Georgina of the Rainbows
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When it was time to go home Belle suggested that they walk around by Fishburn Court. It would be out of their way, but she had heard that Aunt Elspeth wasn't as well as usual.
"Emmett always called her Aunt," she explained to Georgina as they walked along, "so I got into the way of doing it, too. He was so fond of Dan's mother. She was so good to him after his own went that I feel I want to be nice to her whenever I can, for his sake."
"You know," she continued, "Aunt Elspeth never would give up but that Dan was innocent, and since her memory's been failing her this last year, she talks all the time about his coming home; just lies there in bed half her time and babbles about him. It almost kills Uncle Dan'l to hear her, because, of course, he knows the truth of the matter, that Dan was guilty. He as good as confessed it before he ran away, and the running away itself told the story."
When they reached Fishburn Court they could see two people sitting in front of the cottage. Uncle Darcy was in an armchair on the grass with one of the cats in his lap, and Richard sat on one seat of the red, wooden swing with Captain Kidd on the opposite one. Richard had a rifle across his knees, the one Georgina had suggested borrowing. He passed his hand caressingly along its stock now and then, and at intervals raised it to sight along the barrel. It was so heavy he could not keep it from wobbling when he raised it to take aim in various directions.
At the click of the gate-latch the old man tumbled Yellownose out of his lap and rose stiffly to welcome his guests.
"Come right in," he said cordially. "Mother'll be glad to see you, Belle. She's been sort of low in her mind lately, and needs cheering up."
He led the way into a low-ceilinged, inner bedroom with the shades all pulled down. It was so dark, compared to the glaring road they had been following, that Georgina blinked at the dim interior. She could scarcely make out the figure on the high-posted bed, and drew back, whispering to Belle that she'd stay outside until they were ready to go home. Leaving them on the threshold, she went back to the shady door-yard to a seat in the swing beside Captain Kidd.
"It's Uncle Darcy's son's rifle," explained Richard. "He's been telling me about him. Feel how smooth the stock is."
Georgina reached over and passed her hand lightly along the polished wood.
"He and a friend of his called Emmett Potter used to carry it on the dunes sometimes to shoot at a mark with. It wasn't good for much else, it's so old. Dan got it in a trade once; traded a whole litter of collie pups for it. Uncle Darcy says he'd forgotten there was such a gun till somebody brought it to him after Emmett was drowned."
"Oh," interrupted Georgina, her eyes wide with interest. "Emmett's father has just been telling me about this very rifle. But I didn't dream it was the one I'd seen up in the attic here. He showed me the corner where Emmett stood it when he left for the wreck, and told what was to be done with it. 'Them were his last words,'" she added, quoting Mr. Potter.
She reached out her hand for the clumsy old firearm and almost dropped it, finding it so much heavier than she expected. She wanted to touch with her own fingers the weapon that had such an interesting history, and about which a hero had spoken his last words.
"The hammer's broken," continued Richard. "Whoever brought it home let it fall. It's all rusty, too, because it was up in the attic so many years and the roof leaked on it. But Uncle Darcy said lots of museums would be glad to have it because there aren't many of these old flint-locks left now. He's going to leave it to the Pilgrim museum up by the monument when he's dead and gone, but he wants to keep it as long as he lives because Danny set such store by it."
"There's some numbers or letters or something on it," announced Georgina, peering at a small brass plate on the stock. "I can't make them out. I tell you what let's do," she exclaimed in a burst of enthusiasm. "Let's polish it up so's we can read them. Tippy uses vinegar and wood ashes for brass. I'll run get some."
Georgina was enough at home here to find what she wanted without asking, and as full of resources as Robinson Crusoe. She was back in a very few minutes with a shovel full of ashes from the kitchen stove, and an old can lid full of vinegar, drawn from a jug in the corner cupboard. With a scrap of a rag dipped first in vinegar, then in ashes, she began scrubbing the brass plate diligently. It had corroded until there was an edge of green entirely around it.
"I love to take an old thing like this and scrub it till it shines like gold," she said, scouring away with such evident enjoyment of the job that Richard insisted on having a turn. She surrendered the rag grudgingly, but continued to direct operations.
