O Guns, fall silent till the dead men hear Above their heads the legions pressing on: * * * * * Bid them be patient, and some day, anon, They shall feel earth enwrapt in silence deep; Shall greet, in wonderment, the quiet dawn, And in content may turn them to their sleep.
"Immediately following that day when she had watched her father from the arbor and had talked with Bobby and Maggie Whaley on the old road, Helen Ward had thrown herself into the social activities of her circle as if determined to find, in those interests, a cure for her discontent and unhappiness.
Several times she called for a few minutes at the little hut on the cliff. But she did not again talk of herself or of her father to the old basket maker as she had talked that day when she first met the children from the Flats. Two or three times she saw the children. But she passed them quickly by with scarcely a nod of greeting. And yet, the daughter of Adam Ward felt with increasing certainty that she could never be content with the busy nothingness which absorbed the lives of so many of her friends. Her father, since his retirement, seemed a little better. But she could not put out of her mind the memory of what she had seen. For her, the dreadful presence of the hidden thing always attended him. Because she could not banish the feeling and because there was nothing she could do, she sought relief by escaping from the house as often as possible on the plea of social duties.
There were times when the young woman thought that her mother knew. At times she fancied that her brother half guessed the secret that so overshadowed their home. But Mrs. Ward and her children alike shrank from anything approaching frankness in mentioning the Mill owner's condition. And so they went on, feeling the hidden thing, dreading they knew not what--deceiving themselves and each other with hopes that in their hearts they knew were false.
The mother, brave, loyal soul, seeing her daughter's unhappiness and wishing to protect her from the thing that had so saddened her own life, encouraged Helen to find what relief she could in the pleasures that kept her so many hours from home. John, occupied by the exacting duties of his new position, needed apparently nothing more. Indeed, to Helen, her brother's attitude toward his work, his views of life and his increasing neglect of what she called the obligations of their position in Millsburgh, were more and more puzzling. She had thought that with John's advancement to the general managership of the Mill his peculiar ideas would be modified. But his promotion seemed to have made no sign of a change in his conception of the relationship between employer and employee, or in his attitude toward the unions or toward the industrial situation as a whole.
Of one thing Helen was certain--her brother had found that which she, in her own life, was somehow missing. And so the young woman observed her brother with increasing interest and a growing feeling that approached envy. At every opportunity she led him to talk of his work or rather of his attitude toward his work, and encouraged him to express the convictions that had so changed his own life and that were so foreign to the tenets of Helen and her class. And always their talks ended with John's advice: "Go ask the Interpreter; he knows; he will make it so much clearer than I can."
But with all John's absorbing interest in his work and in the general industrial situation of Millsburgh, which under the growing influence of Jake Vodell was becoming every day more difficult and dangerous, the general manager could not escape the memories of that happy evening at the Martin cottage. The atmosphere of this workman's home was so different from the atmosphere of his own home in the big house on the hill. There was a peace, a contentment, a feeling of security in the little cottage that was sadly wanting in the more pretentious residence. Following, as it did, his father's retirement from the Mill with his own promotion to the rank of virtual ownership and his immediate talk with Captain Charlie, that evening had reestablished for him, as it were, the relationship and charm of his boyhood days. It was as though, having been submitted to a final test, he was now admitted once more, without reserve, to the innermost circle of their friendship.
On his way to and from his office he nearly always, now, drove past the Martin cottage. The distance was greater, it is true, but John thought that the road was enough better to more than make up for that. Besides, he really did enjoy the drive down the tree-arched street and past the old house. It was all so rich in memories of his happy boyhood, and sometimes--nearly always, in fact--he would catch a glimpse of Mary among her flowers or on the porch or perhaps at the gate.
Occasionally this young manager of the Mill, with his strange ideas of industrial comradeship, found it necessary to spend an evening with these workmen who were leaders in the union that was held by his father and by McIver to be a menace to the employer class. It in no way detracted from the value of these consultations with Captain Charlie and his father that Mary was always present. In fact, Mary herself was in a position materially to help John Ward in his study of the industrial problems that were of such vital interest to him. No one knew better than did Pete Martin's daughter the actual living conditions of the class of laboring people who dwelt in the Flats. Certainly, as he watched the progress of Jake Vodell's missionary work among them, John could not ignore these Sam Whaleys of the industries as an important factor in his problem.
So it happened, curiously enough, that Helen herself was led to call at the little home next door to the old house where she had lived in those years of her happy girlhood.
* * * * *
Helen was downtown that afternoon on an unimportant shopping errand. She had left the store after making her purchases and was about to enter her automobile, when McIver, who chanced to be passing, stopped to greet her.
There was no doubting the genuineness of the man's pleasure in the incident, nor was Helen herself at all displeased at this break in what had been, so far, a rather dull day.
And what brings you down here at this unreasonable hour? he asked; "on Saturday, too? Don't you know that there is a tennis match on at the club?"
I didn't seem to care for the tennis to-day somehow, she returned. "Mother wanted some things from Harrison's, so I came downtown to get them for her."
He caught a note in her voice that made him ask with grave concern, "How is your father, Helen?"
She answered, quickly, "Oh, father is doing nicely, thank you." Then, with a cheerfulness that was a little forced, she asked in turn, "And why have you deserted the club yourself this afternoon?"
Business, he returned. "There will be no more Saturday afternoons off for me for some time to come, I fear." Then he added, quickly, "But look here, Helen, there is no need of our losing the day altogether. Send your man on, and come with me for a little spin. The roadster is in the next block. I'll take you home in an hour and get on back to my office."
Helen hesitated.
The ride will do you good.
Sure you can spare the time?
Sure. It will do me good, too.
And you're not asking me just to be nice--you really want me?
Don't you know by this time whether I want you or not? he returned, in a tone that brought the color to her cheeks. "Please come!"
All right, she agreed.
When they were seated in McIver's roadster, she added, "I really can't deny myself the thrilling triumph of taking a business man away from his work during office hours."
You take my thoughts away from my work a great many times during office hours, Helen, he retorted, as the car moved away. "Must I wait much longer for my answer, dear?"
She replied, hurriedly, "Please, Jim, not that to-day. Let's not think about it even."
All right, he returned, grimly. "I just want you to know, though, that I am waiting."
I know, Jim--and--and you are perfectly wonderful but--Oh, can't we forget it just for an hour?
As if giving himself to her mood, McIver's voice and manner changed. "Do you mind if we stop at the factory just a second? I want to leave some papers. Then we can go on up the river drive."
* * * * *
An hour later they were returning, and because it was the prettiest street in that part of Millsburgh, McIver chose the way that would take them past the old house.
John Ward's machine was standing in front of the Martin cottage.
McIver saw it and looked quickly at his companion. There was no need to ask if Helen had recognized her brother's car.
The factory owner considered the new manager of the Mill a troublesome obstacle in his own plans for making war on the unions. He felt, too, that with John now in control of the business, his chances of bringing about the combination of the two industries were materially lessened. He had wondered, at times, if it was not her brother's influence that caused Helen to put off giving him her final answer to his suit.
When he saw that Helen had recognized John's car, he remarked, with an insinuating laugh, "Evidently I am not the only business man who can be lured from his office during working hours."
Jim, how can you? she protested. "You know John is there on business to see Charlie or his father."
It is a full hour yet before quitting time at the Mill, he returned.
