Not for some days after his return from Boston did Keith venture out upon the street. He knew then at once that the whole town had heard all about his trip to Boston and what the doctors had said. He tried not to see the curious glances cast in his direction. He tried not to care that the youngest McGuire children stood at their gate and whispered, with fingers plainly pointing toward himself.
He did not go near the schoolhouse, and he stayed at the post-office until he felt sure all the scholars must have reached home. Then, just at the corner of his own street, he met Mazie Sanborn and Dorothy Parkman face to face. He would have passed quickly, with the briefest sort of recognition, but Mazie stopped him short.
"Keith, oh, Keith, it isn't true, is it?" she cried breathlessly. "You aren't going to be blind?"
"Mazie, how could you!" cried Dorothy sharply. And because she shuddered and half turned away, Keith saw only the shudder and the turning away, and did not realize that it was rebuke and remonstrance, and not aversion, that Dorothy was expressing so forcibly.
Keith stiffened.
"Say, Keith, I'm awfully sorry, and so's Dorothy. Why, she hasn't talked about a thing, hardly, but that, since she heard of it."
"Mazie, I have, too," protested Dorothy sharply.
"Well, anyway, it was she who insisted on coming around this way to-day," teased Mazie wickedly; "and when I——"
"I'm going home, whether you are or not," cut in Miss Dorothy, with dignity. And with a low chuckle Mazie tossed a good-bye to Keith and followed her lead.
Keith, his chin aggressively high, strode in the opposite direction.
"I suppose she wanted to see how really bad I did look," he was muttering fiercely, under his breath. "Well, she needn't worry. If I do get blind, I'll take good care she don't have to look at me, nor Mazie, nor any of the rest of them."
Keith went out on the street very little after that, and especially he kept away from it after school hours. They were not easy—those winter days. The snow lay deep in the woods, and it was too cold for long walks. He could not read, nor paint, nor draw, nor use his eyes about anything that tried them. But he was by no means idle. He had found now "the boy to do the reading"—his father. For hours every day they studied together, Keith memorizing, where it was necessary, what his father read, always discussing and working out the problems together. That he could not paint or draw was a great cross to his father, he knew.
Keith noticed, too,—and noticed it with a growing heartache,—that nothing was ever said now about his being Jerry and Ned and dad himself all in a bunch. And he understood, of course, that if he was going to be blind, he could not be Jerry and—
But Keith was honestly trying not to think of that; and he welcomed most heartily anything or anybody that helped him toward that end.
Now there was Susan. Not once had Susan ever spoken to him of his eyes, whether he could or could not see. But Susan knew about it. He was sure of that. First he suspected it when he found her, the next day after his return from Boston, crying in the pantry.
SUSAN CRYING! Keith stood in the doorway and stared unbelievingly. He had not supposed that Susan could cry.
"Why, Susan!" he gasped. "What IS the matter?"
He never forgot the look on Susan's face as she sprang toward him, or the quick cry she gave.
"Oh, Keith, my boy, my boy!" Then instantly she straightened back, caught up a knife, and began to peel an onion from a pan on the shelf before her. "Cryin'? Nonsense!" she snapped quaveringly. "Can't a body peel a pan of onions without being accused of cryin' about somethin'? Shucks! What should I be cryin' for, anyway, to be sure?
Some things need a knife,An' some things need a pill,An' some things jest a laugh'll make a cure.But jest you bet your life,You may cry jest fit to kill,An' never cure nothin'—that is sure.
That's what I always say when I see folks cryin'. An' it's so, too. Here, Keith, want a cooky? An' take a jam tart, too. I made 'em this mornin', 'specially for you."
With which astounding procedure—for her—Susan pushed a plate of cookies and tarts toward him, then picked up her pan of onions and hurried into the kitchen.
Once again Keith stared. Cookies and jam tarts, and made for him? If anything, this was even more incomprehensible than were the tears in Susan's eyes. Then suddenly the suspicion came to him—SUSAN KNEW. And this was her way——
The suspicion did not become a certainty, however, until two days later. Then he overheard Susan and Mrs. McGuire talking in the kitchen. He had slipped into the pantry to look for another of those cookies made for him, when he heard Mrs. McGuire burst into the kitchen and accost Susan agitatedly. And her first words were such that he could not bring himself to step out into view.
"Susan," she had cried, "it ain't true, is it? IS it true that KeithBurton is going—BLIND? My John says——"
"Sh-h! You don't have to shout it out like that, do ye?" demanded Susan crossly, yet in a voice that was far from steady. "Besides, that's a very extravagated statement."
"You mean exaggerated, I suppose," retorted Mrs. McGuire impatiently. "Well, I'm sure I'm glad if it is, of course. But can't you tell me anything about it? Or, don't you know?"
Keith knew—though he could not see her—just how Susan was drawing herself up to her full height.
"I guess I know—all there is to know, Mis' McGuire," she said then coldly. "But there ain't anybody KNOWS anything. We're jest waitin' to see." Her voice had grown unsteady again.
"You mean he MAY be blind, later?"
"Yes."
"Oh, the poor boy! Ain't that terrible? How CAN they stand it?"
"I notice there are things in this world that have to be stood. An' when they have to be stood, they might as well be—stood, an' done with it."
"Yes, I suppose so," sighed Mrs. McGuire. Then, after a pause: "But what is it—that's makin' him blind?"
"I don't know. They ain't sayin'. I thought maybe't was a catamount, but they say't ain't that."
"But when is it liable to come?"
"Come? How do I know? How does anybody know?" snapped Susan tartly. "Look a-here, Mis' McGuire, you must excuse me from discoursin' particulars. We don't talk 'em here. None of us don't."
"Well, you needn't be so short about it, Susan Betts. I'm only tryin' to show a little sympathy. You don't seem to realize at all what a dreadful thing this is. My John says——"
"Don't I—DON'T I?" Susan's voice shook with emotion. "Don't you s'pose that I know what it would be with the sun put out, an' the moon an' the stars, an' never a thing to look at but black darkness all the rest of your life? Never to be able to see the blue sky, or your father's face, or—But talkin' about it don't help any. Look a-here, if somethin' awful was goin' to happen to you, would YOU want folks to be talkin' to you all the time about it? No, I guess you wouldn't. An' so we don't talk here. We're just—waitin'. It may come in a year, it may come sooner, or later. It may not come at all. An' while we ARE waitin' there ain't nothin' we can do except to do ev'rything the doctor tells us, an' hope—'t won't ever come."