"Now dip it in the ashes again. No, not that way, double the rag up and use more vinegar. Rub around that other corner a while. Here, let me show you."
She took the rifle away from him again and proceeded to illustrate her advice. Suddenly she looked up, startled.
"I believe we've rubbed it loose. It moved a little to one side. See?"
He grabbed it back and examined it closely. "I bet it's meant to move," he said finally. "It looks like a lid, see! It slides sideways."
"Oh, I remember now," she cried, much excited. "That's the way Leather-Stocking's rifle was made. There was a hole in the stock with a brass plate over it, and he kept little pieces of oiled deer-skin inside of it to wrap bullets in before he loaded 'em in. I remember just as plain, the place in the story where he stopped to open it and take out a piece of oiled deer-skin when he started to load."
As she explained she snatched the rifle back into her own hands once more, and pried at the brass plate until she broke the edge of her thumb nail. Then Richard took it, and with the aid of a rusty button-hook which he happened to have in his pocket, having found it on the street that morning, he pushed the plate entirely back.
"There's something white inside!" he exclaimed.
Instantly two heads bent over with his in an attempt to see, for Captain Kidd's shaggy hair was side by side with Georgina's curls, his curiosity as great as hers.
"Whatever's in there has been there an awful long time," said Richard as he poked at the contents with his button-hook, "for Uncle Darcy said the rifle's never been used since it was brought back to him."
"And it's ten years come Michaelmas since Emmett was drowned," said Georgina, again quoting the old net-mender.
The piece of paper which they finally succeeded in drawing out had been folded many times and crumpled into a flat wad. Evidently the message on it had been scrawled hastily in pencil by someone little used to letter writing. It was written in an odd hand, and the united efforts of the two little readers could decipher only parts of it.
"I can read any kind of plain writing like they do in school," said Richard, "but not this sharp-cornered kind where the m's and u's are alike, and all the tails are pointed."
Slowly they puzzled out parts of it, halting long over some of the undecipherable words, but a few words here and there were all they could recognize. There were long stretches that had no meaning whatever for them. This much, however, they managed to spell out:
"Dan never took the money… I did it… He went away because he knew I did it and wouldn't tell… Sorry… Can't stand it any longer… Put an end to it all…"
It was signed "Emmett Potter."
The two children looked at each other with puzzled eyes until into Georgina's came a sudden and startled understanding. Snatching up the paper she almost fell out of the swing and ran towards the house screaming:
"Uncle Darcy! Uncle Darcy! Look what we've found."
She tripped over a piece of loose carpet spread just inside the front door as a rug and fell full length, but too excited to know that she had skinned her elbow she scrambled up, still calling:
"Uncle Darcy, Dan never took the money. It was Emmett Potter. He said so himself!"
CHAPTER XII
A HARD PROMISE
A DOZEN times in Georgina's day-dreaming she had imagined this scene. She had run to Uncle Darcy with the proof of Dan's innocence, heard his glad cry, seen his face fairly transfigured as he read the confession aloud. Now it was actually happening before her very eyes, but where was the scene of heavenly gladness that should have followed?
Belle, startled even more than he by Georgina's outcry, and quicker to act, read the message over his shoulder, recognized the handwriting and grasped the full significance of the situation before he reached the name at the end. For ten years three little notes in that same peculiar hand had lain in her box of keepsakes. There was no mistaking that signature. She had read it and cried over it so many times that now as it suddenly confronted her with its familiar twists and angles it was as startling as if Emmett's voice had called to her.
As Uncle Darcy looked up from the second reading, with a faltering exclamation of thanksgiving, she snatched the paper from his shaking hands and tore it in two. Then crumpling the pieces and flinging them from her, she seized him by the wrists.
"No, you're not going to tell the whole world," she cried wildly, answering the announcement he made with the tears raining down his cheeks. "You're not going to tell anybody! Think of me! Think of Father Potter!"
