Dawn
Copyright© 2024 by Eleanor H. Porter
Chapter 21: The Lion
Keith had not been home a week before it was seen that Hinsdale was inclined to make a lion of the boy.
Women brought him jelly and fruit, and men clapped him on the shoulder and said, “How are you, my boy?” in voices that were not quite steady. Young girls brought him flowers, and asked Susan if they could not read or sing or do SOMETHING to amuse him. Children stood about the gate and stared, talking in awe-struck whispers, happy if they could catch a glimpse of his face at the window.
A part of this Susan succeeded in keeping from Keith—Susan had a well-founded belief that Keith would not care to be a lion. But a great deal of it came to his knowledge, of course, in spite of anything she could do. However, she told herself that she need not have worried, for if Keith had recognized it for what it was, he made no sign; and even Susan herself could find no fault with his behavior. He was cordial, cheery, almost gay, outwardly. But inwardly—
Susan was still keeping her eyes on Keith.
Mrs. McGuire came often to see Keith. She said she knew he would want to hear John’s letters. And there were all the old ones, besides the new ones that came from time to time. She brought them all, and read them to him. She talked about the young soldier, too, a great deal, to the blind boy—She explained to Susan that she wanted to do everything she could to get him out of himself and interest him in the world outside; and that she didn’t know any better way to do it than to tell him of these brave soldiers who were doing something so really worth while in the world.
“An’ he’s so interested—the dear boy!” she concluded, with a sigh.
“An’ so brave! I think he’s the bravest thing I ever saw, Susan
Betts.”
“Yes, he is—brave,” said Susan, a little shortly—so shortly that Mrs. McGuire opened her eyes a bit, and wondered why Susan’s lips had snapped tight shut in that straight, hard line.
“But what ails the woman?” she muttered to herself, vexedly, as she crossed the back yard to her own door. “Wasn’t she herself always braggin’ about his bein’ so brave? Humph! There’s no such thing as pleasin’ some folks, it seems!” finished Mrs. McGuire as she entered her own door.
But Mrs. McGuire was not the only frequent caller. There was Mazie
Sanborn.
Mazie began by coming every two or three days with flowers and fudge. Then she brought the latest novel one day and suggested that she read it to Keith.
Susan was skeptical of this, even fearful. She had not forgotten Keith’s frenzied avoidance of such callers in the old days. But to her surprise now Keith welcomed Mazie joyously—so joyously that Susan began to suspect that behind the joyousness lay an eagerness to welcome anything that would help him to forget himself.
She was the more suspicious of this during the days that followed, as she saw this same nervous eagerness displayed every time any one called at the house. Susan’s joy then at Keith’s gracious response to visitors’ attentions changed to a vague uneasiness. Behind and beyond it all lay an intangible something upon which Susan could not place her finger, but which filled her heart with distrust. And so still she kept her eyes on Keith.
In June Dorothy Parkman came to Hinsdale. She came at once to see Susan. But she would only step inside the hall, and she spoke low and hurriedly, looking fearfully toward the closed doors beyond the stairway.
“I HAD to come—to see how he was,” she began, a little breathlessly. “And I wanted to ask you if you thought I could do any good or—or be any help to him, either as Miss Stewart or Dorothy Parkman. Only I—I suppose I would HAVE to be Dorothy Parkman now. I couldn’t keep the other up forever, of course. But I don’t know how to tell—” She stopped, and looked again fearfully toward the closed doors. “Susan, how—how IS he?” she finished unsteadily.
“He’s well—very well.”
“He sees people—Mazie says he sees everybody now.”
“Yes, oh, yes, he sees people.”
“That’s why I thought perhaps he wouldn’t mind ME now—I mean the real me,” faltered the girl wistfully. “Maybe.” Susan’s sigh and frown expressed doubt.
“But he’s real brave,” challenged the girl quickly. “Mazie SAID he was.”
“I know. Everybody says—he’s brave.” There was an odd constraint in Susan’s voice, but the girl was too intent on her own problem to notice it.
“And that’s why I hoped—about me, you know—that he wouldn’t mind—now. And, of course, it can’t make any difference—about his eyes, for he doesn’t need father, or—or any one now.” Her voice broke. “Oh, Susan, I want to help, some way, if I can! WOULD he see me, do you think?”
“He ought to. He sees everybody else.”
“I know. Mazie says—”
“Does Mazie know about you?” interrupted Susan. “I mean, about your being ‘Miss Stewart’?”
“A little, but not much. I told her once that he ‘most always called me ‘Miss Stewart,’ but I never made anything of it, and I never told her how much I saw of him out home. Some way, I—” She stopped short, with a quick indrawing of her breath. In the doorway down the hall stood Keith.
“Susan, I thought I heard—WAS Miss Stewart here?” he demanded excitedly.
With only the briefest of hesitations and a half-despairing, half-relieved look into Susan’s startled eyes, the young girl hurried forward.
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