Helen of the Old House
by
Harold Bell Wright
Part 1 out of 6
Produced by Brendan Lane, Josephine Paolucci
and PG Distributed Proofreaders
HELEN OF THE OLD HOUSE
BY HAROLD BELL WRIGHT
1921
CONTENTS
BOOK ONE
THE INTERPRETER
CHAPTER
I. THE HUT ON THE CLIFF
II. LITTLE MAGGIE'S PRINCESS LADY
III. THE INTERPRETER
IV. PETER MARTIN AT HOME
V. ADAM WARD'S ESTATE
VI. ON THE OLD ROAD
VII. THE HIDDEN THING
VIII. WHILE THE PEOPLE SLEEP
IX. THE MILL
X. CONCERNING THE NEW MANAGER
XI. COMRADES
XII. TWO SIDES OF A QUESTION
BOOK TWO
THE TWO HELENS
XIII. THE AWAKENING
XIV. THE WAY BACK
XV. AT THE OLD HOUSE
XVI. HER OWN PEOPLE
XVII. IN THE NIGHT
BOOK THREE
THE STRIKE
XVIII. THE GATHERING STORM
XIX. ADAM WARD'S WORK
XX. THE PEOPLE'S AMERICA
XXI. PETER MARTIN'S PROBLEM
XXII. OLD FRIENDS
XXIII. A LAST CHANCE
XXIV. THE FLATS
XXV. McIVER's OPPORTUNITY
XXVI. AT THE CALL OF THE WHISTLE
XXVII. JAKE VODELL'S MISTAKE
XXVIII. THE MOB AND THE MILL
XXIX. CONTRACTS
BOOK FOUR
THE OLD HOUSE
XXX. "JEST LIKE THE INTERPRETER SAID"
BOOK I
THE INTERPRETER
"_Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields_."
CHAPTER I
THE HUT ON THE CLIFF
No well informed resident of Millsburgh, when referring to the
principal industry of his little manufacturing city, ever says "the
mills"--it is always "the Mill."
The reason for this common habit of mind is that one mill so
overshadows all others, and so dominates the industrial and civic life
of this community, that in the people's thought it stands for all.
The philosopher who keeps the cigar stand on the corner of Congress
Street and Ward Avenue explained it very clearly when he answered an
inquiring stranger, "You just can't think Millsburgh without thinkin'
mills; an' you can't think mills without thinkin' _the_ Mill."
As he turned from the cash register to throw his customer's change on
the scratched top of the glass show case, the philosopher added with a
grin that was a curious blend of admiration, contempt and envy, "An'
you just can't think the Mill without thinkin' Adam Ward."
That grin was another distinguishing mark of the well informed resident
of Millsburgh. Always, in those days, when the citizens mentioned the
owner of the Mill, their faces took on that curious half-laughing
expression of mingled admiration, contempt and envy.
But it has come to pass that in these days when the people speak of
Adam Ward they do not smile. When they speak of Adam Ward's daughter,
Helen, they smile, indeed, but with quite a different meaning.
The history of Millsburgh is not essentially different from that of a
thousand other cities of its class.
Born of the natural resources of the hills and forests, the first rude
mill was located on that wide sweeping bend of the river. About this
industrial beginning a settlement gathered. As the farm lands of the
valley were developed, the railroad came, bringing more mills. And so
the town grew up around its smoky heart.
It was in those earlier days that Adam Ward, a workman then, patented
and introduced the new process. It was the new process, together with
its owner's native genius for "getting on," that, in time, made Adam
the owner of the Mill. And, finally, it was this combination of Adam
and the new process that gave this one mill dominion over all others.
As the Mill increased in size, importance and power, and the town grew
into the city, Adam Ward's material possessions were multiplied many
times.
Then came the year of this story.
It was midsummer. The green, wooded hills that form the southern
boundary of the valley seemed to be painted on shimmering gauze. The
grainfields on the lowlands across the river were shining gold. But the
slate-colored dust from the unpaved streets of that section of
Millsburgh known locally as the "Flats" covered the wretched houses,
the dilapidated fences, the hovels and shanties, and everything animate
or inanimate with a thick coating of dingy gray powder. Shut in as it
is between a long curving line of cliffs on the south and a row of tall
buildings on the river bank, the place was untouched by the refreshing
breeze that stirred the trees on the hillside above. The hot,
dust-filled atmosphere was vibrant with the dull, droning voice of the
Mill. From the forest of tall stacks the smoke went up in slow,
twisting columns to stain the clean blue sky with a heavy cloud of
dirty brown.
The deep-toned whistle of the Mill had barely called the workmen from
their dinner pails and baskets when two children came along the road
that for some distance follows close to the base of that high wall of
cliffs. By their ragged, nondescript clothing which, to say the least,
was scant enough to afford them comfort and freedom of limb, and by the
dirt, that covered them from the crowns of their bare, unkempt heads to
the bottoms of their bare, unwashed feet, it was easy to identify the
children as belonging to that untidy community.
One was a sturdy boy of eight or nine neglected years. On his rather
heavy, freckled face and in his sharp blue eyes there was, already, a
look of hardness that is not good to see in the countenance of a child.
The other, his sister, was two years younger--a thin wisp of a girl,
with tiny stooping shoulders, as though, even in her babyhood, she had
found a burden too heavy. With her tired little face and grave,
questioning eyes she looked at the world as if she were wondering,
wistfully, why it should bother to be so unkind to such a helpless mite
of humanity.
As they came down the worn road, side by side they chose with
experienced care those wheel ruts where the black dust lay thickest
and, in solemn earnestness, plowed the hot tracks with their bare feet,
as if their one mission in life were to add the largest possible cloud
of powdered dirt to the already murky atmosphere of the vicinity.
Suddenly they stood still.
For a long, silent moment they gazed at a rickety old wooden stairway
that, at this point in the unbroken line of cliffs, climbs zigzag up
the face of the rock-buttressed wall. Then, as if moved by a common
impulse, they faced each other. The quick fire of adventure kindled in
the eyes of the boy as he met the girl's look of understanding.
"Let's go up--stump yer," he said, with a daredevil grin.
"Huh, yer wouldn't dast."
Womanlike, she was hoping that he would "dast" and, with the true
instinct of her sex, she chose unerringly the one way to bring about
the realization of her hope.
Her companion met the challenge like a man. With a swaggering show of
courage, he went to the stairway and climbed boldly up--six full steps.
Then he paused and looked down, "I don't dast, don't I?"
From the lower step she spurred his faltering spirit, "Dare yer--dare
yer--dare yer."
He came reluctantly down two steps, "Will yer go up if I do?"
She nodded, "Uh-huh--but yer gotter go first."
He looked doubtfully up at the edge of the cliff so far above them.
"Shucks," he said, with conviction, "ain't nobody up there 'cept old
Interpreter, an' that dummy, Billy Rand. I know 'cause Skinny Davis an'
Chuck Wilson, they told me. They was up--old Interpreter, he can't do
nothin' to nobody--he ain't got no legs."
Gravely she considered with him the possible dangers of the proposed
adventure. "Billy Rand has got legs."
