WAITING
Not for some days after his return from Boston did Keith venture out
upon the street. He knew then at once that the whole town had heard
all about his trip to Boston and what the doctors had said. He tried
not to see the curious glances cast in his direction. He tried not to
care that the youngest McGuire children stood at their gate and
whispered, with fingers plainly pointing toward himself.
He did not go near the schoolhouse, and he stayed at the post-office
until he felt sure all the scholars must have reached home. Then, just
at the corner of his own street, he met Mazie Sanborn and Dorothy
Parkman face to face. He would have passed quickly, with the briefest
sort of recognition, but Mazie stopped him short.
"Keith, oh, Keith, it isn't true, is it?" she cried breathlessly. "You
aren't going to be blind?"
"Mazie, how could you!" cried Dorothy sharply. And because she
shuddered and half turned away, Keith saw only the shudder and the
turning away, and did not realize that it was rebuke and remonstrance,
and not aversion, that Dorothy was expressing so forcibly.
Keith stiffened.
"Say, Keith, I'm awfully sorry, and so's Dorothy. Why, she hasn't
talked about a thing, hardly, but that, since she heard of it."
"Mazie, I have, too," protested Dorothy sharply.
"Well, anyway, it was she who insisted on coming around this way
to-day," teased Mazie wickedly; "and when I----"
"I'm going home, whether you are or not," cut in Miss Dorothy, with
dignity. And with a low chuckle Mazie tossed a good-bye to Keith and
followed her lead.
Keith, his chin aggressively high, strode in the opposite direction.
"I suppose she wanted to see how really bad I did look," he was
muttering fiercely, under his breath. "Well, she needn't worry. If I
do get blind, I'll take good care she don't have to look at me, nor
Mazie, nor any of the rest of them."
Keith went out on the street very little after that, and especially he
kept away from it after school hours. They were not easy--those winter
days. The snow lay deep in the woods, and it was too cold for long
walks. He could not read, nor paint, nor draw, nor use his eyes about
anything that tried them. But he was by no means idle. He had found
now "the boy to do the reading"--his father. For hours every day they
studied together, Keith memorizing, where it was necessary, what his
father read, always discussing and working out the problems together.
That he could not paint or draw was a great cross to his father, he
knew.
Keith noticed, too,--and noticed it with a growing heartache,--that
nothing was ever said now about his being Jerry and Ned and dad
himself all in a bunch. And he understood, of course, that if he was
going to be blind, he could not be Jerry and--
But Keith was honestly trying not to think of that; and he welcomed
most heartily anything or anybody that helped him toward that end.
Now there was Susan. Not once had Susan ever spoken to him of his
eyes, whether he could or could not see. But Susan knew about it. He
was sure of that. First he suspected it when he found her, the next
day after his return from Boston, crying in the pantry.
SUSAN CRYING! Keith stood in the doorway and stared unbelievingly. He
had not supposed that Susan could cry.
"Why, Susan!" he gasped. "What IS the matter?"
He never forgot the look on Susan's face as she sprang toward him, or
the quick cry she gave.
"Oh, Keith, my boy, my boy!" Then instantly she straightened back,
caught up a knife, and began to peel an onion from a pan on the shelf
before her. "Cryin'? Nonsense!" she snapped quaveringly. "Can't a body
peel a pan of onions without being accused of cryin' about somethin'?
Shucks! What should I be cryin' for, anyway, to be sure?
Some things need a knife,
An' some things need a pill,
An' some things jest a laugh'll make a cure.
But jest you bet your life,
You may cry jest fit to kill,
An' never cure nothin'--that is sure.
That's what I always say when I see folks cryin'. An' it's so, too.
Here, Keith, want a cooky? An' take a jam tart, too. I made 'em this
mornin', 'specially for you."
With which astounding procedure--for her--Susan pushed a plate of
cookies and tarts toward him, then picked up her pan of onions and
hurried into the kitchen.
Once again Keith stared. Cookies and jam tarts, and made for him? If
anything, this was even more incomprehensible than were the tears in
Susan's eyes. Then suddenly the suspicion came to him--SUSAN KNEW. And
this was her way----
The suspicion did not become a certainty, however, until two days
later. Then he overheard Susan and Mrs. McGuire talking in the
kitchen. He had slipped into the pantry to look for another of those
cookies made for him, when he heard Mrs. McGuire burst into the
kitchen and accost Susan agitatedly. And her first words were such
that he could not bring himself to step out into view.
"Susan," she had cried, "it ain't true, is it? IS it true that Keith
Burton is going--BLIND? My John says----"
"Sh-h! You don't have to shout it out like that, do ye?" demanded
Susan crossly, yet in a voice that was far from steady. "Besides,
that's a very extravagated statement."
