DANIEL BURTON'S "JOB"
Dorothy came at ten, or, to be strictly accurate, at five minutes past
ten. The additional five minutes had been consumed by her going out of
her way around the block so that she might see if Keith were visible
in one of the McGuires' windows. He was visible--and when she went up
the Burton walk at five minutes past ten, her step was confident and
her face eager; and there was about her manner none of the furtive,
nervous questioning that had marked her coming the day before.
"Good-morning, Susan," she began cheerily, as Susan answered her ring.
"Did Mr. Burton say he would see me?"
"He did. And Mr. Keith is over to the McGuires' all safe, so you don't
have to worry about him." Susan's eyes were still mutinous, her voice
still coldly disapproving.
"Yes, I know he is," nodded Miss Dorothy with a bright smile.
"Oh, you do!"
"Yes. Well, that is--er--I--" Under Susan's uncompromising frigidity
Miss Dorothy's stammering tongue came to a painful pause.
"Humph!" vouchsafed Susan. "Well, come in, an' I'll tell Mr. DANIEL
Burton you're here."
That the emphasis on "Daniel" was not lost was shown by the sudden
broad smile that chased away the confusion on Miss Dorothy's face, as
Susan led the way to the living-room. Two minutes later Daniel Burton,
thinner, paler, and more worn-looking than Dorothy had ever seen him
before, entered the room and held out a cordial hand.
"Good-morning, Miss Dorothy. I'm glad to see you," he said. "What is
it,--Red Cross, Y.M.C.A., Smileage Books?" The whimsical smile on his
lips only served to emphasize the somber pain in his eyes.
"Not any of them. Then Susan didn't tell you?"
"Not a word. Sit down, please."
"Thank you. Then I shall have to begin at the beginning," sighed the
girl a little constrainedly as she took the chair he offered her.
"I--I have a certain project that I want to carry out, Mr. Burton,
and I--I want your help."
"Why, of course--certainly. I shall be glad to, I know." Daniel
Burton's hand had already reached for his check-book. "Any project of
yours, Miss Dorothy--! How much do you want?"
But Miss Dorothy lifted her hand, palm outward.
"Thank you, Mr. Burton; but not any--in money, just yet. Oh, it'll
take money, probably, to get it started, before it's on a
self-supporting basis, I suppose. But it isn't money I want to-day,
Mr. Burton. It--it's yourself."
The man gave a short, dry laugh, not untinged with bitterness.
"I'm afraid I can't endorse either your taste or your judgment there,
Miss Dorothy. You've come for a poor stick. I can't imagine myself as
being much benefit to any sort of project. However, I shall be glad to
hear about it, of course. What is it?"
And Miss Dorothy told him. With her eyes shining, and her voice
quivering with eagerness, she told the story as she had told it to
Susan the afternoon before, but with even greater elaboration of
detail.
"And so now, Mr. Burton, you--you will help, won't you?" she begged,
in closing.
"Help! But my dear girl, how?"
"Take charge. Be the head and shoulders, the backbone of the whole
thing. Oh, yes, I know it's a whole lot to ask," she hurried on, as
she saw the dawning dismay and refusal in his face. "But I thought,
for the sake of the cause--"
"The cause!" The man's voice was bitter as he interrupted her. "I'd
crawl to France on my hands and knees if that would do any good! But,
my dear young lady, I'm an ignoramus, and worse than an ignoramus,
when it comes to machinery. I'll venture to wager that I wouldn't know
the tape from the coils--or whatever they are."
"Oh, we'd have an engineer for that part, of course," interposed the
girl eagerly. "And we want your son, too."
"You want Keith! Pray, do you expect him to teach how to wind coils?"
"No--no--not exactly;--though I think he will be teaching before he
realizes it. I want him to learn to wind them himself, and thus get
others to learn. You don't understand, Mr. Burton. I want you and Mr.
Keith to--to do just what you did for John McGuire--arouse interest
and enthusiasm and get them to do it. Don't you see?"
"But that was Keith, not I, in the case of John McGuire."
"It was you at the last," corrected the girl gently. "Mr. Burton, John
McGuire wouldn't have any book out this spring if it weren't for you
and--your eyes."
"Hm-m, perhaps not. Still there'd have been a way, probably. But even
if I grant that--all you say in the case of John McGuire--that isn't
winding armatures, or whatever they are."
"Mr. Burton, you aren't going to refuse," pleaded the girl.
"What else can I do? Miss Dorothy, you don't want to stamp this
project of yours a FAILURE from the start, do you?" Words, voice,
manner, and gesture were unmistakable. All the longing and heartache
and bitterness of years of fruitless effort and final disappointment
pulsated through that one word FAILURE.
For a moment nobody spoke. Daniel Burton had got to his feet and
crossed the room to the window. The girl, watching him with
compassionate eyes as he stood looking out, had caught her breath with
a little choking sigh. Suddenly she lifted her head resolutely.
"Mr. Burton, you've got one gift that--that I don't believe you
realize at all that you possess. Like John McGuire you can make folks
SEE what you are talking about. Perhaps it's because you can paint
pictures with a brush. Or--or perhaps it's because you've got such a
wonderful command of words." (Miss Dorothy stumbled a little
precipitately into this sentence--she had not failed to see the
disdainful movement of the man's head and shoulders at the mention of
his pictures.) "Whatever it is," she hurried on, "you've got it. I saw
it first years ago, with--with your son, when I used to see him at
father's. He would sit and talk to me by the hour about the woods and
fields and mountains, the sunsets and the flowers back home; and
little by little I found out that they were the pictures you drew for
him--on the canvas of his soul. You've done it again now for John
McGuire. Do you suppose you could have caught those wonderful stories
of his with your pencil, if you hadn't been able to help him visualize
them for himself--you and Keith together with your wonderful
enthusiasm and interest?
