more, to say thoughtfully, but with decisive warmth,
"It is a shame the way such children--I mean the children of such
people as this man Whaley--are being educated in lawlessness. Those
youngsters are nothing less than juvenile anarchists. They will grow up
a menace to our government, to society, to our homes, and to everything
that is decent and right. They are taught to hate work. And they fairly
revel in their hatred of every one and every thing that is not of their
own miserable class."

There was a note of gentle authority in the Interpreter's deep voice,
and in his dark eyes there was a look of patient sorrow, as he replied,
"Yes, Helen, all that you say of our Bobbies and Maggies is true. But
have you ever considered whether it might not be equally true of the
children of wealth?"

"Is the possession of what we call wealth a crime?" the young woman
asked, bitterly. "Is poverty _always_ such a virtue?"

The Interpreter answered, "I mean, child, that wealth which comes
unearned from the industries of life--that wealth for which no service
is rendered--for which no equivalent in human strength, mental or
physical, is returned. Are not the children of such conditions being
educated in lawlessness when the influence of their money so often
permits them to break our laws with impunity? Are they not a menace to
our government when they coerce and bribe our public servants to enact
laws and enforce measures that are for the advantage of a few favored
ones and against the welfare of our people as a whole? Are they not a
menace to society when they would limit the meaning of the very word to
their own select circles and cliques? Are they not a menace to our
homes by the standards of morals that too often govern their daily
living? For that hatred of class taught the Bobbies and Maggies of the
Flats, Helen, these other children are taught an intolerance and
contempt for everything that is not of their class--an intolerance and
contempt that breed class hatred as surely as blow flies breed
maggots."

For some time the silence was broken only by the dull, droning voice of
the Mill. They listened as they would have listened to the first low
moaning of the wind that might rise later into a destructive storm.

The Interpreter spoke again. "Helen, this nation cannot tolerate one
standard of citizenship for one class and a totally different standard
for another. Whatever is right for the children of the hill, yonder, is
right for the children of the Flats, down there."

Helen asked, abruptly, "Is there any truth in all this talk about
coming trouble with the labor unions?"

The man in the wheel chair did not answer immediately. Then he replied,
gravely, with another question, "And who is it that says there is going
to be trouble again, Helen?"

"John says everybody is expecting it. And Mr. McIver is so sure that he
is already preparing for it at his factory. _He_ says it will be the
worst industrial war that Millsburgh has ever experienced--that it must
be a fight to the finish this time--that nothing but starvation will
bring the working classes to their senses."

"Yes," agreed the Interpreter, thoughtfully, "McIver would say just
that. And many of our labor agitators would declare, in exactly the
same spirit, that nothing but the final and absolute downfall of the
employer class can ever end the struggle. I wonder what little Bobby
and Maggie Whaley and their mother would say if they could have their
way about it, Helen?"

Helen Ward's face flushed as she said in a low, deliberate voice,
"Father agrees with Mr. McIver--you know how bitter he is against the
unions?"

"Yes, I know."

"But John says that Mr. McIver, with his talk of force and of starving
helpless women and children, is as bad as this man Jake Vodell who has
come to Millsburgh to organize a strike. It is really brother's
attitude toward the workmen and their unions and his disagreement with
Mr. McIver's views that make father as--as he is."

The Interpreter's voice was gentle as he asked, "Your father is not
worse, is he, Helen? I have heard nothing."

"Oh, no," she returned, quickly. "That is--"

She hesitated, then continued, with careful exactness, "For a time he
even seemed much better. When I went away he was really almost like his
old self. But this labor situation and John's not seeing things exactly
as he does worries him. The doctors all agree, you know, that father
must give up everything in the nature of business and have absolute
mental rest; but he insists that in the face of this expected trouble
with the workmen he dares not trust the management of the Mill wholly
to John, because of what he calls brother's wild and impracticable
ideas. Everybody knows how father has given his life to building up the
Mill. And now, he--he--It is terrible the way he is about things. Poor
mother is almost beside herself." The young woman's eyes filled and her
lips trembled.

The man in the wheel chair turned to the unfinished basket on the table
beside him and handled his work aimlessly, as if in sorrow that he had
no word of comfort for her.

When Adam Ward's daughter spoke again there was a curious note of
defiance in her voice, but her eyes, when the Interpreter turned to
look at her, were fixed upon her old friend with an expression of
painful anxiety and fear. "Of course his condition is all due to his
years of hard work and to the mental and nervous strain of his
business. It--it couldn't be anything else, could it?"

The Interpreter, who seemed to be watching the intricate and constantly
changing forms that the columns of smoke from the tall stacks were
shaping, apparently did not hear.

"Don't--don't you think it is all because of his worry over the Mill?"

"Yes, Helen," the Interpreter answered, at last, "I am sure your
father's trouble all comes from the Mill."

For a while she did not speak, but sat looking wistfully toward the
clump of trees that shaded her birthplace and the white cottage where
Peter Martin lived with Charlie and Mary.

