Georgina of the Rainbows

But Barbara knew how real they were, from the spotted handkerchief tied around the "bunged eye" of Dare-devil Dick, under his evil-looking slouch hat, to the old horse pistol buckled to his belt. Gory George wore the same. And Barbara knew what serious business it was to them, even more serious than the affairs of eating and drinking.

Tippy scolded when she found that her half-pint bottles which she kept especially for cream had been smuggled away in the hold of the brigantine. But without bottles how could one give a realistic touch to the singing of "Yo ho, and the rum below"?

And Tippy thought it was heathenish for Barbara to let Georgina dress up in some little knickerbockers and a roundabout which had been stored away with other clothes worn by Justin as a small boy. But her disapproval was beyond words when Barbara herself appeared at the back door one morning, so cleverly disguised as a gypsy, that Mrs. Triplett grudgingly handed out some cold biscuits before she discovered the imposition. The poor she was glad to feed, but she had no use for an impudent, strolling gypsy.

"Don't be cross, Tippy," pleaded Barbara, laughing till the tears came. "I had to do it. I can't bear to feel that Georgina is growing away from me – that she is satisfied to leave me out of her games. Since she's so taken up with that little Richard Moreland I don't seem as necessary to her as I used to be. And I can't bear that, Tippy, when I've always been first in everything with her. She's so necessary to me."

Mrs. Triplett made no answer. She felt that she couldn't do justice to the occasion. She doubted if the Pilgrim monument itself could, even if it were to stretch itself up to its full height and deliver a lecture on the dignity of motherhood. She wondered what the Mayflower mothers would have thought if they could have met this modern one on the beach, with face stained brown, playacting that she was a beggar of a gypsy. How could she hope to be one of those written of in Proverbs – "Her children rise up and call her blessed. Her own works praise her in the gates."

Tippy ate her dinner alone that day, glancing grimly through the open window from time to time to the sand dunes back of the house, where an old hag of a gypsy in a short red dress with a gay bandanna knotted over her head, broiled bacon and boiled corn over a smoky campfire; and two swaggering villains who smelled of tar and codfish (because of the old net which half-way filled the brigantine), sucked the very cobs when the corn was eaten from them, forever registering that feast high above all other feasts in the tablet of blessed memories.

The interruption to all this came as unexpectedly as a clap of thunder from a clear sky. A messenger boy on a wheel whirled up to the front gate with a telegram. Tippy signed for it, not wanting the boy to see Barbara in such outlandish dress, then carried it out to the picnickers. She held it under her apron until she reached them. Telegrams always spelled trouble to Mrs. Triplett, but Barbara took this one from her with a smiling thank you, without rising from her seat on the sand. Her father often telegraphed instead of writing when away on his vacations, and she knew he was up at a lake resort in Michigan, at an Editors' Convention. Telegrams had always been pleasant things in her experience. But as she tore this open and read she turned pale even under her brown stain.

"It's papa," she gasped. "Hurt in an automobile accident. They don't say how bad – just hurt. And he wants me. I must take the first train."

She looked up at Mrs. Triplett helplessly, not even making an effort to rise from the sand, she was so dazed and distressed by the sudden summons. It was the first time she had ever had the shock of bad news. It was the first time she had ever been called upon to act for herself in such an emergency, and she felt perfectly numb, mind and body. Tippy's voice sounded a mile away when she said:

"You can catch the boat. It's an hour till the Dorothy Bradford starts back to Boston."

Still Barbara sat limp and powerless, as one sits in a nightmare.

Georgina gave a choking gasp as two awful words rose up in her throat and stuck there. "The Tishbite." Whatever that mysterious horror might be, plainly its evil workings had begun.

"Tut!" exclaimed Tippy, pulling Barbara to her feet. "Keep your head. You'll have to begin scrubbing that brown paint off your face if you expect to reach the boat on time."

Automatically Georgina responded to that "tut" as if it were the old challenge of the powder horn. No matter how she shivered she must show what brave stuff she was made of. Even with that awful foreboding clutching at her heart like an iron hand and Barby about to leave her, she mustn't show one sign of her distress.