She had no reply to this, and the man continued with a touch of malicious satisfaction, "After all, Helen, John is human, you know, and old Pete Martin's daughter is a mighty attractive girl."
Helen Ward's cheeks were red, but she managed to control her voice, as she said, "Just what do you mean by that, Jim?"
Is it possible that you really do not know? he countered.
I know that my brother, foolish as he may be about some things, would never think of paying serious attention to the daughter of one of his employees, she retorted, warmly.
That is exactly the situation, he returned. "No one believes for a moment that the affair is serious on John's part."
The color was gone from Helen's face now. "I think you have said too much not to go on now, Jim. Do you mean that people are saying that John is amusing himself with Mary Martin?"
Well, he returned, coolly, "what else can the people think when they see him going there so often; when they see the two together, wandering about the Flats; when they hear his car tearing down the street late in the evening; when they see her every morning at the gate watching for him to pass on his way to work? Your brother is not a saint, Helen. He is no different, in some ways, from other men. I always did feel that there was something back of all this comrade stuff between him and Charlie Martin. As for the girl, I don't think you need to worry about her. She probably understands it all right enough."
Jim, you must not say such things to me about Mary! She is not at all that kind of girl. The whole thing is impossible.
What do you know about Mary Martin? he retorted. "I'll bet you have never even spoken to her since you moved from the old house."
Helen did not speak after this until they were passing the great stone columns at the entrance to the Ward estate, then she said, quietly, "Jim, do you always believe the worst possible things about every one?"
That's an odd thing for you to ask, he returned, doubtfully, as they drove slowly up the long curving driveway. "Why?"
Because, she answered, "it sometimes seems to me as if no one believed the best things about people these days. I know there is a world of wickedness among us, Jim, but are we all going wholly to the bad together?"
McIver laughed. "We are all alike in one thing, Helen. No matter what he professes, you will find that at the last every man holds to the good old law of 'look out for number one.' Business or pleasure, it's all the same. A man looks after his own interests first and takes what he wants, or can get, when and where and how he can."
But, Jim, the war--
He laughed cynically. "The war was pure selfishness from start to finish. We fed the fool public a lot of patriotic bunk, of course--we had to--we needed them. And the dear people fell for the sentimental hero business as they always do." With the last word he stopped the car in front of the house.
When Helen was on the ground she turned and faced him squarely. "Jim McIver, your words are an insult to my brother and to ninety-nine out of every hundred men who served under our flag, and you insult my intelligence if you expect me to accept them in earnest. If I thought for a minute that you were capable of really believing such abominable stuff I would never speak to you again. Good-by, Jim. Thank you so much for the ride."
Before the man could answer, she ran up the steps and disappeared through the front door.
But McIver's car was no more than past the entrance when Helen appeared again on the porch. For a moment she stood, as if debating some question in her mind. Then apparently, she reached a decision. Ten minutes later she was walking hurriedly down the hill road--the way Bobby and Maggie had fled that day when Adam Ward drove them from the iron fence that guarded his estate. It was scarcely a mile by this road to the old house and the Martin cottage.
That walk from her home to the little white cottage next door to the old house was the most eventful journey that Helen Ward ever made. She felt this in a way at the time, but she could not know to what end her sudden impulse to visit again the place of her girlhood would eventually lead.
As she made her way down the hill toward that tree-arched street, she realized a little how far the years had carried her from the old house. She had many vivid and delightful memories of that world of her childhood, it is true, but the world to which her father's material success had removed her in the years of her ripening womanhood had come to claim her so wholly that she had never once gone back. She had looked back at first with troubled longing. But Adam Ward's determined efforts to make the separation of the two families final and complete, together with the ever-increasing bitterness of his strange hatred for his old workman friend, had effectually prevented her from any attempt at a continuation of the old relationship. In time, even the thought of taking so much as a single step toward the intimacies from which she had come so far, had ceased to occur to her. And now, suddenly, without plan or premeditation, she was on her way actually to touch again, if only for a few moments, the lives that had been so large a part of the simple, joyous life which she had known once, but which was so foreign to her now.
Nor was it at all clear to her why she was going or what she would do. As she had observed with increasing interest the change in her brother's attitude toward the pleasures that had claimed him so wholly before the war, she had wondered often at his happy contentment in contrast to her own restless and dissatisfied spirit. McIver's words had suddenly forced one fact upon her with startling clearness: John, through his work in the Mill, his association with Captain Charlie and his visits to the Martin home, was actually living again in the atmosphere of that world which she felt they had left so far behind. It was as though her brother had already gone back.
And McIver's challenging question, "What do you know about Mary Martin?" had raised in her mind a doubt, not of her brother and his relationship to these old friends of their childhood, but of herself and all the relationships that made her present life such a contrast to her life in the old house.
With her mind and heart so full of doubts and questionings, she turned into the familiar street and saw her brother's car still before the Martin home.
As she went on, a feeling of strange eagerness possessed her. Her face glowed with warm color, her eyes shone with glad anticipation, her heart beat more quickly. As one returning to well loved home scenes after many years in a foreign land, the daughter of Adam Ward went down the street toward the place where she was born. In front of the old house she stopped. The color went from her cheeks--the brightness from her eyes.
In her swiftly moving automobile, nearly always with gay companions, Helen had sometimes passed the old house and had noticed with momentary concern its neglected appearance. But these fleeting glimpses had been so quickly forgotten that the place was most real to her as she saw it in her memories. But now, as she stood there alone, in the mood that had brought her to the spot, the real significance of the ruin struck her with appalling force.
Those rooms with their shattered windowpanes, their bare, rotting casements and sagging, broken shutters appealed to her in the mute eloquence of their empty loneliness for the joyous life that once had filled them. The weed-grown yard, the tumbledown fence, the dilapidated porch, and even the chimneys that were crumbling and ragged against the sky, cried out to her in sorrowful reproach. A rushing flood of home memories filled her eyes with hot tears. With the empty loneliness of the old house in her heart, she went blindly on to the little cottage next door. There was no thought as to how she would explain her unusual presence there. She did not, herself, really know clearly why she had come.
Timidly she paused at the white gate. There was no one in the yard to bid her welcome. As one in a dream, she passed softly into the yard. She was trembling now as one on the threshold of a great adventure. What was it? What did it mean--her coming there?
Wonderingly she looked about the little yard with its bit of lawn--at the big shade tree--the flowers--it was all just as she had always known it. Where were they?--John and Mary and Charlie? Why was there no sound of their voices? Her cheeks were suddenly hot with color. What if Charlie Martin should suddenly appear! As one awakened from strange dreams to a familiar home scene, Helen Ward was all at once back in those days of her girlhood. She had come as she had come so many, many times from the old house next door, to find her brother and their friends. Her heart was eager with the shy eagerness of a maid for the expected presence of her first boyish lover.
* * * * *
Then Peter Martin, coming around the house from the garden, saw her standing there.
The old workman stopped, as if at the sight of an apparition. Mechanically he placed the garden tool he was carrying against the corner of the house; deliberately he knocked the ashes from his pipe and placed it methodically in his pocket.
With a little cry, Helen ran to him, her hands outstretched, "Uncle Pete!"
The old workman caught her and for a few moments she clung to him, half laughing, half crying, while they both, in the genuineness of their affection, forgot the years.