She almost screamed her demand. He could hardly believe it was Belle, this frenzied girl, who, heretofore, had seemed the gentlest of souls. He looked at her in a dazed way, so overwhelmed by the discovery that had just been made, that he failed to comprehend the reason for her white face and agonized eyes, till she threw up her arms crying:
"Emmett a thief! God in heaven! It'll kill me!"
It was the sight of Georgina's shocked face with Richard's at the door, that made things clear to the old man. He waved them away, with hands which shook as if he had the palsy.
"Go on out, children, for a little while," he said gently, and closed the door in their faces.
Slowly they retreated to the swing, Georgina clasping the skinned elbow which had begun to smart. She climbed into one seat of the swing and Richard and Captain Kidd took the other. As they swung back and forth she demanded in a whisper:
"Why is it that grown people always shut children out of their secrets? Seems as if we have a right to know what's the matter when we found the paper."
Richard made no answer, for just then the sound of Belle's crying came out to them. The windows of the cottage were all open and the grass plot between the windows and the swing being a narrow one the closed door was of little avail. It was very still there in the shady dooryard, so still that they could hear old Yellownose purr, asleep on the cushion in the wooden arm-chair beside the swing. The broken sentences between the sobs were plainly audible. It seemed so terrible to hear a grown person cry, that Georgina felt as she did that morning long ago, when old Jeremy's teeth flew into the fire. Her confidence was shaken in the world. She felt there could be no abiding happiness in anything.
"She's begging him not to tell," whispered Richard.
"But I owe it to Danny," they heard Uncle Darcy say. And then, "Why should I spare Emmett's father? Emmett never spared me, he never spared Danny."
An indistinct murmur as if Belle's answer was muffled in her handkerchief, then Uncle Darcy's voice again:
"It isn't fair that the town should go on counting him a hero and brand my boy as a coward, when it's Emmett who was the coward as well as the thief."
Again Belle's voice in a quick cry of pain, as sharp as if she had been struck. Then the sound of another door shutting, and when the voices began again it was evident they had withdrawn into the kitchen.
"They don't want Aunt Elspeth to hear," said Georgina.
"What's it all about?" asked Richard, much mystified.
Georgina told him all that she knew herself, gathered from the scraps she had heard the day of Cousin Mehitable's visit, and from various sources since; told him in a half whisper stopping now and then when some fragment of a sentence floated out to them from the kitchen; for occasional words still continued to reach them through the windows in the rear, when the voices rose at intervals to a higher pitch.
What passed behind those closed doors the children never knew. They felt rather than understood what was happening. Belle's pleading was beginning to be effectual, and the old man was rising to the same heights of self-sacrifice which Dan had reached, when he slipped away from home with the taint of his friend's disgrace upon him in order to save that friend.
That some soul tragedy had been enacted in that little room the children felt vaguely when Belle came out after a while. Her eyes were red and swollen and her face drawn and pinched looking. She did not glance in their direction, but stood with her face averted and hand on the gate-latch while Uncle Darcy stopped beside the swing.
"Children," he said solemnly, "I want you to promise me never to speak to anyone about finding that note in the old rifle till I give you permission. Will you do this for me, just because I ask it, even if I can't tell you why?"
"Mustn't I even tell Barby?" asked Georgina, anxiously.
He hesitated, glancing uncertainly at Belle, then answered:
"No, not even your mother, till I tell you that you can. Now you see what a very important secret it is. Can you keep it, son? Will you promise me too?"
He turned to Richard with the question. With a finger under the boy's chin he tipped up his face and looked into it searchingly. The serious, brown eyes looked back into his, honest and unflinching.
"Yes, I promise," he answered. "Honor bright I'll not tell."
The old man turned to the waiting figure at the gate.
"It's all right, Belle. You needn't worry about it any more. You can trust us."
She made no answer, but looking as if she had aged years in the last half hour, she passed through the gate and into the sandy court, moving slowly across it towards the street beyond.
With a long-drawn sigh the old man sank down on the door-step and buried his face in his hands. They were still shaking as if he had the palsy. For some time the children sat in embarrassed silence, thinking every moment that he would look up and say something. They wanted to go, but waited for him to make some movement. He seemed to have forgotten they were there. Finally a clock inside the cottage began striking five. It broke the spell which bound them.
