CHAPTER XXIV
AS SUSAN SAW IT
It was the town talk, of course--the home-coming of John McGuire. Mengathered on street corners and women clustered about back-yard fencesand church doorways. Children besieged their parents with breathlessquestions, and repeated to each other in awe-struck whispers what theyhad heard. Everywhere was horror, sympathy, and interested speculationas to "how he'd take it."
Where explicit information was so lacking, imagination and surmiseeagerly supplied the details; and Mrs. McGuire's news of the blindingof John McGuire was not three days old before a full account of thetragedy from beginning to end was flying from tongue to tongue--anaccount that would have surprised no one so greatly as it would havesurprised John McGuire himself.
To Susan, Dorothy Parkman came one day with this story.
"Well, 't ain't true," disavowed Susan succinctly when the luriddetails had been breathlessly repeated to her.
"You mean--he isn't blind?" demanded the young girl.
"Oh, yes, he's blind, all right, poor boy! But it's the rest Imean--about his killin' twenty-eight Germans single-handed, an' bein'all shot to pieces hisself, an' benighted for bravery."
"But what did happen?"
"We don't know. We just know he's blind an' comin' home. Mis' McGuirehad two letters yesterday from John, but--"
"From John--himself?"
"Yes; but they was both writ long before the apostrophe, an' 'coursethey didn't say nothin' about it. He was well an' happy, he said. Shehad had only one letter before these for a long time. An' now tohave--this!"
"Yes, I know. It's terrible. How does--Mr. Keith take it?"
Susan opened wide her eyes.
"Why, you've seen him--you see him yesterday yourself, Miss Dorothy."
"Oh, I saw him--in a way, but not the real him, Susan. He's miles awaynow, always."
"You mean he ain't civil an' polite?" demanded Susan.
"Oh, he's very civil--too civil, Susan. Every time I go I say I won'tgo again. Then, when I get to thinking of him sitting there alone allday, and of how he used to like to have me read to him and play withhim, I--I just have to go and see if he won't be the same as he usedto be. But he never is."
"I know." Susan shook her head mournfully. "An' he ain't the same,Miss Dorothy. He don't ever whistle nor sing now, nor play solitary,nor any of them things he used to do. Oh, when folks comes in hebraces back an' talks an' laughs. YOU know that. But in the exclusionof his own home here he jest sits an' thinks an' thinks an' thinks.An', Miss Dorothy, I've found out now what he's thinkin' of."
"Yes?"
"It's John McGuire an' them other soldiers what's comin' back blindfrom the war. An' he talks an' talks about 'em, an' mourns an' takeson something dreadful. He says HE knows what it means, an' that nobodycan know what hain't had it happen to 'em. An' he broods an' broodsover it."
"I can--imagine it." The girl said it with a little catch in hervoice.
"An'--an' there's somethin' else I want to tell you about. I've got totell somebody. I want to know if you think I done right. An' you'rethe only one I can tell. I've thought it all out. Daniel Burton is toonear, an' Mis' McGuire an' all them others is too far. You ain't arelation, an' yet you care. You do care, don't you?--about Mr. Keith?"
"Why, of--of course. I care a great deal, Susan." Miss Dorothy spokevery lightly, very impersonally; but there was a sudden flame of colorin her face. Susan, however, was not noticing this. Furtively she wasglancing one way and another over her shoulder.
"Yes. Well, the other day he--he tried to--that is, well, I--I foundhim with a pistol in his hand, an'--"
"Susan!" The girl had gone very white.
"Oh, he didn't do it. Well, that ain't a very sensitive statement, isit? For if he had done it, he wouldn't be alive now, would he?" brokeoff Susan, with a faint smile. "But what I mean is, he didn't do it,an' I don't think he's goin' to do it."
"But, oh, Susan," faltered the girl, "you didn't leave that--thatawful thing with him, did you? Didn't you take it--away?"
"No." Susan's mouth set grimly. "An' that's what I wanted to ask youabout--if I did right, you know."
"Oh, no, no, Susan! I'm afraid," shuddered the girl. "Can't you--getit away--now?"
"Maybe. I know where 'tis. I was up there yesterday an' see it. 'T wasin the desk drawer in the attic, jest where it used to be."
"Then get it, Susan, get it. Oh, please get it," begged the girl. "I'mafraid to have it there--a single minute."
