Johnston Annie Fellows
Georgina of the Rainbows

CHAPTER XXVIII
THE DOCTOR'S DISCOVERY

IN due time the letter written in the willow tree reached the city of Hong-Kong, and was carried to the big English hotel, overlooking the loveliest of Chinese harbors. But it was not delivered to Doctor Huntingdon. It was piled on top of all the other mail which lay there, awaiting his return. Under it was Georgina's first letter to him and the one she had written to her mother about Dan Darcy and the rifle. And under that was the one which Barbara called the "rainbow letter," and then at least half a dozen from Barbara herself, with the beautiful colored photograph of the Towncrier and his lass. Also there were several bundles of official-looking documents and many American newspapers.

Nothing had been forwarded to him for two months, because he had left instructions to hold his mail until further notice. The first part of that time he was moving constantly from one out-of-the-way place to another where postal delivery was slow and uncertain. The last part of that time he was lying ill in the grip of the very disease which he had gone out to study and to conquer.

He was glad then to be traveling in the wake of the friendly old Englishman and his party. Through their interpreter, arrangements were made to have him carried to one of the tents of a primitive sort of a hospital, kept by some native missionaries. The Englishman's young assistant went with him. He was a quiet fellow whom Mr. Bowles had jokingly dubbed David the silent, because it was so hard to make him talk. But Doctor Huntingdon, a reserved, silent man himself, had been attracted to him by that very trait.

During the months they had been thrown together so much, Dave had taken great interest in the Doctor's reports of the experiments he was making in treating the disease. When the Doctor was told that Mr. Bowles had gone back to the coast, having found what he wanted and made his notes for his next book, and consequently Dave was free to stay and nurse him, he gave a sigh of relief.

Dave stopped his thanks almost gruffly.

"There's more than one reason for my staying," he said. "I've been sick among strangers in a strange country, myself, and I know how it feels. Besides, I'm interested in seeing if this new treatment of yours works out on a white man as well as it did on these natives. I'll be doing as much in the way of scientific research, keeping a chart on you, as if I were taking notes for Mr. Bowles."

That was a long speech for Dave, the longest that he made during the Doctor's illness. But in the days which followed, one might well have wondered if there was not a greater reason than those he offered for such devoted attendance. He was always within call, always so quick to notice a want that usually a wish was gratified before it could be expressed. His was a devotion too constant to be prompted merely by sympathy for a fellow-country-man or interest in medical experiments.

Once, when the Doctor was convalescing, he opened his eyes to find his silent attendant sitting beside him reading, and studied him for some time, unobserved.

"Dave," he said, after watching him a while – "it's the queerest thing – lately every time I look at you I'm reminded of home. You must resemble someone I used to know back there, but for the life of me I can't recall who."

Dave answered indifferently, without glancing up from the page.

"There's probably a thousand fellows that look like me. I'm medium height and about every third person you see back in the States has gray eyes like mine, and just the ordinary every-day sort of features that I have."

The Doctor made no answer. It never would have occurred to him to tell Dave in what way his face differed from the many others of his type. There was a certain kindliness of twinkle in the gray eyes at times, and always a straightforward honesty of gaze that made one instinctively trust him. There was strength of purpose in the resolute set of his mouth, and one could not imagine him being turned back on any road which he had made up his mind to travel to the end.

Several days after that when the Doctor was sitting up outside the tent, the resemblance to someone whom he could not recall, puzzled him again. Dave was whittling, his lips pursed up as he whistled softly in an absent-minded sort of way.

"Dave," exclaimed the Doctor, "there's something in the way you sit there, whittling and whistling that brings little old Provincetown right up before my eyes. I can see old Captain Ames sitting there on the wharf on a coil of rope, whittling just as you are doing, and joking with Sam and the crew as they pile into the boat to go out to the weirs. I can see the nets spread out to dry alongshore, and smell tar and codfish as plain as if it were here right under my nose. And down in Fishburn Court there's the little house that was always a second home to me, with Uncle Darcy pottering around in the yard, singing his old sailors' songs."

The Doctor closed his eyes and drew in a long, slow breath.

