Helen of the Old House Part 7

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 friends.h.i.+p 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 embarra.s.sment, "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 a.s.sertion 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 cla.s.s, 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, pa.s.sed 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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 s.p.a.ce 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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 pa.s.sed, 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, pus.h.i.+ng 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."