"He can't hear nothin', though--can't talk neither," said the leader of
the expedition. "An' besides maybe he ain't there--we might catch him
out. What d'yer say? Will we chance it?"
She looked up doubtfully toward the unknown land above. "I dunno, will
we?"
"Skinny an' Chuck, they said the Interpreter give 'em cookies--an' told
'em stories too."
"Cookies, Gee! Go ahead--I'm a-comin'."
That tiny house high on the cliff at the head of the old, zigzag
stairway, up which the children now climbed with many doubtful stops
and questioning fears, is a landmark of interest not only to Millsburgh
but to the country people for miles around.
Perched on the perilous brink of that curving wall of rocks, with its
low, irregular, patched and weather-beaten roof, and its rough-boarded
and storm-beaten walls half hidden in a tangle of vines and bushes, the
little hut looks, from a distance, as though it might once have been
the strange habitation of some gigantic winged creature of prehistoric
ages. The place may be reached from a seldom-used road that leads along
the steep hillside, a quarter of a mile back from the edge of the
precipice, but the principal connecting link between the queer
habitation and the world is that flight of rickety wooden steps.
Taking advantage of an irregularity in the line of cliffs, the upper
landing of the stairway is placed at the side of the hut. In the rear,
a small garden is protected from the uncultivated life of the hillside
by a fence of close-set pickets. Across the front of the curious
structure, well out on the projecting point of rocks, and reached only
through the interior, a wide, strongly railed porch overhangs the sheer
wall like a balcony.
With fast-beating hearts, the two small adventurers gained the top of
the stairway. Cautiously they looked about--listening, conferring in
whispers, ready for instant, headlong retreat.
The tall grasses and flowering weeds on the hillside nodded sleepily in
the sunlight. A bird perched on a near-by bush watched them with bright
eyes for a moment, then fearlessly sought the shade of the vines that
screened the side of the hut. Save the distant, droning, moaning voice
of the Mill, there was no sound.
Calling up the last reserves of their courage, the children crept
softly along the board walk that connects the landing of the stairway
with the rude dwelling. Once again they paused to look and listen.
Then, timidly, they took the last cautious steps and stood in the open
doorway. With big, wondering eyes they stared into the room.
It was a rather large room, with a low-beamed ceiling of unfinished
pine boards and gray, rough-plastered walls, and wide windows. A
green-shaded student lamp with a pile of magazines and papers on the
table caught their curious eyes, and they gazed in awe at the long
shelves of books against the wall. Opposite the entrance where they
stood they saw a strongly made workbench. And beneath this bench and
piled in that corner of the room were baskets--dozens of them--of
several shapes and sizes; while brackets and shelves above were filled
with the materials of which the baskets were woven. There was very
little furniture. The floors were bare, the windows without hangings.
It was all so different from anything that these children of the Flats
had ever seen that they felt their adventure assuming proportions.
For what seemed a long time, the boy and the girl stood there,
hesitating, on the threshold, expecting something--anything--to happen.
Then the lad ventured a bold step or two into the room. His sister
followed timidly.
They were facing hungrily toward an open door that led, evidently, to
the kitchen, when a deep voice from somewhere behind them said, "How do
you do?"
Startled nearly out of their small wits, the adventurers whirled to
escape, but the voice halted them with, "Don't go. You came to see me,
didn't you?"
The voice, though so deep and strong, was unmistakably kind and
gentle--quite the gentlest voice, in fact, that these children had ever
heard.
Hesitatingly, they went again into the room, and now, turning their
backs upon the culinary end of the apartment, they saw, through the
doorway opening on to the balcony porch, a man seated in a wheel chair.
In his lap he held a half-finished basket.
For a little while the man regarded them with grave, smiling eyes as
though, understanding their fears, he would give them time to gain
courage. Then he said, gently, "Won't you come out here on the porch
and visit with me?"
The boy and the girl exchanged questioning looks.
"Come on," said the man, encouragingly.
Perhaps the sight of that wheel chair recalled to the boy's mind the
reports of his friends, Skinny and Chuck. Perhaps it was something in
the man himself that appealed to the unerring instincts of the child.
The doubt and hesitation in the urchin's freckled face suddenly gave
way to a look of reckless daring and he marched forward with the
swaggering air of an infant bravado. Shyly the little girl followed.
Invariably one's first impression of that man in the wheel chair was a
thought of the tremendous physical strength and vitality that must once
have been his. But the great trunk, with its mighty shoulders and
massive arms, that in the years past had marked him in the multitude,
was little more than a framework now. His head with its silvery white
hair and beard--save that in his countenance there was a look of more
venerable age--reminded one of the sculptor Rodin. These details of the
man's physical appearance held one's thoughts but for a moment. One
look into the calm depths of those dark eyes that were filled with such
an indescribable mingling of pathetic courage, of patient fortitude,
and of sorrowful authority, and one so instantly felt the dominant
spiritual and mental personality of this man that all else about him
was forgotten.
Squaring himself before his host, the boy said, aggressively, "I know
who _yer_ are. Yer are the Interpreter. I know 'cause yer ain't got no
legs."
"Yes," returned the old basket maker, still smiling, "I am the
Interpreter. At least," he continued, "that is what the people call
me." Then, as he regarded the general appearance of the children, and
noted particularly the tired face and pathetic eyes of the little girl,
his smile was lost in a look of brooding sorrow and his deep voice was
sad and gentle, as he added, "But some things I find very hard to
interpret."
The girl, with a shy smile, went a little nearer.
The boy, with his eyes fixed upon the covering that in spite of the
heat of the day hid the man in the wheel chair from his waist down,
said with the cruel insistency of childhood, "Ain't yer got no
legs--honest, now, ain't yer?"
The Interpreter laughed understandingly. Placing the unfinished basket
on a low table that held his tools and the material for his work within
reach of his hand, he threw aside the light shawl. "See!" he said.
For a moment the children gazed, breathlessly, at those shrunken and
twisted limbs that resembled the limbs of a strong man no more than the
empty, flapping sleeves of a scarecrow resemble the arms of a living
human body.
"They are legs all right," said the Interpreter, still smiling, "but
they're not much good, are they? Do you think you could beat me in a
race?"
"Gee!" exclaimed the boy.
Two bright tears rolled down the thin, dirty cheeks of the little
girl's tired face, and she turned to look away over the dirty Flats,
the smoke-grimed mills, and the golden fields of grain in the sunshiny
valley, to something that she seemed to see in the far distant sky.
With a quick movement the Interpreter again hid his useless limbs.
"And now don't you think you might tell me about yourselves? What is
your name, my boy?"
"I'm Bobby Whaley," answered the lad. "She's my sister, Maggie."
"Oh, yes," said the Interpreter. "Your father is Sam Whaley. He works
in the Mill."
"Uh-huh, some of the time he works--when there ain't no strikes ner
nothin'."
The Interpreter, with his eyes on that dark cloud that hung above the
forest of grim stacks, appeared to attach rather more importance to
Bobby's reply than the lad's simple words would justify.
Then, looking gravely at Sam Whaley's son, he said, "And you will work
in the Mill, too, I suppose, when you grow up?"