"Um! There's the most delicious smell coming out of that kitchen – blueberry pies that Aunt Elspeth's baking. What wouldn't I give this minute for one of those good, juicy blueberry pies of hers, smoking hot. I can smell it clear over here in China. There never was anything in the world that tasted half so good. I was always tagging around after Uncle Darcy, as I called him. He was the Towncrier, and one of those staunch, honest souls who make you believe in the goodness of God and man no matter what happens to shake the foundations of your faith."

The Doctor opened his eyes and looked up inquiringly, startled by the knocking over of the stool on which Dave had been sitting. He had risen abruptly and gone inside the tent.

"Go on," he called back. "I can hear you."

He seemed to be looking for something, for he was striding up and down in its narrow space. The Doctor raised his voice a trifle.

"That's all I had to say. I didn't intend to bore you talking about people and places you never heard of. But it just came over me in a big wave – that feeling of homesickness that makes you feel you've got to get back or die. Did you ever have it?"

"Yes," came the answer in an indifferent tone. "Several times."

"Well, it's got me now, right by the throat."

Presently he called, "Dave, while you're in there I wish you'd look in my luggage and see what newspapers are folded up with it. I have a dim recollection that a Provincetown Advocate came about the time I was taken sick and I never opened it.

"Ah, that's it!" he exclaimed when Dave emerged presently, holding out the newspaper. "Look at the cut across the top of the first page. Old Provincetown itself. It's more for the name of the town printed across that picture of the harbor than for the news that I keep on taking the paper. Ordinarily, I never do more than glance at the news items, but there's time to-day to read even the advertisements. You've no idea how good those familiar old names look to me."

He read some of them aloud, smiling over the memories they awakened. But he read without an auditor, for Dave found he had business with one of the missionaries, and put off to attend to it. On his return he was greeted with the announcement:

"Dave, I want to get out of here. I'm sure there must be a big pile of mail waiting for me right now in Hong-Kong, and I'm willing to risk the trip. Let's start back to-morrow."

Several days later they were in Hong-Kong, enjoying the luxuries of civilization in the big hotel. Still weak from his recent illness and fatigued by the hardships of his journey, Doctor Huntingdon did not go down to lunch the day of their arrival. It was served in his room, and as he ate he stopped at intervals to take another dip into the pile of mail which had been brought up to him.

In his methodical way he opened the letters in the order of their arrival, beginning with the one whose postmark showed the earliest date. It took a long time to finish eating on account of these pauses. Hop Ching was bringing in his coffee when Dave came back, having had not only his lunch in the dining-room, but a stroll through the streets afterward. He found Doctor Huntingdon with a photograph propped up in front of him, studying it intently while Hop Ching served the coffee. The Doctor passed the photograph to Dave.

"Take it over to the window where you can get a good light on it," he commanded. "Isn't that a peach of a picture? That's my little daughter and the old friend I'm always quoting. The two seem to be as great chums as he and I used to be. I don't want to bore you, Dave, but I would like to read you this letter that she wrote to her mother, and her mother sent on to me. In the first place I'm proud of her writing such a letter. I had no idea she could express herself so well, and secondly the subject matter makes it an interesting document.

"On my little girl's birthday Uncle Darcy took her out in his boat, The Betsey. The name of that old boat certainly does sound good to me! He told her – but wait! I'd rather read it to you in her own words. It'll give you such a good idea of the old man. Perhaps I ought to explain that he had a son who got into trouble some ten years ago, and left home. He was just a little chap when I saw him last, hardly out of dresses, the fall I left home for college.

"Uncle Darcy and Aunt Elspeth were fairly foolish about him. He had come into their lives late, you see, after their older children died. I don't believe it would make any difference to them what he'd do. They would welcome him back from the very gallows if he'd only come. His mother never has believed he did anything wrong, and the hope of the old man's life is that his 'Danny,' as he calls him, will make good in some way – do something to wipe out the stain on his name and come back to him."

The Doctor paused as if waiting for some encouragement to read.

"Go on," said Dave. "I'd like to hear it, best in the world."