Is it really you, Helen? he said, at last, and she saw a suspicious moisture in the kindly eyes. "Have you really come back to see the old man after all these years?"
Then, with quick anxiety, he asked, "But what is the matter, child? Your father--your mother--are they all right? Is there anything wrong at your home up on the hill yonder?"
His very natural inquiry broke the spell and placed her instantly back in the world to which she now belonged. Drawing away from him, she returned, with characteristic calmness, "Oh, no, Uncle Pete, father and mother are both very well indeed. But why should you think there must be something wrong, simply because I chanced to call?"
The old workman was clearly confused at this sudden change in her manner. He had welcomed the girl--the Helen of the old house--this self-possessed young woman was quite a different person. She was the princess lady of little Maggie and Bobby Whaley's acquaintance, who sometimes condescended to recognize him with a cool little nod as her big automobile passed him swiftly by.
Pete Martin could not know, as the Interpreter would have known, how at that very moment the Helen of the old house and the princess lady were struggling for supremacy.
Removing his hat and handling it awkwardly, he said, with a touch of dignity in his tone and manner in spite of his embarrassment, "I'm glad the folks are well, Helen. Won't you take a seat and rest yourself?"
As they went toward the chairs in the shade of the tree, he added, "It is a long time since we have seen you in this part of town--walking, I mean."
The Helen of the old house wanted to answer--she longed to cry out in the fullness of her heart some of the things that were demanding expression, but it was the princess lady who answered, "I saw my brother's car here and thought perhaps he would let me ride home with him."
The old workman was studying her now with kind but frankly understanding eyes. "John and Mary have gone to see some of the folks that she is looking after in the Flats," he said, slowly. "They'll be back any minute now, I should think."
She did not know what to reply to this. There were so many things she wanted to know--so many things that she felt she must know. But she felt herself forced to answer with the mere commonplace, "You are all well, I suppose, Uncle Pete?"
Fine, thank you, he answered. "Mary is always busy with her housework and her flowers and the poor sick folks she's always a-looking after--just like her mother, if you remember. Charlie, he's working late to-day--some breakdown or something that's keeping him overtime. That brother of yours is a fine manager, Miss Helen, and," he added, with a faint note of something in his voice that brought a touch of color to her cheeks, "a finer man."
Again she felt the crowding rush of those questions she wanted to ask, but she only said, with an air of calm indifference, "John has changed so since his return from France--in many ways he seems like a different man."
As for that, he replied, "the war has changed most people in one way or another. It was bound to. Everybody talks about getting back to normal again, but as I see it there'll be no getting back ever to what used to be normal before the war started."
She looked at him with sudden, intense interest. "How has it so changed every one, Uncle Pete? Why can't people be just as they were before it happened? The change in business conditions and all that, I can understand, but why should it make any difference to--well, to me, for example?"
The old workman answered, slowly, "The people are thinking deeper and feeling deeper. They're more human, as you might say. And I've noticed generally that the way the people think and feel is at the bottom of everything. It's just like the Interpreter says, 'You can't change the minds and hearts of folks without changing what they do.' Everybody ain't changed, of course, but so many of them have that the rest will be bound to take some notice or feel mighty lonesome from now on."
Helen was about to reply when the old workman interrupted her with, "There come John and Mary now."
The two coming along the street walk to the gate did not at first notice those who were watching them with such interest. John was carrying a market basket and talking earnestly to his companion, whose face was upturned to his with eager interest. At the gate they paused a moment while the man, with his hand on the latch, finished whatever it was that he was saying. And Helen, with a little throb of something very much like envy in her heart, saw the light of happiness in the eyes of the young woman who through all the years of their girlhood had been her inseparable playmate and loyal friend.
When John finally opened the gate for her to pass, Mary was laughing, and the clear ringing gladness in her voice brought a faint smile of sympathy even to the face of the now coolly conventional daughter of Adam Ward.
Mary's laughter was suddenly checked; the happiness fled from her face. With a little gesture of almost appealing fear she put her hand on her companion's arm.
In the same instant John saw and stood motionless, his face blank with amazement. Then, "Helen! What in the world are you doing here?"
John Ward never realized all that those simple words carried to the three who heard him. Peter Martin's face was grave and thoughtful. Mary blushed in painful embarrassment. His sister, calm and self-possessed, came toward them, smiling graciously.
I saw your roadster and thought I might ride home with you. Uncle Pete and I have been having a lovely little visit. It is perfectly charming to see you again like this, Mary. Your flowers are beautiful as ever, aren't they?
But, Helen, how do you happen to be wandering about in this neighborhood alone and without your car? demanded the still bewildered John.
Don't be silly, she laughed. "I was out for a walk--that is all. I do walk sometimes, you know." She turned to Mary. "Really, to hear this brother of mine, one would think me a helpless invalid and this part of Millsburgh a very dangerous community."
Mary forced a smile, but the light in her eyes was not the light of happiness and her cheeks were still a burning red.
Don't you think we should go now, John? suggested Helen.
The helpless John looked from Mary to her father appealingly.
Better sit down awhile, Pete offered, awkwardly.
John looked at his watch. "I suppose we really ought to go." To Mary he added, "Will you please tell Charlie that I will see him to-morrow?"
She bowed gravely.
Then the formal parting words were spoken, and Helen and John were seated in the car. Mary had moved aside from the gate and stood now very still among her flowers.
* * * * *
Before John had shifted the gears of his machine to high, he heard a sound that caused him to look quickly at his sister. Little Maggie's princess lady was sobbing like a child.
Why, Helen, what in the world--
She interrupted him. "Please, John--please, don't--don't take me home now. I--I--Let us stop here at the old house for a few minutes. I--I can't go just yet."
Without a word John Ward turned into the curb. Tenderly he helped her to the ground. Reverently he lifted aside the broken-down gate and led her through the tangle of tall grass and weeds that had almost obliterated the walk to the front porch. Over the rotting steps and across the trembling porch he helped her with gentle care. Very softly he pushed open the sagging door.
From room to room in the empty old house the brother and sister went silently or with low, half-whispered words. They moved softly, as if fearing to disturb some unseen tenant of those bare and dingy rooms. Often they paused, and, drawing close to each other, stood as if in the very presence of some spirit that was not of their material world. At last they came to the back porch, which was hidden from the curious eyes of any chance observer in the neighborhood by a rank growth of weeds and bushes and untrimmed trees.
As John Ward looked at his sister now, that expression of wondering amazement with which he had greeted her was gone. In its place there was gentle understanding.
With a little smile, Helen sat down on the top step of the porch and motioned him to a seat beside her. "Won't you tell me about it, John?" she said, softly.
Tell you about what, Helen?
About everything--your life, your work, your friends. She made a little gesture toward the cottage next door.
They could see the white gable through the screen of tangled boughs.
What is it that has changed you so? she went on. "Your interests are so different now. You are so happy and contented--so--so alive--and I"--her voice broke--"I feel as if you were going away off somewhere and leaving me behind. I am so miserable. John, won't you tell me about things?"
You poor old girl! exclaimed John with true brotherly affection. "I've been a blind fool. I ought to have seen. That's nearly always the way, though, I guess," he went on, reflectively. "A fellow gets so darned interested trying to make things go right outside his own home that he forgets to notice how the people that he really loves most of all are getting along. It looks as though I have not been doing so much better than poor old Sam Whaley, after all."