It was well that Georgina had learned to move briskly in her long following after Tippy, else she could not have been of such service in this emergency. Her eyes were blurred with tears as she hurried up to the garret for suitcase and satchel, and down the hall to look up numbers in the telephone directory. But it was a comfort even in the midst of her distress to feel that she could take such an important part in the preparations, that Tippy trusted her to do the necessary telephoning, and to put up a lunch for Barby without dictating either the messages or the contents of the lunch-box.

When Mr. James Milford called up, immediately after Richard had raced home with the news, and offered to take Mrs. Huntingdon to the boat in his machine, he thought it was Mrs. Huntingdon herself who answered him. The trembling voice seemed only natural under the circumstances. He would have smiled could he have seen the pathetic little face uplifted towards the receiver, the quivering lip still adorned with the fierce mustachios of Gory George, in strange contrast to the soft curls hanging over her shoulders now that they were no longer hidden by a piratical hat. She had forgotten that she was in knickerbockers instead of skirts, and that the old horse-pistol was still at her belt, until Barbara caught her to her at parting with a laugh that turned into a sob, looking for a spot on her face clean enough to kiss.

It was all over so soon – the machine whirling up to the door and away again to stop at the bank an instant for the money which Georgina had telephoned to have waiting, and then on to the railroad wharf where the Dorothy Bradford had already sounded her first warning whistle. Georgina had no time to realize what was actually happening until it was over. She climbed up into the mammoth willow tree in the corner of the yard to watch for the steamboat. It would come into view in a few minutes as it ploughed majestically through the water towards the lighthouse.

Then desolation fell upon her. She had never realized until that moment how dear her mother was to her. Then the thought came to her, suppose it was Barby who had been hurt in an accident, and she Georgina, was hurrying to her as Barby was hurrying to grandfather Shirley, unknowing what awaited her at the journey's end. For a moment she forgot her own unhappiness at being left behind, in sympathetic understanding of her mother's distress. She wasn't going to think about her part of it she told herself, she was going to be so brave —

Then her glance fell on the "holiday tree."

The holiday tree was a little evergreen of Barby's christening if not of her planting. For every gala day in the year it bore strange fruit, no matter what the season. At Hallowe'en it was as gay with jack-o-lanterns and witches' caps as if the pixies themselves had decorated it. On Washington's birthday each branch was tipped with a flag and a cherry tart. On the fourteenth of February it was hung with valentines, and at Easter she was always sure of finding a candy rabbit or two perched among its branches and nests of colored eggs. It seemed to be at its best at Christmas, but it was when it took its turns at birthday celebrations that it was most wonderful. Then it blossomed with little glass lanterns of every color, glowing like red and green and golden stars. Last year it had borne a great toy ship with all sails set, and nine "surprise" oranges, round, yellow boxes, each containing a gift, because she was nine years old. In just two more days she would be ten, and Barby gone!

At that instant the boat whistle sounded long and deep, sending its melodious boom across the water. It seemed to strike some chord in the very center of her being, and make her feel as if something inside were sinking down and down and down. The sensation was sickening. It grew worse as the boat steamed away. She stood up on a limb to watch it. Smaller and smaller it seemed, leaving only a long plume of smoke in its wake as it disappeared around Long Point. Then even the smoke faded, and a forlorn little figure, strangely at variance with the fierce pirate suit, she crumpled up in the crotch of the willow, her face hidden in her elbow, and began to sob piteously: "Oh, Barby! Barby!"

CHAPTER IX

THE BIRTHDAY PRISM

THE Towncrier, passing along the street on an early morning trip to the bakery, stopped at the door of the antique shop, for a word with Mrs. Yates, the lady who kept it. She wanted him to "cry" an especial bargain sale of old lamps later in the week. That is how he happened to be standing in the front door when the crash came in the rear of the shop, and it was because he was standing there that the crash came.