"You mean exaggerated, I suppose," retorted Mrs. McGuire impatiently.
"Well, I'm sure I'm glad if it is, of course. But can't you tell me
anything about it? Or, don't you know?"
Keith knew--though he could not see her--just how Susan was drawing
herself up to her full height.
"I guess I know--all there is to know, Mis' McGuire," she said then
coldly. "But there ain't anybody KNOWS anything. We're jest waitin' to
see." Her voice had grown unsteady again.
"You mean he MAY be blind, later?"
"Yes."
"Oh, the poor boy! Ain't that terrible? How CAN they stand it?"
"I notice there are things in this world that have to be stood. An'
when they have to be stood, they might as well be--stood, an' done
with it."
"Yes, I suppose so," sighed Mrs. McGuire. Then, after a pause: "But
what is it--that's makin' him blind?"
"I don't know. They ain't sayin'. I thought maybe't was a catamount,
but they say't ain't that."
"But when is it liable to come?"
"Come? How do I know? How does anybody know?" snapped Susan tartly.
"Look a-here, Mis' McGuire, you must excuse me from discoursin'
particulars. We don't talk 'em here. None of us don't."
"Well, you needn't be so short about it, Susan Betts. I'm only tryin'
to show a little sympathy. You don't seem to realize at all what a
dreadful thing this is. My John says----"
"Don't I--DON'T I?" Susan's voice shook with emotion. "Don't you
s'pose that I know what it would be with the sun put out, an' the moon
an' the stars, an' never a thing to look at but black darkness all the
rest of your life? Never to be able to see the blue sky, or your
father's face, or--But talkin' about it don't help any. Look a-here,
if somethin' awful was goin' to happen to you, would YOU want folks to
be talkin' to you all the time about it? No, I guess you wouldn't. An'
so we don't talk here. We're just--waitin'. It may come in a year, it
may come sooner, or later. It may not come at all. An' while we ARE
waitin' there ain't nothin' we can do except to do ev'rything the
doctor tells us, an' hope--'t won't ever come."
Even Mrs. McGuire could have had no further doubt about Susan's
"caring." No one who heard Susan's voice then could have doubted it.
Mrs. McGuire, for a moment, made no answer; then, with an inarticulate
something that might have passed for almost any sort of comment, she
rose to her feet and left the house.
In the pantry, Keith, the cookies long since forgotten, shamelessly
listened at the door and held his breath to see which way Susan's
footsteps led. Then, when he knew that the kitchen was empty, he
slipped out, still cookyless, and hurried upstairs to his own room.
Keith understood, after that, why Susan did not talk to him about his
eyes; and because he knew she would not talk, he felt at ease and at
peace with her.
It was not so with others. With others (except with his father) he
never knew when a dread question or a hated comment was to be made.
And so he came to avoid those others more and more.
At the first signs of spring, and long before the snow was off the
ground, Keith took to the woods. When his father did not care to go,
he went alone. It was as if he wanted to fill his inner consciousness
with the sights and sounds of his beloved out-of-doors, so that when
his outer eyes were darkened, his inner eyes might still hold the
pictures. Keith did not say this, even to himself; but when every day
Susan questioned him minutely as to what he had seen, and begged him
to describe every budding tree and every sunset, he wondered; was it
possible that Susan, too, was trying to fill that inner consciousness
with visions?
Keith was thrown a good deal with Susan these days. Sometimes it
seemed as if there were almost no one but Susan. Certainly all those
others who talked and questioned--he did not want to be with them. And
his father--sometimes it seemed to Keith that his father did not like
to be with him as well as he used to. And, of course, if he was going
to be blind--Dad never had liked disagreeable subjects. Had HE
become--a disagreeable subject?
And so there seemed, indeed, at times, no one but Susan. Susan,
however, was a host in herself. Susan was never cross now, and almost
always she had a cooky or a jam tart for him. She told lots of funny
stories, and there were always her rhymes and jingles. She had a new
one every day, sometimes two or three a day.
There was no subject too big or too little for Susan to put into
rhyme. Susan said that something inside of her was a gushing siphon of
poems, anyway, and she just had to get them out of her system. And she
told Keith that spring always made the siphon gush worse than ever,
for some reason. She didn't know why.
Keith suspected that she said this by way of an excuse for repeating
so many of her verses to him just now. But Keith was not deceived. He
had not forgotten what Susan had said to Mrs. McGuire in the kitchen
that day; and he knew very well that all this especial attention to
him was only Susan's way of trying to help him "wait."