He paused and seemed to be following his thoughts into fields where only he could go. Helen moved a little closer, and he came back to her.
I never dreamed that you were feeling anything like this, sister. I knew that you were worried about father, of course, as we all are, but aside from that you seemed to be so occupied with your various interests and with McIver-- He paused, then finished, abruptly, "Look here, Helen, what about you and McIver anyway; have you given him his answer yet?"
Has that anything to do with it? she answered, doubtfully. "There is nothing that I can tell you about McIver. I don't seem to be able to make up my mind, that is all. But McIver is only a part of the whole trouble, John. Oh, can't you understand! How am I to know whether or not I want to marry him or any one else until--until I have found myself--until I know where I really belong."
He looked at her blankly for a second, then a smile broke over his face. "By George!" he exclaimed "that is exactly what I had to do--find myself and find where I belonged. I never dreamed that my sister might be compelled to go through the same experience."
Was it your army life that helped you to know?
His face was serious now. "It was the things I saw and experienced while in France."
Tell me, she demanded. "I mean, tell me some of the things that you men never talk about--the things you were forced to think and feel and believe--that showed you your own real self--that changed you into what you are to-day."
And because John Ward was able that afternoon to understand his sister's need, he did as she asked. It may have been the influence of the old house that enabled him to lay bare for her those experiences of his innermost self--those soul adventures about which, as she had so truly said, men never talk. Certainly he could never have spoken in their home on the hill as he spoke in that atmosphere from which their father and his material prosperity had so far removed them. And Helen, as she listened, knew that she had found at last the key to all in her brother's life that had so puzzled her.
But after all, she reflected, when he had finished, John's experience could not solve her problem. She could not find herself in the things that he had thought and felt.
If only I could have been with you over there. she murmured.
But, Helen, he cried, eagerly, "it is all right here at home. The same things are happening all about us every day--don't you understand? The one biggest thing that came to me out of the war is the realization that, great and terrible though it was, it was in reality only a part of the greater war that is being fought all the time."
She shook her head with a doubtful smile at his earnestness.
And then he tried to tell her of the Mill as he saw it in its relation to human life--of the danger that threatened the nation through the industrial situation--of the menace to humanity that lay in the efforts of those who were setting class against class in a deadly hatred that would result in revolution with all its horrors. He tried to make her feel the call of humanity's need in the world's work, as it was felt in the need of the world's war. He sought to apply for her the principles of heroism and comradeship and patriotism and service to this war that was still being waged against the imperialistic enemies of the nation and the race.
But when he paused at last, she only smiled again, doubtfully. "You are wonderful in your enthusiasm, John dear," she said, "and I love you for it. I think I understand you now, and for yourself it is right, of course, but for me--it is all so visionary--so unreal."
And yet, he returned, "you were very active during the war--you made bandages and lint and sweaters, and raised funds for the Red Cross. Was it all real to you?"
Yes, she answered, honestly, "it was very real John; it was so real that in contrast nothing that I do now seems of any importance."
But you never saw a wounded soldier--you never witnessed the horrors--you never came in actual touch with the suffering, did you?
No.
And yet you say the war was real to you.
Very real, she replied.
Do you think, Helen, he said, slowly, "that the Interpreter's suffering would have been more real if he had lost his legs by a German machine gun instead of by a machine in father's mill?"
John! she exclaimed, in a shocked tone.
You say the suffering away over there in France was real to you, he continued. "Well, less than a mile from this spot, I called this afternoon on a man who is dying by inches of consumption, contracted while working in our office. For eight years he was absent from his desk scarcely a day. The force nicknamed him 'Old Faithful.' When he dropped in his tracks at last they carried him out and stopped his pay. He has no care--nothing to eat, even, except the help that the Martins give him. Another case: A widow and four helpless children--the man was killed in McIver's factory last week. He died in agony too horrible to describe. The mother is prostrated, the children are hungry. God knows what will become of them this next winter. Another: A workman who was terribly burned in the Mill two years ago. He is blind and crippled in the bargain--"
She interrupted him with a protesting cry, "John, John, for pity's sake, stop!"
Well, why are not these things right here at home as real to you as you say the same things were when they happened in France? he demanded.
She did not attempt to answer his question but instead asked, gently, "Is that why you have been going to the Flats with Mary?"
If he noticed any special significance in her words he ignored it. "Mary visits the people in the Flats as her mother did--as our mother used to do. She told me about some of the cases, and I have been going with her now and then to see for myself--that is all."
Then they left the old house and drove back to their pretentious home on the hill, where Adam Ward suffered his days of mental torture and was racked by his nightly dreams of hell. And the dread shadow of that hidden thing was over them all.
* * * * *
That night when John told the Interpreter of his afternoon with his sister the old basket maker listened silently. His face was turned toward the scene that, save for the twinkling lights, lay wrapped in darkness before them. And he seemed to be listening to the voice of the Mill. When John had finished, the man in the wheel chair said very little.
But when John was leaving, the Interpreter asked, as an afterthought, "And where was Captain Charlie this afternoon, John?"
At the Mill, John answered. "I'm glad he wasn't at home, too; it was bad enough as it was."
Perhaps it was just as well, said the old basket maker. And John Ward, in the darkness, could not see that the Interpreter was smiling.
A lady to see you, sir.
John did not take his eyes from the work on his desk. "All right, Jimmy, show her in."
The general manager read on to the bottom of the typewritten page, signed his name to the sheet, placed it in the proper basket and turned in his chair.
Helen!
Little Maggie's princess lady was so lovely that afternoon, as she stood there framed in the doorway of the manager's office that even her brother noticed.
She was laughing at his surprise, and there was a half teasing, half serious look in her eyes that was irresistible.
By George, you are a picture, Helen! John exclaimed, with not a little brotherly pride in his face and voice. "But what is the idea? What are you down here for--all dolled up like this?"
She blushed with pleasure at his compliment. "That is very nice of you, John; you are a dear to notice it. Are you going to ask me to sit down, or must you put me out for interrupting?"
He was on his feet instantly. "Forgive me; I am so stunned by the unexpected honor of your visit that I forget my manners."
When she was seated, he continued, "And now what is it? what can I do for you, sister?"
She looked about the office--at his desk and through the open door into the busy outer room. "Are you quite sure that you have time for me?"
Surest thing in the world, he returned, with a reassuring smile. Then to a man who at that moment appeared in the doorway, "All right, Tom." And to Helen, "Excuse me just a second, dear."
She watched him curiously as he turned sheet after sheet of the papers the man handed him, seeming to absorb the pages at a glance, while a running fire of quick questions, short answers, terse comments and clear-cut instructions accompanied the examination.
Helen had never before been inside the doors of the industrial plant to which her father had literally given his life. In those old-house days, when Adam worked with Pete and the Interpreter, she had gone sometimes to the outer gate to meet her father when his day's work was done. On rare occasions her automobile had stopped in front of the office. That was all.
In a vague, indefinite way the young woman realized that her education, her pleasures, the dresses she wore, her home on the hill, everything that she had, in fact, came to her somehow from those great dingy, unsightly buildings. She knew that people who were not of her world worked there for her father. Sometimes there were accidents--men were killed. There had been strikes that annoyed her father. But no part of it all had ever actually touched her. She accepted it as a matter of course--without a thought--as she accepted all of the established facts in nature. The Mill existed for her as the sun existed. It never occurred to her to ask why. There was for her no personal note in the droning, moaning voice of its industry. There was nothing of personal significance in the forest of tall stacks with their overhanging cloud of smoke. Indeed, there had been, rather, something sinister and forbidding about the place. The threatening aspect of the present industrial situation was in no way personal to her except, perhaps, as it excited her father and disturbed John.