Because Mrs. Yates was talking to him she couldn't be at the back door when the fish-boy came with the fish, and nobody being there to take it the instant he knocked, the boy looked in and threw it down on the table nearest the door. And because the fish was left to lie there a moment while Mrs. Yates finished her conversation, the cat, stretched out on the high window ledge above the table, decided to have his breakfast without waiting to be called. He was an enormous cat by the name of "Grandpa," and because he was old and ponderous, and no longer light on his feet, when he leaped from the window-sill he came down clumsily in the middle of the very table full of the old lamps which were set aside for the bargain sale.

Of course, it was the biggest and fanciest lamp in the lot that was broken – a tall one with a frosted glass shade and a row of crystal prisms dangling around the bowl of it. It toppled over on to a pair of old brass andirons, smashing into a thousand pieces. Bits of glass flew in every direction, and "Grandpa," his fur electrified by his fright until he looked twice his natural size, shot through the door as if fired from a cannon, and was seen no more that morning.

Naturally, Mrs. Yates hurried to the back of the store to see what had happened, and Mr. Darcy, following, picked up from the wreck the only piece of the lamp not shattered to bits by the fall. It was one of the prisms, which in some miraculous way had survived the crash, a beautiful crystal pendant without a single nick or crack.

He picked it up and rubbed his coat sleeve down each of its three sides, and when he held it up to the light it sent a ripple of rainbows dancing across the shop. He watched them, pleased as a child; and when Mrs. Yates, loud in her complaints of Grandpa, came with broom and dustpan to sweep up the litter, he bargained with her for the prism.

That is how he happened to have an offering for Georgina's birthday when he reached the house a couple of hours later, not knowing that it was her birthday. Nobody had remembered it, Barby being gone.

It seemed to Georgina the forlornest day she had ever opened her eyes upon. The very fact that it was gloriously sunny with a delicious summer breeze ruffling the harbor and sending the white sails scudding along like wings, made her feel all the more desolate. She was trying her best to forget what day it was, but there wasn't much to keep her mind off the subject. Even opportunities for helping Tippy were taken away, for Belle had come to stay during Barby's absence, and she insisted on doing what Georgina otherwise would have done.

If Barby had been at home there would have been no piano practice on such a gala occasion as a tenth birthday. There would have been no time for it in the program of joyful happenings. But because time dragged, Georgina went to her scales and five-finger exercises as usual. With the hour-glass on the piano beside her, she practised not only her accustomed time, till the sand had run half through, but until all but a quarter of it had slipped down. Then she sauntered listlessly out into the dining-room and stood by one of the open windows, looking out through the wire screen into the garden.

On any other day she would have found entertainment in the kitchen listening to Belle and Mrs. Triplett. Belle seemed doubly interesting now that she had heard of the unused wedding dress and the sorrow that would "blight her whole life." But Georgina did not want anyone to see how bitterly she was disappointed.

Just outside, so close to the window that she could have reached out and touched it had it not been for the screen, stood the holiday tree. It had held out its laden arms to her on so many festal occasions that Georgina had grown to feel that it took a human interest in all her celebrations. To see it standing bare now, like any ordinary tree, made her feel that her last friend was indifferent. Nobody cared. Nobody was glad that she was in the world. In spite of all she could do to check them, two big tears welled up and rolled down her cheeks; then another and another. She lifted up the hem of her dress to wipe them away, and as she did so Uncle Darcy came around the house.

He looked in at the open window, then asked: "Weather a bit squally, hey? Better put into port and tie up till storm's over. Let your Uncle Darcy have a hand at the helm. Come out here, Barby, and let's talk it over on the door-step."

There was something so heartening in the cheery voice that Georgina made one more dab at her eyes with the hem of her dress skirt, then dropped it and went out through the screen door to join him on the steps which led down into the garden. At first she was loath to confess the cause of her tears. She felt ashamed of being caught crying simply because no one had remembered the date. It wasn't that she wanted presents, she sobbed. It was that she wanted someone to be glad that she'd been born and it was so lonesome without Barby —

In the midst of her reluctant confession Mr. Darcy bethought himself of the prism in his pocket.

"Here," he said, drawing it out. "Take this and put a rainbow around your troubles. It's a sort of magic glass. When you look through it, it shows you things you can't see with your ordinary eyes. Look what it does to the holiday tree."

