Rainbow Cottage (19 page)

S
helia slept very little that night. She knelt for a long time at her bedside, weeping and trying to pray. It seemed to her that she had reached the depths.

When she finally got up and sat in her chair, trying to reason herself out of this humiliation, she told herself that she wished she had never met Angus Galbraith. To have had a pleasant thing like meeting a good young man for the first time in her life turned into this was ghastly! To be charged with having gone after a young man and tried to get him away from someone else!

If it had not been for Moira’s careful training, Sheila would probably have been able to laugh off the little incident as a trifle and even perhaps been secretly proud that a desirable young man had chosen to talk to her instead of the other girl who was so much more sophisticated.

But Sheila, in spite of all her bravely dignified words to Jacqueline, felt as if she never wanted to see Angus Galbraith again.

If it had been possible without hurting Grandmother’s feelings and requiting all her kindness with absolute rudeness, she would have crept out of the house that night and never returned!

When, because she knew it was late and she was afraid her light might attract her grandmother’s attention, she crept into bed, it was to toss and lie awake and resolve that she would never, never see Angus Galbraith again. Hour after hour she lay there and tried to tear from her memory the thought of him and only succeeded in making some little word or smile or look of him clearer in her mind. She was appalled, aghast.

Next morning when she came down to breakfast, she was pale and grave. A new dignity seemed to have come upon her, and though she tried to smile at her grandmother, there was a trembly edge to it that made the old lady watch her furtively and wonder.

Not so with Jacqueline. She was on hand with the lark, blithe and cheery in the most feminine of orchid negligees. No one could possibly accuse her of not being demure this morning. She was like a merry lovely child. With her hair brushed plainly back from her forehead, no makeup whatever on her guileless face, no jewelry whatever, not even a ring upon her finger, with little trifles of slippers laced with cord up the front and around her ankles, she toyed with her breakfast and cast endearing glances at the old lady, called her “dear Aunt Myra” and told her “how quaint” she was.

The old lady eyed her with suspicion but dropped no word to break the seeming harmony of the breakfast table.

Then, when Grandmother was suddenly called to the back door to inspect some fish that Janet was not sure ought to be bought, Jacqueline pushed back her plate, planted her charming elbows on the table in front of her, letting the ruffles of lace and orchid silk fall back farther to reveal her lovely arms, and looked long and sweetly at Sheila, who was gravely eating her strawberries with downcast eyes.

At last Jacqueline spoke. “I’ve placed you at last,” she said as if it were an achievement she had long sought. “I couldn’t at all at first.”

Her voice was like that of a pleased little child. Jacqueline was a real actress.

Sheila looked up wondering.

“Yes,” said Jacqueline smiling. “You’re the child of that scapegrace cousin of mine, Andrew! I used to just love to listen to stories of his escapades when I was a child. He did something terrible, didn’t he? What was it? Did he murder somebody, or was it only embezzlement? I forget. Was he hung, or only imprisoned for life? I was trying to tell Angus about it last night, but I couldn’t remember which.”

Sheila had risen when Jacqueline first began to speak. She could not have turned any whiter than she was. Her eyes were wide and dark and ominous. She was almost regal in her bearing, like Nemesis, or a queen about to visit vengeance upon a vassal.

But Jacqueline maintained her sunny, naive bearing and babbled on.

“And he married a barmaid or something, didn’t he? Or weren’t your father and mother ever really married after all? I forget.”

She lifted big dark eyes like pools of wonder to where Sheila had stood only an instant before, but Sheila was no longer there. With one catlike motion, she rounded the end of the table and gave Jacqueline a stinging slap square on her pretty, inquiring mouth, followed by another, and another, so sharp and quick that the astonished tormentor had no time to recover, nor cry out, nor even move. Then like a wraith Sheila disappeared, dashing madly up the stairs to her room and locking her door behind her.

