Helen of the Old House

by Harold Bell Wright

"I'm sorry, son," was all that the old workman said, but Captain
Charlie knew that his father understood.

After that they did not speak until they heard an automobile stop in front of the house.

"That must be Mary now," said Pete, looking at his watch. "They have never been so late before."

They heard her step on the porch. The sound of the automobile died away in the distance.

When Mary came in and they saw her face, they knew that Charlie was right. She tried to return their greetings in her usual manner but failed pitifully and hurried on to her room.

The two men looked at each other without a word.

Presently Mary returned and told them a part of her evening's experience. Soon after her father and brother had left the house for the meeting of their union, a boy from the Flats came with the word that the wife of one of Jake Vodell's followers was very ill. Mary, knowing the desperate need of the case but fearing to be alone in that neighborhood at night, had telephoned John at the Mill and he had taken her in his car to the place. The woman, in the agonies of childbirth, was alone with her three little girls. The husband and father was somewhere helping Jake Vodell in the agitator's noble effort to bring happiness to the laboring class. While Mary was doing what she could in the wretched home, John went for a doctor, and to bring fuel and blankets and food and other things that were needed. But, in spite of their efforts, the fighting methods of McIver and Vodell scored another point, that they each might claim with equal reason as in his favor—to God knows what end.

"I can't understand why you Mill men let them go on," Mary cried, with a sudden outburst of feeling, as she finished her story. "You could fight for the women and children during the war. Whenever there is a shipwreck the papers are always full of the heroism of the men who cry 'women and children first!' Why can't some one think of the women and children in these strikes? They are just as innocent as the women and children of Belgium. Why don't you talk on the streets and hold mass meetings and drive Jake Vodell and that beast McIver out of the country?"

"Jake Vodell and McIver are both hoping that some one will do just that, Mary," returned Captain Charlie. "They would like nothing better than for some one to start a riot. You see, dear, an open clash would result in bloodshed—the troops would be called in by McIver, which is exactly what he wants. Vodell would provoke an attack on the soldiers, some one would be killed, and we would have exactly the sort of war against the government that he and his brotherhood are working for."

The old workman spoke. "Charlie is right, daughter; these troubles will never be settled by McIver's way nor Vodell's way. They will be settled by the employers like John getting together and driving the McIvers out of business—and the employees like Charlie here and a lot of the men in our union getting together with John and his crowd and sending the Jake Vodells back to whatever country they came from." When her father spoke John's name, the young woman's face colored with a quick blush. The next moment, unable to control her overwrought emotions, she burst into tears and started to leave the room. But at the door Captain Charlie caught her in his arms and held her close until the first violence of her grief was over.