There was a long-drawn breath of amazement from Georgina as she held the prism to her eyes and looked through it at the tree.

"Oh! Oh! It does put a rainbow around every branch and every little tuft of green needles. It's even lovelier than the colored lanterns were. Isn't it wonderful? It puts a rainbow around the whole outdoors."

Her gaze went from the grape arbor to the back garden gate. Then she jumped up and started around the house, the old man following, and smiling over each enthusiastic "oh" she uttered, as the prism showed her new beauty at every step. He was pleased to have been the source of her new pleasure.

"It's like looking into a different world," she cried, as she reached the kitchen door, and eagerly turned the prism from one object to another. Mrs. Triplett was scowling intently over the task of trying to turn the lid of a glass jar which refused to budge.

"Oh, it even puts a rainbow around Tippy's frown," Georgina cried excitedly. Then she ran to hold the prism over Belle's eyes.

"Look, what Uncle Darcy brought me for my birthday. See how it puts a rainbow around every blessed thing, even the old black pots and pans!"

In showing it to Tippy she discovered a tiny hole in the end of the prism by which it had been hung from the lamp, and she ran upstairs to find a piece of ribbon to run through it. When she came down again, the prism hanging from her neck by a long pink ribbon, Uncle Darcy greeted her with a new version of the Banbury Cross song:

"Rings on her fingers and ribbon of rose,She shall have rainbows wherever she goes."

"That's even better than having music wherever you go," answered Georgina, whirling around on her toes. Then she stopped in a listening attitude, hearing the postman.

When she came back from the front door with only a magazine her disappointment was keen, but she said bravely:

"Of course, I knew there couldn't be a letter from Barby this soon. She couldn't get there till last night – but just for a minute I couldn't help hoping – but I didn't mind it half so much, Uncle Darcy, when I looked at the postman through the prism. Even his whiskers were blue and red and yellow."

That afternoon a little boat went dipping up and down across the waves. It was The Betsey, with Uncle Darcy pulling at the oars and Georgina as passenger. Lifting the prism which still hung from her neck by the pink ribbon, she looked out upon what seemed to be an enchanted harbor. It was filled with a fleet of rainbows. Every sail was outlined with one, every mast edged with lines of red and gold and blue. Even the gray wharves were tinged with magical color, and the water itself, to her reverent thought, suggested the "sea of glass mingled with fire," which is pictured as one of the glories of the New Jerusalem.

"Isn't it wonderful, Uncle Darcy?" she asked in a hushed, awed tone. "It's just like a miracle the way this bit of glass changes the whole world. Isn't it?"

Before he could answer, a shrill whistle sounded near at hand. They were passing the boathouse on the beach below the Green Stairs. Looking up they saw Richard, hanging out of the open doors of the loft, waving to them. Georgina stood up in the boat and beckoned, but he shook his head, pointing backward with his thumb into the studio, and disconsolately shrugged his shoulders.

"He wants to go so bad!" exclaimed Georgina. "Seems as if his father's a mighty slow painter. Maybe if you'd ask him the way you did before, Uncle Darcy, he'd let Richard off this one more time – being my birthday, you know."

She looked at him with the bewitching smile which he usually found impossible to resist, but this time he shook his head.

"No, I don't want him along to-day. I've brought you out here to show you something and have a little talk with you alone. Maybe I ought to wait till you're older before I say what I want to say, but at my time of life I'm liable to slip off without much warning, and I don't want to go till I've said it to you."

Georgina put down her prism to stare at him in eager-eyed wonder. She was curious to know what he could show her out here on the water, and what he wanted to tell her that was as important as his solemn words implied.

"Wait till we come to it," he said, answering the unspoken question in her eyes. And Georgina, who dearly loved dramatic effects in her own story-telling, waited for something – she knew not what – to burst upon her expectant sight.

They followed the line of the beach for some time, dodging in between motor boats and launches, under the high railroad wharf and around the smaller ones where the old fish-houses stood. Past groups of children, playing in the sand they went, past artists sketching under their white umbrellas, past gardens gay with bright masses of color, past drying nets spread out on the shore.

