Part 24 (2/2)

As she had observed with increasing interest the change in her brother's att.i.tude 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 a.s.sociation 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 relations.h.i.+p to these old friends of their childhood, but of herself and all the relations.h.i.+ps 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 antic.i.p.ation, 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 pa.s.sed 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 cas.e.m.e.nts 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 embarra.s.sment, ”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.”

<script>