Even Mrs. McGuire could have had no further doubt about Susan's "caring." No one who heard Susan's voice then could have doubted it. Mrs. McGuire, for a moment, made no answer; then, with an inarticulate something that might have passed for almost any sort of comment, she rose to her feet and left the house.
In the pantry, Keith, the cookies long since forgotten, shamelessly listened at the door and held his breath to see which way Susan's footsteps led. Then, when he knew that the kitchen was empty, he slipped out, still cookyless, and hurried upstairs to his own room.
Keith understood, after that, why Susan did not talk to him about his eyes; and because he knew she would not talk, he felt at ease and at peace with her.
It was not so with others. With others (except with his father) he never knew when a dread question or a hated comment was to be made. And so he came to avoid those others more and more.
At the first signs of spring, and long before the snow was off the ground, Keith took to the woods. When his father did not care to go, he went alone. It was as if he wanted to fill his inner consciousness with the sights and sounds of his beloved out-of-doors, so that when his outer eyes were darkened, his inner eyes might still hold the pictures. Keith did not say this, even to himself; but when every day Susan questioned him minutely as to what he had seen, and begged him to describe every budding tree and every sunset, he wondered; was it possible that Susan, too, was trying to fill that inner consciousness with visions?
Keith was thrown a good deal with Susan these days. Sometimes it seemed as if there were almost no one but Susan. Certainly all those others who talked and questioned—he did not want to be with them. And his father—sometimes it seemed to Keith that his father did not like to be with him as well as he used to. And, of course, if he was going to be blind—Dad never had liked disagreeable subjects. Had HE become—a disagreeable subject?
And so there seemed, indeed, at times, no one but Susan. Susan, however, was a host in herself. Susan was never cross now, and almost always she had a cooky or a jam tart for him. She told lots of funny stories, and there were always her rhymes and jingles. She had a new one every day, sometimes two or three a day.
There was no subject too big or too little for Susan to put into rhyme. Susan said that something inside of her was a gushing siphon of poems, anyway, and she just had to get them out of her system. And she told Keith that spring always made the siphon gush worse than ever, for some reason. She didn't know why.
Keith suspected that she said this by way of an excuse for repeating so many of her verses to him just now. But Keith was not deceived. He had not forgotten what Susan had said to Mrs. McGuire in the kitchen that day; and he knew very well that all this especial attention to him was only Susan's way of trying to help him "wait."
And so Keith waited, through the summer and into another winter. And April came. Keith was not listening to Susan's rhymes and jingles now, nor was he tramping through the woods in search of the first sign of spring. Both eyes had become badly affected now. Keith knew that and—
THE FOG HAD COME. Keith had seen the fog for several days before he knew what it was. He had supposed it to be really—fog. Then one day he said to Susan:
"Where's the sun? We haven't had any BRIGHT sun for days and days—just this horrid old foggy fog."
"Fog? Why, there ain't any fog!" exclaimed Susan. "The sun is as bright——" She stopped short. Keith could not see her face very clearly—Keith was not seeing anything clearly these days. "Nonsense, Keith, of course, the sun is shinin'!" snapped Susan. "Now don't get silly notions in your head!" Then she turned and hurried from the room.
And Keith knew. And he knew that Susan knew.
Keith did not mention the fog to his father—dad did not like disagreeable subjects. But somebody must have mentioned it—Susan, perhaps. At all events, before the week was out Keith went with his father again to Boston.
It was a sorry journey. Keith did not need to go to Boston. Keith knew now. There was no one who could tell him anything. Dad might laugh and joke and call attention to everything amusing that he wanted to—it would make no difference. Besides, as if he could not hear the shake in dad's voice under all the fun, and as if he could not feel the tremble in dad's hand on his shoulder!
Boston was the same dreary round of testing, talk, and questions, hushed voices and furtive glances, hurried trips from place to place; only this time it was all sharper, shorter, more decisive, and there was no operation. It was not the time for that now, the doctors said. Moreover, this time dad did not laugh, or joke, or even talk on the homeward journey. But that, too, made no difference. Keith already knew.
He knew so well that he did not question him at all. But if he had not known, he would have known from Susan the next day. For he found Susan crying three times the next forenoon, and each time she snapped out so short and sharp about something so entirely foreign from what he asked her that he would have known that Susan knew.
Keith did wonder how many months it would be. Some way he had an idea it would be very few now. As long as it was coming he wished it would come, and come quick. This waiting business—On the whole he was glad that Susan was cross, and that his father spent his days shut away in his own room with orders that he was not to be disturbed. For, as for talking about this thing—
It was toward the last of July that Keith discovered how indistinct were growing the outlines of the big pictures on the wall at the end of the hall. Day by day he had to walk nearer and nearer before he could see them at all. He wondered just how many steps would bring him to the wall itself. He was tempted once to count them—but he could not bring himself to do that; so he knew then that in his heart he did not want to know just how many days it would be before—
But there came a day when he was but two steps away. He told himself it would be in two days then. But it did not come in two days. It did not come in a week. Then, very suddenly, it came.
He woke up one morning to find it quite dark. For a minute he thought it WAS dark; then the clock struck seven—and it was August.
Something within Keith seemed to snap then. The long-pent strain of months gave way. With one agonized cry of "Dad, it's come—it's come!" he sprang from the bed, then stood motionless in the middle of the room, his arms outstretched. But when his father and Susan reached the room he had fallen to the floor in a dead faint.
It was some weeks before Keith stood upright on his feet again. His illness was a long and serious one. Late in September, Mrs. McGuire, hanging out her clothes, accosted Susan over the back-yard fence.
"I heard down to the store last night that Keith Burton was goin' to get well."
"Of course he's goin' to get well," retorted Susan with emphasis. "I knew he was, all the time."
"All the same, I think it's a pity he is." Mrs. McGuire's lips came together a bit firmly. "He's stone blind, I hear, an' my John says—"
"Well, what if he is?" demanded Susan, almost fiercely. "You wouldn't kill the child, would you? Besides SEEIN' is only one of his facilities. He's got all the rest left. I reckon he'll show you he can do somethin' with them."
