Book: Helen of the Old House

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




"Right!" said Charlie with a grin, "but may I be permitted to say
congratulations?"

"Congratulations your foot!" returned the new general manager. "It's
going to be one whale of a job, old man."

The last of the stragglers came near and Charlie Martin moved on, in
his turn, to the pay window.

When John arrived home in the late afternoon, his sister met him with
many joyful exclamations. "Is father in earnest? Are you really to take
his place, John?"

John laughed. "You would have thought he was in earnest if you had
heard him." Then he asked, soberly, "Where is father, Helen; is he all
right?"

"He has been shut up in his room all alone ever since he told us," she
returned, sadly. "I do hope he will be better now that he is to have
complete rest."

As if determined to permit no cloud to mar the joy of the occasion, she
continued, with eager interest, "Do tell me about it, brother. Were the
men in the office glad? Aren't you happy and proud? And how did the
workmen take it?"

"The people in the office were very nice," he answered, smiling back at
her. "Good old George looked a little like he wanted to laugh and cry
at the same time. The men in the plant don't know yet, except
Charlie--I told him."

A little shadow fell over Helen's happy face and she looked away. "I
suppose of course you would tell Charlie Martin the first thing," she
said, slowly. Then, throwing her arm suddenly about his neck, she
kissed him. "You are a dear, silly, sentimental old thing, but I am as
proud as I can be of you."

"As for that," returned John, "I guess it must run in the family
somehow. I notice little things now and then that make me think my
sister may not always be exactly a staid, matter-of-fact old lady owl."

When he had laughed at her blushes, and had teased her as a brother is
in duty bound, he said, seriously, "Will you tell me something, Helen?
Something that I want very much to know--straight from you."

"What is it, John?"

"Are you going to marry Jim McIver?"

"How do you know that he wants me?"

"Father told me to-day. Don't fence please, dear. Either tell me
straight out or tell me to mind my own business."

She replied with straightforward honesty, "Mr. McIver has asked me,
John, but I can't tell you what my answer will be. I don't know
myself."




CHAPTER X

CONCERNING THE NEW MANAGER


When the Mill whistle sounded at the close of that pay day, Mary was
sitting under the tree in the yard with her sewing basket--a gift from
the Interpreter--on the grass beside her chair. The sunlight lay warm
and bright on the garden where the ever industrious bees were filling
their golden bags with the sweet wealth of the old-fashioned flowers.
Bright-winged butterflies zigzagged here and there above the shrubbery
along the fence and over her head; in the leafy shadows of the trees
her bird friends were cheerfully busy with their small duties. Now and
then a passing neighbor paused to exchange a word or two of their
common interests. Presently workmen from the Mill went by--men of her
father's class who lived in that vicinity of well-kept cottage homes;
and each one called a greeting to the daughter of his friend.

And so, at last, Peter Martin himself and Captain Charlie turned in at
the little white gate and came to sit down on the grass at her feet.

"You are late to-day," said Mary, smiling. "I suppose you both have
forgotten that the vegetable garden is to be hoed this afternoon and
that you, Charlie, promised to beat the rugs for me."

Captain Charlie stretched himself lazily on the cool grass. "We should
worry about gardens and rugs and things," he returned. "This is the day
we celebrate."

The father laughed quietly at his daughter's look of puzzled inquiry.

"The day you celebrate?" said Mary. "Celebrate what?"

Charlie answered with a fair imitation of a soapbox orator, "This, my
beloved sister, is the day of our emancipation from the iron rule of
that cruel capitalist, who has for so many years crushed the lives of
his toiling slaves in his Mill of hell, and coined our heart's blood
into dollars to fill his selfish coffers of princely luxury. Down
through the ringing ages of the future this day will be forever
celebrated as the day that signals the dawning of a new era in the
industrial world of--uh-wow! Stop it!"

Captain Charlie was ticklish and the toe of Mary's slippered foot had
found a vital spot among his ribs.

"You sound like that Jake Vodell," she said. "Stop your nonsense this
minute and tell me what you mean or--" Her foot advanced again
threateningly.

Captain Charlie rolled over to a safe distance and sat up to grin at
her with teasing impudence.

"What's the matter with him, father?" she demanded.

But Pete only laughed and answered, "I guess maybe he thinks he's going
to get promoted to some higher-up position in the Mill."