Presently Uncle Darcy stopped rowing and pointed across a vacant strip of beach between two houses, to one on the opposite side of the street.

"There it is," he announced. "That's what I wanted to show you."

Georgina followed the direction of his pointing finger.

"Oh, that!" she said in a disappointed tone. "I've seen that all my life. It's nothing but the Figurehead House."

She was looking at a large white house with a portico over the front door, on the roof of which portico was perched half of the wooden figure of a woman. It was of heroic size, head thrown back as if looking off to sea, and with a green wreath in its hands. Weather-beaten and discolored, it was not an imposing object at first glance, and many a jibe and laugh it had called forth from passing tourists.

Georgina's disappointment showed in her face.

"I know all about that," she remarked. "Mrs. Tupman told me herself. She calls it the Lady of Mystery. She said that years and years ago a schooner put out from this town on a whaling cruise, and was gone more than a year. When it was crossing the equator, headed for home, the look-out at the masthead saw a strange object in the water that looked like a woman afloat. The Captain gave orders to lower the boats, and when they did so they found this figurehead. She said it must have come from the prow of some great clipper in the East India trade. They were in the Indian Ocean, you know.

"There had been some frightful storms and afterwards they heard of many wrecks. This figurehead was so long they had to cut it in two to get it into the hold of the vessel. They brought it home and set it up there over the front door, and they call it the Lady of Mystery, because they said 'from whence that ship came, what was its fate and what was its destination will always be shrouded in mystery.' And Mrs. Tupman said that a famous artist looked at it once and said it was probably the work of a Spanish artist, and that from the pose of its head and the wreath in its hands he was sure it was intended to represent Hope. Was that what you were going to tell me?"

The old man had rested on his oars while she hurried through this tale, with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes, as if she thought she was forestalling him. Now he picked them up again and began rowing out into the harbor.

"That was a part of it," he admitted, "but that's only the part that the whole town knows. That old figurehead has a meaning for me that nobody else that's living knows about. That's what I want to pass on to you."

He rowed several minutes more before he said slowly, with a wistful tenderness coming into his dim old eyes as he looked at her:

"Georgina, I don't suppose anybody's ever told you about the troubles I've had. They wouldn't talk about such things to a child like you. Maybe I shouldn't, now; but when I saw how disappointed you were this morning, I said to myself, 'If she's old enough to feel trouble that way, she's old enough to understand and to be helped by hearing about mine.'"

It seemed hard for him to go on, for again he paused, looking off toward the lighthouse in the distance. Then he said slowly, in a voice that shook at times:

"Once – I had a boy – that I set all my hopes on – just as a man puts all his cargo into one vessel; and nobody was ever prouder than I was, when that little craft went sailing along with the best of them. I used to look at him and think, 'Danny'll weather the seas no matter how rough they are, and he'll bring up in the harbor I'm hoping he'll reach, with all flags flying.' And then – something went wrong – "

The tremulous voice broke. "My little ship went down – all my precious cargo lost – "

Another and a longer pause. In it Georgina seemed to hear Cousin Mehitable's husky voice, half whispering:

"And the lamp threw a shadow on the yellow blind, plain as a photograph. The shadow of an old man sitting with his arms flung out across the table and his head bowed on them. And he was groaning, 'Oh, my Danny! My Danny! If you could only have gone that way.'"

For a moment Georgina felt the cruel hurt of his grief as if the pain had stabbed her own heart. The old man went on:

"If it had only been any other kind of a load, anything but disgrace, I could have carried it without flinching. But that, it seemed I just couldn't face. Only the good Lord knows how I lived through those first few weeks. Then your grandfather Huntingdon came to me. He was always a good friend. And he asked me to row him out here on the water. When we passed the Figurehead House he pointed up at that head. It was all white and fair in those days, before the paint wore off. And he said, 'Dan'l Darcy, as long as a man keeps Hope at the prow he keeps afloat. As soon as he drops it he goes to pieces and down to the bottom, the way that ship did when it lost its figurehead. You mustn't let go, Dan'l. You must keep Hope at the prow.