Johnston Annie Fellows
Georgina of the Rainbows
Richard had no intention of going to sleep, but he chewed one up, finding it so hot it almost strangled him. Every seat was filled in a short time, and presently a drowsiness crept into the heated air which began to weave some kind of a spell around him. His shoes were new and his collar chafed his neck. His eyelids grew heavier and heavier. He stared at the lilies till the whole front of the church seemed filled with them. He looked up at the chandelier and began to count the prisms, and watch for the times that the breeze swept across them and set them to tinkling.
Then, the next thing that he knew he was waking from a long doze on Barby's shoulder. She was fanning him with slow sweeps of her white-feathered fan which smelled deliciously of some faint perfume, and the man from Boston was singing all alone, something about still waves and being brought into a haven.
A sense of Sabbath peace and stillness enfolded him, with the beauty of the music and the lilies, the tinkling prisms, the faint, warm perfume wafted across his face by Barby's fan. The memory of it all stayed with him as something very sacred and sweet, he could not tell why, unless it was that Barby's shoulder was such a dear place for a little motherless lad's head to lie.
Georgina, leaning against Barby on the other side, half asleep, sat up and straightened her hat when the anthem began. Being a Huntingdon she could not turn as some people did and stare up at the choir loft behind her when that wonderful voice sang alone. She looked up at the prisms instead, and as she looked it seemed to her that the voice was the voice of the white angel Hope, standing at the prow of a boat, its golden wings sweeping back, as storm-tossed but triumphant, it brought the vessel in at last to happy anchorage.
The words which the voice sang were the words on which the rainbow had rested, that day she read them to Aunt Elspeth: "So He bringeth them into their desired haven." They had seemed like music then, but now, rolling upward, as if Hope herself were singing them at the prow of Life's tossing shallop, they were more than music. They voiced the joy of great desire finding great fulfilment.
CHAPTER XXX
NEARING THE END
"OLD Mr. Potter has had a stroke."
Georgina called the news up to Richard as she paused at the foot of the Green Stairs on her way to the net-mender's house.
"Belle sent a note over a little while ago and I'm taking the answer back. Come and go with me."
Richard, who had been trundling Captain Kidd around on his forefeet in the role of wheelbarrow, dropped the dog's hind legs which he had been using as handles and came jumping down the steps, two at a time to do her bidding.
"Belle's gone over to take care of things," Georgina explained, with an important air as they walked along. "There's a man to help nurse him, but she'll stay on to the end." Her tone and words were Tippy's own as she made this announcement.
"End of what?" asked Richard. "And what's a stroke?"
Half an hour earlier Georgina could not have answered his question, but she explained now with the air of one who has had a lifetime of experience. It was Mrs. Triplett's fund she was drawing on, however, and old Jeremy's. Belle's note had started them to comparing reminiscences, and out of their conversation Georgina had gathered many gruesome facts.
"You may be going about as well and hearty as usual, and suddenly it'll strike you to earth like lightning, and it may leave you powerless to move for weeks and sometimes even years. You may know all that's going on around you but not be able to speak or make a sign. Mr. Potter isn't as bad as that, but he's speechless. With him the end may come any time, yet he may linger on for nobody knows how long."
Richard had often passed the net-mender's cottage in the machine, and stared in at the old man plying his twine-shuttle in front of the door. The fact that he was Emmett's father and ignorant of the secret which Richard shared, made an object of intense interest out of an otherwise unattractive and commonplace old man. Now that interest grew vast and overshadowing as the children approached the house.
Belle, stepping to the front door when she heard the gate click, motioned for them to go around to the back. As they passed an open side window, each looked in, involuntarily attracted by the sight of a bed drawn up close to it. Then they glanced at each other, startled and awed by what they saw, and bumped into each other in their haste to get by as quickly as possible.
On the bed lay a rigid form, stretched out under a white counterpane. All that showed of the face above the bushy whiskers was as waxen looking as if death had already touched it, but the sunken eyes half open, showed that they were still in the mysterious hold of what old Jeremy called a "living death." It was a sight which neither of them could put out of their minds for days afterward.
Belle met them at the back door, solemn, unsmiling, her hushed tones adding to the air of mystery which seemed to shroud the house. As she finished reading the note a neighbor came in the back way and Belle asked the children to wait a few minutes. They dropped down on the grass while Belle, leaning against the pump, answered Mrs. Brown's questions in low tones.
She had been up all night, she told Mrs. Brown. Yes, she was going to stay on till the call came, no matter whether it was a week or a year. Mrs. Brown spoke in a hoarse whisper which broke now and then, letting her natural voice through with startling effect.