Mrs. McGuire shook her head mournfully.
"Poor boy, poor boy! How's he feel himself? Has he got his senses, his real senses yet?"
"He's just beginnin' to." The harshness in Susan's voice betrayed her difficulty in controlling it. "Up to now he hain't sensed anything, much. Of course, part of the time he hain't known ANYTHING—jest lay there in a stupid. Then, other times he's jest moaned of-of the dark—always the dark.
"At first he—when he talked—seemed to be walkin' through the woods; an' he'd tell all about what he saw; the 'purple sunsets,' an' 'dancin' leaves,' an' the merry little brooks hurryin' down the hillside,' till you could jest SEE the place he was talkin' about. But now—now he's comin' to full conscientiousness, the doctor says; an' he don't talk of anything only—only the dark. An' pretty quick he'll—know."
"An' yet you want that poor child to live, Susan Betts!"
"Of course I want him to live!"
"But what can he DO?"
"Do? There ain't nothin' he can't do. Why, Mis' McGuire, listen! I've been readin' up. First, I felt as you do—a little. I—I didn't WANT him to live. Then I heard of somebody who was blind, an' what he did. He wrote a great book. I've forgotten its name, but it was somethin' about Paradise. PARADISE—an' he was in prison, too. Think of writin' about Paradise when you're shut up in jail—an' blind, at that! Well, I made up my mind if that man could see Paradise through them prison bars with his poor blind eyes, then Keith could. An' I was goin' to have him do it, too. An' so I went down to the library an' asked Miss Hemenway for a book about him. An' I read it. An' then she told me about more an' more folks that was blind, an' what they had done. An' I read about them, too."
"Well, gracious me, Susan Betts, if you ain't the limit!" commentedMrs. McGuire, half admiringly, half disapprovingly.
"Well, I did. An'—why, Mis' McGuire, you hain't any inception of an idea of what those men an' women an'—yes, children—did. Why, one of 'em wasn't only blind, but deaf an' dumb, too. She was a girl. An' now she writes books an' gives lecturin's, an', oh, ev'rything."
"Maybe. I ain't sayin' they don't. But I guess somebody else has to do a part of it. Look at Keith right here now. How are you goin' to take care of him when he gets up an' begins to walk around? Why, he can't see to walk or—or feed himself, or anything. Has the nurse gone?"
Susan shook her head. Her lips came together grimly.
"No. Goes next week, though. Land's sakes, but I hope that woman is expulsive enough! Them entrained nurses always cost a lot, I guess. But we've just had to have her while he was so sick. But she's goin' next week."
"But what ARE you goin' to do? You can't tag him around all day an' do your other work, too. Of course, there's his father—"
"His father! Good Heavens, woman, I wonder if you think I'd trust that boy to his father?" demanded Susan indignantly. "Why, once let him get his nose into that paint-box, an' he don't know anything—not anything. Why, I wouldn't trust him with a baby rabbit—if I cared for the rabbit. Besides, he don't like to be with Keith, nor see him, nor think of him. He feels so bad."
"Humph! Well, if he does feel bad I don't think that's a very nice way to show it. Not think of him, indeed! Well, I guess he'll find SOME one has got to think of him now. But there! that's what you might expect of Daniel Burton, I s'pose, moonin' all day over those silly pictures of his. As my John says—"
"They're not silly pictures," cut in Susan, flaring into instant wrath. "He HAS to paint pictures in order to get money to live, don't he? Well, then, let him paint. He's an artist—an extinguished artist—not just a common storekeeper." (Mr. McGuire, it might be mentioned in passing, kept a grocery store.) "An' if you're artistical, you're different from other folks. You have to be."
"Nonsense, Susan! That's all bosh, an' you know it. What if he does paint pictures? That hadn't ought to hinder him from takin' proper care of his own son, had it?"
"Yes, if he's blind." Susan spoke with firmness and decision. "You don't seem to understand at all, Mis' McGuire. Mr. Burton is an artist. Artists like flowers an' sunsets an' clouds an' brooks. They don't like disagreeable things. They don't want to see 'em or think about 'em. I know. It's that way with Mr. Burton. Before, when Keith was all right, he couldn't bear him out of his sight, an' he was goin' to have him do such big, fine, splendid things when he grew up. Now, since he's blind, he can't bear him IN his sight. He feels that bad. He just won't be with him if he can help it. But he ain't forgettin' him. He's thinkin' of him all the time.IKNOW. An' it's tellin' on him. He's lookin' thin an' bad an' sick. You see, he's so disappointed, when he'd counted on such big things for that boy!"
"Humph! Well, I'll risk HIM. It's Keith I'm worry in' about. Who is going to take care of him?"
Susan Betts frowned.
"Well,Icould, I think. But there's a sister of Mr. Burton's—she's comin'."
"Not Nettie Colebrook?"
"Yes, Mis' Colebrook. That's her name. She's a widow, an' hain't got anything needin' her. She wrote an' offered, an' Mr. Burton said yes, if she'd be so kind. An' she's comin'."
"When?"
"Next week. The day the nurse goes. Why? What makes you look so queer?Do you know—Mis' Colebrook?"
"Know Nettie Burton Colebrook? Well, I should say I did! I went to boardin'-school with her."
"Humph!" Susan threw a sharp glance into Mrs. McGuire's face. Susan looked as if she wanted to ask another question. But she did not ask it. "Humph!" she grunted again; and turned back to the sheet she was hanging on the line.
There was a brief pause, then Mrs. McGuire commented dryly:
"I notice you ain't doin' no rhymin' to-day, Susan."
"Ain't I? Well, perhaps I ain't. Some way, they don't come out now so natural an' easy-like."
"What's the matter? Ain't the machine workin'?"
Susan shook her head. Then she drew a long sigh. Picking up her empty basket she looked at it somberly.
"Not the way it did before. Some way, there don't seem anything inside of me now only dirges an' funeral marches. Everywhere, all day, everything I do an' everywhere I go I jest hear: 'Keith's blind, Keith's blind!' till it seems as if I jest couldn't bear it."
With something very like a sob Susan turned and hurried into the house.
It was when the nurse was resting and Susan was with Keith that the boy came to a full, realizing sense of himself, on his lips the time-worn question asked by countless other minds back from that mysterious land of delirium:
"Where am I?"
