Suzanna Stirs the Fire Part 45

"Richard," she said softly.

He turned from the machine. His face was strangely colorless, strangely drained of all light. She did not speak, but the loyalty and faith deepened in her eyes. Perhaps he gained some comfort from their steady gaze, his tenseness seemed to relax, his arms fell to his sides.

Suzanna unable to stand the strain longer, flew to him and put her small arms tight about him. "Oh, are you sick, daddy?" she cried, tears in her voice.

He hesitated, looked down at her, and said simply, very quietly:

"Suzanna, you might as well know the truth now as later. My machine is a failure--I am a failure!"

Her heart leaped sickeningly, her arms fell from about him. In all her life she had never lived through so intense an emotion. Her father, the Great Man, proclaimed himself a failure in tones which struck through her.

The mother's voice rang out clear. "Richard, you cannot say that." She looked about the attic made sacred by its high use, "Here while you worked we all, your children and I, have learned great lessons. You're looking at your machine, an insensate thing, and losing sight of what during its building, you put into the lives of those near to you, living stuff, Richard."

And then Maizie cried out, "Oh, daddy, it's just like being on a mountain top when we're in the attic with you. We'll never, never have to stop coming, will we?"

And Suzanna, still deeply troubled, cried: "Daddy, how could the machine be a failure when it was born because you loved all men, and wanted to make them happy? And the very thought of it up here made me happy. Why, in school on Monday I'd look down all the shapes of the week, and think of Sat.u.r.day afternoon and wish it would come quick." Her voice broke and the sobs came uncontrollable, shaking the slender body. In a moment she was clasped tight in her father's arms.

After she had regained some composure she looked up at him. "It hurts me, daddy, so that I can't breathe when you forget that you're a Great Man."

A silence fell, and into it plunged a voice. "Good evening," it said.

There in the doorway stood the Eagle Man. He laughed at their bewildered expressions. "I rang and rang," he explained, "and when no one answered, I looked up at the attic window and thought you must all be upstairs."

"And was the door unlocked," cried Mrs. Procter. "I thought I attended to the doors and windows right after supper."

"The door was unlocked," said the Eagle Man, "and so I took the liberty of coming right in."

"I'm glad you did," said Mr. Procter.

"Well, I need your help, Richard," said old John Ma.s.sey in an affectionate tone.

"It's ready for you, Mr. Ma.s.sey," the inventor answered warmly.

Suzanna gazing at her old friend, suddenly cried out: "Oh, your eyes have changed, Eagle Man, they're all nice and s.h.i.+ny."

He smiled with great fondness at her. "My dear," he said, "how can a man fail to indulge in nice s.h.i.+ning eyes after contact with a family of rare visionaries?"

Suzanna did not understand that. She knew only that the Eagle Man had greatly changed, that he seemed kinder, more understanding, and all at once she knew why. He had had of late the ineffable privilege of being close to her father. Of course, by such proximity he must grow kind and understanding.

"Richard," said the capitalist, "there's trouble threatened in the foreign section of the mills."

"Trouble?" Richard Procter's head went up.

"Yes, the men are dissatisfied, surly. It's the one department where your touch hasn't been felt. I want you to go there on Monday and begin your work."

"I'll be ready," said Richard Procter. Strength and purpose seemed to flow back to him.

The Eagle Man turned as though to go, but he paused at the door to look again at Suzanna.

"And so your father's been telling you that he has failed, that his machine refused to work in the final test we gave it at the mills."

"My father hasn't failed," Suzanna said proudly.

"No, he hasn't failed," the Eagle Man agreed. "He hasn't failed. He's the most brilliant success I know. He built into a piece of machinery his ideals, and when the machine was finished he saw in his experiments with it on those in his home ultimate triumph. But when it was taken to my mills the machine failed to register color in personalities whose chief talent by years of wrong work had been nearly strangled."

Mr. Procter spoke: "It shouldn't have failed even there. It did register, if you remember your color and Mr. Bartlett's, and both of you had pulled far away from your purpose."

"Yes, for some reason, it did register us," agreed the Eagle Man. He paused, and then his voice rang out. "Let me tell you all something that the inventor of that machine did, some miracle he brought to pa.s.s I should have thought impossible. He awakened old ideals in a hard old breast, he made hard old eyes see in men, not automatons born only to add to his wealth, but human beings to be rendered happy in their work."

"Was yours the hard old breast, Eagle Man?" Suzanna asked.

"Yes, Suzanna. A result like that is worth while, eh, Richard?"

Mr. Procter did not answer, could not, because he feared at the moment that he could not speak intelligently.

The Eagle Man turned to the wife, adoringly silent as she listened.

"Three men Richard Procter brought to me on his first day in my mills.

He said: 'These men have ambitions, they are greatly talented. You must give them their chance.'"

"And what did you say?" asked Mrs. Procter softly.

"Oh, I snarled as usual, but that was really the work I wanted him to do. I wanted him to do in the circ.u.mscribed field of my mills that which he had built his machine to do. And so I snapped out: 'All right, put the burden on me! I'll give them their chance just because you say so.'

And where men were dissatisfied he got at them and discovered the trouble, and down there they all trust him, and his influence will be like a river flowing on, ever widening. So there's the late history of the man who stands and calls himself a failure."

So he finished, said not another word, looked once at the inventor, and then went away.

Suzanna, trying in vain that night to sleep, tossed about restlessly.

Maizie, a sound sleeper, did not stir despite her sister's wakefulness.

Suzanna was thinking of her father, of the Eagle Man, of The Machine.

Suddenly she lay quite still. She was remembering the day when The Machine had registered her color, a soft purple, gold tipped. How stirred her father had been when the wavering color spread itself upon the gla.s.s plate. It had repeated its marvel for Maizie and Peter. Why then when The Machine was removed and conveyed to the big steel mills, did it stand brooding, sulky, refusing to make any record of any personality. She sat up straight in bed, her eyes yearning forward into the dark. And all at once the answer came to her. Only in the attic, where, piece by piece, in prayer, hope, and jubilation it had been a.s.sembled; where love and belief had formed the atmosphere could The Machine be its own highly sensitive self, reacting and responding.

With that big thought flowing through her, she slipped from the bed. The night was warm, soft little breezes coming through the open window. She went to the closet, found her slippers, put them on, and with a backward glance at the unconscious Maizie, left the room.

The hall lay quiet, the tiny night lamp flickering in its place on the small table set near her mother's room--that mother, ready at the first sound to spring to any need of her children.

Downstairs Suzanna went swiftly, and there in the dining-room, as she had thought, she found her father. He was sitting at the long table, above which hung the new lamp with its pink shade and long bra.s.s chain.

His head was bent over a big book, and Suzanna knew that he was studying. She paused half-way to him. In her white night gown, her hair flowing over her shoulders, she looked like a small visitor from another higher plane. At last her father, impelled, turned and saw her. At once he opened wide his arms, and she went into them.

She lay, her cheek pressed against his, for a long time. All the thoughts that had raced through her upstairs in the sleepless hours returned to her, but she had to struggle to find language in which to tell them.

"Daddy," she began, "maybe The Machine can't work except where it was born."

"Tell me all that's in your heart, little girl," he said.