"It's certainly noble of you," she declared. "There's not many who would put themselves out to do for an old person who hadn't any claim on them the way you are doing for him. There'll surely be stars in your crown."
Later, as the children trudged back home, sobered by all they had seen and heard, Georgina broke the silence.
"Well, I think we ought to put Belle's name on the very top line of our club book. She ought to be an honary member – the very honaryest one of all."
"Why?" asked Richard.
"You heard all Mrs. Brown said. Seems to me what she's doing to give old Mr. Potter a good time is the very noblest – "
There was an amazed look on Richard's face as he interrupted with the exclamation:
"Gee-minee! You don't call what that old man's having a good time, do you?"
"Well, it's good to what it would be if Belle wasn't taking care of him. And if she does as Mrs. Brown says, 'carries some comfort into the valley of the shadow for him, making his last days bright,' isn't that the very biggest rainbow anybody could make?"
"Ye-es," admitted Richard in a doubtful tone. "Maybe it is if you put it that way."
They walked a few blocks more in silence, then he said:
"I think Dan ought to be an honary member."
It was Georgina's turn to ask why.
"Aw, you know why! Taking the blame on himself the way he did and everything."
"But he made just as bad times for Uncle Darcy and Aunt Elspeth as he made good times for Mr. Potter and Emmett. I don't think he has any right to belong at all."
They argued the question hotly for a few minutes, coming nearer to a quarrel than they had ever been before, and only dropping it as they crossed to a side street which led into the dunes.
"Let's turn here and go home this way," suggested Richard. "Let's go look at the place where we buried the pouch and see if the sand has shifted any."
Nothing was changed, however, except that the holes they had dug were filled to the level now, and the sand stretched an unbroken surface as before the day of their digging.
"Cousin James says that if ever the gold comes to the top we can have it, because he paid the woman. But if it ever does I won't be here to see it. I've got to go home in eight more days."
He stood kicking his toes into the sand as he added dolefully, "Here it is the end of the summer and we've only played at being pirates. We've never gone after the real stuff in dead earnest, one single time."
"I know," admitted Georgina. "First we had to wait so long for your portrait to be finished and then you went off on the yacht, and all in between times things have happened so fast there never was any time. But we found something just as good as pirate stuff – that note in the rifle was worth more to Uncle Darcy than a chest of gold."
"And Captain Kidd was as good as a real pirate," said Richard, brightening at the thought, "for he brought home a bag of real gold, and was the one who started us after the wild-cat woman. I guess Uncle Darcy would rather know what she told him than have a chest of ducats and pearls."
"We can go next summer," suggested Georgina.
"Maybe I won't be here next summer. Dad always wants to try new places on his vacation. He and Aunt Letty like to move. But I'd like to stay here always. I hate to go away until I find out the end of things. I wish I could stay until the letter is found and Dan comes home."
"You may be a grown-up man before either of those things happen," remarked Georgina sagely.
"Then I'll know I'll be here to see 'm," was the triumphant answer, "because when I'm a man I'm coming back here to live all the rest of my life. It's the nicest place there is."
"If anything happens sooner I'll write and tell you," promised Georgina.
Something happened the very next morning, however, and Georgina kept part of her promise though not in writing, when she came running up the Green Stairs, excited and eager. Her news was so tremendously important that the words tumbled over each other in her haste to tell it. She could hardly make herself understood. The gist of it was that a long night letter had just arrived from her father, saying that he had landed in San Francisco and was taking the first homeward bound train. He would stop in Washington for a couple of days to attend to some business, and then was coming home for a long visit. And – this was the sentence Georgina saved till last to electrify Richard with:
"Am bringing Dan with me."
"He didn't say where he found him or anything else about it," added Georgina, "only 'prepare his family for the surprise.' So Barby went straight down there to Fishburn Court and she's telling Aunt Elspeth and Uncle Darcy now, so they'll have time to get used to the news before he walks in on them."
They sat down on the top step with the dog between them.
"They must know it by this time," remarked Georgina. "Oh, don't you wish you could see what's happening, and how glad everybody is? Uncle Darcy will want to start right out with his bell and ring it till it cracks, telling the whole town."
"But he won't do it," said Richard. "He promised he wouldn't."
"Anyhow till Belle says he can," amended Georgina. "I'm sure she'll say so when 'the call' comes, but nobody knows when that will be. It may be soon and it may not be for years."