Susan sprang to her feet, then dropped on her knees at the bedside.
"In your own bed—honey."
"Is that—Susan?" No wonder he asked the question. Whenever before hadSusan talked like that?
"Sure it's Susan."
"But I can't—see you—or anything. Oh-h!" With a shudder and a quivering cry the boy flung out his hands, then covered his eyes with them. "I know, now, I know! It's come—it's come! I am—BLIND!"
"There, there, honey, don't, please don't. You'll break Susan's heart.An' you're SO much better now."
"Better?"
"Yes. You've been sick—very sick."
"How long?"
"Oh, several weeks. It's October now."
"And I've been blind all that time?"
"Yes."
"But I haven't known I was blind!"
"No."
"I want to go back—I want to go back, where I didn't know—again."
"Nonsense, Keith!" (Susan was beginning to talk more like herself.)"Go back to be sick? Of course you don't want to go back an' be sick!Listen!
Don't you worry, an' don't you fret.Somethin' better is comin' yet.Somethin' fine! What'll you bet?It's jest the thing you're wantin' ter get!
Come, come! We're goin' to have you up an' out in no time, now, boy!"
"I don't want to be up and out. I'm blind, Susan."
"An' there's your dad. He'll be mighty glad to know you're better.I'll call him."
"No, no, Susan—don't! Don't call him. He won't want to see me. Nobody will want to see me now. I'm blind, Susan—blind!"
"Shucks! Everybody will want to see you, so's to see how splendid you are, even if you are blind. Now don't talk any more—please don't; there's a good boy. You're gettin' yourself all worked up, an' then, oh, my, how that nurse will scold!"
"I shan't be splendid," moaned the boy. "I shan't be anything, now. I shan't be Jerry or Ned or dad. I shall be just ME. And I'll be pointed at everywhere; and they'll whisper and look and stare, and say, 'He's blind—he's blind—he's blind.' I tell you, Susan, I can't stand it. I can't—I can't! I want to go back. I want to go back to where I didn't—KNOW!"
The nurse came in then, and of course Susan was banished in disgrace. Of course, too, Keith was almost in hysterics, and his fever had gone away up again. He still talked in a high, shrill voice, and still thrashed his arms wildly about, till the little white powder the nurse gave him got in its blessed work. And then he slept.
Keith was entirely conscious the next day when Susan came in to sit with him while the nurse took her rest. But it was a very different Keith. It was a weary, spent, nerveless Keith that lay back on the pillow with scarcely so much as the flutter of an eyelid to show life.
"Is there anything I can get you, Keith?" she asked, when a long-drawn sigh convinced her that he was awake.
Only a faint shake of the head answered her.
"The doctor says you're lots better, Keith."
There was no sort of reply to this; and for another long minute Susan sat tense and motionless, watching the boy's face. Then, with almost a guilty look over her shoulder, she stammered:
"Keith, I don't want you to talk to me, but I do wish you'd just SPEAK to me."
But Keith only shook his head again faintly and turned his face away to the wall.
By and by the nurse came in, and Susan left the room. She went straight to the kitchen, and she did not so much as look toward Keith's father whom she met in the hall. In the kitchen Susan caught up a cloth and vigorously began to polish a brass faucet. The faucet was already a marvel of brightness; but perhaps Susan could not see that. One cannot always see clearly—through tears.
Keith was like this every day after that, when Susan came in to sit with him—silent, listless, seemingly devoid of life. Yet the doctor declared that physically the boy was practically well. And the nurse was going at the end of the week.
On the last day of the nurse's stay, Susan accosted her in the hall somewhat abruptly.
"Is it true that by an' by there could be an operator on that boy's eyes?"
"Oper—er—oh, operation! Yes, there might be, if he could only get strong enough to stand it. But it might not be successful, even then."
"But there's a chance?"
"Yes, there's a chance."
"I s'pose it—it would be mighty expulsive, though."
"Expulsive?" The young woman frowned slightly; then suddenly she smiled. "Oh! Oh, yes, I—I'm afraid it would—er—cost a good deal of money," she nodded over her shoulder as she went on into Keith's room.
That evening Susan sought her employer in the studio. Daniel Burton spent all his waking hours in the studio now. The woods and fields were nothing but a barren desert of loneliness to Daniel Burton—without Keith.
The very poise of Susan's head spelt aggressive determination as she entered the studio; and Daniel Burton shifted uneasily in his chair as he faced her. Nor did he fail to note that she carried some folded papers in her hand.
"Yes, yes, Susan, I know. Those bills are due, and past due," he cried nervously, before Susan could speak. "And I hoped to have the money, both for them and for your wages, long before this. But——"
Susan stopped him short with an imperative gesture.
"T ain't bills, Mr. Burton, an't ain't wages. It's—it's somethin' else. Somethin' very importune." There was a subdued excitement in Susan's face and manner that was puzzling, yet most promising.
Unconsciously Daniel Burton sat a little straighter and lifted his chin—though his eyes were smiling.
"Something else?"
"Yes. It's—poetry."
"Oh, SUSAN!" It was as if a bubble had been pricked, leaving nothing but empty air.
"But you don't know—you don't understand, yet," pleaded Susan, unerringly reading the disappointment in her employer's face. "It's to sell—to get some money, you know, for the operator on the poor lamb's eyes. I—I wanted to help, some way. An' this is REAL poetry—truly it is!—not the immaculate kind that I jest dash off! I've worked an' worked over this, an' I'm jest sure it'll sell, It's GOT to sell, Mr. Burton. We've jest got to have that money. An' now, I—I want to read 'em to you. Can't I, please?"
And this from Susan—this palpitating, pleading "please"! Daniel Burton, with a helpless gesture that expressed embarrassment, dismay, bewilderment, and resignation, threw up both hands and settled back in his chair.
"Why, of—of course, Susan, read them," he muttered as clearly as he could, considering the tightness that had come into his throat.
And Susan read this:
Oh, gentle Spring, I love thy rills,I love thy wooden, rocky rills,I love thy budsome beauty.But, oh, I hate o'er anything,Thy mud an' slush, oh, gentle Spring,When rubbers are a duty.
"That's the shortest—the other is longer," explained Susan, still the extraordinary, palpitating Susan, with the shining, pleading eyes.
"Yes, go on." Daniel Burton had to clear his throat before he could say even those two short words.