You've got it all there, Tom, said the manager, finishing his examination of the papers. "Good work, too. Baird will have those specifications on that Miller and Wilson job in to-morrow, will he?"
Yes, sir.
Good, that's the stuff!
The man was smiling as he moved toward the door.
Oh, Tom, just a moment.
Still smiling, the man turned back.
I want you to meet my sister. Helen, may I present Mr. Conway? Tom is one of our Mill family, you know, mighty important member, too--regular shark at figuring all sorts of complicated calculations that I couldn't work out in a month of Sundays. He laughed with boyish happiness and pride in Tom's superior accomplishments.
It was a simple little incident, but there was something in it somewhere that moved Helen Ward strangely. A spirit that was new to her seemed to fill the room. She felt it as one may feel the bigness of the mountains or sense the vast reaches of the ocean. These two men, employer and employee, were in no way conscious of their relationship as she understood it. Tom did not appear to realize that he was working _for_ John--he seemed rather to feel that he was working _with_ John.
When the man was gone, she asked again, timidly, "Are you sure, brother, that I am not in the way?"
Forget it! he cried. "Tell me what I can do for you."
I want to see the Mill, she answered.
John did not apparently quite understand her request. "You want to see the Mill?" he repeated.
She nodded eagerly. "I want to see it all--not just the office but where the men work--everything."
She laughed at his bewildered expression as the sincerity of her wish dawned upon him.
But what in the world--he began--"why this sudden interest in the Mill, Helen?"
Half teasing, half laughing, she answered, "You didn't really think, did you, John, that I would forget everything you said to me at the old house?"
No, he said, doubtfully. "At least, I suppose I didn't. But, honestly, I didn't think that I had made much of an impression."
She made a little gesture of helpless resignation. "Here I am just the same and so much interested already that I can't tear myself away. Come on, let's start--that is, if you really have the time to take me."
Time to take her! John Ward would have lost the largest contract he had ever dreamed of securing rather than miss taking Helen through the Mill.
* * * * *
With an old linen duster, which had hung in the office closet since Adam Ward's day, to cover her from chin to shoes, and a cap that John himself often wore about the plant, to replace her hat, they set out.
Helen's first impression, as she stood just inside the door to the big main room of the plant, was fear. To her gentle eyes the scene was one of terrifying confusion and unspeakable dangers.
Those great machines were grim and threatening monsters with ponderous jaws and arms and chains that seemed all too light to control their sullen strength. The noise--roaring, crashing, clanking, moaning, shrieking, hissing--was overpowering in its suggestion of the ungoverned tumult that belonged to some strange, unearthly realm. Everywhere, amid this fearful din and these maddening terrors, flitting through the murky haze of steam and smoke and dust, were men with sooty faces and grimy arms. Never had the daughter of Adam Ward seen men at work like this. She drew closer to John's side and held to his arm as though half expecting him to vanish suddenly and leave her alone in this monstrous nightmare.
Looking down at her, John laughed aloud and put his arm about her reassuringly. "Great game, old girl!" he said, with a wholesome pride in his voice. "This is the life!"
And all at once she remembered that this _was_, indeed, life--life as she had never seen it, never felt it before. And this life game--this greatest of all games--was the game that John played with such absorbing interest day after day.
I can understand now why you are not so devoted to tennis and teas as you used to be, she returned, laughing back at him with a new admiration in her face.
Then John led her into the very midst of the noisy scene. Carefully he guided her steps through the seeming hurry and confusion of machinery and men. Now they paused before one of those grim monsters to watch its mighty work. Now they stopped to witness the terrific power displayed by another giant that lifted, with its great arms of steel, a weight of many tons as easily as a child would handle a toy. Again, they stepped aside from the path of an engine on its way to some distant part of the plant, or stood before a roaring furnace, or paused to watch a group of men, or halted while John exchanged a few brief words with a superintendent or foreman. And always with boyish enthusiasm John talked to her of what they saw, explaining, illustrating, making the purpose and meaning of every detail clear.
Gradually, as she thus went closer to this life that was at first so terrifying to her, the young woman was conscious of a change within herself. The grim monsters became kind and friendly as she saw how their mighty strength was obedient always to the directing eye and hand of the workmen who controlled them. The many noises, as she learned to distinguish them, came to blend into one harmonious whole, like the instruments in a great orchestra. The confusion, as she came to view it understandingly, resolved itself into orderly movement. As she recalled some of the things that her brother had said to her as they sat on the back porch of the old house, her mind reached out for the larger truth, and she thrilled to the feeling that she was standing, as it were, in the living, beating heart of the nation. The things that she had been schooled to hold as of the highest value she saw now for the first time in their just relation to the mighty underlying life of the Mill. The petty refinements that had so largely ruled her every thought and deed were no more than frothy bubbles on the surface of the industrial ocean's awful tidal power. The male idlers of her set were suddenly contemptible in her eyes, as she saw them in comparison with her brother or with his grimy, sweating comrades.
Presently John was saying, "This is where father used to work--before the days of the new process, I mean. That bench there is the very one he used, side by side with Uncle Pete and the Interpreter."
Helen stared at the old workbench that stood against the wall and at the backs of the men, as though under a spell. Her father working there!
Her brain all at once was crowded with questions to which there were no answers. What if Adam Ward were still a workman at that bench? What if it had been the Interpreter who had discovered the new process? What if her father had lost his legs? What if John, instead of being the manager, were one of those men who worked with their hands? What if they had never left the old house next door to Mary and Charlie? What if--
Uncle Pete, said John, "look here and see who's with us this afternoon."
Mary's father turned from his work and they laughed at the expression on his face when he saw her standing there.
And it was the Helen of the old house who greeted him, and who was so interested in what he was doing and asked so many really intelligent questions that he was proud of her.
They had left Uncle Pete at his bench, and Helen's mind was again busy with those unanswerable questions--so busy, in fact, that she scarcely heard John saying, "I want to show you a lathe over here, Helen, that is really worth seeing. It is, on the whole, the finest and most intricate piece of machinery in the whole plant." And, he added, as they drew near the subject of his remarks, "You may believe me, it takes an exceptional workman to handle it. There are only three men in our entire force who are ever permitted to touch it. They are experts in their line and naturally are the best paid men we have."
As he finished speaking they paused beside a huge affair of black iron and gray steel, that to Helen seemed an incomprehensible tangle of wheels and levers.
A workman was bending over the machine, so absorbed apparently in the complications of his valuable charge that he was unaware of their presence.
Helen spoke close to her brother's ear, "Is he one of your three experts?"
John nodded. "He is the chief. The other two are really assistants--sort of understudies, you know."
At that moment the man straightened up, stood for an instant with his eyes still on his work, then, as he was turning to another part of the intricate mechanism, he saw them.
Hello, Charlie! said the grinning manager, and to his sister, "Surely you haven't forgotten Captain Martin, Helen?"
In the brief moments that followed Helen Ward knew that she had reached the point toward which she had felt herself moving for several months--impelled by strange forces beyond her comprehension.