They sat there on the steps a long time, talking quietly, but with the holiday feeling that one has when waiting for a procession to pass by. The very air seemed full of that sense of expectancy, of waiting for something to happen.
CHAPTER XXXI
COMINGS AND GOINGS
OUT towards the cranberry bogs went the Towncrier. No halting step this time, no weary droop of shoulders. It would have taken a swift-footed boy to keep pace with him on this errand. He was carrying the news to Belle. What he expected her to say he did not stop to ask himself, nor did he notice in the tumultuous joy which kept his old heart pounding at unwonted speed, that she turned white with the suddenness of his telling, and then a wave of color surged over her face.
Her only answer was to lead him into the room where the old net-mender lay helpless, turning appealing eyes to her as she entered, with the look in them that one sees in the eyes of a grateful dumb animal. His gaze did not reach as far as the Towncrier, who halted on the threshold until Belle joined him there. She led him outside.
"You see for yourself how it is," was all she said. "Do as you think best about it."
Out on the road again the Towncrier stood hesitating, uncertain which course to take. Twice he started in the direction of home, then retraced his steps again to stand considering. Finally he straightened up with a determined air and started briskly down the road which led to the center of the town. Straight to the bank he went, asking for Mr. Gates, and a moment later was admitted into the president's private office.
"And what can I do for you, Uncle Dan'l?" was the cordial greeting.
The old man dropped heavily into the chair set out for him. He was out of breath from his rapid going.
"You can do me one of the biggest favors I ever asked of anybody if you only will. Do you remember a sealed envelope I brought in here the first of the summer and asked you to keep for me till I called for it?"
"Yes, do you want it now?"
"I'm going to show you what's in it."
He had such an air of suppressed excitement as he said it and his breathing was so labored, that Mr. Gates wondered what could have happened to affect him so. When he came back from the vault he carried the envelope which had been left in his charge earlier in the summer. Uncle Darcy tore it open with fingers that trembled in their eagerness.
"What I'm about to show you is for your eyes alone," he said. He took out a crumpled sheet of paper which had once been torn in two and pasted together again in clumsy fashion. It was the paper which had been wadded up in the rifle, which Belle had seized with hysterical fury, torn in two and flung from her.
"There! Read that!" he commanded.
Mr. Gates knew everybody in town. He had been one of the leading citizens who had subscribed to the monument in Emmett Potter's honor. He could scarcely believe the evidence of his own eyes as he read the confession thrust into his hands, and he had never been more surprised at any tale ever told him than the one Uncle Darcy related now of the way it had been found, and his promise to Belle Triplett.
"I'm not going to make it public while old Potter hangs on," he said in conclusion. "I'll wait till he's past feeling the hurts of earth. But Mr. Gates, I've had word that my Danny's coming home. I can't let the boy come back to dark looks and cold shoulders turned on him everywhere. I thought if you'd just start the word around that he's all right – that somebody else confessed to what he's accused of – that you'd seen the proof with your own eyes and could vouch for his being all right – if you'd just give him a welcoming hand and show you believed in him it would make all the difference in the world in Danny's home-coming. You needn't mention any names," he pleaded. "I know it'll make a lot of talk and surmising, but that won't hurt anybody. If you could just do that – "
When the old man walked out of the president's office he carried his head as high as if he had been given a kingdom. He had been given what was worth more to him, the hearty handclasp of a man whose "word was as good as a bond," and the promise that Dan should be welcomed back to the town by great and small, as far as was in his power to make that welcome cordial and widespread.
* * * * * * *
Dan did not wait in Washington while Doctor Huntingdon made his report. He came on alone, and having missed the boat, took the railroad journey down the Cape. In the early September twilight he stepped off the car, feeling as if he were in a strange dream. But when he turned into one of the back streets leading to his home, it was all so familiar and unchanged that he had the stranger feeling of never having been away. It was the past ten years that seemed a dream.
He had not realized how he loved the old town or the depth of his longing for it, until he saw it now, restored to him. Even the familiar, savory smells floating out from various supper tables as he passed along, gave him keen enjoyment. Some of them had been unknown all the time of his wanderings in foreign lands. The voices, the type of features, the dress of the people he passed, the veriest trifles which he never noticed when he lived among them, thrilled him now with a sense of having come back to his own.
Half a dozen fishermen passed him, their boots clumping heavily. He recognized two of them if not as individuals, as members of families he had known, from their resemblance to the older ones. Then he turned his head aside as he reached the last man. He was not ready to be recognized himself, yet. He wanted to go home first, and this man at the end was Peter Winn. He had sailed in his boat many a time.