She tore off the pretty new dress of blue she was wearing, the dainty bits of lingerie that she had loved so when they were bought for her, even the shoes and stockings that were a part of her new outfit. She was breathless as she did it. Her heart was beating wildly.

She reached to her closet for the newspaper bundle of scorched things she had carefully salvaged from the trash heap, a sob gathering in her throat as she did so and escaping like a great gasp. She put on the things without stopping to look them over—her old clothes that she had worn when she came here. There were several burned places, but she did not heed them. Her fingers trembled as she fastened the blouse. It had a great scorched place across the breast, but she drew on the woolen coat over it and buttoned it firmly to her chin. She jammed on the little old felt hat that had been folded away to die, and then she gave one wild, sorrowful look around the quiet room with all its sweet furniture, a great look of renunciation toward the closet and the trunk full of lovely clothes.

She caught at her little handbag that Grandmother had so carefully picked out for her and filled with necessities. There was a pencil in it and a little notebook.

She tore a leaf from the book and wrote:

She laid the little note beside the pencil on the bureau where it could not fail to be seen, took five dollars from the handbag and put it in her mother’s worn old purse, then she tiptoed over to the door and opened it softly. She could hear Jacqueline down at the piano in the living room playing jolly nothings and singing little trilly, silly words. She could hear Grandmother’s voice in the kitchen talking to Janet. Now was the time.

She gave one more anguished look around the room and slipped softly out to the hall window, which opened onto a gently sloping porch roof, ending in a wide rose trellis with crimson roses nodding and smiling in full bloom around the edge of the roof.

Stealthily she climbed out of the window—a fugitive once more in a strange, unfriendly world—slid softly down the roof, put a tentative foot upon the bar of the trellis and found that it held, and then went swiftly down past the roses, not minding the thorns that tore her face and arms and clutched their best at her woolen garments. She hurried ruthlessly down from slat to slat, not daring to linger on the frail white wood lest it gave way and let her down too soon and somebody might see her.

She was on the ground now, standing in a little pool of bright portulacas at the garden end of the house. They smiled up at her confidingly, pleasedly, like a little dog of the family who might wag his tail at a guest. But she must not linger in this place. She must be gone at once, before anyone saw her and made the way harder. She must not let that other girl see her in these disgraceful rags.

She dashed wildly across the flower bed, the garden walk, the little patch of lawn, down along behind the trellis, and stole quickly from the wicket gate, shutting it firmly behind her.

She gave one last look back, saw the beloved cottage, the door where she had been taken in, the vista of dining room beyond, the table where she had just eaten the last bounteous breakfast she would likely ever have, then heard her enemy singing a little wicked song, and the fire burned hot in her heart. She vanished around the garden wall, keeping close behind its shelter, then dashed for a great sand dune and crouched down beyond it to reconnoiter.

The day was perfect, calm and blue with a lovely breeze. The waves were like the ruffles of white foamy lace on the negligee that Grandmother had bought for her. The sand was hard and white like marble, and off in the distance the rocks loomed black and clear against a summer sky. The little cottage lay smiling in the summer sun, tucked safely inside its sheltering wall, and not a soul was in sight. They could not see her from here even if they were all looking out the kitchen windows. It was too far. Besides, they would not know her in these clothes.

Either way on the great wide beach there was not a soul in sight. Now was the time to go, and to go far and fast.

She stood, bent her head a little, and started on blindly, walking as fast as she could, running sometimes between the sand dunes. When she dared to look back again, the cottage was like a little picture on the horizon. But she must not pause, not till she had rounded that curve in the beach and got entirely out of sight.

The last few yards she took in a run and turned for one more glimpse before she said good-bye forever. But the cottage now was only a tiny miniature far and vague, and no one could possibly see her here.

She dropped down on the sand for a moment to rest and looked around her. Up the beach a little way, towering almost above her head, there loomed great rocks and a lovely house of stone beyond on more rocks. It looked like the pictures Mother had drawn for her when she was a child, of the castle where she used to live.