"I dunno," returned the boy. "I ain't much stuck on work. An' dad, he
says it don't git yer nothin', nohow."
"I see," mused the Interpreter, and he seemed to see much more than lay
on the surface of the child's characteristic expression.
The little girl was still gazing wistfully at the faraway line of
hills.
As if struck by a sudden thought, the Interpreter asked, "Your father
is working now, though, isn't he?"
"Uh-huh, just now he is."
"I suppose then you are not hungry."
At this wee Maggie turned quickly from contemplating the distant
horizon to consider the possible meaning in the man's remark.
For a moment the children looked at each other. Then, as a grin of
anticipation spread itself over his freckled face, the boy exclaimed,
"Hungry! Gosh! Mister Interpreter, we're allus hungry!"
For the first time the little girl spoke, in a thin, piping voice,
"Skinny an' Chuck, they said yer give 'em cookies. Didn't they, Bobby?"
"Uh-huh," agreed Bobby, hopefully.
The man in the wheel chair laughed. "If you go into the house and look
in the bottom part of that cupboard near the kitchen door you will find
a big jar and--"
But Bobby and Maggie had disappeared.
The children had found the jar in the cupboard and, with their hands
and their mouths filled with cookies, were gazing at each other in
unbelieving wonder when the sound of a step on the bare floor of the
kitchen startled them. One look through the open doorway and they fled
with headlong haste back to the porch, where they unhesitatingly sought
refuge behind their friend ha the wheel chair.
The object of their fears appeared a short moment behind them.
"Oh," said the Interpreter, reaching out to draw little Maggie within
the protecting circle of his arm, "it is Billy Rand. You don't need to
fear Billy."
The man who stood looking kindly down upon them was fully as tall and
heavy as the Interpreter had been in those years before the accident
that condemned him to his chair. But Billy Rand lacked the commanding
presence that had once so distinguished his older friend and guardian.
His age was somewhere between twenty and thirty; but his face was still
the face of an overgrown and rather slow-witted child.
Raising his hands, Billy Rand talked to the Interpreter in the sign
language of the deaf and dumb. The Interpreter replied in the same
manner and, with a smiling nod to the children, Billy returned to the
garden in the rear of the house.
Tiny Maggie's eyes were big with wonder.
"Gee!" breathed Bobby. "He sure enough can't talk, can he?"
"No," returned the Interpreter. "Poor Billy has never spoken a word."
"Gee!" said Bobby again. "An' can't he hear nothin,' neither?"
"No, Bobby, he has never heard a sound."
Too awe-stricken even to repeat his favorite exclamation, the boy
munched his cooky in silence, while Maggie, enjoying her share of the
old basket maker's hospitality, snuggled a little closer to the wheel
of the big chair.
"Billy Rand, you see," explained the Interpreter, "is my legs."
Bobby laughed. "Funny legs, I'd say."
"Yes," agreed the Interpreter, "but very good legs just the same. Billy
runs all sorts of errands for me--goes to town to sell our baskets and
to bring home our groceries, helps about the house and does many things
that I can't do. He is hoeing the garden this afternoon. He comes in
every once in a while to ask if I want anything. He sleeps in a little
room next to mine and sometimes in the night, when I am not resting
well, I hear him come to my bedside to see if I am all right."
"An' yer keep him an' take care of him?" asked Bobby.
"Yes," returned the Interpreter, "I take care of Billy and Billy takes
care of me. He has fine legs but not much of a--but cannot speak or
hear. I can talk and hear and think but have no legs. So with my
reasonably good head and his very good legs we make a fairly good man,
you see."
Bobby laughed aloud and even wee Maggie chuckled at the Interpreter's
quaint explanation of himself and Billy Rand.
"Funny kind of a man," said Bobby.
"Yes," agreed the Interpreter, "but most of us men are funny in one way
or another--aren't we, Maggie?" He looked down into the upturned face
of that tiny wisp of humanity at his side.
Maggie smiled gravely in answer.
Very confident now in his superiority over the Interpreter, whose deaf
and dumb legs were safely out of sight in the garden back of the house,
Bobby finished the last of his cookies, and began to explore.
Accompanying his investigations with a running fire of questions, he
fingered the unfinished basket and the tools and material on the table,
examined the wheel chair, and went from end to end of the balcony
porch. Hanging over the railing, he looked down from every possible
angle upon the rocks, the stairway and the dusty road below.
Exhausting, at last, the possibilities of the immediate vicinity, he
turned his inquiring gaze upon the more distant landscape.
"Gee! Yer can see a lot from here, can't yer?"
"Yes," returned the Interpreter, gravely, "you can certainly see a lot.
And do you know, Bobby, it is strange, but what you see depends almost
wholly on what you are?"
The boy turned his freckled face toward the Interpreter. "Huh?"
"I mean," explained the Interpreter, "that different people see
different things. Some who come to visit me can see nothing but the
Mill over there; some see only the Flats down below; others see the
stores and offices; others look at nothing but the different houses on
the hillsides; still others can see nothing but the farms. It is funny,
but that's the way it is with people, Bobby."
"Aw--what are yer givin' us?" returned Bobby, and, with an unmistakably
superior air, he faced again toward the scene before them. "I can see
the whole darned thing--I can."
The Interpreter laughed. "And that," he said, "is exactly what every
one says, Bobby. But, after all, they don't see the whole darned
thing--they only think they do."
"Huh," retorted the boy, scornfully, "I guess I can see the Mill, can't
I?--over there by the river--with the smoke a-rollin' out of her
chimneys? Listen, I can hear her, too."
Faintly, on a passing breath of air, came the heavy droning, moaning
voice of the Mill.
"Yes," agreed the Interpreter, with an odd note in his deep, kindly
voice, "I can nearly always hear it. I was sure you would see the
Mill."
"An' look-ee, look-ee," shouted the boy, forgetting, in his quick
excitement, to maintain this superior air, "look-ee, Mag! Come here,
quick." With energetic gestures he beckoned his sister to his side.
"Look-ee, right over there by that bunch of dust, see? It's our
house--where we live. That there's Tony's old place on the corner. An'
there's the lot where us kids plays ball. Gee, yer could almost see mom
if she'd only come outside to talk to Missus Grafton er somethin'!"
From his wheel chair the Interpreter watched the children at the porch
railing. "Of course you would see your home," he said, gravely. "The
Mill first, and then the place where you live. Nearly every one sees
those things first. Now tell what else you see."
"I see, I see--" The boy hesitated. There was so much to be seen from
the Interpreter's balcony porch.
The little girl's thin voice piped up with shrill eagerness, "Look at
the pretty yeller fields an' the green trees away over there across the
river, Bobby. Gee, but wouldn't yer just love to be over there
an'--an'--roll 'round in the grass, an' pick flowers, an' everything?"
"Huh," retorted Bobby. "Look-ee, that there's McIver's factory up the
river there. It's 'most as big as the Mill. An' see all the stores an'
barber shops an' things downtown--an' look-ee, there's the courthouse
where the jail is an'--"
Maggie chimed in with, "An' all the steeples of the churches--an'
everythin'."
