Helen of the Old House Part 30

It was evening. The Interpreter was sitting in his wheel chair on the balcony porch with silent Billy not far away. Beyond the hills on the west the sky was faintly glowing in the last of the sun's light. The Flats were deep in gloomy shadows out of which the grim stacks of the Mill rose toward the smoky darkness of their overhanging cloud. Here and there among the poor homes of the workers a lighted window or a lonely street lamp shone in the murky dusk. But the lights of the business section of the city gleamed and sparkled like cl.u.s.ters and strings of jewels, while the residence districts on the hillside were marked by hundreds of twinkling, starlike points.

The quiet was rudely broken by a voice at the outer doorway of the hut.

The tone was that of boisterous familiarity. "h.e.l.lo! h.e.l.lo there!

Anybody home?"

"Here," answered the Interpreter. "Come in. Or, I should say, come out," he added, as his visitor found his way through the darkness of the living room. "A night like this is altogether too fine to spend under a roof."

"Why in thunder don't you have a light?" said the visitor, with a loud freedom carefully calculated to give the effect of old and privileged comradeship. But the laugh of hearty good fellowship which followed his next remark was a trifle overdone "Ain't afraid of bombs, are you?

Don't you know that the war is over yet?"

The Interpreter obligingly laughed at the merry witticism, as he answered, "There is light enough out here under the stars to think by.

How are you, Adam Ward?"

From where he stood in the doorway, Adam could see the dim figure of the Interpreter's companion at the farther end of the porch. "Who is that with you?" demanded the Mill owner suspiciously.

"Only Billy Rand," replied the man in the wheel chair rea.s.suringly.

"Won't you sit down?"

Before accepting the invitation to be seated, Adam advanced upon the man in the wheel chair with outstretched hands, as if eagerly meeting a most intimate friend whose regard he prized above all other relationships of life. Seizing the Interpreter's hand, he clung to it in an excess of cordiality, all the while pouring out between short laughs of pretended gladness, a hurried volume of excuses for having so long delayed calling upon his dear old friend. To any one at all acquainted with the man, it would have been very clear that he wanted something.

"It seems ages since I saw you," he declared, as he seated himself at last. "It's a shame for a man to neglect an old friend as I have neglected you."

The Interpreter returned, calmly, "The last time you called was just before your son enlisted. You wanted me to help you keep him at home."

It was too dark to see Adam's face. "So it was, I remember now." There was a suggestion of nervousness in the laugh which followed his words.

"The time before that," said the Interpreter evenly, "was when Tom Blair was killed in the Mill. You wanted me to persuade Tom's widow that you were in no way liable for the accident."

The barometer of Adam's friendliness dropped another degree. "That affair was finally settled at five thousand," he said, and this time he did not laugh.

"The time before that," said the Interpreter, "was when your old friend Peter Martin's wife died. You wanted me to explain to the workmen who attended the funeral how necessary it was for you to take that hour out of their pay checks."

"You have a good memory," said the visitor, coldly, as he stirred uneasily in the dusk.

"I have," agreed the man in the wheel chair; "I find it a great blessing at times. It is the only thing that preserves my sense of humor. It is not always easy to preserve one's sense of humor, is it, Adam Ward?"

When the Mill owner answered, his voice, more than his words, told how determined he was to hold his ground of pleasant, friendly comradeship, at least until he had gained the object of his visit.

"Don't you ever get lonesome up here? Sort of gloomy, ain't it--especially at nights?"

"Oh, no," returned the Interpreter; "I have many interesting callers; there are always my work and my books and always, night and day, I have our Mill over there."

"Heh! What! _Our_ Mill! Where? Oh, I see--yes--_our_ Mill--that's good!

_Our_ Mill!"

"Surely you will admit that I have some small interest in the Mill where we once worked side by side, will you not, Adam?"

"Oh, yes," laughed Adam, helping on the jest. "But let me see--I don't exactly recall the amount of your investment--what was it you put in?"

