"I can't tell, Maizie, he may be kept at the mills. Mr. Massey is growing more dependent on father every day," she ended, with a little burst of pride.

Father did not come home in the afternoon. The children lost hope after a time, and followed their separate whims.

But at six he arrived. Suzanna had noticed at once upon her return, that he was quieter, less exuberant than he had been since entering old John Massey's employ. Some light seemed to have gone from his face. Suzanna wanted always to comfort him, and he, though saying nothing, was quite conscious of his little daughter's yearning over him.

During supper his absorption continued, and immediately afterward he went into the parlor, selected a big book from a shelf, and drawing a chair near the lamp began to read. Mother put the "baby" and Peter to bed. Suzanna and Maizie, after the dishes were finished, followed father, and drawing their chairs close, looked over some pictures together.

"Saturday night"—how Suzanna loved it! It seemed the hush time of the week, the hush before waking to the next beautiful day, Sunday, when all the family were together—father in his nice dark suit, mother in her soft wisteria gown, all the children in pretty clothes; church, with its resonant organ, and the minister's deep voice reading from the old book. Then, weather propitious, the walk with father and mother in the afternoon down the country road, and at night the lamps again lit—all the homely significances of the place where love and peace and courage dwelt.

Mrs. Procter returned from putting the children to bed. "I think I'll go upstairs for a little while," said Mr. Procter looking up at her.

"Oh, do, Richard," she urged.

Suzanna went close to him, her hand sought his. "Could—could you invite us for a little while, daddy," she asked, beseechingly.

"Why, yes, if you wish," he answered. "You and mother and Maizie."

It was rather a heavy consent, but they all accompanied him up to the attic. He lit the shaded lamp standing on the corner table, regulated it till it gave out a subdued glow, and then walked and stood before his machine.

He stood a long time looking at it. Once he put out his hand and touched it softly, as a mother might a sleeping child.

Suzanna and Maizie, awed and troubled, they knew not why, watched their father. Only their mother, with a little tender smile that held in it a great deal of wistfulness, went close to him.

"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 Saturday 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 Massey in an affectionate tone.

"It's ready for you, Mr. Massey," 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 shiny."

He smiled with great fondness at her. "My dear," he said, "how can a man fail to indulge in nice shining 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 pass 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 circumscribed 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 glass 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 assembled; 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 brass 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.

"Well, we've all thought of The Machine, and loved it and believed in it ever since I was the tiniest girl, and you've talked to us of what it was to mean."

"All true, my child, all true."

"And The Machine stood there and listened, daddy." She released herself from his clasp and stood very straight. Her dark eyes seeing pictures, were brilliantly wide. Her breath came quickly from between her parted lips: "And so it grew and grew, and soon out of its soul it sent colors. And it loved the man who made it, and it loved his little children, and made them all want to be good and do something for others.

"And then one day, they took it away from its home and into a big mill, and men crowded around it and looked at it, but they didn't love it, and they didn't believe in it. And it felt shy and hurt and the color stayed in its soul and wouldn't come forth.

"And the man who had made it felt sad and he cried, and he took his machine home. And then one day, years and years after when the man's little girl, Suzanna, was a woman and she was out in the world trying to do good, as her father had taught her, trying to make other people happy, the colors crept out from The Machine again, all gold and purple and rose and green, this time for everybody."

She finished, and with a great cry her father folded her to him. The tears came streaming to his eyes, and quite frankly now he wept. She felt the hot tears upon her face, they burned her, but she knew she had helped him and she was satisfied.

They sat on in a wonderful silence. A distant clock struck one. They heard the sound of quickly descending feet, and turning, Suzanna saw her mother standing in the doorway.

"I heard voices," said Mrs. Procter.

"Come here," her husband said. She saw his face transfigured, and she went to him and fell on her knees beside him.

"Courage—belief?" she questioned.

"Yes, they have returned," he said.

Suzanna spoke again: "Daddy," she said, in her eager voice, "I forgot to tell you of a nice happening. You know when we were at the seashore with Mr. Bartlett, John, the waiter at the hotel, said something one day about a son of his who wanted to write beautiful music, and Mr. Bartlett said right before me: 'John, let me help that boy of yours. This little girl's father has shown me the beauty of doing good for others.'"

The inventor did not speak. He sat, his arms about his wife and child, and in his eyes the radiance of new inspiration, new purpose.

At last his wife spoke. "Richard, could success as you planned it, have meant more, and wouldn't it have brushed some of the butterfly dust away?"

He took the thought, pondered it, and his wife went on. "There's the joy of striving, of waking fresh every day to hope. Can attainment, after all, give any greater joy?"

"Perhaps not," he murmured.

"So, dear," she went on, "think of what has been done, not of what you wished for. Think what you've done for our children. You took them with you into your land of dreams, letting them share with you as far as you might, that thrill which comes to the creator."

"And, daddy," finished Suzanna, "if The Machine had gone away to stay, we couldn't have any more beautiful Saturday afternoons in the attic with you."

They remained then all very still. Peter cried out a little in his sleep. His mother, alert at once, listened, then relaxed when the cry did not come again, and then Suzanna asked, "Are you still very, very sad, daddy?"

And he answered, "The sadness has gone, Suzanna. Come another Saturday, I shall take up the work again—and some day—"

"Some day all the world will say my father is a great man," ended Suzanna, an unfaltering faith written upon her face.

And so her love, like an essence, flowed out and healed his spirit.



* * * * *

Transcriber's Notes:

Page 11, 'rythmic' changed to "rhythmic" (rhythmic noises)

Page 120, "base ball" changed to "baseball". (to mend a baseball)

Page 125, "Reyonlds'" changed to "Reynolds'". (Reynolds' gate.)

Page 249, hyphen added to "every-day" to match rest of text.(the real every-day life)

Page 290, "white clad" changed to "white-clad" to match usage. (The white-clad nurse)

Page 347, "cobble stones" changed to "cobble-stones" to fit rest of text. (out on the cobble-stones)

Page 363, "wistaria" changed to "wisteria" (wistera gown)

THE END