"An' right down there," continued the boy, pointing more toward the
east where, at the edge of the Flats, the ground begins to rise toward
the higher slope of the hills, "in that there bunch of trees is where
Pete Martin lives, an' Mary an' Captain Charlie. Look-ee, Mag, yer can
see the little white house a-showin' through the green leaves."
"You know the Martins, do you?" asked the Interpreter.
"You bet we do," returned Bobby, without taking his gaze from the scene
before him, while Maggie confirmed her brother's words by turning to
look shyly at her new-found friend. "Pete and Charlie they work in the
Mill. Charlie he was a captain in the war. He's one of the head guys in
our union now. Mary she used to give us stuff to eat when dad was
a-strikin' the last time."
"An' look-ee," continued the boy, "right there next to the Martins' yer
can see the old house where Adam Ward used to live before the Mill made
him rich an' he moved to his big place up on the hill. I know 'cause I
heard dad an' another man talkin' 'bout it onct. Ain't nobody lives in
the old house now. She's all tumbled down with windows broke an'
everything. I wonder--" He paused to search the hillside to the east.
"Yep," he shouted, pointing, "there she is--there's the castle--there's
where old Adam an' his folks lives now. Some place to live I'd say.
Gee, but wouldn't I like to put a chunk o' danermite er somethin' under
there! I'd blow the whole darned thing into nothin' at all an that old
devil Adam with it. I'd--"
Little Maggie caught her warlike brother's arm. "But, Bobby--Bobby, yer
wouldn't dast to do that, yer know yer wouldn't!"
"Huh," returned the boy, scornfully. "I'd show yer if I had a chanct."
"But, Bobby, yer'd maybe kill the beautiful princess lady if yer was to
blow up the castle an' every-thin'."
"Aw shucks," returned the boy, shaking off his sister's hand with manly
impatience. "Couldn't I wait 'til she was away somewheres else 'fore I
touched it off? An', anyway, what if yer wonderful princess lady _was_
to git hurt, I guess she's one of 'em, ain't she?"
Poor Maggie, almost in tears, was considering this doubtful reassurance
when Bobby suddenly pointed again toward that pretentious estate on the
hillside, and cried in quick excitement: "Look-ee, Mag, there's a
autermobile a-comin' out from the castle, right now--see? She's a-goin'
down the hill toward town. Who'll yer bet it is? Old Adam Ward
his-self, heh?"
Little Maggie's face brightened joyously. "Maybe it's the princess
lady, Bobby."
"And who is this that you call the princess lady, Maggie?" asked the
Interpreter.
Bobby answered for his sister. "Aw, she means old Adam's daughter.
She's allus a-callin' her that an' a-makin' up stories about her."
"Oh, so you know Miss Helen Ward, too, do you?" The Interpreter was
surprised.
The boy turned his back on the landscape as though it held nothing more
of interest to him. "Naw, we've just seen her, that's all."
Stealing timidly back to the side of the wheel chair, the little girl
looked wistfully up into the Interpreter's face. "Do yer--do yer know
the princess lady what lives in the castle?" she asked.
The old basket maker, smiling down at her, answered, "Yes, dear, I have
known your princess lady ever since she was a tiny baby--much smaller
than you. And did you know, Maggie, that she was born in the old house
down there, next door to Charlie and Mary Martin?"
"An'--an' did she live there when she was--when she was as big as me?"
Bobby interrupted with an important "Huh, I know her brother John is a
boss in the Mill. He was in the war, too, with Captain Charlie. Did he
live in the old house when he was a kid?"
"Yes."
"An'--an' when the princess lady was little like me, an' lived in the
old house, did yer play with her?" asked Maggie.
The Interpreter laughed softly. "Yes, indeed, often. You see I worked
in the Mill, too, in those days, Maggie, with her father and Peter
Martin and--"
"That was when yer had yer real, sure-nuff legs, wasn't it?" the boy
interrupted.
"Yes, Bobby. And every Sunday, almost, I used to be at the old house
where the little princess lady lived, or at the Martin home next door,
and Helen and John and Charlie and Mary and I would always have such
good times together."
Little Maggie's face shone with appreciative interest. "An' did yer
tell them fairy stories sometimes?"
"Sometimes."
The little girl sighed and tried to get still closer to the man in the
wheel chair. "I like fairies, don't yer?"
"Indeed, I do," he answered heartily.
"Skinny and Chuck, they said yer tol' _them_ stories, too."
The Interpreter laughed quietly. "I expect perhaps I did."
"I don't suppose yer know any fairy stories right now, do yer?"
"Let me see," said the Interpreter, seeming to think very hard. "Why,
yes, I believe I do know one. It starts out like this: Once upon a time
there was a most beautiful princess, just like your princess lady, who
lived in a most wonderful palace. Isn't that the way for a fairy story
to begin?"
"Uh-huh, that's the way. An' then what happened?"
With a great show of indifference the boy drew near and stretched
himself on the floor on the other side of the old basket maker's chair.
"Well, this beautiful princess in the story, perhaps because she was so
beautiful herself, loved more than anything else in all the world to
have lots and lots of jewels. You know what jewels are, don't you?"
"Uh-huh, the princess lady she has 'em--heaps of 'em. I seen her onct
close, when she was a-gettin' into her autermobile, in front of one of
them big stores."
"Well," continued the story-teller, "it was strange, but with all her
diamonds and pearls and rubies and things there was _one_ jewel that
the princess did _not_ have. And, of course, she wanted that one
particular gem more than all the others. That is the way it almost
always is, you know."
"Huh," grunted Bobby.
"What was that there jewel she wanted?" asked Maggie.
"It was called the jewel of happiness," answered the Interpreter,
"because whoever possessed it was sure to be always as happy as happy
could be. And so, you see, because she did not have that particular
jewel the princess did not have as good times as such a beautiful
princess, living in such a wonderful palace, with so many lovely
things, really ought to have.
"But because this princess' heart was kind, a fairy appeared to her one
night, and told her that if she would go down to the shore of the great
sea that was not far from the castle, and look carefully among the
rocks and in the sand and dirt, she would find the jewel of happiness.
Then the fairy disappeared--poof! just like that."
Little Maggie squirmed with thrills of delight. "Some story, I'd say.
An' then what happened?"
"Why, of course, the very next day the princess went to walk on the
seashore, just as the fairy had told her. And, sure enough, among the
rocks and in the sand and dirt, she found hundreds and hundreds of
bright, shiny jewels. And she picked them up, and picked them up, and
picked them up, until she just couldn't carry another one. Then she
began to throw away the smaller ones that she had picked up at first,
and to hunt for larger ones to take instead. And then, all at once,
right there beside her, was a poor, ragged and crooked old woman, and
the old woman was picking up the ugly, dirt-colored pebbles that the
princess would not touch.
"'What are you doing, mother?' asked the beautiful princess, whose
heart was kind.
"And the crooked old woman answered, 'I am gathering jewels of
happiness on the shore of the sea of life.'
"'But those ugly, dirty pebbles are not jewels, mother,' said the lady.