"No such luck for me!" said Charlie quickly. "John will need me too
much right where I am."

A bright color swept into Mary's cheeks and her eyes shone with glad
excitement. "Do you mean that John--that his father has--" She looked
from her father's face to her brother and back to her father again.

Pete nodded silently.

"You've guessed it, sister," said Charlie. "Old Adam walked out for
good to-day, turned the whole works over to John--troubles, triumphs,
opportunities, disasters and all. And it's a man's sized job the boy
has drawn, believe me--especially right now, with Jake Vodell as busy
as he is."

"The men in the Mill were all pleased with the change, weren't they?"
asked Mary.

"They will be, when they hear of it," answered Captain Charlie, getting
to his feet. "That is," he added, as he met his father's look, "most of
them will be."

"There's some in the Mill that it won't make any difference to, I'm
afraid," said Peter Martin, soberly.

Then the two men went into the house to, as they said, "clean up"--an
operation that required a goodly supply of water with plenty of soap
and a no little physical effort in the way of vigorous rubbing.

When her father and brother were gone, Mary Martin sat very still. So
still was she that a butterfly paused in its zigzag flight about the
yard to rest on the edge of the work basket at her side. At last the
young woman rose slowly to her feet, dropping the sewing she had held
on the other things in the basket. The startled butterfly spread its
gorgeous wings and zigzagged away unnoticed. Crossing the little lawn,
Mary made her way among the flowers in the garden until she stood half
hidden in the tall bushes which grew along the fence that separated the
Martin home from the neglected grounds about the old house. When her
father and brother went to their pleasant task in the vegetable garden
she was still standing there, but the men did not notice.

* * * * *

Later, when Mary called the men to supper, the change in the management
of the Mill was again mentioned. And all during the evening meal it was
the topic of their conversation. It was natural that the older man
should recall the days when he and Adam and the Interpreter had worked
together.

"The men generally showed a different spirit toward their work in those
days," said the veteran. "They seemed to have a feeling of pride and a
love for it that I don't see much of now. Of late years, it looks as
though everybody hates his job and is ashamed of what he is doing. They
all seem to think of nothing but their pay, and busy their minds with
scheming how they can get the most and give the least. It's the regular
thing to work with one eye on the foreman and the other on the clock,
and to count it a great joke when a job is spoiled or a breakdown
causes trouble." All of which was a speech of unusual length for Pete
Martin. Captain Charlie asked, thoughtfully, "And don't you think,
father, that Adam looks on the work of the Mill in exactly that spirit
of 'get the most for the least' without regard to the meaning and
purpose of the work itself?"

"There's no reason to doubt it, son, that I can see," returned the old
workman.

"I have often wondered," said Charlie, "how much the attitude of the
employees toward their work is due to the attitude of their employers
toward that same work."

The old workman returned, heartily, "We'll be seeing a different
feeling in the Mill under John, I am thinkin'--he's different."

"I should say he is different," agreed Charlie, quickly. "John would
rather work at his job for nothing than do anything else for ten times
the salary he draws. But was Adam always as he is now?"

"About his work do you mean?"

"Yes."

Adam Ward's old comrade answered, slowly, "I've often wondered that
myself. I can't say for sure. As I look back now, I think sometimes
that he used to have an interest in the work itself at first. Takin'
his development of the new process and all--it almost seems that he
must have had. And yet, there's some things that make me think that all
the time it meant nothing to him but just what he could get out of it
for himself."

"Helen will be happy over the change, won't she?" remarked Mary.

"Helen!" ejaculated Captain Charlie, with more emphasis perhaps than
the occasion demanded.

"She won't give it so much as a thought. Why should she? She can go on
with her dinners and card parties and balls and country club affairs
with the silk-hatted slackers of her set, just the same as if nothing
had happened."

Mary laughed. "Seems to me I have heard something like that
before--'silk-hatted slackers'--it sounds familiar."

Captain Charlie watched her suspiciously.

The father laughed quietly.

"Oh, yes," she exclaimed, with an air of triumph. "It was Bobby Whaley
who said it. I remember thinking at the time that it probably came to
him from his father, who of course got it from Jake Vodell. Silk-hatted
slackers--sounds like Jake, doesn't it, father?"