He turned his chair so that he could look out of the window at the harbor. The Chinese sampans of every color were gliding across the water like a flock of gaily-hued swans. He seemed to be dividing his attention between those native boats and the letter when the Doctor first began to read. It was Georgina's rainbow letter, and the colors of the rainbow were repeated again and again by the reds and yellows and blues of that fleet of sampans.

But as the Doctor read on Dave listened more intently, so intently, in fact, that he withdrew his attention entirely from the window, and leaning forward, buried his face in his hands, his elbows resting on his knees. The Doctor found him in this attitude when he looked up at the end, expecting some sort of comment. He was used to Dave's silences, but he had thought this surely would call forth some remark. Then as he studied the bowed figure, it flashed into his mind that the letter must have touched some chord in the boy's own past. Maybe Dave had an old father somewhere, longing for his return, and the memory was breaking him all up.

Silently, the Doctor turned aside to the pile of letters still unread. Georgina's stern little note beginning "Dear Sir" was the next in order and was in such sharp contrast to the loving, intimate way she addressed her mother, that he felt the intended reproach of it, even while it amused and surprised him. But it hurt a little. It wasn't pleasant to have his only child regard him as a stranger. It was fortunate that the next letter was the one in which she hastened to call him "a Saint-George-and-the-dragon sort of father."

When he read Barbara's explanation of his long silence and Georgina's quick acceptance of it, he wanted to take them both in his arms and tell them how deeply he was touched by their love and loyalty; that he hadn't intended to be neglectful of them or so absorbed in his work that he put it first in his life. But it was hard for him to put such things into words, either written or spoken. He had left too much to be taken for granted he admitted remorsefully to himself.

For a long time he sat staring sternly into space. So people had been gossiping about him, had they? And Barbara and the baby had heard the whispers and been hurt by them – He'd go home and put a stop to it. He straightened himself up and turned to report his sudden decision to Dave. But the chair by the window was empty. The Doctor glanced over his shoulder. Dave had changed his seat and was sitting behind him. They were back to back, but a mirror hung in such a way the Doctor could see Dave's face.

With arms crossed on a little table in front of him, he was leaning forward for another look at the photograph which he had propped up against a vase. A hungry yearning was in his face as he bent towards it, gazing into it as if he could not look his fill. Suddenly his head went down on his crossed arms in such a hopeless fashion that in a flash Doctor Huntingdon divined the reason, and recognized the resemblance that had haunted him. Now he understood why the boy had stayed behind to nurse him. Now a dozen trifling incidents that had seemed of no importance to him at the time, confirmed his suspicion.

His first impulse was to cry out "Dan!" but his life-long habit of repression checked him. He felt he had no right to intrude on the privacy which the boy guarded so jealously. But Uncle Darcy's son! Off here in a foreign land, bowed down with remorse and homesickness! How he must have been tortured with all that talk of the old town and its people!

A great wave of pity and yearning tenderness swept through the Doctor's heart as he sat twisted around in his chair, staring at that reflection in the mirror. He was uncertain what he ought to do. He longed to go to him with some word of comfort, but he shrank from the thought of saying anything which would seem an intrusion.

Finally he rose, and walking across the room, laid his hand on the bowed shoulder with a sympathetic pressure.

"Look here, my boy," he said, in his deep, quiet voice. "I'm not asking you what the trouble is, but whatever it is you'll let me help you, won't you? You've given me the right to ask that by all you've done for me. Anything I could do would be only too little for one who has stood by me the way you have. I want you to feel that I'm your friend in the deepest meaning of that word. You can count on me for anything." Then in a lighter tone as he gave the shoulder a half-playful slap he added, "I'm for you, son."

The younger man raised his head and straightened himself up in his chair.

"You wouldn't be!" he exclaimed, "if you knew who I am." Then he blurted out the confession: "I'm Dan Darcy. I can't let you go on believing in me when you talk like that."

"But I knew it when I said what I did," interrupted Doctor Huntingdon. "It flashed over me first when I saw you looking at your father's picture. No man could look at a stranger's face that way. Then I knew what the resemblance was that has puzzled me ever since I met you. The only wonder to me is that I did not see it long ago."

"You knew it," repeated Dan slowly, "and yet you told me to count you as a friend in the deepest meaning of that word. How could you mean it?"