A cold fog was settling over the Court when he turned into it. As silently as the fog itself he stole through the sand and in at the gate. The front door was shut and the yellow blind pulled down over the window, but the lamp behind it sent out a glow, reaching dimly through the fog. He crept up close to it to listen for the sound of voices, and suddenly two blended shadows were thrown on the blind. The old man was helping his wife up from her rocking chair and supporting her with a careful arm as he guided her across to the table. His voice rang out cheerfully to the waiting listener.
"That's it, Mother! That's it! Just one more step now. Why, you're doing fine! I knew the word of Danny's coming home would put you on your feet again. The lad'll be here soon, thank God! Maybe before another nightfall."
A moment later and the lamp-light threw another shadow on the yellow blind, plain as a photograph. It was well that the fog drew a white veil between it and the street, for it was a picture of joy too sacred for curious eyes to see.
Danny had come home!
* * * * * * *
It was the tenth of September. The town looked strangely deserted with nearly all the summer people gone. The railroad wharf was the only place where there was the usual bustle and crowd, and that was because the Dorothy Bradford was gathering up its passengers for the last trip of the season.
Richard was to be one of them, and a most unwilling one. Not that he was sorry to be going back to school. He had missed Binney and the gang, and could hardly wait to begin swapping experiences with them. But he was leaving Captain Kidd behind. Dogs were not allowed in the apartment house to which his father and Aunt Letty intended moving the next week.
There had been a sorry morning in the garage when the news was broken to him. He crept up into the machine and lay down on the back seat, and cried and cried with his arms around Captain Kidd's neck. The faithful little tongue reached out now and then to lap away his master's tears, and once he lifted his paw and clawed at the little striped shirt waist as if trying to convey some mute comfort.
"You're just the same as folks!" sobbed Richard, hugging the shaggy head, laid lovingly on his breast. "And it's cruel of 'em to make me give you away."
Several days had passed since that unhappy morning, however, and Richard did not feel quite so desolate over the separation now. For one thing it had not been necessary to give up all claim on Captain Kidd to insure him a good home. Georgina had gladly accepted the offer of half of him, and had coaxed even Tippy into according him a reluctant welcome.
The passengers already on deck watched with interest the group near the gang-plank. Richard was putting the clever little terrier through his whole list of tricks.
"It's the last time, old fellow," he said imploringly when the dog hesitated over one of them. "Go on and do it for me this once. Maybe I'll never see you again till I'm grown up and you're too old to remember me."
"That's what you said about Dan's coming home," remarked Georgina from under the shade of her pink parasol. That parasol and the pink dress and the rose-like glow on the happy little face was attracting even more admiration from the passengers than Captain Kidd's tricks. Barbara, standing beside her, cool and dainty in a white dress and pale green sweater and green parasol, made almost as much of a picture.
"You talked that way about never expecting to see Danny till you were grown," continued Georgina, "and it turned out that you not only saw him, but were with him long enough to hear some of his adventures. It would be the same way about your coming back here if you'd just keep hoping hard enough."
"Come Dicky," called Mr. Moreland from the upper deck. "They're about to take in the gang-plank. Don't get left."
Maybe it was just as well that there was no time for good-byes. Maybe it was more than the little fellow could have managed manfully. As it was his voice sounded suspiciously near breaking as he called back over his shoulder, almost gruffly:
"Well you – you be as good to my half of him as you are to yours."
A moment or two later, leaning over the railing of the upper deck he could see Captain Kidd struggling and whining to follow him. But Barby held tightly to the chain fastened to his collar, and Georgina, her precious pink parasol cast aside, knelt on the wharf beside the quivering, eager little body to clasp her arms about it and pour out a flood of comforting endearments.
Wider and wider grew the stretch of water between the boat and the wharf. Richard kept on waving until he could no longer distinguish the little group on the end of the pier. But he knew they would be there until the last curl of smoke from the steamer disappeared around Long Point.
"Here," said the friendly voice of a woman standing next to him. She had been one of the interested witnesses of the parting. She thrust an opera-glass into his hands. For one more long satisfying moment he had another glimpse of the little group, still faithfully waving, still watching. How very, very far away they were!
Suddenly the glass grew so blurry and queer it was no more good, and he handed it back to the woman. At that moment he would have given all the pirate gold that was ever on land or sea, were it his to give, to be back on that pier with the three of them, able to claim that old seaport town as his home for ever and always. And then the one thing that it had taught him came to his help. With his head up, he looked back to the distant shore where the Pilgrim monument reared itself like a watchful giant, and said hopefully, under his breath:
"Well, some day!"