"I called this 'Them Things That Plague,'" said Susan. "An' it's really true, too. Don't you know? Things DO plague worse nights, when you can't sleep. An' you get to thinkin' an' thinkin'. Well, that's what made me write this." And she began to read:
They come at night, them things that plague,An' gather round my bed.They cluster thick about the foot,An' lean on top the head.
They like the dark, them things that plague,For then they can be great,They loom like doom from out the gloom,An' shriek: "I am your Fate!"
But, after all, them things that plagueAre cowards—Say not you?—To strike a man when he is down,An' in the darkness, too.
For if you'll watch them things that plague,Till comin' of the dawn,You'll find, when once you're on your feet,Them things that plague—are gone!
"There, ain't that true—every word of it?" she demanded. "An' there ain't hardly any poem license in it, too. I think they're a ways lots better when there ain't; but sometimes, of course, you jest have to use it. There! an' now I've read 'em both to you—an' how much do you s'pose I can get for 'em—the two of 'em, either singly or doubly?" Susan was still breathless, still shining-eyed—a strange, exotic Susan, that Daniel Burton had never seen before. "I've heard that writers—some writers—get lots of money, Mr. Burton, an' I can write more—lots more. Why, when I get to goin' they jest come autocratically—poems do—without any thinkin' at all; an'—But how much DO you think I ought to get?"
"Get? Good Heavens woman!" Daniel Burton was on his feet now trying to shake off the conflicting emotions that were all but paralyzing him. "Why, you can't get anything for those da——" Just in time he pulled himself up. At that moment, too, he saw Susan's face. He sat down limply.
"Susan." He cleared his throat and began again. He tried to speak clearly, judiciously, kindly. "Susan, I'm afraid—that is, I'm not sure—Oh, hang it all, woman"—he was on his feet now—"send them, if you want to—but don't blame me for the consequences." And with a gesture, as of flinging the whole thing far from him, he turned his back and walked away.
"You mean—you don't think I can get hardly anything for 'em?" An extraordinarily meek, fearful Susan asked the question.
Only a shrug of the back-turned shoulders answered her.
"But, Mr. Burton, we—we've got to have the money for that operator; an', anyhow, I—I mean to try." With a quick indrawing of her breath she turned abruptly and left the studio.
That evening, in her own room, Susan pored over the two inexpensive magazines that came to the house. She was searching for poems and for addresses.
As she worked she began to look more cheerful. Both the magazines published poems, and if they published one poem they would another, of course, especially if the poem were a better one—and Susan could not help feeling that they were better (those poems of hers) than almost any she saw there in print before her. There was some SENSE to her poems, while those others—why, some of them didn't mean anything, not anything!—and they didn't even rhyme!
With real hope and courage, therefore, Susan laboriously copied off the addresses of the two magazines, directed two envelopes, and set herself to writing the first of her two letters. That done, she copied the letter, word for word—except for the title of the poem submitted.
It was a long letter. Susan told first of Keith and his misfortune, and the imperative need of money for the operation. Then she told something of herself, and of her habit of turning everything into rhyme; for she felt it due to them, she said, that they know something of the person with whom they were dealing. She touched again on the poverty of the household, and let it plainly be seen that she had high hopes of the money these poems were going to bring. She did not set a price. She would leave that to their own indiscretion, she said in closing.
It was midnight before Susan had copied this letter and prepared the two manuscripts for mailing. Then, tired, but happy, she went to bed.
It was the next day that the nurse went, and that Mrs. Colebrook came.
The doctor said that Keith might be dressed now, any day—that he should be dressed, in fact, and begin to take some exercise. He had already sat up in a chair every day for a week—and he was in no further need of medicine, except a tonic to build him up. In fact, all efforts now should be turned toward building him up, the doctor said. That was what he needed.
All this the nurse mentioned to Mr. Burton and to Susan, as she was leaving. She went away at two o'clock, and Mrs. Colebrook was not to come until half-past five. At one minute past two Susan crept to the door of Keith's room and pushed it open softly. The boy, his face to the wall, lay motionless. But he was not asleep. Susan knew that, for she had heard his voice not five minutes before, bidding the nurse good-bye. For one brief moment Susan hesitated. Then, briskly, she stepped into the room with a cheery:
"Well, Keith, here we are, just ourselves together. The nurse is gone an' I am on—how do you like the weather?"
"Yes, I know, she said she was going." The boy spoke listlessly, wearily, without turning his head.
"What do you say to gettin' up?"
Keith stirred restlessly.
"I was up this morning."
"Ho!" Susan tossed her head disdainfully. "I don't mean THAT way. I mean up—really up with your clothes on."
The boy shook his head again.
"I couldn't. I—I'm too tired."
"Nonsense! A great boy like you bein' too tired to get up! Why Keith, it'll do you good. You'll feel lots better when you're up an' dressed like folks again."
The boy gave a sudden cry.
"That's just it, Susan. Don't you see? I'll never be—like folks again."
"Nonsense! Jest as if a little thing like bein' blind was goin' to keep you from bein' like folks again!" Susan was speaking very loudly, very cheerfully—though with first one hand, then the other, she was brushing away the hot tears that were rolling down her cheeks. "Why, Keith, you're goin' to be better than folks—jest common folks. You're goin' to do the most wonderful things that——"
"But I can't—I'm blind, I tell you!" cut in the boy. "I can't do—anything, now."
"But you can, an' you're goin' to," insisted Susan again. "You jest wait till I tell you; an' it's because you ARE blind that it's goin' to be so wonderful. But you can't do it jest lyin' abed there in that lazy fashion. Come, I'm goin' to get your clothes an' put 'em right on this chair here by the bed; then I'm goin' to give you twenty minutes to get into 'em. I shan't give you but fifteen tomorrow." Susan was moving swiftly around the room now, opening closet doors and bureau drawers.
"No, no, Susan, I can't get up," moaned the boy turning his face back to the wall. "I can't—I can't!"
"Yes, you can. Now, listen. They're all here, everything you need, on these two chairs by the bed."
"But how can I dress me when I can't see a thing?"
"You can feel, can't you?"
"Y-yes. But feeling isn't seeing. You don't KNOW."
Susan gave a sudden laugh—she would have told you it was a laugh—but it sounded more like a sob.
