Dawn
Copyright© 2024 by Eleanor H. Porter
Chapter 29: Dorothy Tries Her Hand
It was on a mild day early in February that Susan met Dorothy Parkman on the street. She stopped her at once.
“Well, if I ain’t glad to see you!” she cried. “I didn’t know you’d got back.”
“I haven’t been back long, Susan.”
“You hain’t been over to see us once, Miss Dorothy,” Susan reproached her.
“I—I have been very busy.” Miss Dorothy seemed ill at ease, and anxious to get away.
“An’ you didn’t come for a long, long time when you was here last fall.” Susan had laid a detaining hand on the girl’s arm now.
“Didn’t I?” Miss Dorothy smiled brightly. “Well, perhaps I didn’t. But you didn’t need me, anyway. I’ve heard all about it—the splendid work Mr. Burton and his son have done for John McGuire. And I’m so glad.”
“Oh, yes, that’s all right.” Susan spoke without enthusiasm.
“And the book is going to be published?”
“Yes, oh, yes.” Susan still spoke with a preoccupied frown.
“Why, Susan, what’s the matter? I thought you’d be glad.”
Susan drew a long sigh.
“I am glad, Miss Dorothy. I’m awful glad—for John McGuire. They say it’s wonderful, the change in him already. He’s so proud an’ happy to think he’s done it—not sinfully proud, you understand, but just humbly proud an’ glad. An’ his ma says he’s writin’ other things now—poems an’ stories, an’ he’s as happy as a lark all day. An’ I’m awful glad. But it’s Keith hisself that I’m thinkin’ of. You see, only yesterday I found him—cryin’.”
“Crying!” Miss Dorothy seemed to have forgotten all about her haste to get away. She had Susan’s arm in HER grasp now. She had pulled her to one side, too, where they could have a little sheltered place to talk, in the angle of two store windows.
“Yes, cryin’. You see, ‘t was like this,” hurried on Susan. “Mis’ McGuire was over, an’ I’d been readin’ a new poem to her an’ him. ‘T was a real pretty one, too, if I do say it as shouldn’t—the best I ever done; all about how fame an’ beauty an’ pleasure didn’t count nothin’ beside workin’. I got the idea out of something I found in a magazine. ‘T was jest grand; an’ it give me the perspiration right away to turn it into a poem. An’ I did. An’ ‘t was that I was readin’. I’d jest got it done that mornin’.”
“Yes, yes,” nodded Miss Dorothy. “I see.”
“Well, I never thought of its meanin’ anything to Keith, or of his takin’ it nohow wrong; but after Mis’ McGuire had gone home (she came out an’ set with me a spell first in the kitchen) I heard a queer little noise in the settin’-room, an’ I went an’ looked in. Keith was at the table, his arms flung straight out in front of him, an’ his head bowed down. An’, Miss Dorothy, he was cryin’ like a baby.”
“Oh, Susan, what did you do? What did you say?”
“Say? Nothin’!” Susan’s eyes flashed her scorn. “Do you s’pose I’d let that poor lamb know I see him cryin’? Well, I guess not! I backed out as soft as a feather bed, an’ I didn’t go near that settin’-room for an hour, nor let any one else. I was a regular dragon-fly guardin’ it. Well, by an’ by Keith comes out. His face was white an’ strained-lookin’. But he was smiling, an’ he handed out my poem—I’d left it on the table when I come out with Mis’ McGuire. ‘I found this paper on the table, Susan. It’s your poem, isn’t it?’ he says real cheerful-like. Then he turns kind of quick an’ leaves the room without another word.
“Well, I didn’t know then that’t was the poem he’d been cryin’ over. I didn’t know—till this mornin’. Then somethin’ he said made me see right off.”
“Why, Susan, what was it?”