"I know you couldn't. And that's what I want you now for--you and your
son. Because he is blind, and knows, and understands, as no seeing
person can know and understand, they will trust him; they will follow
where he leads. But behind him has got to be YOU. You've got to be the
eyes for--for them all; not to teach the work--we'll have others for
that. Any good mechanic will do for that part. But it's the other part
of it--the soul of the thing. These men, lots of them, are but little
more than boys--big, strong, strapping fellows with the whole of life
before them. And they are--blind. Whichever way they turn a big black
curtain shuts them in. And it's those four black curtains that I want
you to paint. I want you to give them something to look at, something
to think of, something to live for. And you can do it. And when you
have done it, you'll find they're the best and--and the biggest
pictures you ever painted." Her voice broke with the last word and
choked into silence.
Over at the window the man stood motionless. One minute, two minutes
passed. Then a bit abruptly he turned, crossed the room to the girl's
side, and held out his hand.
"Miss Dorothy, I--I'll take the job," he said.
He spoke lightly, and he smiled as he said the words; but neither the
smile nor the lightness of his manner quite hid the shake in his voice
nor the moisture in his eyes.
"Thank you, Mr. Burton. I was sure you would," cried the girl.
"And now for Keith! He's over to the McGuires'. I'll get him!"
exclaimed the man boyishly.
But Miss Dorothy was instantly on her feet.
"No, no, please," she begged a little breathlessly. "I'd rather you
didn't--now. I--I think we'd better get it a little farther along
before we tell him. There's a whole lot to do, you know--getting the
room and the materials and the superintendent, and all that; and there
isn't a thing he can do--yet."
"All right. Very good. Perhaps that would be better," nodded the man.
"But, let me tell you, I already have some workers for your project."
"You mean Jack Green, here in town?"
"No. Oh, we'd want him, of course; but it's some others--a couple of
boys from Hillsboro. I had a letter yesterday from the father of one
of the boys, asking what to do with his son. He thought because of--of
Keith, that I could help him. It was a pitiful letter. The man was
heart-broken and utterly at sea. His boy--only nineteen--had come home
blind, and well-nigh crazed with the tragedy of it. And the father
didn't know which way to turn. That's why he had appealed to me. You
see, on account of Keith--"
"Yes, I understand," said the girl gently, as the man left his
sentence unfinished.
"I've had others, too--several of them--in the last few weeks. If
you'll wait I'll get the letters." He was already halfway to the door.
"It may take a minute or two to look them up; but--they'll be worth
it, I think."
"Of course they will," she cried eagerly. "They'll be just exactly
what we want, and I'm not in a bit of a hurry," she finished, dropping
back in her chair as the door closed behind him.
Alone, she looked about the room, her eyes wistful, brimming with
unshed tears. Over by the window was Keith's chair, before it the
table, with a half-completed picture puzzle spread upon it. Near the
table was a set of shelves containing other picture puzzles, games,
and books--all, as the girl well knew, especially designed and
constructed for eyes that could not see.
She had risen to her feet and half started to cross the room toward
the table when the door to the side hall opened and Keith Burton
entered the room.
With a half-stifled gasp the girl stepped back to her chair. The blind
boy stopped instantly, his face turned toward her.
"Is that--you, Susan?"
The girl wet her lips, but no words came.
"Who's there, please?" He spoke sharply this time. As everybody
knew--who knew Keith--the one thing that angered him more than anything
else was the attempted deception as to one's presence in the room.
Miss Dorothy gave a confused little laugh, and put her hand to her
throat.
"Why, Keith, it's only I! Don't look so--"
"You?" For one brief moment his face lighted up as with a hidden
flame; then instantly it changed. It became like the gray of ashes
after the flame is spent. "Why didn't you speak, then?" he questioned.
"It did no good to keep quiet. You mustn't forget that I have ears--if
I haven't eyes."
"Nonsense, Keith!" She laughed again confusedly, though her own face
had paled a little. "I did speak as soon as I caught my
breath;--popping in on a body like that!"
"But I didn't know--you were here," stammered the young fellow
uncertainly. "Nobody called me. I beg your pardon if--" He came to a
helpless pause.
"Not a bit of it! You needn't. It wasn't necessary at all." The girl
tossed off the words with a lightness so forced that it was almost
flippancy. "You see, I didn't come to see you at all. It was your
father."
"My father!"
"Certainly."
"But--but does he know?"
The girl laughed merrily--too merrily for sincerity.
"Know? Indeed he does. We've just been having a lovely talk. He's gone
upstairs for some letters. He's coming right back--right back."
"Oh-h!" Was it an indefinable something in her voice, or was it the
repetition of the last two words? Whatever it was that caused it,
Keith turned away with a jerk, walked with the swift sureness of long
familiarity straight to the set of shelves and took down a book. "Then
I'll not disturb you any further--as long as you're not needing me,"
he said tersely. "I only came for this." And with barely a touch of
his cane to the floor and door-casing, he strode from the room.
The pity of it--that he could not have seen Dorothy Parkman's eyes
looking after him!