The Doctor's answer came with deep impressiveness.

"Because, despite whatever slip you may have made as a boy of eighteen, you have grown into a man worthy of such a friendship. A surgeon in my position learns to read character, learns to know an honest man when he sees one. No matter what lies behind you that you regret, I have every confidence in you now, Dan. I am convinced you are worthy to be the son of even such a man as Daniel Darcy."

He held out his hand to have it taken in a long, silent grip that made it ache.

"Come on and go back home with me," urged the Doctor. "You've made good out here. Do the brave thing now and go back and live down the past. It'll make the old folks so happy it'll wipe out the heart-break of all those years that you've been away."

Dan's only response was another grasp of the Doctor's hand as strong and as painful as the first. Pulling himself up by it he stood an instant trying to say something, then, too overcome to utter a word, made a dash for the door.

Doctor Huntingdon was so stirred by the scene that he found it difficult to go back to his letters, but the very next one in order happened to be the one Georgina wrote to her mother just after Belle had given her consent to Barby's being told of Emmett's confession. He read the latter part of it, standing, for he had sprung to his feet with the surprise of its opening sentence. He did not even know that Emmett had been dead all these years, and Dan, who had had no word from home during all his absence, could not know it either. He was in a tremor of eagerness to hurry to him with the news, but he waited to scan the rest of the letter.

Then with it fluttering open in his hand he strode across the hall and burst into Dan's room without knocking.

"Pack up your junk, this minute, boy," he shouted. "We take the first boat out of here for home. Look at this!"

He thrust Georgina's letter before Dan's bewildered eyes.

CHAPTER XXIX
WHILE THEY WAITED

"THERE comes the boy from the telegraph office." Mrs. Triplett spoke with such a raven-like note of foreboding in her voice that Georgina, practising her daily scales, let her hands fall limply from the keys.

"The Tishbite!" she thought uneasily. What evil was it about to send into the house now, under cover of that yellow envelope? Would it take Barby away from her as it had done before?

Sitting motionless on the piano stool, she waited in dread while Mrs. Triplett hurried to the door before the boy could ring, signed for the message and silently bore it upstairs. The very fact that she went up with it herself, instead of calling to Barby that a message had come, gave Georgina the impression that it contained bad news.

"A cablegram for me?" she heard Barby ask. Then there was a moment's silence in which she knew the message was being opened and read. Then there was a murmur as if she were reading it aloud to Tippy and then – an excited whirlwind of a Barby flying down the stairs, her eyes like happy stars, her arms outstretched to gather Georgina into them, and her voice half laugh, half sob, singing:

 
"Oh, he's coming home to me
Baby mine!"
 

Never before had Georgina seen her so radiant, so excited, so overflowingly happy that she gave vent to her feelings as a little schoolgirl might have done. Seizing Georgina in her arms she waltzed her around the room until she was dizzy. Coming to a pause at the piano stool she seated herself and played, "The Year of Jubilee Has Come," in deep, crashing chords and trickly little runs and trills, till the old tune was transformed into a paen of jubilation.

Then she took the message from her belt, where she had tucked it and re-read it to assure herself of its reality.

"Starting home immediately. Stay three months, dragon captured."

"That must mean that his quest has been fairly successful," she said. "If he's found the cause of the disease it'll be only a matter of time till he finds how to kill it."

Then she looked up, puzzled.

"How strange for him to call it the dragon. How could he know we'd understand, and that we've been calling it that?"

Georgina's time had come for confession.

"Oh, I wrote him a little note after you told me the story and told him I was proud of having a Saint-George-kind of a father, and that we hoped every day he'd get the microbe."

"You darling!" exclaimed Barbara, drawing her to her for another impulsive hug. She did not ask as Georgina was afraid she would:

"Why didn't you tell me you were writing to your father?" Barbara understood, without asking, remembering the head bowed in her lap after that confession of her encounter with the prying stranger in the bakery.

Suddenly Georgina asked:

"Barby, what is the 'Tishbite?'"

"The what?" echoed Barby, wrinkling her forehead in perplexity.