"Let's go," whispered Richard.
"All right," was the answer, also whispered. "Wait till I take the shovel and can lid back to the kitchen."
"I'll take 'em," he offered. "I want to get a drink, anyhow."
Stealthily, as if playing Indian, they stepped out of the swing and tiptoed through the grass around the corner of the house. Even the dog went noiselessly, instead of frisking and barking as he usually did when starting anywhere. Their return was equally stealthy. As they slipped through the gate Georgina looked back at the old man. He was still sitting on the step, his face in his hands, as if he were bowed down by some weight too heavy for his shoulders to bear.
The weary hopelessness of his attitude made her want to run back and throw her arms around his neck, but she did not dare. Trouble as great as that seemed to raise a wall around itself. It could not be comforted by a caress. The only thing to do was to slip past and not look.
Richard shared the same awe, for he went away leaving the rifle lying in the grass. Instinctively he felt that it ought not to be played with now. It was the rifle which had changed everything.
CHAPTER XIII
LOST AND FOUND AT THE LINIMENT WAGON
WITH Mrs. Triplett back in bed again on account of the rheumatism which crippled her, and Belle going about white of face and sick of soul, home held little cheer for Georgina. But with Mrs. Triplett averse to company of any kind, and Belle anxious to be alone with her misery, there was nothing to hinder Georgina from seeking cheer elsewhere and she sought it early and late.
She had spent her birthday dollar in imagination many times before she took her check to the bank to have it cashed. With Richard to lend her courage, and Manuel, Joseph and Rosa trailing after by special invitation, she walked in and asked for Mr. Gates. That is the way Barby always did, and as far as Georgina knew he was the only one to apply to for money.
The paying teller hesitated a moment about summoning the president of the bank from his private office at the behest of so small a child, so small that even on tiptoe her eyes could barely peer into the window of his cage. But they were entreating eyes, so big and brown and sure of their appeal that he decided to do their bidding.
Just as he turned to knock at the door behind him it opened, and Mr. Gates came out with the man with whom he had been closeted in private conference. It was Richard's Cousin James. The children did not see him, however, for he stopped at one of the high desks inside to look at some papers which one of the clerks spread out before him.
"Oh, it's my little friend, Georgina," said Mr. Gates, smiling in response to the beaming smile she gave him. "Well, what can I do for you, my dear?"
"Cash my check, please," she said, pushing the slip of paper towards him with as grand an air as if it had been for a million dollars instead of one, "and all in nickels, please."
He glanced at the name she had written painstakingly across the back.
"Well, Miss Huntingdon," he exclaimed gravely, although there was a twinkle in his eyes, "if all lady customers were as businesslike in endorsing their checks and in knowing what they want, we bankers would be spared a lot of trouble."
It was the first time that Georgina had ever been called Miss Huntingdon, and knowing he said it to tease her, it embarrassed her to the point of making her stammer, when he asked her most unexpectedly while picking out twenty shining new nickels to stuff into the little red purse:
"All of these going to buy tracts for the missionaries to take to the little heathen?"
"No, they're all going to – to – "
She didn't like to say for soda water and chewing gum and the movies, and hesitated till a substitute word occurred to her.
"They're all going to go for buying good times. It's for a sort of a club we made up this morning, Richard and me."
"May I ask the name of the club?"
Georgina glanced around. No other customer happened to be in the bank at the moment and Richard had wandered out to the street to wait for her. So tiptoeing a little higher she said in a low tone as if imparting a secret:
"It's the Rainbow Club. We pretend that everytime we make anybody happy we've made a little rainbow in the world."
"Well, bless your heart," was the appreciative answer. "You've already made one in here. You do that every time you come around."
Then he looked thoughtfully at her over his spectacles.
"Would you take an old fellow like me into your club?"
Georgina considered a moment, first stealing a glance at him to see if he were in earnest or still trying to tease. He seemed quite serious so she answered:
"If you really want to belong. Anybody with a bank full of money ought to be able to make happy times for the whole town."
"Any dues to pay? What are the rules and what are the duties of a member?"
