Suzanna Stirs the Fire Part 35

They entered the house and went into a small room at the left of the wide hall. It was lovely, Suzanna decided, done all in soft gray, except the curtains at the window, which were of amber silk, hanging in heavy folds. Yes, very charming, Suzanna emphasized to herself. She liked particularly the one picture on the wall, showing a group of horses, heads high in the air, full of fire. Suzanna could see them move, she believed.

"Sit down there, Suzanna, in that high-backed chair and tell us what you have to say that's so important," suggested Mr. Bartlett.

"I'm crazy to hear all about it, Suzanna," supplemented Graham. He settled himself in antic.i.p.ation, for Suzanna was always intensely interesting.

Suzanna seated herself. A quaint little figure she was, her fine head thrown in relief against the gray satin of the chair. "You know," she began, "there's been a fire."

"A bully big one," said Graham.

Suzanna turned her dark eyes upon the boy. "It was a big one, and maybe fun to watch," she said, "but it burned all the people's homes. We've got two little children, at our house. We could never find their father and mother."

Mr. Bartlett, occupying the corner of a lounge, s.h.i.+fted uneasily.

Evidently to put forth truths so baldly was inartistic.

"My mother says it was--I can't think of the word--but she meant it was lucky those cottages were burned down; they were so dirty." Suzanna went on: "And babies played in the yards in ashes and old papers. I always hurried past when I went that way because something stopped inside of me, I felt so sorry for those babies." Suzanna paused. "I just thought as we walked up your front path how different everything is here; your front yard is so clean, and there's so much room!"

She stopped again. She wished Mr. Bartlett would speak. He must guess now all that she meant to convey to him; all she would ask of him.

But still he didn't answer. "The Eagle Man owned those houses," she said at last.

"The Eagle Man?" Mr. Bartlett roused himself at last. "Who is the Eagle Man?"

"Mr. Ma.s.sey other people call him. The Eagle Man's my own private name for him."

Graham knew his father was heavily interested in the Ma.s.sey Steel Mills.

But he did not speak.

"You know, it's an awful fine feeling you get when you're doing something for strangers," Suzanna pressed on. "Some way you don't feel so excited when you're doing something for your very own family."

But she was doomed to disappointment. A continued silence still greeted her words. "When people work for you isn't it as though you were their father or their big brother and had to help them when they needed it?"

she asked, at length.

"Well, it's a new thought that you owe anything to the men who work for you except their wages," said Mr. Bartlett at last.

"Why, Drusilla told me that everyone in the world has a little silver chain running from his wrist to his next friend's wrist; it stretches when you run--a fellows.h.i.+p link my father named it when I told him. And the chain runs from my wrist to your wrist and from yours to every other wrist in the world." She leaned closer, finis.h.i.+ng earnestly. "And Drusilla says if you break your chain you're really a slave."

"Very interesting," commented Mr. Bartlett.

"Yes, isn't it?" agreed Suzanna. She returned tenaciously to her subject. "There are many homeless families who weren't welcome where they had to go after the fire. Mary Holmes says her mother took in four people and she says as long as they stay there'll have to be stews, for in that way a pound of meat goes further, and Mary just hates stews."

"Well, what is your suggestion of a remedy, Suzanna?" asked Mr.

Bartlett. At which question, though put in words beyond her, Suzanna's eyes brightened. She caught the sense unerringly and answered promptly.

"Why, I thought _you_ could do something. You have so much room." And then the solution came, out of the sky as often answers came when you didn't expect them. "Why, you could put tents up in your big yards for the homeless people, till their own homes are built again."

Mr. Bartlett was greatly amused. "You ask such a little thing, Suzanna."

"Yes, isn't it, seeing it'll help out so much?" Suzanna returned innocently.

Graham rose and went close to his father. "Father," he said, "who's going to build the new homes for the poor people?"

His father answered: "I don't know, I'm sure; but I should think it old John Ma.s.sey's duty to do so."

"Father," asked Graham, after a pause given over to thought and drawing on his memory for what vague facts he knew of his father's business, "if you take less money for your interests in the mill and if you speak to him, do you suppose Mr. Ma.s.sey would begin at once to build those homes?" His young face was quite white with earnestness and other new emotions struggling up to the surface.

Mr. Bartlett looked from one small face to the other. He smiled grimly.

They could see nothing but the humanness of a situation, the need existing. Going against all precedent meant nothing to them; they simply followed ridiculous altruistic impulses. Only in their minds was the knowledge that other people were suffering; and the immediate necessity for relief.

He let his hand fall upon his son's shoulder. "How about the trip abroad, Graham?" There was an under meaning in his question which Graham got at once. His face lit.

"I'd rather help out here, father, and give up the trip. I really would."

Mr. Bartlett remained quiet for a long time again. In some mysterious manner he was now for almost the first time looking upon his son as an individual, one with opinions and the power of criticism. And there grew in his heart the very fervent desire to stand well in that son's estimation. He looked at Suzanna and envied her father. How proudly, how simply she had said, "He is a great man!"

But when he spoke, he reverted to a name used a moment before by Suzanna, a name he knew well.

"Who's your very philosophic friend, Suzanna--Drusilla, you called her."

Suzanna's eyes shone. "Drusilla? She's my special friend. She lives in a little house on the forked road. She's pretty and sweet and she has fancies, like children. She plays sometimes she's a queen. But she's lonely. She gave Miss Ma.s.sey to Robert in the little church. And she has no one in all the world left to call her by her first name. So I call her Drusilla and she loves it."

Graham did not stir. Neither did he look at his father till Suzanna, suddenly remembering, cried out:

"Why, Drusilla's Graham's grandmother!"

Mr. Bartlett's face suddenly went very white. He didn't speak for a long time. Then he rose and went to the window, drew back the silken curtain and stared out.

Suzanna wondered if he would ever move again! At the moment he was far away. He was a boy again at his mother's knee, listening to that fanciful conception of the little silver chain that stretched so far.

There rushed in on him, too, other memories, blinding ones that hurt.

True, every day at the little house a spray of lilies of the valley were delivered; but with that impersonal gift which cost him nothing but the drawing of a check he had dismissed his mother from his busy mind, letting her stay in loneliness, live in old dreams.

A soft little swish was heard at the door and Mrs. Bartlett entered the room. She stopped in some consternation at sight of the silent trio within.

"Why, what is the matter?" she asked, impulsively.

Mr. Bartlett turned from the window. He looked at his wife, steadily regarded her beautiful face and bronze-colored hair piled high upon her small and regal head. His gaze sought the soft, white hands, the tapered fingers with pink and s.h.i.+ning nails.

At last he spoke, very quietly, but each word seemed weighed: "'And in the morning there shall tents suddenly arise.' A quotation from somewhere, my dear, but it shall come true here."

She turned a cold gaze upon him. "Will you explain what you mean?" she asked.

"There are a few homeless people in Anchorville; their homes laid waste by a fire," he said, pleasantly. "This small messenger has suggested that we make use of our ample grounds for a time by putting up tents, for a time, I say, till more substantial abiding places may be built."

She clenched her hands. "You can't do that, Graham," she began, a note of entreaty in her voice; "you can't possibly be so absurdly quixotic."

"And why not?"

"I can't understand!" she repeated. "Such philanthropic ideas have not occurred to you before."