"The Tishbite. Don't you know it says in the Bible, Elijah and the Tishbite – "

"Oh, no, dear, you've turned it around, and put the and in the wrong place. It is 'And Elijah the Tishbite,' just as we'd say William the Norman or Manuel the Portuguese."

"Well, for pity sakes!" drawled Georgina in a long, slow breath of relief. "Is that all? I wish I'd known it long ago. It would have saved me a lot of scary feelings."

Then she told how she had made the wish on the star and tried to prove it as Belle had taught her, by opening the Bible at random.

"If you had read on," said Barby, "you'd have found what it meant your own self."

"But the book shut up before I had a chance," explained Georgina. "And I never could find the place again, although I've hunted and hunted. And I was sure it meant some sort of devil, and that it would come and punish me for using the Bible that way as if it were a hoodoo."

"Then why didn't you ask me?" insisted Barby. "There's another time you see, when a big worry and misunderstanding could have been cleared away with a word. To think of your living in dread all that time, when the Tishbite was only a good old prophet whose presence brought a blessing to the house which sheltered him."

That night when Georgina's curls were being brushed she said, "Barby, I know now who my Tishbite is; it's Captain Kidd. He's brought a blessing ever since he came to this town. If it hadn't been for his barking that day we were playing in the garage I wouldn't be here now to tell the tale. If it hadn't been for him I wouldn't have known Richard, and we'd never have started to playing pirate. And if we hadn't played pirate Richard wouldn't have asked to borrow the rifle, and if he hadn't asked we never would have found the note hidden in the stock, and if we hadn't found the note nobody would have known that Danny was innocent. Then if Captain Kidd hadn't found the pouch we wouldn't have seen the compass that led to finding the wild-cat woman who told us that Danny was alive and well."

"What a House-That-Jack-Built sort of tale that was!" exclaimed Barby, much amused. "We'll have to do something in Captain Kidd's honor. Give him a party perhaps, and light up the holiday tree."

The usual bedtime ceremonies were over, and Barby had turned out the light and reached the door when Georgina raised herself on her elbow to call:

"Barby, I've just thought of it. The wish I made on that star that night is beginning to come true. Nearly everybody I know is happy about something." Then she snuggled her head down on the pillow with a little wriggle of satisfaction. "Ugh! this is such a good world. I'm so glad I'm living in it. Aren't you?"

And Barby had to come all the way back in the dark to emphasize her heartfelt "yes, indeed," with a hug, and to seal the restless eyelids down with a kiss – the only way to make them stay shut.

Richard came back the next day. He brought a picture to Georgina from Mr. Locke. It was the copy of the illustration he had promised her, the fairy shallop with its sails set wide, coming across a sea of Dreams, and at the prow, white-handed Hope, the angel girt with golden wings, which swept back over the sides of the vessel.

"Think of having a painting by the famous Milford Norris Locke!" exclaimed Barby. She hung over it admiringly. "Most people would be happy to have just his autograph." She bent nearer to examine the name in the corner of the picture. "What's this underneath? Looks like number IV."

"Oh, that means he's number four in our Rainbow Club. Peggy Burrell is number five and the Captain is number six. That's all the members we have so far."

"Aren't you going to count me in?" asked Barby.

"Oh, you are counted in. You've belonged from the beginning. We made you an honary member or whatever it is they call it, people who deserve to belong because they're always doing nice things, but don't know it. There's you and Uncle Darcy and Captain Kidd, because he saved our lives and saved our families from having to have a double funeral."

Barby stooped to take the little terrier's head between her hands and pat-a-cake it back and forth with an affectionate caress.

"Captain Kidd," she said gaily, "you shall have a party this very night, and there shall be bones and cakes on the holiday tree, and you shall be the best man with a 'normous blue bow on your collar, and we'll all dance around in your honor this way."

Springing to her feet and holding the terrier's front paws, she waltzed him around and around on his hind legs, singing:

 
"All around the barberry bush,
Barberry bush, barberry bush.
All around the barberry bush
So early in the morning."
 