Captain Charlie grinned sheepishly. "I know it was a rotten thing to
say," he admitted. "Some of the best and bravest men in our army were
silk-hatters at home. They were in the ranks, too, a lot of them--just
like John Ward. And some of the worst cowards and shirkers and slackers
that ever lived belonged to our ancient and noble order of the
horny-handed sons of toil, that Jake Vodell orates about. But what gets
me, is the way some of those fellows who were everything but slackers
in France act, now that they are back home. Over there they were on the
job with everything they had, to the last drop of their blood. But now
that they are back in their own home country again, they have simply
thrown up their hands and quit--that is, a lot of them have. They seem
to think that the signing of the Armistice ended it all and that they
can do nothing now for the rest of their lives. Who was it said, 'Peace
hath her victories,' or something like that? Well, peace hath her
defeats, too. I'll be hanged if I can understand how a man who has it
in him to be a one hundred per cent American hero in war can be a
Simon-pure slacker in times of peace."

As he finished, Captain Charlie pushed his chair back from the table
and, finding his pipe, proceeded to fill it with the grim determination
of an old-time minuteman ramming home a charge in his Bunker Hill
musket.

Later the two men went out to enjoy their pipes on the lawn in the cool
of the evening. They were discussing the industrial situation when
Mary, having finished her household work for the night, joined them.

"I forgot to tell you," she said, "that Jake Vodell called to-day."

"Again!" exclaimed Charlie.

"If Vodell wants to talk with us he'll have to come when we are at
home," said Pete Martin, slowly, looking at his daughter.

With a laugh, the young woman returned, "But I don't think that it was
you or Charlie that he wanted to see this time, father."

"What did he want?" demanded her brother quickly.

"He wanted me to go with him to a dance next Tuesday," she answered
demurely.

"Huh," came in a tone of disgust from Charlie.

The father asked, quietly, "And what did you say to him, Mary?"

"I told him that I went to dances only with my friends."

"Good!" said Captain Charlie.

"And what then?" asked Pete.

"Then," she hesitated, "then he said something about my being careful
that I had the right sort of friends and referred to Charlie and John."

"Yes?" said Mary's father.

"He said that the only use John Ward had for Charlie was to get a line
on the union and the plans of the men--that his friendship was only a
pretext in order that he might use Charlie as a sort of spy and that
the union men wouldn't stand for it."

Captain Charlie muttered something under his breath that he could not
speak aloud in the presence of his sister.

Pete Martin deliberately knocked the ashes from his pipe.

"Then," continued Mary, "he talked about how everybody knew that John
was nothing but a"--she laughed mockingly at her brother--"a
silk-hatted swell who couldn't hold his job an hour if it wasn't that
his father owned the Mill, and that Charlie was a hundred times more
competent to manage the business. He said that anybody could see how
Charlie's promotion in the army proved him superior to John, who was
never anything but a common private."

Captain Charlie laughed aloud. "John and I understand all about that
superiority business. I was lucky, that's all--our captain just
happened to be looking in my direction. Believe me, good old John was
just as busy as I ever dared to be, only it was his luck to be busy at
some other point that the captain didn't see."

"Is that all Jake had to say, daughter?"

"No," answered the young woman, slowly. "I--I am afraid I was angry at
what he called John--I mean at what he said about Charlie and John's
friendship--and so I told him what I thought about him and Sam Whaley
and their crowd, and asked him to go and not come back again except to
see you or Charlie."

"Good for you, Mary!" exclaimed her brother.

But the old workman said nothing.

"And how did Jake take his dismissal?" asked Charlie, presently.

"He went, of course," she answered. "But he said that he would show me
what the friendship of a man of John Ward's class meant to a working
man; that the union men would find out who the loyal members were and
when the time came they would know whom to reward and whom to treat as
traitors to the Cause."

For a little while after this the three sat in silence. At last Peter
Martin rose heavily to his feet. "Come, Charlie, it is time we were on
our way to the meeting; we mustn't be late, you know."

When her father and brother were gone to the meeting of the Mill
workers' union, Mary Martin locked the door of the cottage and walked
swiftly away.

It was not far to the Interpreter's hut, and presently the young woman
was climbing the old zigzag stairway to the little house on the edge of
the cliff above. There was no light but the light of the stars--the
faint breath of the night breeze scarcely stirred the leaves of the
bushes or moved the tall weeds that grew on the hillside. At the top of
the stairs Mary paused to look at the many lights of the Flats, the
Mill, the business houses, the streets and the homes, that shone in the
shadowy world below.