"But I do know, an' that's the funny part of it, Keith," she cried. "Listen! What do you s'pose your poor old Susan's been doin'? You'd never guess in a million years, so I'm goin' to tell you. For the last three mornin's she's tied up her eyes with a handkerchief an' then DRESSED herself, jest to make sure it COULD be done, you know."
"Susan, did you, really?" For the first time a faint trace of interest came into the boy's face.
"Sure I did! An' Keith, it was great fun, really, jest to see how smart I could be, doin' it. An' I timed myself, too. It took me twenty-five minutes the first time. Dear, dear, but I was clumsy! But I can do it lots quicker now, though I don't believe I'll ever do it as quick as you will."
"Do you think I could do it, really?"
"I know you could."
"I could try," faltered Keith dubiously.
"You ain't goin' to TRY, you're goin' to DO it," declared Susan. "Now, listen. I'm goin' out, but in jest twenty minutes I'm comin' back, an' I shall expect to find you all dressed. I—I shall be ashamed of you if you ain't." And without another glance at the boy, and before he could possibly protest, Susan hurried from the room.
Her head was still high, and her voice still determinedly clear—but in the hall outside the bedroom, Susan burst into such a storm of sobs that she had to hurry to the kitchen and shut herself in the pantry lest they be heard.
Later, when she had scornfully lashed herself into calmness, she came out into the kitchen and looked at the clock.
"An' I've been in there five minutes, I'll bet ye, over that fool cry in'," she stormed hotly to herself. "Great one, I am, to take care of that boy, if I can't control myself better than this!"
At the end of what she deemed to be twenty minutes, and after a fruitless "puttering" about the kitchen, Susan marched determinedly upstairs to Keith's room. At the door she did hesitate a breathless minute, then, resolutely, she pushed it open.
The boy, fully dressed, stood by the bed. His face was alight, almost eager.
"I did it—I did it, Susan! And if it hasn't been more than twenty minutes, I did it sooner than you!"
Susan tried to speak; but the tears were again chasing each other down her cheeks, and her face was working with emotion.
"Susan!" The boy put out his hand gropingly, turning his head with the pitiful uncertainty of the blind. "Susan, you are there, aren't you?"
Susan caught her breath chokingly, and strode into the room with a brisk clatter.
"Here? Sure I'm here—but so dumb with amazement an' admiration that I couldn't open my head—to see you standin' there all dressed like that! What did I tell you? I knew you could do it. Now, come, let's go see dad." She was at his side now, her arm linked into his.
But the boy drew back.
"No, no, Susan, not there. He—he wouldn't like it. Truly, he—he doesn't want to see me. You know he—he doesn't like to see disagreeable things."
"'Disagreeable things,' indeed!" exploded Susan, her features working again. "Well, I guess if he calls it disagreeable to see his son dressed up an' walkin' around—"
But Keith interrupted her once more, with an even stronger protest, and Susan was forced to content herself with leading her charge out on to the broad veranda that ran across the entire front of the house. There they walked back and forth, back and forth.
She was glad, afterward, that this was all she did, for at the far end of the veranda Daniel Burton stepped out from a door, and stood for a moment watching them. But it was for only a moment. And when she begged mutely for him to come forward and speak, he shook his head fiercely, covered his eyes with his hand, and plunged back into the house.
"What was that, Susan? What was that?" demanded the boy.
"Nothin', child, nothin', only a door shuttin' somewhere, or a window."
At that moment a girl's voice caroled shrilly from the street.
"Hullo, Keith, how do you do? We're awfully glad to see you out again."
The boy started violently, but did not turn his head—except to Susan.
"Susan, I—I'm tired. I want to go in now," he begged a little wildly, under his breath.
"Keith, it's Mazie—Mazie and Dorothy," caroled the high-pitched voice again.
But Keith, with a tug so imperative that Susan had no choice but to obey, turned his head quite away as he groped for the door to go in.
In the hall he drew a choking breath.
"Susan, I don't want to go out there to walk any more—NOT ANY MORE! I don't want to go anywhere where anybody'll see me."
"Shucks!" Susan's voice was harshly unsteady again. "See you, indeed! Why, we're goin' to be so proud of you we'll want the whole world to see you.
You jest waitAn' see the fateThat I've cut out for you.We'll be so proudWe'll laugh aloud,An' you'll be laughin', too!
I made that up last night when I laid awake thinkin' of all the fine things we was goin' to have you do."
But Keith only shook his head again and complained of feeling, oh, so tired. And Susan, looking at his pale, constrained face, did not quote any more poetry to him, or talk about the glorious future in store for him. She led him to the easiest chair in his room and made him as comfortable as she could. Then she went downstairs and shut herself in the pantry—until she could stop her "fool cryin' over nothin'."
Mrs. Nettie Colebrook came at half-past five. She was a small, nervous-looking woman with pale-blue eyes and pale-yellow hair. She greeted her brother with a burst of tears.
"Oh, Daniel, Daniel, how can you stand it—how can you stand it!" she cried, throwing herself upon the man's somewhat unresponsive shoulder.
"There, there, Nettie, control yourself, do!" besought the man uncomfortably, trying to withdraw himself from the clinging arms.
"But how CAN you stand it!—your only son—blind!" wailed Mrs.Colebrook, with a fresh burst of sobs.
"I notice some things have to be stood," observed Susan grimly. Susan, with Mrs. Colebrook's traveling-bag in her hand, was waiting with obvious impatience to escort her visitor upstairs to her room.
Susan's terse comment accomplished what Daniel Burton's admonition had been quite powerless to bring about. Mrs. Colebrook stopped sobbing at once, and drew herself somewhat haughtily erect.
"And, pray, who is this?" she demanded, looking from one to the other.
"Well, 'this' happens to be the hired girl, an' she's got some biscuits in the oven," explained Susan crisply. "If you'll be so good, ma'am, I'll show you upstairs to your room."
"Daniel!" appealed Mrs. Colebrook, plainly aghast.
But her brother, with a helpless gesture, had turned away, and Susan, bag in hand, was already halfway up the stairs. With heightened color and a muttered "Impertinence!" Mrs. Colebrook turned and followed Susan to the floor above.
A little way down the hall Susan threw open a door.
