Chapter 32: The Key

There was no work at the winding-room Saturday afternoons, and it was on Saturday afternoon that Susan found Keith sitting idle-handed in his chair by the window in the living-room.

As was her custom she spoke the moment she entered the room—but not before she had noted the listless attitude and wistful face of the youth over by the window.

“Keith, I’ve been thinkin’.”

“Bad practice, Susan—sometimes,” he laughed whimsically.

“Not this time.”

“Poetry?”

She shook her head.

“No. I ain’t poetizin’ so much these days, though I did write one yesterday—about the ways of the world. I’m goin’ to read it to you, too, by an’ by. But that’s jest a common poem about common, every-day folks. An’ this thing I was thinkin’ about was—was diff’rent.”

“And so you couldn’t put this into a poem—eh?”

Susan shook her head again and sighed.

“No. An’ it’s been that way lots o’ times lately, ‘specially since I seen John McGuire’s poems—so fine an’ bumtious! Oh, I have the perspiration to write, lots o’ times, an’ I yield up to it an’ write. But somehow, when it’s done, I hain’t said a mite what I want to, an’ I hain’t said it the way I want to, either. I think maybe havin’ so many of ‘em disinclined by them editors has made me kinder fearsome.”

“I’m afraid it has, Susan,” he smiled.

“Now, this afternoon, what I was thinkin’ about—once I’d’ve made a poem of that easy; but to-day I didn’t even try. I KNEW I couldn’t do it. An’, say, Keith, it was you I was thinkin’ about.”

“Heavens, Susan! A poem out of me? No wonder your muse balked! I’m afraid you’d find even—er—perspiration wouldn’t make a poem out of me.”

“Keith, do you remember?” Susan was still earnest and preoccupied. “I told you once that it didn’t make no diff’rence if God had closed the door of your eyes. He’d open up another room to you sometime, an’ give you the key to unlock the door. An’ he has. An’ now you’ve got it—that key.”

“I’ve got it—the key!”

“Yes. It’s that work down there—helpin’ them blind men an’ boys to get hold of their souls again. Oh, Keith, don’t you see? An’ it’s such a big, wide room that God has given you, an’ it’s all yours. There ain’t no one that can help them poor blind soldiers like you can. An’ you couldn’t ‘a’ done it if the door of your eyes hadn’t been shut first. That was what give you the key to this big, beautiful room of helpin’ our boys what’s come back to us, blinded, an’ half-crazed with despair an’ discouragement. Oh, if I only could make you see it the way I do! But I can’t say it—the right way. There’s such a big, beautiful idea there, if only I could make you see it. That’s why I wanted to write the poem.”