She was about to move toward the door of the hut when the sound of
voices coming from the balcony-porch halted her. The Interpreter was
speaking. She could not distinguish his words, but the deep tones of
the old basket maker's voice were not to be mistaken. Then the young
woman heard some one reply, and the laughing voice that answered the
Interpreter was as familiar to Mary Martin as the laugh of her own
brother. The evening visitor to the little hut on the cliff was the son
of Adam Ward.

Very softly Mary Martin stole back down the zigzag steps to the road
below. Slowly she went back through the deep shadows of the night to
her little home, with its garden of old-fashioned flowers, next door to
the deserted house where John Ward was born.

Late that night, while John was still at the Interpreter's hut, Adam
Ward crept alone like some hunted thing about the beautiful grounds of
his great estate. Like a haunted soul of wretchedness, the Mill owner
had left his bed to escape the horror of his dreams and to find, if
possible, a little rest from his torturing fears in the calm solitude
of the night.

* * * * *

When Pete Martin, with Captain Charlie and their many industrial
comrades, had returned to their homes after the meeting of their union,
five men gathered in that dirty, poorly lighted room in the rear of
Dago Bill's pool hall.

The five men had entered the place one at a time. They spoke together
in low, guarded tones of John Ward and his management of the Mill, of
Pete Martin and Captain Charlie, of the Interpreter and McIver.

And three of those five men had come to that secret place at Jake
Vodell's call, directly from the meeting of the Mill workers' union.




CHAPTER XI

COMRADES


Mary was in the flower garden that Sunday forenoon when John Ward
stopped his big roadster in front of the Martin cottage.

It was not at all unusual for the one-time private, John, to call that
way for his former superior officer. Nearly every Sunday when the
weather was fine the comrades would go for a long ride in John's car
somewhere into the country. And always they carried a lunch prepared by
Captain Charlie's sister.

Sometimes there might have been a touch of envy in Mary's generous
heart, as she watched the automobile with her brother and his friend
glide away up the green arched street. After all, Mary was young and
loved the country, and John Ward's roadster was a wonderful machine,
and the boy who had lived in the old house next door had been, in her
girlhood days, a most delightful comrade and playfellow.

The young woman could no more remember her first meeting with John or
his sister Helen than she could recall the exact beginning of her
acquaintance with Charlie. From her cradle days she had known the
neighbor children as well as she had known her own brother. Then the
inevitable separation of the playmates had come with Adam Ward's
increasing material prosperity. The school and college days of John and
Helen and the removal of the family from the old house to the new home
on the hill had brought to them new friends and new interests--friends
and interests that knew nothing of Pete Martin's son and daughter. But
in Mary's heart, because it was a woman's heart, the memories of the
old house lived. The old house itself, indeed, served to keep those
memories alive.

John did not see her at first, but called a cheery greeting to her
father, who with his pipe and paper was sitting under the tree on the
lawn side of the walk.

Mary drew a little back among the flowers and quietly went on with her
work.

"Is Charlie here, Uncle Pete?" asked John, as he came through the gate.

"He's in the house, I think, John, or out in the back yard, maybe,"
answered the old workman. And, then, in his quiet kindly way, Peter
Martin spoke a few words to Adam Ward's son about the change in the
management of the Mill--wishing John success, expressing his own
gratification and confidence, and assuring him of the hearty good will
that prevailed, generally, among the employees.

Presently, as the two men talked together, Mary went to express her
pleasure in the promotion of her old playmate to a position of such
responsibility and honor in the industrial world. And John Ward, when
he saw her coming toward him with an armful of flowers, must at least
have noticed the charming picture she made against that background of
the garden, with its bright-colored blossoms in the flood of morning
sunlight.

Certainly the days of their childhood companionship must have stirred
in his memory, for he said, presently, "Do you know, Mary, you make me
think of mother and the way she used to go among her flowers every
Sunday morning when we lived in the old house there." He looked
thoughtfully toward the neighboring place.

"How is your mother these days, John?" asked Mary's father.

"She is well, thank you, Uncle Pete," returned John. "Except of
course," he added, soberly, "she worries a good deal about father's ill
health."