"I swept, but I didn't have no time to dust," she announced as she put down the bag. "There's a duster in that little bag there. Don't lock the door. Somethin' ails it. If you do you'll have to go out the window down a ladder. There's towels in the top drawer, an' you'll have to fill the pitcher every day, 'cause there's a crack an' it leaks, an' you can't put in the water only to where the crack is. Is there anything more you want?"
"Thank you. If you'll kindly take me to Master Keith's room, that will be all that I require," answered Mrs. Colebrook frigidly, as she unpinned her hat and laid that on top of her coat on the bed.
"All right, ma'am. He's a whole lot better. He's been up an' dressed to-day, but he's gone back to bed now. His room is right down here, jest across the hall," finished Susan, throwing wide the door.
There was a choking cry, a swift rush of feet, then Mrs. Colebrook, on her knees, was sobbing at the bedside.
"Oh, Keithie, Keithie, my poor blind boy! What will you do? How will you ever live? Never to see again, never to see again! Oh, my poor boy, my poor blind boy!"
Susan, at the door, flung both hands above her head, then plunged down the stairs.
"Fool! FOOL! FOOL!" she snarled at the biscuits in the oven. "Don't you know ANYTHING?" Yet the biscuits in the oven were puffing up and browning beautifully, as the best of biscuits should.
When Susan's strident call for supper rang through the hall, Mrs. Colebrook was with her brother in the studio. She had been bemoaning and bewailing the cruel fate that had overtaken "that dear boy," and had just asked for the seventh time how he could stand it, when from the hall below came:
"Supper's ready, supper's ready,Hurry up or you'll be late.Then you'll sure be cross an' heady,If there's nothin' left to ate."
"Daniel, what in the world is the meaning of that?" she interrupted sharply.
"That? Oh, that is Susan's—er—supper bell," shrugged the man, with a little uneasy gesture.
"You mean that you've heard it before?—that that is her usual method of summoning you to your meals?"
"Y-yes, when she's good-natured," returned the man, with a still more uneasy shifting of his position. "Come, shall we go down?"
"DANIEL! And you stand it?"
"Oh, come, come! You don't understand—conditions here. Besides, I've tried to stop it."
"TRIED to stop it!"
"Yes. Oh, well, try yourself, if you think it's so easy. I give you my full and free permission. Try it."
"TRY it! I shan't TRY anything of the sort. I shall STOP it."
"Humph!" shrugged the man. "Oh, very well, then. Suppose we go down."
"But what does that poor little blind boy eat? How can he eat—anything?"
"Why, I—I don't know." The man gave an irritably helpless gesture."The nurse—she used to—You'll have to ask Susan. She'll know."
"Susan! That impossible woman! Daniel, how DO you stand her?"
Daniel Burton shrugged his shoulders again. Then suddenly he gave a short, grim laugh.
"I notice there are some things that have to be stood," he observed, so exactly in imitation of Susan that it was a pity only Mrs. Nettie Colebrook's unappreciative ears got the benefit of it.
In the dining-room a disapproving Susan stood by the table.
"I thought you wasn't never comin'. The hash is gettin' cold."
Mrs. Colebrook gasped audibly.
"Yes, yes, I know," murmured Mr. Burton conciliatingly. "But we're here now, Susan."
"What will Master Keith have for his supper?" questioned Mrs.Colebrook, lifting her chin a little.
"He's already had his supper, ma'am. I took it up myself."
"What was it?" Mrs. Colebrook asked the question haughtily, imperiously.
Susan's eyes grew cold like steel.
"It was what he asked for, ma'am, an' he's ate it. Do you want your tea strong or weak, ma'am?"
Mrs. Colebrook bit her lip.
"I'll not take any tea at all," she said coldly. "And, Susan!"
"Yes, ma'am." Susan turned, her hand on the doorknob.
"Hereafter I will take up Master Keith's meals myself. He is in my charge now."
There was no reply—in words. But the dining-room door after Susan shut with a short, crisp snap.
After supper Mrs. Colebrook went out into the kitchen.
"You may prepare oatmeal and dry toast and a glass of milk for MasterKeith to-morrow morning, Susan. I will take them up myself."
"He won't eat 'em. He don't like 'em—not none of them things."
"I think he will if I tell him to. At all events, they are what he should eat, and you may prepare them as I said."
"Very well, ma'am."
Susan's lips came together in a thin, white line, and Mrs. Colebrook left the kitchen.
Keith did not eat his toast and oatmeal the next morning, though his aunt sat on the edge of the bed, called him her poor, afflicted, darling boy, and attempted to feed him herself with a spoon.
Keith turned his face to the wall and said he didn't want any breakfast. Whereupon his aunt sighed, and stroked his head; and Keith hated to have his head stroked, as Susan could have told her.
"Of course, you don't want any breakfast, you poor, sightless lamb," she moaned. "And I don't blame you. Oh, Keithie, Keithie, when I see you lying there like that, with your poor useless eyes—! But you must eat, dear, you must eat. Now, come, just a weeny, teeny mouthful to please auntie!"
But Keith turned his face even more determinedly to the wall, and moved his limbs under the bed clothes in a motion very much like a kick. He would have nothing whatever to do with the "weeny, teeny mouthfuls," not even to please auntie. And after a vain attempt to remove his tortured head, entirely away from those gently stroking fingers, he said he guessed he would get up and be dressed.
"Oh, Keithie, are you well enough, dear? Are you sure you are strong enough? I'm sure you must be ill this morning. You haven't eaten a bit of breakfast. And if anything should happen to you when you were in MY care—"
"Of course I'm well enough," insisted the boy irritably.
"Then I'll get your clothes, dear, and help you dress, if you will be careful not to overdo."
"I don't want any help."
"Why, Keithie, you'll HAVE to have some one help you. How do you suppose your poor blind eyes are going to let you dress yourself all alone, when you can't see a thing? Why, dear child, you'll have to have help now about everything you do. Now I'll get your clothes. Where are they, dear? In this closet?"
"I don't know. I don't want 'em. I—I've decided I don't want to get up, after all."
"You ARE too tired, then?"
"Yes, I'm too tired." And Keith, with another spasmodic jerk under the bedclothes, turned his face to the wall again.
"All right, dear, you shan't. That's the better way, I think myself," sighed his aunt. "I wouldn't have you overtax yourself for the world. Now isn't there anything, ANYTHING I can do for you?"
And Keith said no, not a thing, not a single thing. And his face was still to the wall.
