The poor woman did not fill the air with loud cries of hysterical gratitude and superlative prayers to God for His blessing upon this one who had come so miraculously to her relief. For a moment she stood trembling with emotion, while her tearless eyes were fixed upon Helen's face with a look of such gratitude that the young woman was forced to turn away lest her own feeling escape her control. Then, snatching the money from the boy's hands, she said, "I had better go myself, ma'am—Bobby can come along to help carry things. If you"—she hesitated, with a look toward that other room—"if you wouldn't mind stayin' with Maggie till we get back?"
A minute later and Helen was alone in that wretched house in the
Flats—alone save for the sick child in the next room.
The door to the street had scarcely closed when a wave of terror swept over her. She started to her feet. She could not do it. She would call Mrs. Whaley back. She would go herself for the needed things. But there was a strength in Helen Ward that few of her most intimate friends, even, realized; and before her hand touched the latch of the door she had command of herself once more. In much the same spirit that her brother John perhaps had faced a lonely night watch in Flanders fields, Adam Ward's daughter forced herself to do this thing that had so unexpectedly fallen to her.
For some minutes she walked the floor, listening to the noises of the neighborhood. Anxiously she opened the door and looked out into the fast, gathering darkness. No one of her own people knew where she was. She had heard terrible things of Jake Vodell and his creed of terrorism. McIver had pressed it upon her mind that the strikers were all alike in their lawlessness. What if Sam Whaley should return to find her there? She listened—listened.
A faint, moaning sound came from the next room. She went quickly to the doorway, but in the faint light she could see only the shadowy outline of a bed. Taking the lamp she entered fearfully.
Save for the bed, an old box that served as a table, and one chair, this room was as bare as the other. With the lamp in her hand Helen stood beside the bed.
The tiny form of little Maggie was lost under the ragged and dirty coverlet. The child's face in the tangled mass of her unkempt hair was so wasted and drawn, her eyes, closed under their dark lids, so deeply sunken, and her teeth so exposed by the thin fleshless lips, that she seemed scarcely human. One bony arm with its clawlike hand encircled the rag doll that she had held that day when Helen took the two children into the country.
As Helen looked all her fears vanished. She had no thought, now, of where she was or how she came there. Deep within her she felt the awakening of that mother soul which lives in every woman. She did not shrink in horror from this hideous fruit of Jake Vodell's activity. She did not cry out in pity or sorrow. She uttered no word of protest. As she put the lamp down on the box, her hand did not tremble. Very quietly she placed the chair beside the bed and sat down to watch and wait as motherhood in all ages has watched and waited.
While poor Sam Whaley was busy on some mission assigned to him by his leader, Jake Vodell, and his wife and boy were gone for the food supplied by a stranger to his household, this woman, of the class that he had been taught to hate, held alone her vigil at the bedside of the workman's little girl.
A thin, murmuring voice came from the bed. Helen leaned closer. She heard a few incoherent mutterings—then, "No—no—Bobby, yer wouldn't dast blow up the castle. Yer'd maybe kill the princess lady—yer know yer couldn't do that!"