"Your father will surely be much better, now that he is relieved from
all his business care," said Mary.

"We are all hoping so," returned John.

There was an awkward moment of silence.

As if the mention of his father's condition had in some way suggested
the thought, or, perhaps, because he wished to change the subject, John
said, "The old house looks pretty bad, doesn't it? It is a shame that
we have permitted it to go to ruin that way."

Neither Peter Martin nor his daughter made reply to this. There was
really nothing they could say.

John was about to speak again when Captain Charlie, coming from the
house with their lunch basket in his hand, announced that he was ready,
and the two men started on their way.

Standing at the gate, Mary waved good-by as her brother turned to look
back. Even when the automobile had finally passed from sight she stood
there, still looking in the direction it had gone.

Peter Martin watched his daughter thoughtfully.

Without speaking, Mary went slowly into the house.

Her father sat for some minutes looking toward the door through which
she had passed. At last with deliberate care he refilled his pipe. But
the old workman did not, for an hour or more, resume the reading of his
Sunday morning paper.


Beyond a few casual words, the two friends in the automobile seemed
occupied, each with his own thoughts. Neither asked, "Where shall we
go?" or offered any suggestion for the day's outing. As if it were
understood between them, John turned toward the hill country and sent
the powerful machine up the long, winding grade, as if on a very
definite mission. An hour's driving along the ridges and the hillsides,
and they turned from the main thoroughfare into a narrow lane between
two thinly wooded pastures. A mile of this seldom traveled road and
John stopped his car beside the way. Here they left the automobile,
and, taking the lunch basket, climbed the fence and made their way up
the steep side of the hill to a clump of trees that overlooked the many
miles of winding river and broad valley and shaded hills. The place was
a favorite spot to which they often came for those hours of comradeship
that are so necessary to all well-grounded and enduring friendships.

"Well, _Mister_ Ward," said Captain Charlie, when they were comfortably
seated and their pipes were going well, "how does it feel to be one of
the cruel capitalist class a-grindin' the faces off us poor?"

The workman spoke lightly, but there was something in his voice that
made John look at him sharply. It was a little as though Captain
Charlie were nerving himself to say good-by to his old comrade.

The new general manager smiled, but it was a rather serious smile. "Do
you remember how you felt when you received your captain's commission?"
he asked.

"I do that," returned Charlie. "I felt that I had been handed a mighty
big job and was scared stiff for fear I wouldn't be able to make good
at it."

"Exactly," returned John. "And I'll never forget how _I_ felt when they
stepped you up the first time and left me out. And when you had climbed
on up and Captain Wheeler was killed and you received your commission,
with me still stuck in the ranks--well--I never told you before but
I'll say now that I was the lonesomest, grouchiest, sorest man in the
whole A.E.F. It seemed to me about then that being a private was the
meanest, lowest, most no-account job on earth, and I was darned near
deserting and letting the Germans win the war and be hanged. I thought
it would serve the Allies right if I was to let 'em get licked good and
plenty just for failing to appreciate me."

Captain Charlie laughed.

"Oh, yes, you can laugh," said the new general manager of the Mill.
"It's darned funny _now_, but I can tell you that there wasn't much
humor in it for me _then_. We had lived too close together from that
first moment when we found ourselves in the same company for me to feel
comfortable as a common buck private, watchin' you strut around in the
gentleman officer class, and not daring even to tell you to go to--"

"You poor old fool," said Charlie, affectionately. "You knew my
promotion was all an accident."

"Exactly," returned John dryly. "We've settled all that a hundred
times."

"And you ought to have known," continued Captain Charlie, warmly, "that
my feeling toward you would have been no different if they had made me
a general."

"Sure, I ought to have known," retorted John, with an air of triumph.

And then it appeared that John Ward had a very definite purpose in thus
turning his comrade's mind to their army life in France. "And you
should have sense enough to understand that my promotion in the Mill is
not going to make any difference in our friendship. Your promotion was
the result of an accident, Charlie, exactly as my position in the Mill
to-day is the result of an accident. Your superior officer happened to
see you. I happen to be the son of Adam Ward. If I should have known
_then_ that your rank would make no difference in your feeling toward
me, you have got to understand _now_ that my position can make no
difference in my feeling toward you."

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