'See, these are the jewels of happiness.' And she showed the poor,
ignorant old woman the bright, shiny stones that she had gathered.
"And the crooked old crone looked at the princess and laughed--a
curious, creepy, crawly, crooked laugh.
"Then the old woman offered to the princess one of the ugly,
dirt-colored pebbles that she had gathered. 'Take this, my dear,' she
croaked, 'and wear it, and you shall see that I am right--that this is
the jewel of happiness.'
"Now the beautiful princess did not want to wear that ugly,
dirt-colored stone--no princess would, you know. But, nevertheless,
because her heart was kind and she saw that the poor, crooked old woman
would feel very bad if her gift was not accepted, she took the dull,
common pebble and put it with the bright, shiny jewels that she had
gathered.
"And that very night the fairy appeared to the princess again.
"'Did you do as I told you?' the fairy asked. 'Did you look for the
jewel of happiness on the shore of the sea of life?'
"'Oh, yes,' cried the princess. 'And see what a world of lovely ones I
found!'
"The fairy looked at all the pretty, shiny stones that the princess had
gathered. 'And what is this?' the fairy asked, pointing to the ugly,
dirt-colored pebble.
"'Oh, that,' replied the princess, hanging her head in
embarrassment,--'that is nothing but a worthless pebble. A poor old
woman gave it to me to wear because she thinks it is beautiful.'
"'But you will not wear the ugly thing, will you?' asked the fairy.
'Think how every one would point at you, and laugh, and call you
strange and foolish.'
"'I know,' answered the princess, sadly, 'but I must wear it because I
promised, and because if I did not and the poor old lady should see me
without it, she would be so very, very unhappy.'
"And, would you believe it, no sooner had the beautiful princess said
those words than the fairy disappeared--poof! just like that! And right
there, on the identical spot where she had been, was that old ragged
and crooked woman.
"'Oh!' cried the princess.
"And the old woman laughed her curious, creepy, crawly, crooked laugh.
'Don't be afraid, my dear,' she said, 'you shall have your jewel of
happiness. But look!' She pointed a long, skinny, crooked finger at the
shiny jewels on the table and there, right before the princess' eyes,
they were all at once nothing but lumps of worthless dirt.
"'Oh!' screamed the princess again. 'All my lovely jewels of
happiness!'
"'But look,' said the old woman again, and once more pointed with her
skinny finger. And would you believe it, the princess saw that ugly,
dirt-colored pebble turn into the most wonderfully splendid jewel that
ever was--the true jewel of happiness.
"And so," concluded the Interpreter, "the beautiful princess whose
heart was kind lived happy ever after."
Little Maggie clapped her thin hands with delight.
"Gee," said Bobby, "wish I knowed where that there place was. I'd get
me enough of them there jewel things to swap for a autermobile an'
a--an' a flyin' machine."
"If you keep your eyes open, Bobby," answered the old basket maker,
"you will find the place all right. Only," he added, looking away
toward the big house on the hill, "you must be very careful not to make
the mistake that the princess lady is making--I mean," he corrected
himself with a smile, "you must be careful not to pick up only the
bright and shiny pebbles as the princess in the story did."
"Huh--I guess I'd know better'n that," retorted the boy. "Come on, Mag,
we gotter go."
"You will come to see me again, won't you?" asked the Interpreter, as
the children stood on the threshold. "You have legs, you know, that can
easily bring you."
"Yer bet we'll come," said Bobby, "won't we, Mag?"
The little girl, looking back at the man in the wheel chair, smiled.
* * * * *
For some time after the children had gone the Interpreter sat very
still. His dark eyes were fixed upon the Mill with its tall, grim
stacks and the columns of smoke that twisted upward to form that
overshadowing cloud. The voices of the children, as they started down
the stairway to the dusty road and to their wretched home in the Flats,
came to him muffled and indistinct from under the cliff.
Perhaps the man in the wheel chair was thinking of the days when
Maggie's princess lady was a little girl and lived in the old house
next door to Mary and Charlie Martin. Perhaps his mind still dwelt on
the fairy story and the princess who found her jewel of happiness. It
may have been that he was listening to the droning, moaning voice of
the Mill, as one listens to the distant roar of the surf on a dangerous
coast.
With a weary movement he took the unfinished basket from the table and
began to work. But it was not his basket making that caused the
weariness of the Interpreter--it was not his work that put the light of
sorrow in his dark eyes.
* * * * *
As Bobby and Maggie went leisurely down the zigzag steps, proud of
the tremendous success of their adventure, the boy paused several times
to execute an inspirational "stunt" that would in some degree express
his triumphant emotions.
"Gee!" he exulted. "Wait 'til I see Skinny and Chuck an' the rest of
the gang! Gee, won't I tell 'em! Just yer wait. I'll knock 'em dead.
Gee!"
On the bottom step they deliberately seated themselves as if they had
suddenly found the duty of leaving the charmed vicinity of that hut on
the cliff above impossible.
Suddenly, from around the curve in the road followed by a whirling
cloud of dust, came an automobile. It was a big car, very imposing with
its shiny black body, its gleaming metal, and its liveried chauffeur.
The children gazed in open-mouthed wonder. The car drew nearer, and
they saw, behind the dignified personality at the wheel, a lady who
might well have been the beautiful princess of the Interpreter's fairy
tale.
Little Maggie caught her brother's arm. "Bobby! It's--it's _her_--it's
the princess lady herself."
"Gee!" gasped the boy. "She's a slowin' down--what d'yer--"
The automobile stopped not thirty feet from where the children sat on
the lower step of the old stairway. Springing to the ground, the
chauffeur, with the dignity of a prime minister, opened the door.
But the princess lady sat motionless in her car. With an expression of
questioning disapproval she looked at the Interpreter's friends on that
lower step of the Interpreter's stairway.
CHAPTER II
LITTLE MAGGIE'S PRINCESS LADY
By nine out of ten of the Millsburgh people, the Interpreter would be
described as a strange character. But the judge once said to the
cigar-store philosopher, when that worthy had so spoken of the old
basket maker, "Sir, the Interpreter is more than a character; he is a
conviction, a conscience, an institution."
It was about the time when the patents on the new process were issued
that the Interpreter--or Wallace Gordon, as he was then known--appeared
from no one knows where, and went to work in the Mill. Because of the
stranger's distinguished appearance, his evident culture, and his
slightly foreign air, there were many who sought curiously to learn his
history. But Wallace Gordon's history remained as it, indeed, remains
still, an unopened book. Within a few months his ability to speak
several of the various languages spoken by the immigrants who were
drawn to the manufacturing city caused his fellow workers to call him
the Interpreter.
Working at the same bench in the Mill with Adam Ward and Peter Martin,
the Interpreter naturally saw much of the two families that, in those
days, lived such close neighbors. Sober, hard working, modest in his
needs, he acquired, during his first year in the Mill, that little plot
of ground on the edge of the cliff, and built the tiny hut with its
zigzag stairway. But often on a Sunday or a holiday, or for an hour of
the long evenings after work, this man who was so alone in the world
would seek companionship in the homes of his two workmen friends. The
four children, who were so much together that their mothers used to say
laughingly they could scarcely tell which were Wards and which were
Martins, claimed the Interpreter as their own. With his never-failing
fund of stories, his ultimate acquaintance with the fairies, his ready
understanding of their childish interests, and his joyous comradeship
in their sports, he won his own peculiar place in their hearts.