Her brother's renewed and firmly established friendship with this playmate of their childhood years, together with the many stirring tales that John had told of his comrade captain's life in France, could not but awaken her interest in the boy lover whom she had, as she believed, so successfully forgotten. The puzzling change in her brother's life interests, has neglect of so many of his pre-war associates and his persistent comradeship with his fellow workman, had kept alive that interest; while Captain Martin's repeated refusals to accept John's invitations to the big home on the hill had curiously touched her woman's pride and at the same time had compelled her respect.
The clash between John's new industrial and social convictions and the class consciousness to which she had been so carefully schooled, with its background of her father's wretched mental condition, the unhappiness of her home and her own repeated failures to find contentment in the privileges of material wealth, raised in her mind questions which she had never before faced.
Her talks with the Interpreter, the slow forming of the lines of the approaching industrial struggle, with the sharpening of the contrast between McIver and John, her acquaintance with Bobby and Maggie, even--all tended to drive her on in her search for the answer to her problem.
And so she had been carried to the Martin cottage--to her talk with John at the old house--to the Mill--to this.
As one may intuitively sense the crisis in a great struggle between life and death, this woman knew that in this man all her disturbing life questions were centered. Deep beneath the many changes that her father's material success in life had brought to her, one unalterable life fact asserted itself with startling power: It was this man who had first awakened in her the consciousness of her womanhood. Face to face with this workman in her father's Mill, she fought to control the situation.
To all outward appearances she did control it. Her brother saw only a reserved interest in his workman comrade. Captain Martin saw only the daughter of his employer who had so coldly preferred her newer friends to the less pretentious companions of her girlhood.
But beneath the commonplace remarks demanded by the occasion, the Helen of the old house was struggling for supremacy. The spirit that she had felt in the office when John talked with his fellow workmen, she felt now in the presence of this workman. The power, the strength, the bigness, the meaning of the Mill, as it had come to her, were all personified in him. A strange exultation of possession lifted her up. She was hungry for her own; she wanted to cry out: "This work is my work--these people are my people--this man is my man!"
It was Captain Charlie who ended the interview with the excuse that the big machine needed his immediate attention. He had stood as they talked with a hand on one of the controls and several times he had turned a watchful eye on his charge. It was almost, Helen thought with a little thrill of triumph, as though the man sought in the familiar touch of his iron and steel a calmness and self-control that he needed. But now, when he turned to give his attention wholly to his work, with the effect of politely dismissing her, she felt as though he had suddenly, if ever so politely, closed a door in her face.
John must have felt it a little, too, for he became rather quiet as they went on and soon concluded their inspection of the plant.
At the office door, Helen paused and turned to look back, as if reluctant to leave the scene that had now such meaning for her, while her brother stood silently watching her. Not until they were back in the manager's office and Helen was ready to return to the outside world did John Ward speak.
Facing her with his straightforward soldierly manner, he said, inquiringly, "Well?"
She returned his look with steady frankness. "I can't tell you what I think about it all now, John dear. Sometime, perhaps, I may try. It is too big--too vital--too close. I am glad I came. I am sorry, too."
So he took her to her waiting car.
For a moment he stood looking thoughtfully after the departing machine and then, with an odd little smile, went back to his work.
Helen knew, even as she told the chauffeur to drive her home, that she did not wish to return just then to the big house on the hill. Her mind was too crowded with thoughts she could not entertain in the atmosphere of her home; her heart was too deeply moved by emotions that she scarcely dared acknowledge even to herself.
She thought of the country club, but that, in her present mood, was impossible. The Interpreter--she was about to tell Tom that she wished to call at the hut on the cliff, but decided against it. She feared that she might reveal to the old basket maker things that she wished to hide. She might go for a drive in the country, but she shrank from being alone. She wanted some one who could take her out of herself--some one to whom she could talk without betraying herself.
Not far from the Mill a number of children were playing in the dusty road.
Helen did not notice the youngsters, but Tom, being a careful driver, slowed down, even though they were already scurrying aside for the automobile to pass. Suddenly she was startled by a shrill yell. "Hello, there! Hello, Miss!"
Bobby Whaley, in his frantic efforts to attract her attention, was jumping up and down, waving his cap and screeching like a wild boy, while his companions looked on in wide-eyed wonder, half in awe at his daring, half in fear of the possible consequence.
To the everlasting honor and glory of Sam Whaley's son, the automobile stopped. The lady, looking back, called, "Hello, Bobby!" and waited expectantly for him to approach.
With a look of haughty triumph at Skinny and Chuck, the lad swaggered forward, a grin of overpowering delight at his achievement on his dirty, freckled countenance.
I am so glad you called to me, Helen said, when he was close. "I was just wishing for some one to go with me for a ride in the country. Would you like to come?"
Gee, returned the urchin, "I'll say I would."
Do you think your mother would be willing for you to go?
Lord, yes--ma, she ain't a-carin' where we kids are jest so's we ain't under her feet when she's a-workin'.
And could you find Maggie, do you think? Perhaps she would enjoy the ride, too.
Bobby lifted up his voice in a shrill yell, "Mag! Oh--oh--Mag!"
The excited cry was caught up by the watching children, and the neighborhood echoed their calls. "Mag! Oh, Mag! Somebody wants yer, Mag! Come a-runnin'. Hurry up!"
Their united efforts were not in vain. From the rear of a near-by house little Maggie appeared. A dirty, faded old shawl was wrapped about her tiny waist, hiding her bare feet and trailing behind. A sorry wreck of a hat trimmed with three chicken feathers crowned her uncombed hair, and the ragged remnants of a pair of black cotton gloves completed her elegant costume. In her thin little arms she held, with tender mother care, a doll so battered and worn by its long service that one wondered at the imaginative power of the child who could make of it anything but a shapeless bundle of dirty rags.
Get a move on yer, Mag! yelled the masterful Bobby, with frantic gestures. "The princess lady is a-goin' t' take us fer a ride in her swell limerseen with her driver 'n' everything."
For one unbelieving moment, little Maggie turned to the two miniature ladies who, in costumes that rivaled her own, had come to ask the cause of this unseemly disturbance of their social affair. Then, at another shout from her brother, she discarded her finery and, holding fast to her doll with true mother instinct, hurried timidly to the waiting automobile.
On that day when Helen had sent her servant to take them for a ride, these children of the Flats had thought that no greater happiness was possible to mere human beings. But now, as they sat with their beautiful princess lady between them on the deep-cushioned seat, and watched the familiar houses glide swiftly past, even Bobby was silent. It was all so unreal--so like a dream. Their former experience was so far surpassed that they would not have been surprised had the automobile been suddenly transformed into a magic ship of the air, with Tom a fairy pilot to carry them away up among the clouds to some wonderful sunshine castle in the sky.
It is true that Bobby's conscience stirred uneasily when he felt an arm steal gently about him and he was drawn a little closer to the princess lady's side. A feller with a proper pride does not readily permit such familiarities. It had been a long time since any one had put an arm around Bobby--he did not quite understand.
