Dawn
Copyright© 2024 by Eleanor H. Porter
Chapter 6: Lights Out
And so Keith waited, through the summer and into another winter. And April came. Keith was not listening to Susan’s rhymes and jingles now, nor was he tramping through the woods in search of the first sign of spring. Both eyes had become badly affected now. Keith knew that and—
THE FOG HAD COME. Keith had seen the fog for several days before he knew what it was. He had supposed it to be really—fog. Then one day he said to Susan:
“Where’s the sun? We haven’t had any BRIGHT sun for days and days—just this horrid old foggy fog.”
“Fog? Why, there ain’t any fog!” exclaimed Susan. “The sun is as bright——” She stopped short. Keith could not see her face very clearly—Keith was not seeing anything clearly these days. “Nonsense, Keith, of course, the sun is shinin’!” snapped Susan. “Now don’t get silly notions in your head!” Then she turned and hurried from the room.
And Keith knew. And he knew that Susan knew.
Keith did not mention the fog to his father—dad did not like disagreeable subjects. But somebody must have mentioned it—Susan, perhaps. At all events, before the week was out Keith went with his father again to Boston.
It was a sorry journey. Keith did not need to go to Boston. Keith knew now. There was no one who could tell him anything. Dad might laugh and joke and call attention to everything amusing that he wanted to—it would make no difference. Besides, as if he could not hear the shake in dad’s voice under all the fun, and as if he could not feel the tremble in dad’s hand on his shoulder!
Boston was the same dreary round of testing, talk, and questions, hushed voices and furtive glances, hurried trips from place to place; only this time it was all sharper, shorter, more decisive, and there was no operation. It was not the time for that now, the doctors said. Moreover, this time dad did not laugh, or joke, or even talk on the homeward journey. But that, too, made no difference. Keith already knew.
He knew so well that he did not question him at all. But if he had not known, he would have known from Susan the next day. For he found Susan crying three times the next forenoon, and each time she snapped out so short and sharp about something so entirely foreign from what he asked her that he would have known that Susan knew.
Keith did wonder how many months it would be. Some way he had an idea it would be very few now. As long as it was coming he wished it would come, and come quick. This waiting business—On the whole he was glad that Susan was cross, and that his father spent his days shut away in his own room with orders that he was not to be disturbed. For, as for talking about this thing—
It was toward the last of July that Keith discovered how indistinct were growing the outlines of the big pictures on the wall at the end of the hall. Day by day he had to walk nearer and nearer before he could see them at all. He wondered just how many steps would bring him to the wall itself. He was tempted once to count them—but he could not bring himself to do that; so he knew then that in his heart he did not want to know just how many days it would be before—
But there came a day when he was but two steps away. He told himself it would be in two days then. But it did not come in two days. It did not come in a week. Then, very suddenly, it came.
He woke up one morning to find it quite dark. For a minute he thought it WAS dark; then the clock struck seven—and it was August.
Something within Keith seemed to snap then. The long-pent strain of months gave way. With one agonized cry of “Dad, it’s come—it’s come!” he sprang from the bed, then stood motionless in the middle of the room, his arms outstretched. But when his father and Susan reached the room he had fallen to the floor in a dead faint.
It was some weeks before Keith stood upright on his feet again. His illness was a long and serious one. Late in September, Mrs. McGuire, hanging out her clothes, accosted Susan over the back-yard fence.
“I heard down to the store last night that Keith Burton was goin’ to get well.”
“Of course he’s goin’ to get well,” retorted Susan with emphasis. “I knew he was, all the time.”
“All the same, I think it’s a pity he is.” Mrs. McGuire’s lips came together a bit firmly. “He’s stone blind, I hear, an’ my John says—”
“Well, what if he is?” demanded Susan, almost fiercely. “You wouldn’t kill the child, would you? Besides SEEIN’ is only one of his facilities. He’s got all the rest left. I reckon he’ll show you he can do somethin’ with them.”
Mrs. McGuire shook her head mournfully.
“Poor boy, poor boy! How’s he feel himself? Has he got his senses, his real senses yet?”
“He’s just beginnin’ to.” The harshness in Susan’s voice betrayed her difficulty in controlling it. “Up to now he hain’t sensed anything, much. Of course, part of the time he hain’t known ANYTHING—jest lay there in a stupid. Then, other times he’s jest moaned of-of the dark—always the dark.
“At first he—when he talked—seemed to be walkin’ through the woods; an’ he’d tell all about what he saw; the ‘purple sunsets,’ an’ ‘dancin’ leaves,’ an’ the merry little brooks hurryin’ down the hillside,’ till you could jest SEE the place he was talkin’ about. But now—now he’s comin’ to full conscientiousness, the doctor says; an’ he don’t talk of anything only—only the dark. An’ pretty quick he’ll—know.”
“An’ yet you want that poor child to live, Susan Betts!”
“Of course I want him to live!”
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