Rainbow Cottage (31 page)

And at last he had found out the tale. In a shanty where old settlers sometimes recalled stories when they felt it was safe, he heard the tale of how Buck Hasbrouck had been at the bottom of crime after crime and escaped justice, and how at last when justice seemed inevitable he had managed to fasten it upon one Andrew Ainslee. Handsome Andy, they called him.

He dared not ask questions. He was a disinterested stranger, and so he must remain if he would hear the whole story, and he lingered as long as he dared. But one day he heard a word that gave him a clue as to where this man might be found, and at last he came to the prison.

But when he finally was led to the man whom he had sought so far, he saw at a glance that he was not long for this world; yet Angus could not explain that look of something alive in the haggard face that gave it vividness. Also he saw in spite of the different coloring a startling likeness to Sheila. A way he had of raising his hand, the lifting of his chin, and a trick he had of smiling faintly with one corner of his mouth. They all gripped the young man’s heart. He knew at once that it was with more than pity that he regarded this man. There was something really lovable about him, even in his disgrace, and he could understand why he had been popular and spoiled in his youth.

It was only a plain hospital ward of the prison, and he lay on a crude cot with few comforts around him, yet there was something princely about him in spite of his surroundings. It was easy to see, even now, how highborn Moira McCleeve had believed in him and loved him and been willing to risk joining her life to his.

He had something about him, too, of his mother’s proud features, and Angus Galbraith was glad that at last his search was ended.

He sat down beside the man, and they began to talk.

At first he did not tell him who he was nor where he came from, just talked as any visitor might to a prisoner, a sick man.

“Yes,” said Andrew Ainslee, in a voice that sounded much like his elder brother Maxwell’s, only not quite so firm and opinionated, “I’m not long here now, and I’m glad. In any case, my time would be out in another nine months, but I can’t wait for that. I’ve got a call to another country, and I think I’m going soon.”

Angus tried to say something about being sorry he had to go from such a place as this, but a surprising smile lit up the man’s face as he answered.

“Oh, I’m not minding that,” he said. “This place has been the gate of heaven to me, and I’m glad I was sent here. You see, sir, I’ve always been a failure in life, made a mess of things for all I loved, you know, just by wanting my own way. But when I came here, I found the Lord, and I am saved. Probably if I had never come I might not have listened. But here there wasn’t anything to do, and I was going wild. When a man came and told me the Lord Jesus still loved me, I had to listen. It was my only hope. Do you know the Lord, sir? If you don’t, you wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh yes, indeed I do!” said Angus with a genuine ring to his voice and a thrill in his heart that he should come to seek a lost soul and find in him a brother in the Lord.

After that it was easy to get close to the other life and find out bit by bit the way that had ended in a prison cell.

Andrew Ainslee told it briefly and simply: “I was just a fool and thought I knew best about my life. I broke my mother’s heart. My brothers turned against me, after my father died. Later I got mixed up in a crime that I hadn’t committed—didn’t even know about it till after I went away. I didn’t write home for a long time. I was bitter at them all for not believing me. But I was wrong. I got to drinking, of course, and that led to worse things, till I really got my conscience blunted and let things get by me that I wouldn’t have thought of in younger days.”

Angus Galbraith laid a friendly hand on the coarse sleeve the man was wearing, and the sick man flashed a grateful look at him. He had had little sympathy, hadn’t deserved it either, of course, but it touched him deeply from this stranger.

“Then I found a girl,” went on Andrew in a husky tone, struggling with emotion. “I kept straight for her sake for a long time. Then when our little girl was born, I got hard up and went to gambling again and drinking.”

The man’s voice broke.

“She was a wonderful girl, not like the girls such a man as I was usually meets or cares for. She was up against it, too, and I married her. Fool! I thought I was good enough to do that! She was a wonderful girl, a Christian girl, high born. I wish I could tell you what she was!”

“Yes, I know,” said Angus quietly. “My mother knew her mother and sister. I have been to McCleeve Castle myself.”