Georgina, accustomed all her life to such frisky performances, took it as a matter of course that Barby should give vent to her feelings in the same way that she herself would have done, but Richard stood by, bewildered. It was a revelation to him that anybody's mother could be so charmingly and unreservedly gay. She seemed more like a big sister than any of the mothers of his acquaintance. He couldn't remember his own, and while Aunt Letty was always sweet and good to him he couldn't imagine her waltzing a dog around on its hind legs any more than he could imagine Mrs. Martha Washington doing it.

The holiday tree was another revelation to him, when he came back at dusk to find it lighted with the colored lanterns and blooming with flags and hung with surprises for Georgina and himself.

"You've never seen it lighted," Barby explained, "and Georgina's birthday had to be skipped because I wasn't here to celebrate, so we've rolled all the holidays into one, for a grand celebration in Captain Kidd's honor."

It was to shorten the time of waiting that Barbara threw herself into the children's games and pleasures so heartily. Every night she tore a leaf off the calendar and planned something to fill up the next day to the brim with work or play. They climbed to the top of the monument when she found that Richard had never made the ascent, and stood long, looking off to Plymouth, twenty miles away, and at the town spread out below them, seeming from their great height, a tiny toy village. They went to Truro to see the bayberry candle-dipping. They played Maud Muller, raking the yard, because the boy whom old Jeremy had installed in his place had hurt his foot. Old Jeremy, being well on toward ninety now, no longer attempted any work, though still hale and hearty. But the garden had been his especial domain too long for him to give it up entirely, and he spent hours in it daily, to the disgust of his easy-going successor.

There were picnics at Highland Light and the Race Point life-saving station. There were long walks out the state road, through the dunes and by the cranberry bogs. But everything which speeded Barbara's weeks of feverish waiting, hurrying her on nearer her heart's desire, brought Richard nearer to the time of parting from the old seaport town and the best times he had ever known. He had kodak pictures of all their outings. Most of them were light-struck or out of focus or over-exposed, but he treasured them because he had taken them himself with his first little Brownie camera. There was nothing wrong or queer with the recollection of the scenes they brought to him. His memory photographed only perfect days, and he dreaded to have them end.

Before those weeks were over Richard began to feel that he belonged to Barby in a way, and she to him. There were many little scenes of which no snapshot could be taken, which left indelible impressions.

For instance, those evenings in the dim room lighted only by the moonlight streaming in through the open windows, when Barby sat at the piano with Georgina beside her, singing, while he looked out over the sea and felt the soul of him stir vaguely, as if he had wings somewhere, waiting to be unfurled.

The last Sunday of his vacation he went to church with Barbara and Georgina. It wasn't the Church of the Pilgrims, but another white-towered one near by. The president of the bank was one of the ushers. He called Richard by name when he shook hands with the three of them at the door. That in itself gave Richard a sense of importance and of being welcome. It was a plain old-fashioned church, its only decoration a big bowl of tiger-lilies on a table down in front of the pulpit. When he took his seat in one of the high front pews he felt that he had never been in such a quiet, peaceful place before.

They were very early. The windows were open, and now and then a breeze blowing in from the sea fluttered the leaves of a hymn-book lying open on the front seat. Each time they fluttered he heard another sound also, as faint and sweet as if it were the ringing of little crystal bells. Georgina, on the other side of Barby, heard it too, and they looked at each other questioningly. Then Richard discovered where the tinkle came from, and pointed upward to call her attention to it. There, from the center of the ceiling swung a great, old-fashioned chandelier, hung with a circle of pendant prisms, each one as large and shining as the one Uncle Darcy had given her.

Georgina knew better than to whisper in such a place, but she couldn't help leaning past Barby so that Richard could see her lips silently form the words, "Rainbow Club." She wondered if Mr. Gates had started it. There were enough prisms for nearly every member in the church to claim one.

Barby, reading the silent message of her lips and guessing that Georgina was wondering over the discovery, moved her own lips to form the words, "just honorary members."

Georgina nodded her satisfaction. It was good to know that there were so many of them in the world, all working for the same end, whether they realized it or not.

Just before the service began an old lady in the adjoining pew next to Richard, reached over the partition and offered him several cloves. He was too astonished to refuse them and showed them to Barby, not knowing what to do with them. She leaned down and whispered behind her fan:

"She eats them to keep her awake in church."