But as for that, the princess lady herself did not quite understand either. Perhaps the sight of little Maggie and her play lady friends so elegantly costumed for their social function had suddenly convinced her that these children of the Flats were of her world after all. Perhaps the shouting children had awakened memories that banished for the moment the sadness of her grown-up years. Or it may have been simply the way that wee Maggie held her battered doll. It may have been that the mother instinct of this wistful mite of humanity quickened in the heart of the young woman something that was deeper, more vital, more real to her womanhood than the things to which she had so far given herself. As the Helen of the old house had longed to cry aloud in the Mill her recognition of her man, she hungered now with a strange woman hunger for the feel of a child in her arms.
And so, with no care for her gown, which was sure to be ruined by this contact with the grime of the Flats, with no question as to what people might think, with no thought for class standards or industrial problems, the daughter of Adam Ward took the children of Sam Whaley in her arms and carried them away from the shadow of that dark cloud that hung always above the Mill. From the smoke and dust and filth of their heritage, she took them into the clean, sunny air of the hillside fields and woods. From the hovels and shanties of their familiar haunts she took them where birds made their nests and the golden bees and bright-winged butterflies were busy among their flowers. From the squalid want and cruel neglect of their poverty she took them into a fairyland that was overflowing with the riches that belong to childhood.
And then, when the sun was red above the bluff where the curving line of cliffs end at the river's edge, she brought them back.
For some reason that has never been made satisfactorily clear by the wise ones who lead the world's thinking, Bobby and Maggie must always be brought back to their home in the Flats, the princess lady must always return to her castle on the hill.
* * * * *
Charlie Martin was unusually quiet when he returned home from his work that day. The father mentioned Helen's visit to the Mill, and Mary had many questions to ask, but the soldier workman, usually so ready to talk and laugh with his sister, answered only in monosyllables or silently permitted the older man to carry the burden of the conversation.
When supper was over and it was dark, Charlie, saying that he thought he ought to attend Jake Vodell's street meeting that evening, left the house.
But Captain Charlie did not go to hear the agitator's soap-box oration that night. For an hour or more, under cover of the darkness, the workman sat on the porch of the old house next door to his home.
He had pushed aside the broken gate and made his way up the weed-tangled walk so quietly that neither his sister nor his father, who were on the porch of the cottage, heard a sound. So still was he that two neighborhood lovers, who paused in their slow walk, as if tempted by the friendly shadow of the lonely old place, did not know that he was there. Then at something her father said, Mary's laugh rang out, and the lovers moved on.
A little later Captain Charlie stole softly out of the yard and up the street in the direction from which Helen had come the day of her visit to the old house. When the sound of his feet on the walk could not be heard at the cottage, the workman walked briskly, taking the way that led toward the Interpreter's hut.
One who knew him would have thought that he was going for an evening call on the old basket maker. He saw the light of the little house on the cliff presently, and for a moment walked slowly, as if debating whether or not he should go on as he had intended. Then he turned off from the way to the Interpreter's and took that seldom used road that led up the hill toward the home of Adam Ward. With a strong, easy stride he swung up the grade until he came to the corner of the iron fence. Slowly and quietly he moved on now in the deeper shadows of the trees. When he could see the gloomy mass of the house unobstructed against the sky, he stopped.
The lower floor was brightly lighted. The windows above were dark. With his back against the trunk of a tree Captain Charlie waited.
An automobile came out between the stone columns of the big gate and thundered away down the street with reckless speed. Adam Ward, thought the man under the tree--even John never drove like that. And he wondered where the old Mill owner could be going at such an hour of the night.
Still he waited.
Suddenly a light flashed out from the windows of an upper room. A moment, and the watcher saw the form of a woman framed in the casement against the bright background. For some time she stood there, her face, shaded by her hands, pressed close to the glass, as if she were trying to see into the darkness of the night. Then she drew back. The shade was drawn.
Very slowly Captain Charlie went back down the hill.
O flashing muzzles, pause, and let them see The coming dawn that streaks the sky afar; Then let your mighty chorus witness be To them, and Caesar, that we still make war.
"In the weeks immediately following her visit to the Mill, Helen Ward met the demands of her world apparently as usual. If any one noticed that she failed to enter into the affairs of her associates with the same lively interest which had made her a leader among those who do nothing strenuously, they attributed it to her father's ill health. And in this they were partially right. Ever since the day when she half revealed her fears to the Interpreter, the young woman's feeling that her father's ill health and the unhappiness of her home were the result of some hidden thing, had gamed in strength. Since her meeting with Captain Charlie there had been in her heart a deepening conviction that, but for this same hidden thing, she would have known in all its fullness a happiness of which she could now only dream.
More frequently than ever before, she went now to sit with the Interpreter on the balcony porch of that little hut on the cliff. But Bobby and Maggie wished in vain for their princess lady to come and take them again into the land of trees and birds and flowers and sunshiny hills and clean blue sky. Often, now, she went to meet her brother when his day's work was done, and, sending Tom home with her big car, she would go with John in his roadster. And always while he told her of the Mill and led her deeper into the meaning of the industry and its relation to the life of the people, she listened with eager interest. But she did not go again to the Martin cottage or visit the old house.
Once at the foot of the Interpreter's zigzag stairway she met Captain Martin and greeted him in passing. Two or three times she caught a glimpse of him among the men coming from the Mill as she waited for John in front of the office. That was all. But always she was conscious of him. When from the Interpreter's hut she watched the twisting columns of smoke rising from the tall stacks, her thoughts were with the workman who somewhere under that cloud was doing his full share in the industrial army of his people. When John talked to her of the Mill and its meaning, her heart was glad for her brother's loyal comradeship with this man who had been his captain over there. The very sound of the deep-toned whistle that carried to Adam Ward the proud realization of his material possessions carried to his daughter thoughts of what, but for those same material possessions, might have been.
For relief she turned to McIver. There was a rocklike quality in the factory owner that had always appealed to her. His convictions were so unwavering--his judgments so final. McIver never doubted McIver. He never, in his own mind, questioned what he did by the standards of right and justice. The only question he ever asked himself was, Would McIver win or lose? Any suggestion of a difference of opinion on the part of another was taken as a personal insult that was not to be tolerated. Therefore, because the man was what he was, his class convictions were deeply grounded, fixed and certain. In the turmoil of her warring thoughts and disturbed emotions Helen felt her own balance so shaken that she instinctively reached out to steady herself by him. The man, feeling her turn to him, pressed his suit with all the ardor she would permit, for he saw in his success not only possession of the woman he wanted, but the overthrow of John's opposition to his business plans and the consequent triumph of his personal material interests and the interests of his class. But, in spite of the relief she gained from the strength of McIver's convictions, some strange influence within herself prevented her from yielding. She probably would yield at last, she told herself drearily--because there seemed to be nothing else for her to do.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, from his hut on the cliff, the Interpreter watched the approach of the industrial storm.
The cloud that had appeared on the Millsburgh horizon with the coming of Jake Vodell had steadily assumed more threatening proportions until now it hung dark with gloomy menace above the work and the homes of the people. To the man in the wheel chair, looking out upon the scene that lay with all its varied human interests before him, there was no bit of life anywhere that was not in the shadow of the gathering storm. The mills and factories along the river, the stores and banks and interests of the business section, the farms in the valley, the wretched Flats, the cottage homes of the workmen and the homes on the hillside, were all alike in the path of the swiftly approaching danger.
