Helen of the Old House Part 9

"Ain't it pretty?" murmured little Maggie. "Just like them places where the fairies live."

"Huh," returned the boy, "old Adam Ward, he ain't no fairy I'm a-tellin' yer."

To which Maggie, hurt by this suggested break in the spell of her enchantment, returned indignantly, "Well, I guess the fairies can live in all them there pretty flowers an' things just the same, if old Adam does own 'em. You can't shut fairies out with no big iron fences."

"That's so," admitted Bobby. "Gee, I wisht we was fairies, so's we could sneak in! Gee, wouldn't yer like ter take a roll on that there gra.s.s?"

"Huh," returned the little girl, "I know what I'd do if I was a fairy.

I'd hide in that there bunch of flowers over there, an' I'd watch till the beautiful princess lady with the kind heart come along, an' I'd tell her where she could find them there jewels of happiness what the Interpreter told us about."

"Do yer reckon she's in the castle there, right now?" asked Bobby.

"I wonder!" murmured Maggie.

"Betcher can't guess which winder is hern."

"Bet I kin; it's that there one with all them vines around it. Princess ladies allus has vines a-growin' 'roun' their castle winders--so's when the prince comes ter rescue 'em he kin climb up."

"Wisht she'd come out."

"I wish--"

Little Maggie's wish was never expressed, for at that moment, from behind that near-by clump of shrubbery a man sprang toward them, his face distorted with pa.s.sion and his arms tossing in threatening gestures.

The children, too frightened to realize the safety of their position on the other side of those iron bars, stood speechless. For the moment they could neither cry out nor run.

"Get out!" Adam Ward yelled, hoa.r.s.e with rage, as he would have driven off a trespa.s.sing dog. "Get out! Go home where you belong! Don't you know this is private property? Do you think I am keeping a circus here for all the dirty brats in the country to look at? Get out, I tell you, or I'll--"

With frantic speed the two children fled down the hill.

Adam Ward laughed--laughed until he was forced to hold his sides and the tears of his unG.o.dly mirth rolled down his cheeks.

But such laughter is a fearful thing to see. White and trembling with the shame and the horror of it, Helen crouched in her hiding place, not daring even to move. She felt, as never before, the presence of that spirit which possessed her father and haunted her home. It was as if the hidden thing of which she had forced herself to speak to the Interpreter were suddenly about to materialize before her eyes. She wanted to scream--to cry aloud her fear--to shriek her protest--but sheer terror held her motionless and dumb.

The spell was broken by Mrs. Ward who, from somewhere in the grounds, was calling, "Adam! Oh-h, Adam!"

The man heard, and Helen saw him controlling his laughter, and looking cautiously about.

Again the call came, and there was an anxious note in the voice.

"Adam--father--Oh-h, father, where are you?"

With a cruel grin still twisting his gray face, Adam slunk behind a clump of bushes.

Helen Ward crept from her hiding place and, keeping the little arbor between herself and her father, stole away through the grounds. When she was beyond his hearing, she almost ran, as if to escape from a spot accursed.

CHAPTER VI

ON THE OLD ROAD

When Bobby and Maggie Whaley fled from the immediate vicinity of Adam Ward's estate, they were beside themselves with fear--blind, unreasoning, instinctive fear.

There is a fear that is reasonable--that is born of an intelligent comprehension of the danger that menaces, and there is a fear that is born of ignorance--of inability to understand the nature of the danger.

These children of the Flats had nothing in their little lives by which they might know the owner of the Mill, or visualize the world in which the man for whom their father worked lived. To Bobby and Maggie the home of Adam Ward was a place of mystery, as far removed from the world of their actualities as any fabled castle in fairyland could possibly be.

Sam Whaley's distorted views of all employers in the industrial world, and his fanatical ideas of cla.s.s loyalty, were impressed with weird exaggeration upon the fertile minds of his children. From their father's conversation with his workmen neighbors, and from the suggestive expressions and epithets which Sam had gleaned from the literature upon which he fed his mind and which he used with such gusto, Bobby and Maggie had gathered the material out of which they had created an imaginary monster, capable of destroying them with fiendish delight. They had seen angry men too often to be much disturbed by mere human wrath. But, to them, this Adam Ward who had appeared so suddenly from the shrubbery was more than a man; he was all that they had been taught to believe--a hideous thing of more dreadful power and sinister purpose than could be imagined.