Then she said, musingly, "How happy we all were in the old house, when
father worked in the Mill with you and Uncle Pete, and you used to come
for Sunday dinner with us. Do you know, sometimes"--she hesitated as if
making a confession of which she was a little ashamed--"sometimes--that
is, since brother came home from France, I--I almost hate it. I think I
feel just as mother does, only neither of us dares admit it--scarcely
even to ourselves."

"You almost hate what, Helen?"

"Oh, everything--the way we live, the people we know, the stupid things
I am expected to do. It all seems so useless--so futile--so--so--such a
waste of time."

The Interpreter was studying her with kindly interest.

"I never felt this way before brother went away. And during the war
everybody was so much excited and interested, helping in every way he
or she could. But now--now that it is over and John is safely home
again, I can't seem to get back into the old ways at all. Life seems to
have flattened out into a dull, monotonous round of nothing that really
matters."

The Interpreter spoke, thoughtfully, "Many people, I find, feel that
way these days, Helen."

"As for brother," she continued, "he is so changed that I simply can't
understand him at all. He is like a different man--just grinds away in
that dirty old Mill day after day, as if he were nothing more than a
common laborer who had to work or starve. In fact," she finished with
an air of triumph, "that is exactly what he says he is--simply a
laborer like--like Charlie Martin and the rest of them."

The Interpreter smiled.

"It was all very well for John and Charlie Martin to be buddies, as
they call it, during the war," she went on. "It was different over
there in France. But now that it is all over and they are home again,
and Captain Martin has gone back to his old work in the Mill where John
has practically become the manager, there is no sense in brother's
keeping up the intimacy. Really I don't wonder that father is worried
almost to death over it all. I suppose the next thing John will be
chumming with this Jake Vodell himself."

"I don't suppose you see much of your old friends the Martins these
days, do you, Helen?" said the old basket maker, reflectively.

She retorted quickly with an air, "Certainly not."

"But I remember, in the old-house days, before you went away to school,
you and Charlie Martin were--"

She interrupted him with "I was a silly child. I suppose every girl at
about that age has to have her foolish little romance."

And the Interpreter saw that her cheeks were crimson.

"A young girl's first love is not in the least silly or foolish, my
dear," he said.

She made an effort to speak lightly. "Well, fortunately, mine did not
last long."

"I know," he returned, "but I thought perhaps because of the friendship
between John and the Captain--"

"I could scarcely see much of one of the common workmen in my father's
mill, could I?" she asked, warmly. "I must admit, though," she added,
with an odd note in her voice, "that I admire his good sense in never
accepting John's invitations to the house."

And then, suddenly, to the consternation of her companion, her eyes
filled with tears.

The Interpreter looked away toward the beautiful country beyond the
squalid Plats, the busy city, the smoke-clouded Mill.

There was a sound of some one knocking at the front door of the hut.
Through the living room Helen saw her chauffeur.

"Yes, Tom," she called, "I am coming."

To the Interpreter she said, hurriedly, "I have really stayed longer
than I should. I promised mother that I would be home early. She is so
worried about father, I do not like to leave her, but I felt that I
must see you. I--I haven't said at all the things I--wanted to say.
Father--" She looked at the man in the wheel chair appealingly, as she
hesitated again with the manner of one who feels compelled to speak,
yet fears to betray a secret. "You feel sure, don't you, that father's
condition is nothing more than the natural result of his nervous
breakdown and his worry over business?"

The Interpreter thought how like the look in her eyes was to the look
in the eyes of timid little Maggie. And again he waited, before
answering, "Yes, Helen, I am sure that your father's trouble is all
caused by the Mill. Is there anything that I can do, child?"

"There is nothing that any one can do, I fear," she returned, with a
little gesture of hopelessness. Then, avoiding the grave, kindly eyes
of the old basket maker, she forced herself to say, in a tone that was
little more than a whisper, "I sometimes think--at tines I am almost
compelled to believe that there _is_ something more--something that
we--that no one knows about." With sudden desperate earnestness she
went on with nervous haste as if she feared her momentary courage would
fail. "I can't explain--but it is as if he were hiding something and
dreaded every moment that it would be discovered. He is so--so afraid.
Can it be possible that there is something that we do not know--some
hidden thing?" And then, before the Interpreter could speak, she
exclaimed, with a forced laugh of embarrassment, "How silly of me to
talk like this--you will think that I am going insane."


When he was alone, the Interpreter turned again to his basket making.
"Yes, Billy," he said aloud as his deaf and dumb companion appeared in
the doorway a few minutes later, "yes, Billy, she will find her jewel
of happiness. But it will not be easy, Billy--it will not be easy."

To which, of course, Billy made no reply. And that--the Interpreter
always maintained--was one of the traits that made his companion such a
delightful conversationalist. He invariably found your pet arguments
and theories unanswerable, and accepted your every assertion without
question.