The people with anxious eyes watched for the storm to break and made such hurried preparations as they could. They heard the dull, muttering sound of its heavy voice and looked at one another in silent dread or talked, neighbor to neighbor, in low tones. A strange hush was over this community of American citizens. In their work, in their pleasures, in their home life, in their love and happiness, in their very sorrows, they felt the deadening presence of this dread thing that was sweeping upon them from somewhere beyond the borders of their native land. And against this death that filled the air they seemingly knew not how to defend themselves.
This, to the Interpreter, was the almost unbelievable tragedy--that the people should not know what to do; that they should not have given more thought to making the structure of their citizenship stormproof.
The great trouble is that the people don't line up right, said Captain Charlie to John and the Interpreter one evening as the workman and the general manager were sitting with the old basket maker on the balcony porch.
Just what do you mean by that, Charlie? asked John. The man in the wheel chair was nodding his assent to the union man's remark.
I mean, Charlie explained, "that the people consider only capital and labor, or workmen and business men. They put loyal American workmen and imperialist workmen all together on one side and loyal American business men and imperialist business men all together on the other. They line up _all_ employees against _all_ employers. For example, as the people see it, you and I are enemies and the Mill is our battle ground. The fact is that the imperialist manual workman is as much my enemy as he is yours. The imperialist business man is as much your enemy as he is mine."
You are exactly right, Charlie, said the Interpreter. "And that is the first thing that the Big Idea applied to our industries will do--it will line up the great body of loyal American workmen that you represent with the great body of loyal American business men that John represents against the McIvers of capital and the Jake Vodells of labor. And that new line-up alone would practically insure victory. Nine tenths of our industrial troubles are due to the fact that employers and employees alike fail to recognize their real enemies and so fight their friends as often as they fight their foes.
The people must learn to call an industrial slacker a slacker, whether he loafs on a park bench or loafs on the veranda of the country club house. They have to recognize that a traitor to the industries is a traitor to the nation and that he is a traitor whether he works at a bench or runs a bank. They have to say to the imperialist of business and to the imperialist of labor alike, 'The industries of this country are not for you or your class alone, they are for all because the very life of the nation is in them and is dependent upon them.' When the people of this country learn to draw the lines of class where they really belong there will be an end to our industrial wars and to all the suffering that they cause.
If only the people could be lined up and made to declare themselves openly, said John, "Jake Vodell would have about as much chance to make trouble among us as the German Crown Prince would have had among the French Blue Devils."
Charlie laughed.
Which means, I suppose, said the Interpreter, "that there would be a riot to see who could lay hands on him first."
* * * * *
The storm broke at McIver's factory. It was as Jake Vodell had told the Interpreter it would be--"easy to find a grievance."
McIver declared that before he would yield to the demands of his workmen, his factory should stand idle until the buildings rotted to the ground.
The agitator answered that before his men would yield they would make Millsburgh as a city of the dead.
Two or three of the other smaller unions supported McIver's employees with sympathetic strikes. But the success or failure of Jake Vodell's campaign quickly turned on the action of the powerful Mill workers' union. The commander-in-chief of the striking forces must win John Ward's employees to his cause or suffer defeat. He bent every effort to that end.
Sam Whaley and a few like him walked out. But that was expected by everybody, for Sam Whaley had identified himself from the day of Vodell's arrival in Millsburgh as the agitator's devoted follower and right-hand man. But this unstable, whining weakling and his fellows from the Flats carried little influence with the majority of the sturdy, clearer-visioned workmen.
At a meeting of the Millsburgh Manufacturing Association, McIver endeavored to pledge the organization to a concerted effort against the various unions of their workmen.
John Ward refused to enter into any such alliance against the workmen, and branded McIver's plan as being in spirit and purpose identical with the schemes of Jake Vodell. John argued that while the heads of the various related mills and factories possessed the legal right to maintain their organization for the purpose of furthering such business interests as were common to them all, they could not, as loyal citizens, attempt to deprive their fellow workmen citizens of that same right. Any such effort to array class against class, he declared, was nothing less than sheer imperialism, and antagonistic to every principle of American citizenship.
When McIver characterized Vodell as an anarchist and stated that the unions were back of him and his schemes against the government, John retorted warmly that the statement was false and an insult to many of the most loyal citizens in Millsburgh. There were individual members of the unions who were followers of Jake Vodell, certainly. But comparatively few of the union men who were led by the agitator to strike realized the larger plans of their leader, while the unions as a whole no more endorsed anarchy than did the Manufacturing Association.
McIver then drew for his fellow manufacturers a very true picture of the industrial troubles throughout the country, and pointed out clearly and convincingly the national dangers that lay in the threatening conditions. Millsburgh was in no way different from thousands of other communities. If the employers could not defend themselves by an organized effort against their employees, he would like Mr. Ward to explain who would defend them.
To all of which John answered that it was not a question of employers defending themselves against their employees. The owners had no more at stake in the situation than did their workmen, for the lives of all were equally dependent upon the industries that were threatened with destruction. In the revolution that Jake Vodell's brotherhood was fomenting the American employers could lose no more than would the American employees. The question was, How could American industries be protected against both the imperialistic employer and the imperialistic employee? The answer was, By the united strength of the loyal American employers and employees, openly arrayed against the teachings and leadership of Jake Vodell, on the one hand, and equally against all such principles and actions as had been proposed by Mr. McIver, on the other.
When the meeting closed, McIver had failed to gain the support of the association.
Realizing that without the Mill he could never succeed in his plans, the factory owner appealed to Adam Ward himself.
The old Mill owner, in full accord with McIver, attempted to force John into line. But the younger man refused to enlist in any class war against his loyal fellow workmen.
Adam stormed and threatened and predicted utter ruin. John calmly offered to resign. The father refused to listen to this, on the ground that his ill health did not permit him to assume again the management of the business, and that he would never consent to the Mill's being operated by any one outside the family.
When Helen returned to her home in the early evening, she found her father in a state of mind bordering on insanity.
Striding here and there about the rooms with uncontrollable nervous energy, he roared, as he always did on such occasions, about his sole ownership of the Mill--the legality of the patents that gave him possession of the new process--how it was his genius and hard work alone that had built up the Mill--that no one should take his possessions from him--waving his arms and shaking his fists in violent, meaningless gestures. With his face twitching and working and his eyes blazing with excitement and rage, his voice rose almost to a scream: "Let them try to take anything away from me! I know what they are going to do, but they can't do it. I've had the best lawyers that I could hire and I've got it all tied up so tight that no one can touch it.
I could have thrown Pete Martin out of the Mill any time I wanted. He has no claim on me that any court in the world would recognize. Let him try anything he dares. I'll starve him to death--I'll turn him into the streets--he hasn't a thing in the world that he didn't get by working for me. I made him--I will ruin him. You all think that I am sick--you think that I am crazy--that I don't know what I am talking about. I'll show you--you'll see what will happen if they start any thing--
The piteous exhibition ended as usual. As if driven by some invisible fiend, the man rushed from the presence of those whom he most loved to the dreadful company of his own fearful and monstrous thoughts.
And the room where the wife and children of Adam Ward sat was filled with the presence of that hidden thing of which they dared not speak.
* * * * *
Everywhere throughout the city the people were discussing John Ward's opposition to McIver.
The community, tense with feeling, waited for an answer to the vital question, What would the Mill workers' union do? Upon the answer of John Ward's employees to the demands of the agitator for a sympathetic strike depended the success or failure of Jake Vodell's Millsburgh campaign.