It was during the second year of his residence in Millsburgh that he
adopted the deaf and dumb orphan boy, Billy Rand.
That such a workman should become a leader among his fellow workers was
inevitable. More and more his advice and counsel were sought by those
who toiled under the black cloud that rolled up in ever-increasing
volumes from the roaring furnaces.
The accident which so nearly cost him his life occurred soon after the
new process had taken Adam from his bench to a desk in the office of
the Mill. Helen and John were away at school. At the hospital they
asked him about his people. He smiled grimly and shook his head. When
the surgeons were finally through with him, and it was known that he
would live but could never stand on his feet again, he was still silent
as to his family and his life before he came to the Mill. So they
carried him around by the road on the hillside to his little hut on the
top of the cliff where, with Billy Rand to help him, he made baskets
and lived with his books, which he purchased as he could from time to
time during the more profitable periods of his industry.
As the years passed and the Mill, under Adam Ward's hand, grew in
importance, Millsburgh experienced the usual trials of such industrial
centers. Periodic labor wars alternated with times of industrial peace.
Months of prosperity were followed by months of "hard times," and want
was in turn succeeded by plenty. When the community was at work the
more intelligent and thrifty among those who toiled with their hands
and the more conservative of those who labored in business were able to
put by in store enough to tide them over the next period of idleness
and consequent business depression.
From his hut on the cliff the Interpreter watched it all with
never-failing interest and sympathy. Indeed, although he never left his
work of basket making, the Interpreter was a part of it all. For more
and more the workers from the Mill, the shops and the factories, and
the workers from the offices and stores came to counsel with this
white-haired man in the wheel chair.
The school years of John and Helen, the new home on the hill, and all
the changes brought by Adam Ward's material prosperity separated the
two families that had once been so intimate. But, in spite of the wall
that the Mill owner had built between himself and his old workmen
comrades, the children of Adam Ward and the children of Peter Martin
still held the Interpreter in their hearts. To the man condemned to his
wheel chair and his basket making, little Maggie's princess lady was
still the Helen of the old house.
Sam Whaley's children sitting on the lower step of the zigzag stairway
that afternoon had no thought for the Interpreter's Helen of the old
house. Bobby's rapt attention was held by that imposing figure in
uniform. Work in the Mill when he became a man! Not much! Not as long
as there were automobiles like that to drive and clothes like those to
wear while driving them! Little Maggie's pathetically serious eyes saw
only the beautiful princess of the Interpreter's story--the princess
who lived in a wonderful palace and who because her heart was so kind
was told by the fairy how to find the jewel of happiness. Only this
princess lady did not look as though she had found her jewel of
happiness yet. But she would find it--the fairies would be sure to help
her because her heart was kind. How could any princess lady--so
beautiful, with such lovely clothes, and such a grand automobile, and
such a wonderful servant--how could any princess lady like that help
having a kind heart!
"Tom, send those dirty, impossible children away!"
The man touched his cap and turned to obey.
Poor little Maggie could not believe. It was not what the lady said; it
was the tone of her voice, the expression of her face, that hurt so.
The princess lady must be very unhappy, indeed, to look and speak like
that. And the tiny wisp of humanity, with her thin, stooping shoulders
and her tired little face--dirty, half clothed and poorly fed--felt
very sorry because the beautiful lady in the automobile was not happy.
But Bobby's emotions were of quite a different sort. Sam Whaley would
have been proud of his son had he seen the boy at that moment.
Springing to his feet, the lad snarled with all the menacing hate he
could muster, "Drive us away, will yer! I'd just like to see yer try it
on. These here are the Interpreter's steps. If the Interpreter lets us
come to see him, an' gives us cookies, an' tells us stories, I guess
we've got a right to set on his steps if we want to."
"Go on wid ye--git out o' here," said the man in livery. But Bobby's
sharp eyes saw what the lady in the automobile could not see--a faint
smile accompanied the chauffeur's attempt to obey his orders.
"Go on yerself," retorted the urchin, defiantly, "I'll go when I git
good an' ready. Ain't no darned rich folks what thinks they's so
grand--with all their autermobiles, an' swell drivers, 'n' things--can
tell _me_ what to do. I know her--she's old Adam Ward's daughter, she
is. An' she lives by grindin' the life out of us poor workin' folks,
that's what she does; 'cause my dad and Jake Vodell they say so. Yer
touch me an' yer'll see what'll happen to yer, when I tell Jake
Vodell."
Unseen by his mistress, the smile on the servant's face grew more
pronounced; and the small defender of the rights of the poor saw one of
the man's blue Irish eyes close slowly in a deliberate wink of good
fellowship. In a voice too low to be heard distinctly in the automobile
behind him, he said, "Yer all right, kid, but fer the love o' God beat
it before I have to lay hands on ye." Then, louder, he added gruffly,
"Get along wid ye or do ye want me to help ye?"
Bobby retreated in good order to a position of safety a little way down
the road where his sister was waiting for him.
With decorous gravity the imposing chauffeur went back to his place at
the door of the automobile.
"Gee!" exclaimed Bobby. "What do yer know about that! Old Adam Ward's
swell daughter a-goin' up to see the Interpreter. Gee!"
On the lower step of the zigzag stairway, with her hand on the railing,
the young woman paused suddenly and turned about. To the watching
children she must have looked very much indeed like the beautiful
princess of the Interpreter's fairy tale.
"Tom--" She hesitated and looked doubtfully toward the children.
"Yes, Miss."
"What was it that boy said about his rights?"
"He said, Miss, as how they had just been to visit the Interpreter an'
the old man give 'em cookies, and so they thought they was privileged
to sit on his steps."
A puzzled frown marred the really unusual loveliness of her face. "But
that was not all he said, Tom."
"No, Miss."
She looked upward to the top of the cliff where one corner of the
Interpreter's hut was just visible above the edge of the rock. And
then, as the quick light of a smile drove away the trouble shadows, she
said to the servant, "Tom, you will take those children for a ride in
the car. Take them wherever they wish to go, and return here for me. I
shall be ready in about an hour."
The man gasped. "But, Miss, beggin' yer pardon,--the car--think av the
upholsterin'--an' the dirt av thim little divils--beggin' yer pardon,
but 'tis ruined the car will be--an' yer gowns! Please, Miss, I'll give
them a dollar an' 'twill do just as well--think av the car!"
"Never mind the car, Tom, do as I say, please."
In spite of his training, a pleased smile stole over the Irish face of
the chauffeur; and there was a note of ungrudging loyalty and honest
affection in his voice as he said, touching his cap, "Yes, Miss, I will
have the car here in an hour--thank ye, Miss."
A moment later the young woman saw her car stop beside the wondering
children. With all his high-salaried dignity the chauffeur left the
wheel and opened the door as if for royalty itself.
The children stood as if petrified with wonder, although the boy was
still a trifle belligerent and suspicious.