“It was somethin’ about—work. But first you wouldn’t understand it, unless you see the poem. An’ I can show it to you, ‘cause I’ve got it right here. I’m tryin’ to memorialize it, so I keep it with me all the time, an’ repeat one line over an’ over till I get it. It’s right here in my bag. You’ll find it’s the best I’ve wrote, Miss Dorothy; I’m sure you will,” she went on a bit wistfully. “You see I used a lot of the words that was in the magazine—not that I pleasurized it any, of course. Mine’s different, ‘cause mine is poetry an’ theirs is prosy. There! I guess maybe you can read it, even if’t is my writin’,” she finished, taking a sheet of note-paper from her bag and carefully spreading it out for Miss Dorothy to read.
And this is what Dorothy read:
CONTENTMENT
Wealth
I asked for the earth—but when in my hands
It shriveled and crumbled away;
And the green of its trees and the blue of its skies
Changed to a somber gray.
Beauty
I asked for the moon—but the shimmering thing
Was only reflected gold,
And vanished away at my glance and touch,
And was then but a tale that is told.
Pleasure
I asked for the stars—and lots of them came,
And twinkled and danced for me;
But the whirling lights soon wearied my gaze—
I squenched their flame in the sea.
Fame
I asked for the sun!—but the fiery ball,
Brought down from its home on high,
Scorched and blistered my finger tips,
As I swirled it back to the sky.
Labor
I asked for a hoe, and I set me to work,
And my red blood danced as I went:
At night I rested, and looking back,
I counted my day well spent.
“But, Susan, I don’t see,” began Miss Dorothy, lifting puzzled eyes from the last line of the poem, “I don’t see what there is about that to make Mr. Keith—cry.”
“No, I didn’t, till this mornin’; an’ then—Well, Keith came out into the kitchen an’ begun one of them tramps of his up an’ down the room. It always drives me nearly crazy when he does that, but I can’t say anything, of course. I did begin this mornin’ to talk about John McGuire an’ how fine it was he’d got somethin’ he could do. I thought’t would take the poor boy’s mind off hisself, if I could get him talkin’ about John McGuire—he’s been SO interested in John all winter! An’ so glad he could help him. You know he’s always so wanted to HELP somebody hisself instead of always havin’ somebody helpin’ him. But, dear me, instead of its bein’ a quieter now for him, it was a regular stirrup.
“‘That’s just it, that’s just it, Susan,’ he moans. ‘You’ve got to have work or you die. There’s nothin’ in the whole world like work—YOUR WORK! John McGuire’s got his work, an’ I’m glad of it. But where’s mine? Where’s mine, I tell you?’
“An’ I told him he’d jest been havin’ his work, helpin’ John McGuire. You know it was wonderful, perfectly wonderful, Miss Dorothy, the way them two men got hold of John McGuire. You know John wouldn’t speak to anybody, not anybody, till Keith an’ his father found some way to get on the inside of his shell. An’ Keith’s been so happy all winter doin’ it; an’ his father, too. So I tried to remind him that he’d been doin’ his work.
“But it didn’t do no good. Keith said that was all very well, an’ he was glad, of course; but that was only a little bit of a thing, an’ ‘t was all past an’ gone, an’ John didn’t need ‘em any more, an’ there wasn’t anything left for him now at all. Oh, Miss Dorothy, he talked awfully. I never heard him run on so. An’ I knew, from a lot of it that he said, that he was thinkin’ of that poem—he wouldn’t ask for wealth or beauty or fame, or anything, an’ that there didn’t anything count but labor. You see?”
“Yes, I—see.” Miss Dorothy’s voice was very low. Her face was turned quite away, yet Susan was very sure that there were tears in her eyes.
“An’ his father!—he’s ‘most as bad as Keith,” sighed Susan. “They’re both as nervous as witches, what with the war an’ all, an’ they not bein’ able to do anything. Oh, they do give money—lots of it—Liberty Bonds an’ Red Cross, an’ drives, of course. You knew they’d got it now—their money, didn’t you, Miss Dorothy?”
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