"Two good legs, Adam Ward, two good legs," returned the old basket maker.

Again Adam Ward was at a loss for an answer. In the shadowy presence of that old man in the wheel chair the Mill owner was as a wayward child embarra.s.sed before a kindly master.

When the Interpreter spoke again his deep voice was colored with gentle patience.

"Why have you come to me like this, Adam Ward? What is it that you want?"

Adam moved uneasily. "Why--nothing particular--I just thought I would call--happened to be going by and saw your light."

There had been no light in the hut that evening. The Interpreter waited. The surrounding darkness of the night seemed filled with warring spirits from the gloomy Flats, the mighty Mill, the glittering streets and stores and the cheerfully lighted homes.

Adam tried to make his voice sound casual, but he could not altogether cover the nervous intensity of his interest, as he asked the question that was so vital to the entire community. "Will the Mill workers'

union go out on a sympathetic strike?"

"No."

The Mill owner drew a long breath of relief. "I judged you would know."

The Interpreter did not answer.

Adam spoke with more confidence. "I suppose you know this agitator Jake Vodell?"

"I know who he is," replied the Interpreter. "He is a well-known representative of a foreign society that is seeking, through the working people of this country, to extend its influence and strengthen its power."

"The unions are going too far," said Adam. "The people won't stand for their bringing in a man like Vodell to preach anarchy and stir up all kinds of trouble."

The Interpreter spoke strongly. "Jake Vodell no more represents the great body of American union men than you, Adam Ward, represent the great body of American employers."

"He works with the unions, doesn't he?"

"Yes, but that does not make him a representative of the union men as a whole, any more than the fact that your work with the great body of American business men makes you their representative."

"I should like to know why I am not a representative American business man." It was evident from the tone of his voice that the Mill owner controlled himself with an effort.

The Interpreter answered, without a trace of personal feeling, "You do not represent them, Adam Ward, because the spirit and purpose of your personal business career is not the spirit and purpose of our business men as a whole--just as the spirit and purpose of such men as Jake Vodell is not the spirit and purpose of our union men as a whole."

"But," a.s.serted the Mill owner, "it is men like me who have built up this country. Look at our railroads, our great manufacturing plants, our industries of all kinds! Look what I have done for Millsburgh! You know what the town was when you first came here. Look at it now!"

"The new process has indeed wrought great changes in Millsburgh,"

suggested the Interpreter.

"The new process! You mean that _I_ have wrought great changes in Millsburgh. What would the new process have amounted to if it had not been for me? Why, even the poor old fools who owned the Mill at that time couldn't have done anything with it. I had to force it on them.

And then when I had managed to get it installed and had proved what it would do, I made them increase their capitalization and give me a half interest--told them if they didn't I would take my process to their compet.i.tors and put them out of business. Later I managed to gain the control and after that it was easy." His voice changed to a tone of arrogant, triumphant boasting. "I may not be a representative business man in _your_ estimation, but my work stands just the same. No man who knows anything about business will deny that I built up the Mill to what it is to-day."

"And that," returned the Interpreter, "is exactly what Vodell says for the men who work with their hands in cooperation with men like you who work with their brains. You say that you built the Mill because you thought and planned and directed its building. Jake Vodell says the men whose physical strength materialized your thoughts, the men who carried out your plans and toiled under your direction built the Mill. And you and Jake are both right to exactly the same degree. The truth is that you have _all together_ built the Mill. You have no more right to think or to say that you did it than Pete Martin has to think or to say that he did it."

When Adam Ward found no answer to this the Interpreter continued.

"Consider a great building: The idea of the structure has come down through the ages from the first habitation of primitive man. The mental strength represented in the structure in its every detail is the composite thought of every generation of man since the days when human beings dwelt in rocky caves and in huts of mud. But listen: The capitalist who furnished the money says he did it; the architect says he did it; the stone mason says he did it; the carpenter says he did it; the mountains that gave the stone say they did it; the forests that grew the timber say they did it; the hills that gave the metal say they did it.