Part 24 (1/2)

”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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sing 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.

CHAPTER XIV

THE WAY BACK

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 relations.h.i.+p. 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.