“What? You know who I am? And you knew Moira? And you came here to see me, a dying convict?”

“No, I didn’t know Moira, but I’ve heard much about her, and I know your daughter, Sheila.”

The man was still for an instant, a gray look coming over his face.

“They know where I am,” he said. “I hoped I could spare them that. Moira died. You knew Moira died, didn’t you? The man who made a lot of trouble for me told me that. I hoped sometimes that perhaps he did not tell me true, but I did not dare to write. I wanted to spare her knowing where I am. I do not think she knew. I hope she did not know.”

“No, she did not know. As long as she lived she kept hoping you would come back. She died a little over six months ago.”

The man lay still, breathing hard.

“But Mother and Sheila? They know where I am? Perhaps I oughtn’t to care. But it was to save Mother this that I came away from home, to save her from having a son in prison. If I stayed at home I would have been sent to prison for another man’s sin, and it would have been prison for life. Yet she had to have the shame after all. And my little girl has to grow up and think she is a convict’s daughter!”

He sighed deeply and turned his face away for a moment. Then he looked up again with a ray of light in his sunken features.

“But there’s something you can tell them when I’m gone. I’m not serving time for my own crime now. I’m taking the place of another man. No one around here knows it. I did it voluntarily. It was a bargain I made with him in a time when he was in a tight place. Maybe I was wrong, but I did it so that Mother could have some evidence, when I was gone, that I didn’t do the deed for which I know people back home have blamed me. I got a paper signed by the criminal himself, exonerating me, and I paid for it with my life. I didn’t think that would be the price when I did it. I thought the five years would go fast, and then I could go back with my paper and live among my people. I thought with that evidence I could take my wonderful wife and child back and really live out the rest of my days. But God saw things differently, and I am content to go. Only I wish Mother could have had that paper! But now that Moira is dead, I don’t suppose it’s in existence anymore. Or perhaps Buck has made Sheila give it to him. He threatened to if I didn’t keep my bargain.”

“Well, friend,” said Angus with a joyous ring to his voice, “you can set your mind at rest on that point. Your mother has seen the paper, and it is now in possession of the president of the Hazen Bank, and your family and friends all know that you had nothing to do with the robbery, nor the two murders that resulted from it.”

“Thank the Lord!” said the sick man in a weak voice in which there was a sound of tears. “I don’t deserve it, but thank the Lord! And now I can die at peace. I’ve done plenty of things I shouldn’t have done, and I’ve sinned against all my dear ones, but I’m glad to be free of that terrible crime in the eyes of the world before I die.”

“I’ve something more to tell you, too,” said Angus, taking the thin hand in his and holding it warmly. “I’ve just had a telegram this morning saying that Buck was arrested last night, when he entered your mother’s cottage by the sea and tried to force your daughter to tell him where that paper was. And besides the evidence that the paper had already furnished and the perfect set of fingerprints, which they had been able to get after the robbery and murder and identified Buck as the criminal without any doubt, there was found in his pocket another paper, rolled tightly inside an old tin pencil holder. It was a memorandum that had been made out by the bank clerk concerning some of the stolen property. It had evidently been lying with the rest and they grabbed everything. It’s going to be important evidence in the case against him.”

“He found it then!” said the sick man excitedly. “It was a paper he dropped the night I helped to get him away, though I never knew there was a reason like that for his wanting to get away quickly. He dropped the slip in the car I drove for him, and I found it after he had gone. I didn’t know at the time whether it was important or not. I made out that it was written on bank paper by the lower edges of the letter where it had been torn off. It had the Hazen Bank name on it, and of course, afterward, when I read the newspapers and knew what had happened, I kept the paper to use as evidence if there ever was a chance. But I couldn’t go back anymore. I had helped him to get away, and they probably knew I had. There was no hope for me!”

“They didn’t all believe you had had any part in it. Your mother never believed it. She told me so!”

“She didn’t! Oh, my precious mother, how she must have suffered! I shall never see her again on this earth, but I’ve written her a letter to be sent to her at my death.”

