Dawn
Copyright© 2024 by Eleanor H. Porter
Chapter 24: As Susan Saw It
It was the town talk, of course—the home-coming of John McGuire. Men gathered on street corners and women clustered about back-yard fences and church doorways. Children besieged their parents with breathless questions, and repeated to each other in awe-struck whispers what they had heard. Everywhere was horror, sympathy, and interested speculation as to “how he’d take it.”
Where explicit information was so lacking, imagination and surmise eagerly supplied the details; and Mrs. McGuire’s news of the blinding of John McGuire was not three days old before a full account of the tragedy from beginning to end was flying from tongue to tongue—an account that would have surprised no one so greatly as it would have surprised John McGuire himself.
To Susan, Dorothy Parkman came one day with this story.
“Well, ‘t ain’t true,” disavowed Susan succinctly when the lurid details 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 I mean—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’ McGuire had two letters yesterday from John, but—”
“From John—himself?”
“Yes; but they was both writ long before the apostrophe, an’ ‘course they didn’t say nothin’ about it. He was well an’ happy, he said. She had had only one letter before these for a long time. An’ now to have—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 away now, 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’t go again. Then, when I get to thinking of him sitting there alone all day, and of how he used to like to have me read to him and play with him, I—I just have to go and see if he won’t be the same as he used to 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 he braces back an’ talks an’ laughs. YOU know that. But in the exclusion of 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 blind from the war. An’ he talks an’ talks about ‘em, an’ mourns an’ takes on something dreadful. He says HE knows what it means, an’ that nobody can know what hain’t had it happen to ‘em. An’ he broods an’ broods over it.”
“I can—imagine it.” The girl said it with a little catch in her voice.
“An’—an’ there’s somethin’ else I want to tell you about. I’ve got to tell somebody. I want to know if you think I done right. An’ you’re the only one I can tell. I’ve thought it all out. Daniel Burton is too near, an’ Mis’ McGuire an’ all them others is too far. You ain’t a relation, 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 spoke very lightly, very impersonally; but there was a sudden flame of color in her face. Susan, however, was not noticing this. Furtively she was glancing one way and another over her shoulder.
“Yes. Well, the other day he—he tried to—that is, well, I—I found him 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, is it? For if he had done it, he wouldn’t be alive now, would he?” broke off 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—that awful 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 you about—if I did right, you know.”
“Oh, no, no, Susan! I’m afraid,” shuddered the girl. “Can’t you—get it away—now?”
“Maybe. I know where ‘tis. I was up there yesterday an’ see it. ‘T was in 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’m afraid to have it there—a single minute.”
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