In his best manner the chauffeur announced, "Miss Ward's compliments,
Sir and Miss, an' she has ordered me to place her automobile at yer
disposal if ye would be so minded as to go for a bit of a pleasure
ride."
"Oh!" gulped little Maggie.
"Aw, what are yer givin' us!" said Bobby.
The man's voice changed, but his manner was unaltered. "'Tis the truth
I'm a-tellin' ye, kids, wid the lady herself back there a-watchin' to
see that I carry out her orders. So hop in, quick, and don't keep her
a-waitin'."
"Gee!" exclaimed the boy.
Maggie looked at her brother doubtfully. "Dast we, Bobby? Dast we?"
"Dast we!--Huh! Who's afraid? I'll say we dast."
Another second and they were in the car. The chauffeur gravely touched
his cap. "An' where will I be drivin' ye, Sir?"
"Huh?"
"Where is it ye would like for to go?"
The two children looked at each other questioningly. Then a grin of
wild delight spread itself over the countenance of the boy and he
fairly exploded with triumphant glee, "Gee! Mag, now's our chance." To
the man he said, eagerly, "Just you take us all 'round the Flats,
mister, so's folks can see. An'--an', mind yer, toot that old horn good
an' loud, so as everybody'll know we're a-comin'." As the automobile
moved away he beamed with proud satisfaction. "Some swells we are--heh?
Skinny an' Chuck an' the gang'll be plumb crazy when they see us. Some
class, I'll tell the world."
"Well, why not?" demanded the cigar-stand philosopher, when Tom
described that triumphant drive of Sam Whaley's children through the
Flats. "Them kids was only doin' what we're all a-tryin' to do in one
way or another."
The lawyer, who had stopped for a light, laughed. "I heard the
Interpreter say once that 'to live on some sort of an elevation was to
most people one of the prime necessities of life.'"
"Sure," agreed the philosopher, reaching for another box for the
real-estate agent, "I'll bet old Adam Ward himself is just as human as
the rest of us if you could only catch him at it."
For some time after her car, with Bobby and Maggie, had disappeared in
its cloud of dust, among the wretched buildings of the Flats, Helen
stood there, on the lower step of the zigzag stairway, looking after
them. She was thinking, or perhaps she was wondering a little at
herself. She might even have been living again for the moment those
old-house days when, with her brother and Mary and Charlie Martin, she
had played there on these same steps.
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?"
"She did and she didn't," replied Mary.
"Never mind, dear," returned the soldier workman, "it'll be all right."
Peter Martin--a gray-haired veteran with rather a stolid English
face--looked up at his children questioningly. Presently he said, "It's
a wonder Adam wouldn't fix up the old place a bit--for pride's sake if
for nothing else. It's a disgrace to the neighborhood."
"I guess that's the reason he lets it go," said Captain Charlie,
pushing his chair back from the table.
"What's the reason?" asked Peter.
"For his pride's sake. As it stands now, the old house advertises
Adam's success. When people see it in ruins like that they always speak
of the big new house on the hill. If the old house was fixed up and
occupied it wouldn't cause any comment on Adam's prosperity, you see.
John told me once that he had begged his father to let him do something
with it, but Adam ordered him never to set foot on the place."
"Well," said Mary, "I suppose he can afford to keep the old house as a
sort of monument if he wants to."
Peter Martin commented, in his slow way, "If Charlie is right about his
reason for leaving it as it is, I am not so sure, daughter, that even
Adam Ward can afford to do such a thing."
Captain Charlie's eyes twinkled as he addressed his sister. "Father
evidently believes with the Interpreter that houses have souls or
spirits or something--like human beings."
"Of course," she returned, "if the Interpreter believes it father is
bound to."
The old workman smiled. "You children will believe it, too, some day;
at least I hope so."
"I wonder if Helen ever goes to see the Interpreter," said Mary.
Captain Charlie returned, quickly, "I know she does."
"How do you know? Did you ever meet her there?"
The Captain answered grimly, "I hid out in the garden once with Billy
Rand to keep from meeting her."
Flushed with the unparalleled adventures of the day, Bobby Whaley asked
his father, "Dad, ain't the old Interpreter one of us?--ain't he?"
"Sure he is."
"Well, then, what for did old Adam Ward's daughter go to see him just
like Mag an' me did?"
"I don't know nothin' about that," growled Sam Whaley, "but I can tell
you kids one thing. You're a-goin' to stay out of that there automobile
of hers. You let me catch you takin' up with such as Adam Ward's
daughter and I'll teach you somethin' you won't fergit."
* * * * *
The cigar-store philosopher remarked casually to the chief of police,
"This here savior of the people, Jake Vodell, that's recently descended
upon us, is gatherin' to himself a choice bunch of disciples--I'll tell
the world."
"What do you know about it?" demanded the officer of the law.
The philosopher grinned. "Oh, they most of them smoke or chew, the same
as your cops. Vodell himself smokes your brand. Have one on me chief."
CHAPTER V
ADAM WARD'S ESTATE
In spite of that smile of mingled admiration, contempt and envy, with
which the people always accompanied any mention of Adam Ward,
Millsburgh took no little pride in the dominant Mill owner's
achievements. In particular, was the Ward home, most pretentious of all
the imposing estates on the hillside, an object of never-failing
interest and conversational speculation. "Adam Ward's castle," the
people called it, smiling. And no visiting stranger of any importance
whatever could escape being driven past that glaring architectural
monstrosity which stood so boldly on its most conspicuous hillside
elevation and proclaimed so defiantly to all the world its owner's
material prosperity.
But the sight-seers always viewed the "castle" and the "palatial
grounds" (the Millsburgh _Clarion_, in a special Sunday article for
which Adam paid, so described the place) through a strong, ornamental
iron fence, with a more than ornamental gate guarded by massive stone
columns. Only when the visiting strangers were of sufficient importance
in the owner's eyes were they permitted to pass the conspicuous PRIVATE
PROPERTY, NO ADMITTANCE sign at the entrance. As the cigar-stand
philosopher explained, Adam Ward did not propose to give anything away.
The chief value of his possessions, in Adam's thoughts, lay in the fact
that they were _his_. He always said, "_My_ house--_my_ grounds--_my_
flowers--_my_ trees--_my_ fountain--_my_ fence." He even extended his
ownership and spoke of the very birds who dared to ignore the PRIVATE
PROPERTY, No ADMITTANCE sign as _my_ birds. So marked, indeed, was this
characteristic habit of his speech, that no one in Millsburgh would
have been surprised to hear him say, "_My_ sun--_my_ moonlight." And
never did he so forget himself as to include his wife and children in
such an expression as "our home." Why, indeed, should he? His wife and
his children were as much _his_ as any of the other items on the long
list of the personal possessions which he had so industriously
acquired.
