Helen of the Old House

gh took no little pride in the dominant Mill owner's achievements. In particular, was the Ward home, most pretentious of all the imposing esta

de--the world of true friendships, with their inspiring sympathies and unselfish love--in these worlds there is no place for Adam Wards.Retire! Retire to what?* * * * *One afternoon, a few days after her visit to the Interpreter, Helen sat with a book in a little vine-covered arbor, in a secluded part of the grounds, some distance from the house. She had been in the quiet retreat an hour, perhaps, when her attention was attracted by the sound of some one approaching. Through a tiny opening in the lattice and vine wall she saw her father.Adam Ward apparently was on his way to the very spot his daughter had chosen, and the young woman smiled to herself as she pictured his finding her there. But a moment before the seemingly inevitable discovery, the man turned aside to a rustic seat in the shade of a great tree not far away.Helen was about to reveal her presence by calling to him when something in her father's manner caused her to hesitate. Through the leafy screen of the arbor wall she saw him stop beside the bench and look carefully about on every side, as if to assure himself that he was alone. The young woman flushed guiltily, but, as if against her will, she remained silent. As she watched her father's face, a feeling of pity, fear and wonder held her breathless.Helen had often seen her father suffering under an attack of nervous excitement. She had witnessed his spells of ungoverned rage that left him white and trembling with exhaustion. She had known his fears that he tried so hard to hide. She knew of his sleepless nights, of his dreams of horror, of his hours of lonely brooding. But never had she seen her father like this. It was as if Adam Ward, believing himself unobserved, let fall the mask that hid his secret self from even those who loved him most. Sinking down upon the bench, he groaned aloud, while his daughter, looking upon that huddled figure of abject misery and despair, knew that she was witnessing a mental anguish that could come only from some source deep hidden beneath the surface of her father's life. She could not move. As one under some strange spell, she was helpless.The doctors had said--diplomatically--that Adam Ward's ill health was a nervous trouble, resulting from his lifelong devotion to his work, with no play spell or rest, and no relief through interest in other things. But Adam Ward knew the real reason for the medical men's insistent advice that he retire from the stress of the Mill to the quiet of his estate. He knew it from his wife's anxious care and untiring watchfulness. He knew it from the manner of his business associates when they asked how he felt. He knew when, at some trivial incident or word, he would be caught, helpless, in the grip of an ungovernable rage that would leave him exhausted for many weary, brooding hours. He felt it in the haunting, unconquerable fears that beset him--by the feeling of some dread presence watching him--by the convictions that unknown enemies were seeking his life--by his terrifying dreams of the hell of his inherited religion.And the real reason for his condition Adam Ward knew. It was not the business to which he had driven himself so relentlessly. It was not that he had no other interests to take his mind from the Mill. It was a thing that he had fought, in secret, almost every hour of every year of his accumulating successes. It was a thing which his neighbors and associates and family felt in his presence but could not name--a thing which made him turn his eyes away from a frank, straightforward look and forbade him to look his fellows in the face save by an exertion of his will.Through the vines, Helen saw her father stoop to pick from the ground a few twigs that had escaped the eyes of the caretakers. Deliberately he broke the twigs into tiny bits, and threw the pieces one by one aside. His gray face, drawn and haggard, twitched and worked with the nervous stress of his thoughts. From under his heavy brows he glanced with the quick, furtive look of a hunted thing, as though fearing some enemy that might be hidden in the near-by shrubbery. The young woman, shrinking from the look in his eyes, and not daring to make her presence known, remembered, suddenly, how the Interpreter had been reluctant to discuss her father's illness.Casting aside the last tiny bit of the twig which he had broken so aimlessly, he found another and continued his senseless occupation.With pity and love in her heart, Helen wanted to go to him--to help him, but she could not--some invisible presence seemed to forbid.Suddenly Adam raised his head. A moment he listened, then cautiously he rose to his feet--listening, listening. It was no trick of his fancy this tune. He could hear voices on the other side of a dense growth of shrubbery near the fence. Two people were talking. He could not distinguish the words but he could hear distinctly the low murmur of their voices.Helen, too, heard the voices and looked in that direction. From her position in the arbor she could see the speakers. With the shadow of a quick smile, she turned her eyes again toward her father. He was looking about cautio