Part 45 (2/2)

”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.

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