"But, Miss Dorothy, stop; wait jest a minute. Think. How's he goin' toget self-defiance an' make a strong man of hisself if we take thingsaway from him like he was a little baby?"
"I know, Susan; but if he SHOULD be tempted--"
"He won't. He ain't no more. I'm sure of that. I talked with him.Besides, I hain't caught him up there once since that day last week.Oh, I'm free to confess I HAVE watched him," admitted Susandefensively, with a faint smile.
"But what did happen that day you--you found him?"
"Oh, he had it, handlin' it, an' when he heard me, he jumped a little,an' hid it under some papers. My, Miss Dorothy, 'twas awful. I wasthat scared an' frightened I thought I couldn't move. But I knew I'dgot to, an' I knew I'd got to move RIGHT, too, or I'd spoileverything. This wa'n't no ten-cent melodydrama down to the movies,but I had a humane soul there before me, an' I knew maybe it's wholeinternal salvation might depend on what I said an' did."
"But what DID you say?"
"I don't know. I only know that somehow, when it was over, I had afeelin' that he wouldn't never do that thing again. That somehow theMAN in him was on top, an' would stay on top. An' I'm more sure thanever of it now. He ain't thinkin' of hisself these days. It's JohnMcGuire and them others. An' ain't it better that he let that pistolalone of his own free will an' accordance, an' know he was a man an'no baby, than if I'd taken it away from him?"
"I suppose--it was, Susan; but I don't think I'd have been strongenough--to make him strong."
"Yes, you would, if you'd been there. I reckon we're all goin' tolearn to do a lot of things we never did before, now that the war hascome."
"Yes, I know." A quivering pain swept across the young girl's face.
"Somehow, the war never seemed real to me before. 'T was jestsomethin' 'way off--a lot of Dagoes an' Dutchmen, like the men whatdug up the McGuires' frozen water-pipes last spring, fightin'. Not ourkind of folks what talked English. Even when I read the papers, an'the awful things they did over there--it didn't seem as if 't wasfolks on our earth. It was like somethin' you read about in them oldhistronic days, or somethin' happenin' up on the moon, or on thatplantation of Mars. Oh, of course, I knew John McGuire had gone; butsomehow I never thought of him as fightin'--not with guns an' bloodygore, in spite of them letters of his. Some way, in my mind's eyes Ialways see him marchin' with flags flyin' an' folks cheerin'; an' Ithought the war'd be over, anyhow, by the time he got there.
"But, now--! Why, now they're all gone--our own Teddy Somers, an' TomSpencer, an' little Jacky Green that I used to hold on my knee. Someof 'em in France, an' some of 'em in them army canteens down to Ayeran' Texas an' everywhere. An' poor Tom's died already of pneumoniaright here in our own land. An' now poor John McGuire! I tell you,Miss Dorothy, it brings it right home now to your own heart, where ithurts."
"It certainly does, Susan."
"An' let me tell you. What do you s'pose, more 'n anything else, mademe see how really big it all is?"
"I don't know, Susan,"
"Well, I'll tell you. 'Twas because I couldn't write a poem on it."
"Sure enough, Susan! I don't believe I've heard you make a rhymeto-day," smiled Miss Dorothy.
Susan sighed and shook her head.
"Yes, I know. I don't make 'em much now. Somehow they don't sing allthe time in my heart, an' burst out natural-like, as they used to. Ithink them days when I tried so hard to sell my poems, an' couldn't,kinder took the jest out of poetizin' for me. Somehow, when you findout somethin' is invaluabl
e to other folks, it gets so it's invaluableto you, I s'pose. Still, even now, when I set right down to it, I can'most always write 'em right off 'most as quick as I used to. But Icouldn't on this war. I tried it. But it jest wouldn't do. I begun it:
Oh, woe is me, said the bayonet, Oh, woe is me, said the sword.
Then the whole awful frightfulness of it an' the bigness of it seemedto swallow me up, an' I felt like a little pigment overtopped an'surrounded by great tall mountains of horror that were tumblin' downone after another on my head, an' bury in' me down so far an' deepthat I couldn't say anything, only to moan, 'Oh, Lord, how long, oh,Lord, how long?' An' I knew then't was too big for me. I didn't try towrite no more."
"I can see how you couldn't," faltered the girl, as she turned away."I'm afraid--we're all going to find it--too big for us."