Then a thought came to her. That must be The Cliffs where the Galbraiths lived, and they would see her perhaps from the windows. How terrible if Angus Galbraith should come down this way and meet her, see her in these soiled, scorched garments, these awful shoes! There was a hole burned clear through the toe of one where Jacqueline’s fire had done its deadly work. Oh, she did not want him to see her! He would not know her perhaps looking like this, but she did not want to see him now. She must get away faster than ever.

Or suppose that cousin, the married one, Malcolm, should see her! She shuddered. She had a feeling about him now that he was like Buck.

She rose swiftly and bounded away up the beach, faster and faster, scarcely raising her eyes to look ahead, not daring to look behind. Only she knew that she had passed the house. If they saw from its high, beautiful windows a shabby little figure flying along, they would never think of her as Grandmother’s guest. They would think of her as some poor fisherman’s child.

So she fled along the beach and tried to comfort and reassure herself.

Then she came upon a place where a great white motorboat was drawn up high on the sand, and beside it was a lovely sailboat with its sails all neatly furled. It seemed to be a spot where the beach was sheltered, a sort of landing place where the water was quieter and deep enough to land a boat. Sheila knew little about boats and landing, but a sudden panic took her, for out on the bright water not so very far away there came another boat with sails unfurled and billowing beautifully in the breeze. It looked as if it was headed straight for her, and her heart stood still. She must get far past here before that boat could come in.

But the old shoes, worn at the heel, began to hurt her feet, and her limbs were getting tired and weak with the fright, sorrow, and anger that were mingled in her soul. It seemed as if every step dragged slower and slower.

And now she caught echoes of voices, a word now and then. There were people up above the cliff, perhaps belonging to that Galbraith house. They were laughing and talking. She passed a little jagged path that ran up the rocks a few steps at a time and then around them, with vines and short grasses fringing its edge. It sounded as if there were people coming down that path. She distinctly heard someone say, “I’m not going to stay in the water so long this morning.” Then the dashing of the sea ahead against more rocks drowned the voices, and blindly she dashed on. There must be a shelter somewhere near where she could hide till all these people got down in the water, swimming, and then perhaps they would not notice her.

A rock jutted out ahead of her, and she darted around behind it. Ah! Sure enough there was shelter, a group of big rocks huddled together like walls of different rooms and a great flat one in the center, with a winding path around up to its top. The sea was just beyond that, and behind it there was a sort of hollow cave, rock lined.

She slipped within and hid behind a rock. She would wait there in the silence and quiet until those bathers were finished, or at least until they were out in the water where they would not notice. Then she would watch for her chance and dart out and around the last rock, and so on farther up the coast away from all Galbraiths and their sort, away from this world that was not hers and did not want her.

So she lay hidden while Angus Galbraith and his cousins came down the rocky path and went into the sea.

From where she was, she could just see them as they stepped out into the water, the white of their bodies and the dark colors of their bathing suits flashing bright where the water touched them and the sun glanced off. She could easily identify the two young men striding into the water with great bounds, flinging water at each other, dipping and shaking their heads like water spaniels. She had never seen people bathing in the ocean before, though she had of course seen many a picture of seashore resorts in the books she read. But the sight of it fascinated her even in her terrible predicament. What would it be like to do things like that, having good times without a lot of worry and disgrace?

She watched the girls plunging into the great waves and riding above them, the men swimming up and taking hold of their hands, laying them down on the swell of a wave, and holding them to float. The one in the red bathing suit must be Malcolm’s wife. She thought she recognized the way she held herself. But who was the one with the gold hair in the blue bathing suit? Someone called her Rose as they came down the cliff. The name had echoed to her ears and set her wondering. Was that perhaps a guest staying at the house? Her heart gave an odd little twist. Well, this Rose person belonged there among them. She was graceful and merry, and her laugh rang out and echoed through the vaulted arch of the cavern where Sheila was hiding, giving her a lonely ache in her heart.