Helen of the Old House Part 19

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-fas.h.i.+oned 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--wis.h.i.+ng John success, expressing his own gratification and confidence, and a.s.suring 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 companions.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed. 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 comrades.h.i.+p that are so necessary to all well-grounded and enduring friends.h.i.+ps.

"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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s, 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 friends.h.i.+p. 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."

Charlie Martin's silence revealed how accurately John had guessed his Mill comrade's hidden thoughts.

The new manager continued, "The thing that straightened me out on the question of our different ranks was that sc.r.a.p where Captain Charlie and Private John found themselves caught in the same sh.e.l.l hole with no one else anywhere near except friend enemy, and somebody had to do something darned quick. Do you remember our argument?"