“You’re not going to have to wait till you die,” said Galbraith, deeply moved. “You’re going back to see her and tell her all about it!”

The prisoner looked at him, bewildered, and then smiled sadly. “I wish that might be,” he said, “but I know it can’t. I asked the doctor the other day if there was any chance I could live till my term was out, and he told me I had only a few weeks left at most. And I know myself that I am growing weaker every day now.”

“But your pardon is on the way here,” said Angus with a light in his eyes. “I’ve been to the governor and made all the arrangements. I think it will be here in the next mail. And I have an airplane here to take you home as soon as it comes. Your mother is expecting you. Do you think you can stand the trip if we take it by easy stages?”

“Can I stand it?” said the sick man, rising up on one elbow. “Oh, Lord! You are too good to me! I shall see my mother before I die. I shall feel her kiss of forgiveness. I know she has forgiven me or she would not let me come home! And I shall perhaps see my little girl again before I go to see her mother and my Lord! Oh, sir, you are a stranger, but you have brought me the best thing that life could bring. I don’t know why you have done it, but I know I never can thank you enough. I’ll just have to ask God to do it for me.”

They started two days later, as soon as they could get the prodigal son arrayed in the fine raiment befitting his station, and the silver wings flew fast and carefully to make it as easy as could be for the invalid. By slow stages they reached the East and one bright morning landed safely on the broad white beach beside the Rainbow Cottage garden wall, and the son was at home at last with his mother, the father with his child.

Those were wonderful days while the death angel lingered and left Andrew Ainslee with his mother and child a little before he went to heaven.

That first night, after the invalid had been put to bed in his own home, Sheila and Angus went out together into the garden where the silver moonbeams were glorifying the drowsy flowers. Angus led her far down to the end of the garden where the old seawall rose grayly in the moonlight, making sharp, deep shadows over the rose beds, and then he opened his arms and Sheila walked into them.

“My darling!” he said softly as he folded her close. “I’ve loved you since the first minute I saw you and known you were the one girl in the world for me if you would have me, but you’ve been so sweet and shy I wasn’t sure whether you cared at all. I was even afraid when I put out my arms just now that you would turn and walk away from them. It seemed almost presumption to expect you to care so soon.”

She lifted her sweet eyes to his face in the moonlight and looked at him adoringly.

“Why, Angus, I’ve loved you longer than you have me, for I saw you first. Out there on the step when I was sitting at the dinner table, and before you knew I was here, I saw you, and my heart gave a great leap up for joy. I didn’t know there was such a man as you, and I loved you at once, only I was afraid to let myself know it.”

They had much to say those long moonlit evenings when they sat in the garden or walked together on the sand.

Daytimes they spent most of their time with Sheila’s father, holding sweet converse and speaking much about the Lord and heaven and Moira, who would be waiting for him.

The fresh air and good food and most of all the presence of his dear ones and the relief from the terrible thing that had hung over him so long gave the invalid a short reprieve.

He told them the simple story of his conversion in the prison cell. It seemed almost unbelievable that he had been saved in this quiet way and was so changed.

His brothers came to see him and marveled and spoke gently to him where they had meant to blame. His sisters hurried home from Europe to see him once more before he left the earth forever. And his sweet daughter sat at his feet and loved him, while his mother trotted her dear old feet almost off waiting on him.

And then one day, quite quietly, he slipped away at sunset into the beyond.

The young Bible teacher held the service and spoke of Christ’s coming again for His own and bringing with Him all those who sleep in Jesus, and Grandmother looked up and wiped her brave old eyes and smiled.

“That didn’t seem like a funeral at all,” said Betty happily to her husband as they walked back along the beach after the service.

S
ome people in the summer colony by the sea thought it was a little strange that Grandmother allowed a wedding so soon after a funeral at her cottage, but that didn’t make any difference with Grandmother. The happy preparations went on just the same. In fact, the dear one who had gone had wished it to be so. It was only because he failed so quickly and unexpectedly at the last that he was not present to be lifted to the bench in the garden, which it had been hoped he might occupy at the wedding.