Again Georgina was embarrassed. He seemed to expect so much more than she had to offer. She swung the red purse around nervously as she answered:
"I guess you won't think it's much of a club. There's nothing to it but just its name, and all we do is just to go around making what it says."
"Count me as Member number Three," said Mr. Gates gravely. "I'm proud to join you. Shake hands on it. I'll try to be a credit to the organization, and I hope you'll drop around once in a while and let me know how it's getting along."
The beaming smile with which Georgina shook hands came back to him all morning at intervals.
Cousin James Milford, who had been an interested listener, followed her out of the bank presently and as he drove his machine slowly past the drug-store he saw the five children draining their glasses at the soda-water fountain. He stopped, thinking to invite Richard and Georgina to go to Truro with him. It never would have occurred to him to give the three little Portuguese children a ride also had he not overheard that conversation in the bank.
"Well, why not?" he asked himself, smiling inwardly. "It might as well be rainbows for the crowd while I'm about it."
So for the first time in their lives Manuel and Joseph and Rosa rode in one of the "honk wagons" which heretofore they had known only as something to be dodged when one walked abroad. Judging by the blissful grins which took permanent lodging on their dirty faces, Cousin James was eligible to the highest position the new club could bestow, if ever he should apply for membership.
If Mrs. Triplett had been downstairs that evening, none of the birthday nickels would have found their way through the ticket window of the moving picture show. She supposed that Georgina was reading as usual beside the evening lamp, or was out on the front porch talking to Belle. But Belle, not caring to talk to anyone, had given instant consent when Georgina, who wanted to go to the show, having seen wonderful posters advertising it, suggested that Mrs. Fayal would take her in charge. She did not add that she had already seen Mrs. Fayal and promised to provide tickets for her and the children in case she could get permission from home. Belle did not seem interested in hearing such things, so Georgina hurried off lest something might happen to interfere before she was beyond the reach of summoning voices.
On the return from Truro she had asked to be put out at the Fayal cottage, having it in mind to make some such arrangement. Manuel had seen one show, but Joseph and Rosa had never so much as had their heads inside of one. She found Mrs. Fayal glooming over a wash-tub, not because she objected to washing for the summer people. She was used to that, having done it six days out of seven every summer since she had married Joe Fayal. What she was glooming over was that Joe was home from a week's fishing trip with his share of the money for the biggest catch of the season, and not a dime of it had she seen. It had all gone into the pocket of an itinerant vendor, and Joe was lying in a sodden stupor out under the grape arbor at the side of the cottage.
Georgina started to back away when she found the state of affairs. She did not suppose Mrs. Fayal would have a mind for merry-making under the circumstances. But, indeed, Mrs. Fayal did.
"All the more reason that I should go off and forget my troubles and have a good time for a while," she said decidedly. Georgina recognized the spirit if not the words of her own "line to live by." Mrs. Fayal could bear up and steer onward with a joyful heart any time she had the price of admission to a movie in her pocket. So feeling that as a member of the new club she could not have a better opportunity to make good its name, Georgina promised the tickets for the family even if she could not go herself. She would send them by Richard if not allowed to take them in person.
It was still light when Georgina fared forth at the end of the long summer day. Richard joined her at the foot of the Green Stairs with the price of his own ticket in his pocket, and Captain Kidd tagging at his heels.
"They won't let the dog into the show," Georgina reminded him.
"That's so, and he might get into a fight or run over if I left him outside," Richard answered. "B'leeve I'll shut him up in the garage."
This he did, fastening the door securely, and returning in time to see the rest of the party turning the corner, and coming towards the Green Stairs.
Mrs. Fayal, after her long day over the wash-tub, was resplendent in lavender shirt-waist, blue serge skirt and white tennis shoes, with long gold ear-rings dangling half-way to her shoulders. Manuel and Joseph were barefooted as usual, and in overalls as usual, but their lack of gala attire was made up for by Rosa's. No wax doll was ever more daintily and lacily dressed. Georgina looked at her in surprise, wishing Tippy could see her now. Rosa in her white dress and slippers and with her face clean, was a little beauty.