With all their strength they ran down the old hill road toward the world of the Flats where they belonged. They dared not even look over their shoulders. The very ground seemed to drag at their feet to hold them back. Then little Maggie stumbled and fell. Her frantic screams reached Bobby, who was a few feet in advance, and the boy stopped instantly and faced about, with terror in his eyes but with evident determination to defend his sister at any cost.

When he had pulled Maggie to her feet, and it was certain that there was nothing pursuing them, Bobby, boylike, laughed. "Gee, but we made some git-away, that trip! Gee, I'll tell the world!"

The little girl clung to her protector, shaking with weariness and fear. "I--can't run 'nother step," she gasped. "Will he come after us here?"

"Naw," returned the boy, with rea.s.suring boldness, "he won't come this far. Yer just lay down in the gra.s.s, under this here tree, 'til yer catch yer wind; then we'll make it on down to the Interpreter's--'tain't far to the stairs. You just take it easy. I'll watch."

The soft gra.s.s and the cool shade were very pleasant after their wild run, and they were loath to go, even when little Maggie had recovered from her exhaustion. Very soon, when no danger appeared, the boy forgot to watch and began an animated discussion of their thrilling experience.

But Maggie did not share her brother's boastful triumph. "Do you suppose," she said, wistfully, "that he is like that to the princess lady?"

Bobby shook his head doubtfully. "I don't know. Yer can't tell what he'd do to her if he took a notion. Old Adam Ward would do anything that's mean, to anybody, no matter who. I'll bet--"

The sound of some one approaching from the direction of the castle interrupted Bobby's conjectures.

Maggie would have made another frantic effort to escape, but the boy caught her roughly and drew her down beside him. "No use to run--yer can't make it," he whispered. "Best lay low. An' don't yer dast even whimper."

Lying p.r.o.ne, they wormed themselves into the tall gra.s.s, with the trunk of the tree between them and the road, until it would have been a keen observer, indeed, who would have noticed them in pa.s.sing.

They heard the approaching danger coming nearer and nearer. Little Maggie buried her face in the gra.s.s roots to stifle a scream. Now it was on the other side of the tree. It was pa.s.sing on. Suddenly they almost buried themselves in the ground in their effort to lie closer to the earth. The sound of the footsteps had ceased.

For what seemed to them hours, the frightened children lay motionless, scarcely daring to breathe. Then another sound came to their straining ears--a sound not unfamiliar to the children of the Flats. A woman was weeping.

Cautiously, the more courageous Bobby raised his head until he could peer through the tangled stems and blades of the sheltering gra.s.s. A moment he looked, then gently shook his sister's arm. Imitating her brother's caution, little Maggie raised her frightened face. Only a few steps away, their princess lady was crouching in the gra.s.s, with her face buried in her hands, crying bitterly.

"Well, what do yer know about that?" whispered Bobby.

A moment longer they kept their places, whispering in consultation.

Then they rose quietly to their feet and, hand in hand, stood waiting.

Helen had not consciously followed the children. Indeed, her mind was so occupied with her own troubled thoughts that she had forgotten the little victims of her father's insane cruelty. To avoid meeting her mother, as she fled from the scene of her father's madness, she had taken a course that led her toward the entrance to the estate. With the one thought of escaping from the invisible presence of that hidden thing, she had left the grounds and followed the quiet old road.

When the storm of her grief had calmed a little, the young woman raised her head and saw Sam Whaley's dirty, ill-kept children gazing at her with wondering sympathy. It is not too much to say that Helen Ward was more embarra.s.sed than she would have been had she found herself thus suddenly in the presence of royalty. "I am sorry you were frightened,"

she said, hesitatingly. "I can't believe that he really would have hurt you."

"Huh," grunted Bobby. "I'm darned glad we was outside of that there fence."

Maggie's big eyes were eloquent with compa.s.sion. "Did--did he scare yer, too?"