Helen Ward could not feel that her father's condition--much as it
alarmed and distressed her--was, in itself, the reason of her own
unrest and discontent. She felt, rather, in a vague, instinctive way,
that the source of her parent's trouble was somehow identical with the
cause of her own unhappiness. But what was it that caused her father's
affliction and her own dissatisfied and restless mental state? The
young woman questioned herself in vain.

Pausing at one of the turns in the stairway, she stood for some time
looking at the life that lay before her, as though wondering if the
answer to her questions might not be found somewhere in that familiar
scene.

But the Mill, with its smoking stacks and the steady song of its
industry, had no meaning for her. The dingy, dust-veiled Flats spoke a
language that she was not schooled to understand. The farms of the
valley beyond the river, so beautiful in their productiveness, were as
meaningless to her as the life on some unknown planet. To her the busy
city with its varied interests was without significance. The many homes
on the hillside held, for her, nothing. And yet as she looked she was
possessed of a curious feeling that everything in that world before her
eyes was occupied with some definite purpose--was living to some fixed
end--was a part of life--belonged to life. Below her, on the road at
the foot of the cliffs, an old negro with an ancient skeleton of a
horse and a shaky wreck of a wagon was making slow progress toward the
Flats. To Helen, even this poor creature was going somewhere--to some
definite place--on some definite mission. She felt strangely alone.

In those years of the war Adam Ward's daughter, like many thousands of
her class, had been inevitably forced into a closer touch with life
than she had ever known before. She had felt, as never before, the
great oneness of humanity. She had sensed a little the thrilling power
of a great human purpose. Now it was as though life ignored her, passed
her by. She felt left out, overlooked, forgotten.

Slowly she went on down the zigzag stairway to her waiting automobile.

As she entered her car, the chauffeur looked at her curiously. When she
gave him no instructions, he asked, quietly, "Home, Miss?"

She started. "Yes, Tom."

The man was in his place at the wheel when she added, "Did those
children enjoy their ride, Tom?"

"That they did, Miss--it was the treat of their lives."

Little Maggie's princess lady smiled wistfully--almost as Maggie
herself might have smiled.

As the car was moving slowly away from the foot of the old stairway,
she spoke again. "Tom!"

"Yes, Miss."

"You may drive around by the old house, please."




CHAPTER IV

PETER MARTIN AT HOME


Peter Martin, with his children, Charlie and Mary, lived in the oldest
part of Millsburgh, where the quiet streets are arched with great trees
and the modest houses, if they seem to lack in modern smartness, more
than make good the loss by their air of homelike comfort. The Martin
cottage was built in the days before the success of Adam Ward and his
new process had brought to Millsburgh the two extremes of the Flats and
the hillside estates. The little home was equally removed from the
wretched dwellings of Sam Whaley and his neighbors, on the one hand,
and from the imposing residences of Adam Ward and his circle, on the
other.

The house--painted white, with old-fashioned green shutters--is only a
story and a half, with a low wing on the east, and a bit of porch in
front, with wooden seats on either side the door. The porch step is a
large uncut stone that nature shaped to the purpose, and the walk that
connects the entrance with the front gate is of the same untooled flat
rock. On the right of the walk, as one enters, a space of green lawn, a
great tree, and rustic chairs invite one to rest in the shade; while on
the left, the yard is filled with old-fashioned flowers, and a row of
flowering shrubs and bushes extends the full width of the lot along the
picket fence which parallels the board walk of the tree-bordered
street. The fence, like the house, is painted white.

The other homes in the neighborhood are of the same modest, well kept
type.

The only thing that marred the quiet domestic beauty of the scene at
the time of this story was the place where Adam Ward had lived with his
little family before material prosperity removed them to their estate
on the hill. Joining the Martin home on the east, the old house,
unpainted, with broken shutters, shattered windows, and sagging porch,
in its setting of neglected, weed-grown yard and tumble-down fences,
was pathetic in its contrast.

Since the death of her mother, Mary Martin had been the housekeeper for
her father and her brother. She was a wholesome, clear-visioned girl,
with an attractive face that glowed with the good color of health and
happiness. And if at times, when the Ward automobile passed, there was
a shadow of wistfulness in Mary's eyes, it did not mar for long the
expression of her habitually contented and cheerful spirit. She worked
at her household tasks with a song, entered into the pleasures of her
friends and neighbors with hearty delight, and was known, as well, to
many poverty-stricken homes in the Flats in times of need.

More than one young workman in the Mill had wanted Pete Martin's girl
to help him realize his dreams of home building. But Mary had always
answered "No."

Mary's brother Charlie was a strong-shouldered, athletic workman, with
a fine, clean countenance and the bearing of his military experience.

At supper, that evening, the young woman remarked casually, "Helen Ward
went by this afternoon. I was working in the roses. I thought for a
moment she was going to stop--at the old house, I mean."

Captain Charlie's level gaze met his sister's look. "Did she see you?"

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