"Then if you're all right, absolutely all right, I'll go out to walk and get a little fresh air. Now don't move. Don't stir. TRY to go to sleep if you can. And if you want anything, just ring. I'll put this little bell right by your hand on the bed; and you must ring if you want anything, ANYTHING. Then Susan will come and get it for you. There, the bell's right here. See? Oh, no, no, you CAN'T see!" she broke off suddenly, with a wailing sob. "Why will I keep talking to you as if you could?"
"Well, I wish you WOULD talk to me as if I could see," stormed Keith passionately, sitting upright in bed and flinging out his arms. "I tell you I don't want to be different! It's because I AM different that I am so——"
But his aunt, aghast, interrupted him, and pushed him back.
"Oh, Keithie, darling, lie down! You mustn't thrash yourself around like that," she remonstrated. "Why, you'll make yourself ill. There, that's better. Now go to sleep. I'm going out before you can talk any more, and get yourself all worked up again," she finished, hurrying out of the room with the breakfast tray.
A little later in the kitchen she faced Susan a bit haughtily.
"Master Keith is going to sleep," she said, putting down the breakfast tray. "I have left a bell within reach of his hand, and he will call you if he wants anything. I am going out to get a little air."
"All right, ma'am." Susan kept right on with the dish she was drying.
"You are sure you can hear the bell?"
"Oh, yes, my hearin' ain't repaired in the least, ma'am." Susan turned her back and picked up another dish. Plainly, for Susan, the matter was closed.
Mrs. Colebrook, after a vexed biting of her lip and a frowning glance toward Susan's substantial back, shrugged her shoulders and left the kitchen. A minute later, still hatless, she crossed the yard and entered the McGuires' side door.
"Take the air, indeed!" muttered Susan, watching from the kitchen window. "A whole lot of fresh air she'll get in Mis' McGuire's kitchen!"
With another glance to make sure that Mrs. Nettie Colebrook was safely behind the McGuires' closed door, Susan crossed the kitchen and lifted the napkin of the breakfast tray.
"Humph!" she grunted angrily, surveying the almost untouched breakfast. "I thought as much! But I was ready for you, my lady. Toast an' oatmeal, indeed!" With another glance over her shoulder at the McGuire side door Susan strode to the stove and took from the oven a plate of crisply browned hash and a hot corn muffin. Two minutes later, with a wonderfully appetizing-looking tray, she tapped at Keith's door and entered the room.
"Here's your breakfast, boy," she announced cheerily.
"I didn't want any breakfast," came crossly from the bed.
"Of course you didn't want THAT breakfast," scoffed Susan airily; "but you just look an' see what I'VE brought you!"
Look and see! Susan's dismayed face showed that she fully realized what she had said, and that she dreaded beyond words its effect on the blind boy in the bed.
She hesitated, and almost dropped the tray in her consternation. But the boy turned with a sudden eagerness that put to rout her dismay, and sent a glow of dazed wonder to her face instead.
"What HAVE you got? Let me see." He was sitting up now. "Hash—and—johnny-cake!" he crowed, as she set the tray before him, and he dropped his fingers lightly on the contents of the tray. "And don't they smell good! I don't know—I guess I am hungry, after all."
"Of course you're hungry!" Susan's voice was harsh, and she was fiercely brushing back the tears. "Now, eat it quick, or I'll be sick! Jest think what'll happen to Susan if that blessed aunt of yours comes an' finds me feedin' you red-flannel hash an' johnny-cake! Now I'll be up in ten minutes for the tray. See that you eat it up—every scrap," she admonished him, as she left the room.
Susan had found by experience that Keith ate much better when alone. She was not surprised, therefore, though she was very much pleased—at sight of the empty plates awaiting her when she went up for the tray at the end of the ten minutes.
"An' now what do you say to gettin' up?" she suggested cheerily, picking up the tray from the bed and setting it on the table.
"Can I dress myself?"
"Of course you can! What'll you bet you won't do it five minutes quicker this time, too? I'll get your clothes."
Halfway back across the room, clothes in hand, she was brought to a sudden halt by a peremptory: "What in the world is the meaning of this?" It was Mrs. Nettie Colebrook in the doorway.
"I'm gettin' Keith's clothes. He's goin' to get up."
"But MASTER Keith said he did not wish to get up."
"Changed his mind, maybe." The terseness of Susan's reply and the expression on her face showed that the emphasis on the "Master" was not lost upon her.
"Very well, then, that will do. You may go. I will help him dress."
"I don't want any help," declared Keith.
"Why, Keithie, darling, of course you want help! You forget, dear, you can't see now, and—"
"Oh, no, I don't forget," cut in Keith bitterly. "You don't let me forget a minute—not a minute. I don't want to get up now, anyhow. What's the use of gettin' up? I can't DO anything!" And he fell back to his old position, with his face to the wall.
"There, there, dear, you are ill and overwrought," cried Mrs.Colebrook, hastening to the bedside. "It is just as I said, you arenot fit to get up." Then, to Susan, sharply: "You may put MasterKeith's clothes back in the closet. He will not need them to-day."
"No, ma'am, I don't think he will need them—now." Susan's eyes flashed ominously. But she hung the clothes back in the closet, picked up the tray, and left the room.
Susan's eyes flashed ominously, indeed, all the rest of the morning, while she was about her work; and at noon, when she gave the call to dinner, there was a curious metallic incisiveness in her voice, which made the call more strident than usual.
It was when Mrs. Colebrook went into the kitchen after dinner forKeith's tray that she said coldly to Susan:
"Susan, I don't like that absurd doggerel of yours."
"Doggerel?" Plainly Susan was genuinely ignorant of what she meant.
"Yes, that extraordinary dinner call of yours. As I said before, I don't like it."
There was a moment's dead silence. The first angry flash in Susan's eyes was followed by a demure smile.
"Don't you? Why, I thought it was real cute, now."
"Well, I don't. You'll kindly not use it any more, Susan," repliedMrs. Colebrook, with dignity.
Once again there was the briefest of silences, then quietly cameSusan's answer:
"Oh, no, of course not, ma'am. I won't—when I work for you. There,Mis' Colebrook, here's your tray all ready."
And Mrs. Colebrook, without knowing exactly how it happened, found herself out in the hall with the tray in her hands.