In perfect harmony with the principles that ordered his life, the owner
of the castle made great show of hospitality at times. But the
recipients of his effusive welcome were invariably those from whom, or
through whom, he had reason to think he might derive a definite
material gain in return for his graciousness. The chief entertainment
offered these occasional utilitarian guests was a verbal catalogue of
the estate, with an itemized statement of the cost of everything
mentioned. If the architecture of the house was noticed, Adam proudly
disclaimed any knowledge of architecture, but named the architect's
fee, and gave the building cost in detail, from the heating system to
the window screens. If one chanced to betray an interest in a flower or
shrub or tree, he boasted that he could not name a plant on the place,
and told how many thousands he had paid the landscape architect, and
what it cost him each year to maintain the lawns and gardens. If the
visitor admired the fountain or the statuary he declared--quite
unnecessarily--that he knew nothing of art, but had paid the various
artists represented various definite dollars and cents. And never was
there a guest of that house that poor Adam did not seek to discredit to
his family and to other guests, lest by any chance any one should fail
to recognize the host's superiority.
In his youth the Mill owner had received from his parents certain
exaggerated religious convictions as to the desirability of gaining
heaven and escaping, hell when one's years of material gains and losses
should be forever past. Therefore, his spiritual life, also, was wholly
a matter of personal bargain and profit. The church was an insurance
corporation, of a sort, to which he paid his dues, as he paid the
premiums on his policies in other less pretentious companies. As a
matter of additional security--which cost nothing in the way of
additional premiums--he never failed to say grace at the table.
This matter of grace, Adam found, was also a character asset of no
little value when there were guests whom he, for good material reasons,
wished to impress with the fine combination of business ability and
sterling Christian virtue that so distinguished his simple and sincere
nature. Profess yourself the disinterested friend of a man--make him
believe that you value his friendship for its own sake and, on that
ground, invite him to your home as your honored guest. And then, when
he sits at your table, ask God to bless the food, the home, and the
guest, and you have unquestionably maneuvered your friend into a
position where he will contribute liberally to your business
triumphs--if your contracts are cleverly drawn and you strike for the
necessary signature while the glow of your generous hospitality is
still warm.
And thus, with his patented process and his cleverly drawn contracts,
this man had reaped from hospitality, religion and friendship the
abundant gains that made him the object of his neighbors' admiration,
contempt and envy.
But the end of Adam Ward's material harvest day was come. As Helen had
told the Interpreter, the doctors were agreed that her father must give
up everything in the nature of business and have absolute mental rest.
The Mill owner must retire.
Retire! Retire to what?
The world of literature--of history and romance, of poetry and the
lives of men--the world of art, with its magic of color and form--the
world of music, with its power to rest the weary souls of men--the
world of nature, that with its myriad interests lay about him on every
side--the world of true friendships, with their inspiring sympathies
and unselfish love--in these worlds there is no place for Adam Wards.
Retire! Retire to what?
* * * * *
One afternoon, a few days after her visit to the Interpreter, Helen sat
with a book in a little vine-covered arbor, in a secluded part of the
grounds, some distance from the house. She had been in the quiet
retreat an hour, perhaps, when her attention was attracted by the sound
of some one approaching. Through a tiny opening in the lattice and vine
wall she saw her father.
Adam Ward apparently was on his way to the very spot his daughter had
chosen, and the young woman smiled to herself as she pictured his
finding her there. But a moment before the seemingly inevitable
discovery, the man turned aside to a rustic seat in the shade of a
great tree not far away.
Helen was about to reveal her presence by calling to him when something
in her father's manner caused her to hesitate. Through the leafy screen
of the arbor wall she saw him stop beside the bench and look carefully
about on every side, as if to assure himself that he was alone. The
young woman flushed guiltily, but, as if against her will, she remained
silent. As she watched her father's face, a feeling of pity, fear and
wonder held her breathless.
Helen had often seen her father suffering under an attack of nervous
excitement. She had witnessed his spells of ungoverned rage that left
him white and trembling with exhaustion. She had known his fears that
he tried so hard to hide. She knew of his sleepless nights, of his
dreams of horror, of his hours of lonely brooding. But never had she
seen her father like this. It was as if Adam Ward, believing himself
unobserved, let fall the mask that hid his secret self from even those
who loved him most. Sinking down upon the bench, he groaned aloud,
while his daughter, looking upon that huddled figure of abject misery
and despair, knew that she was witnessing a mental anguish that could
come only from some source deep hidden beneath the surface of her
father's life. She could not move. As one under some strange spell, she
was helpless.
The doctors had said--diplomatically--that Adam Ward's ill health was a
nervous trouble, resulting from his lifelong devotion to his work, with
no play spell or rest, and no relief through interest in other things.
But Adam Ward knew the real reason for the medical men's insistent
advice that he retire from the stress of the Mill to the quiet of his
estate. He knew it from his wife's anxious care and untiring
watchfulness. He knew it from the manner of his business associates
when they asked how he felt. He knew when, at some trivial incident or
word, he would be caught, helpless, in the grip of an ungovernable rage
that would leave him exhausted for many weary, brooding hours. He felt
it in the haunting, unconquerable fears that beset him--by the feeling
of some dread presence watching him--by the convictions that unknown
enemies were seeking his life--by his terrifying dreams of the hell of
his inherited religion.
And the real reason for his condition Adam Ward knew. It was not the
business to which he had driven himself so relentlessly. It was not
that he had no other interests to take his mind from the Mill. It was a
thing that he had fought, in secret, almost every hour of every year of
his accumulating successes. It was a thing which his neighbors and
associates and family felt in his presence but could not name--a thing
which made him turn his eyes away from a frank, straightforward look
and forbade him to look his fellows in the face save by an exertion of
his will.
Through the vines, Helen saw her father stoop to pick from the ground a
few twigs that had escaped the eyes of the caretakers. Deliberately he
broke the twigs into tiny bits, and threw the pieces one by one aside.
His gray face, drawn and haggard, twitched and worked with the nervous
stress of his thoughts. From under his heavy brows he glanced with the
quick, furtive look of a hunted thing, as though fearing some enemy
that might be hidden in the near-by shrubbery. The young woman,
shrinking from the look in his eyes, and not daring to make her
presence known, remembered, suddenly, how the Interpreter had been
reluctant to discuss her father's illness.
Casting aside the last tiny bit of the twig which he had broken so
aimlessly, he found another and continued his senseless occupation.
With pity and love in her heart, Helen wanted to go to him--to help
him, but she could not--some invisible presence seemed to forbid.
Suddenly Adam raised his head. A moment he listened, then cautiously he
rose to his feet--listening, listening. It was no trick of his fancy
this tune. He could hear voices on the other side of a dense growth of
shrubbery near the fence. Two people were talking. He could not
distinguish the words but he could hear distinctly the low murmur of
their voices.
Helen, too, heard the voices and looked in that direction. From her
position in the arbor she could see the speakers. With the shadow of a
quick smile, she turned her eyes again toward her father. He was
looking about cautiously, as if to assure himself that he was alone.
The shadow of a smile vanished from Helen's face as she watched in
wondering fear.
Stooping low, Adam Ward crept swiftly to a clump of bushes near the
spot from which the sound of the voices came. Crouching behind the
shrubbery, he silently parted the branches and peered through. Bobby
and Maggie Whaley stood on the outer side of the fence with their
little faces thrust between the iron pickets, looking in.
Back to Full Books
|