* * * * * * *
Georgina, waking earlier than usual that September morning, looked up and read the verse on the calendar opposite her bed, which she had read every morning since the month came in.
"Like ships my days sail swift to port,
I know not if this be
The one to bear a cargo rare
Of happiness to me."
"But I do know this time," she thought exultingly, sitting up in bed to look out the window and see what kind of weather the dawn had brought. This was the day her father was coming home. He was coming from Boston on a battleship, and she and Barby were going out to meet him as soon as it was sighted in the harbor.
She had that quivery, excited feeling which sometimes seizes travelers as they near the journey's end, as if she herself were a little ship, putting into a long-wished-for port. Well, it would be like that in a way, she thought, to have her father's arms folded around her, to come at last into the strange, sweet intimacy she had longed for ever since she first saw Peggy Burrell and the Captain.
And it was reaching another long-desired port to have Barby's happiness so complete. As for Uncle Darcy he said himself that he couldn't be gladder walking the shining streets of heaven, than he was going along that old board-walk with Danny beside him, and everybody so friendly and so pleased to see him.
Georgina still called him Danny in her thoughts, but it had been somewhat a shock the first time she saw him, to find that he was a grown man with a grave, mature face, instead of the boy which Uncle Darcy's way of speaking of him had led her to expect. He had already been up to the house to tell them the many things they were eager to know about the months he had spent with Doctor Huntingdon and their long trip home together. And listening, Georgina realized how very deep was the respect and admiration of this younger man for her father and his work, and everything he said made her more eager to see and know him.
Uncle Darcy and Dan were with them when they put out in the motor boat to meet the battleship. It was almost sunset when they started, and the man at the wheel drove so fast they felt the keen whip of the wind as they cut through the waves. They were glad to button their coats, even up to their chins. Uncle Darcy and Dan talked all the way over, but Georgina sat with her hand tightly locked in her mother's, sharing her tense expectancy, never saying a word.
Then at last the little boat stopped alongside the big one. There were a few moments of delay before Georgina looked up and saw her father coming down to them. He was just as his photograph had pictured him, tall, erect, commanding, and strangely enough her first view of him was with his face turned to one side. Then it was hidden from her as he gathered Barby into his arms and held her close.
Georgina, watching that meeting with wistful, anxious eyes, felt her last little doubt of him vanish, and when he turned to her with his stern lips curved into the smile she had hoped for, and with outstretched arms, she sprang into them and threw her arms around his neck with such a welcoming clasp that his eyes filled with tears.
Then, remembering certain little letters which he had re-read many times on his homeward voyage, he held her off to look into her eyes and whisper with a tender smile which made the teasing question a joy to her:
"Which is it now? 'Dear Sir' or 'Dad-o'-my-heart?'"
The impetuous pressure of her soft little cheek against his face was answer eloquent enough.
As they neared the shore a bell tolled out over the water. It was the bell of Saint Peter, patron saint of the fisher-folk and all those who dwell by the sea. Then Long Point lighthouse flashed a welcome, and the red lamp of Wood End blinked in answer. On the other side Highland Light sent its great, unfailing glare out over the Atlantic, and the old Towncrier, looking up, saw the first stars shining overhead.
Alongshore the home lights began to burn. One shone out in Fishburn Court where Aunt Elspeth sat waiting. One threw its gleam over the edge of the cranberry bog from the window where Belle kept faithful vigil – where she would continue to keep it until "the call" came to release the watcher as well as the stricken old soul whose peace she guarded. And up in the big gray house by the break-water, where Tippy was keeping supper hot, a supper fit to set before a king, lights blazed from every window.
Pondering on what all these lights stood for, the old man moved away from the others, and took his place near the prow. His heart was too full just now to talk as they were doing. Presently he felt a touch on his arm. Georgina had laid her hand on it with the understanding touch of perfect comradeship. They were his own words she was repeating to him, but they bore the added weight of her own experience now.
"It pays to keep Hope at the prow, Uncle Darcy."
"Aye, lass," he answered tremulously, "it does."
"And we're coming into port with all flags flying!"
"That we are!"
She stood in silent gladness after that, the rest of the way, her curls flying back in the wind made by the swift motion of the boat, the white spray dashing up till she could taste the salt of it on her lips; a little figure of Hope herself, but of Hope riding triumphantly into the port of its fulfillment. It was for them all – those words of the old psalm on which the rainbow had rested, and which the angel voice had sung – "Into their desired haven."
