Rainbow Cottage (7 page)

“Maybe not, child, but I guess I need to know about him. I might meet him sometime, and I’d want to recognize him at once, you know.”

“Oh, but Grandmother!” There was fright in the girl’s voice. “He wouldn’t come
here
! So far!”

“Maybe not, child! I don’t suppose he would. But I want to be prepared. How did he look?”

Sheila gave a little shiver and clutched her hands together nervously. “He was tall and bold and had shining black hair, just as if it were varnished. He had thick lips that sneered, even when he smiled, and showed a lot of big white teeth. People thought he was handsome, but he always made me shudder. I hated his lips. Once he tried to kiss me! Oh! It was awful! I got away, but I never went where he was if I could help it after that. He had eyes like—well, you’ll laugh, but they were like little white boiled onions. They were sort of full for their places. I heard people in the hotel say they were stunning eyes, but they looked wicked to me. And when he smiled it was like a dart of lightning.”

Grandmother was listening, wide eyed.

“Did he have a laugh like a horse, Sheila?” she asked in a startled voice. “And was he a friend of your father’s?”

“Why, yes, Grandmother! How could you know?”

“I know!” said Grandmother. “I suspected. That was Bucknell Hasbrouck, and he was always a bad boy. Even when he was in the primary school he was a bad little boy. He used to do the most devilish things. When he was only five, he took a little fellow out to the swimming pool down in the woods and pushed him in. They didn’t find his body until the next day. But another boy told he had seen him pushing him in, and finally he owed up he had because the other boy had candy and he wanted it. He took the candy and pushed him in. He said he didn’t know the boy couldn’t swim. They let him off, of course, because he was only a baby, but he went right on doing things and not getting caught, till one day he helped to hold up a freight train with some other bigger boys, and they sent him to jail. Then when he got out, he seemed to be a great hero to the rest of the boys. Your father was somehow under his influence. I never understood why. And when your father went away, it was the same night that Buck disappeared. And Buck was proved to have broken into the bank and taken two hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of cash and bonds that they couldn’t get back.”

“Oh, Grandmother!” said Sheila, her eyes big with trouble. “You didn’t think Father was in a thing like that, do you?”

“I never believed he was,” said Grandmother sadly. “He had always been honest. At least, I never had any cause to suspect him. He was a real bad boy and had to be punished a great deal, but I never knew him to be dishonest. But it did look bad for him, dearie. It almost broke your grandfather’s heart. He was a director of the bank and had to make good, of course, and he did, but it rankled in his heart that there was any possibility of suspicion attached to his son. Of course there were fingerprints to show that Buck had been there, and Buck had been in trouble before; and there was nothing to prove that our boy was mixed in it, only that he was always thick with Buck in the old school days and that he went away. I used to think maybe he had had some minor part in the affair without knowing how far Buck was going, perhaps, and got frightened when he saw how the thing had turned out. But we never knew. I often thought that hastened your grandfather’s death.”

“But didn’t my father write to you, Grandmother?”

Sheila had drawn a little footstool close to her grandmother’s knee and was sitting with her elbows on her knees, her troubled eyes looking up into the old lady’s, a new terror in her countenance.

“Yes, he wrote,” said Grandmother. “He wrote and said he had a good job out in Chicago, and we sent out there and had him watched and found he really was going pretty straight, working every day and boarding at a respectable place and not spending a lot of money anywhere, as he might have done if he had profited by Buck’s robbery. But he didn’t write often, and by and by he disappeared again for a long time, and then he wrote from away out West telling me about this wonderful girl he had met, and how he was going to keep straight now if I would only help him out. But—do you wonder, Sheila, that I thought it was only one more trouble he was getting into?”

“No, Grandmother! I don’t blame you at all now,” said Sheila with a trembling lip.

“Well, I blame myself. I should have gone out there myself right away and found out about everything. I shouldn’t have been so taken up with my new grandchildren and my own life. I had got used to thinking my Andy would never be any good. And then he disappeared again, and I didn’t know where to find him. Not for three or four years did I hear from him, and then he wrote that he was getting on nicely and told about you. But he still seemed hard and bitter at me and said things that hurt. I used to lie awake at night and cry about it. I used to blame myself, too, for not having done something when he was younger. But the next day all the children would blame me for worrying about a good-for-nothing, and I would shut my teeth hard and try to bear it. And I prayed for him every night always. Oh, my boy, my boy! He always went wrong, Sheila, from just a little fellow! Such a pretty little fellow! I suppose it was my fault somehow, but I didn’t know it at the time.”

“Don’t—
dear
Grandmother!” said Sheila, her own tears flowing now. “Perhaps he couldn’t help it!”

“Don’t ever say that about any living soul, child!” said Grandmother sharply. “He may not have been able to help it himself, but there is always God. And my Andy knew about God, from a little child he knew. When a man goes wrong, it is always because he wants to go that way, not because he can’t help it. But I never knew that man had followed him, or was with him. Or perhaps he followed Buck; I can’t tell which.”

“Grandmother, I’ve sometimes thought Buck had some kind of a hold over my father. I heard several things that made me think so. He hadn’t been around us long. Only a few months ago he came to the place and had something to do with the dance hall where Mother sang. He was the one who made trouble for Mother, cut her pay and made her work so hard. He didn’t like her because she wouldn’t be friendly with him!”

“My dear!” said Grandmother. “You
must
have had a most unusual mother!”

“Oh, I did!” said Sheila in a new burst of tears.

Then suddenly there arose a murmur that grew into a distant whirr, gradually differentiating itself from the steady murmur of the sea, until it sounded very near.

Sheila looked up, startled, and Grandmother sprang to her feet.

“That’ll be Mr. Galbraith. Let’s go out and watch him. He’s coming this way just to salute us. The planes usually go a little to the west of this spot. Hurry! He’ll be over us in a minute!”

Grandmother snapped on the porch light as she passed the switch, and together, hand in hand like two children, the old lady and the girl hurried out into the garden.

They were just in time, for they could see the great plane skirting the sea, circling out over the water in a wide loop, and rushing on over the house and garden.

Sheila looked up and marveled. She had never seen a plane so close. It was swooping down right over the garden, which lay bathed in a silver sea of moonlight, and even as it came, a clean bright ray of signal light shot out from it and searched the ground below. Then the ray was shut off again, and down from the plane as it dipped, something bright and burning, a smaller ray of light, burning in itself, like a tiny ball of fire, came hurtling down straight as a die and dropped among the lilies where its little ray kept shining on, making the lilies stand out from the other flowers with a strange, lovely incandescence.

“Oh!” breathed Sheila. “What is it?”

They hurried down the garden path toward the lilies, Grandmother guiding, for Sheila’s eyes were up in the sky watching the curve of the great bird as it swept upward. Grandmother as eager as Sheila.

“There it is, child, pick it up! Right at the foot of that largest lily! My old bones can’t bend to reach it!” cried Grandmother.

Sheila brought her eyes down to earth for a moment and picked up the bright thing. A small metal flashlight with the light turned on.

Sheila looked at it in wonder.

“What is it?” she asked again. She had never seen one like it before.

“A pocket flashlight,” said Grandmother, giving it a quick glance. “It’s a wonder it didn’t break in falling. That’s his card tied to it. See, Sheila, he’s coming back again to give us another greeting. Answer it this time. Move that little button back and forth. That shuts off the light and turns it on again, see? Now, he’s sending down his searchlight again; isn’t that pretty where it strikes the lilies and delphinium? Now, hold yours up and move the button back and forth.”

They were like two children as they stood there among the flowers with heads lifted, hands raised waving, the little light answering the big one. Sheila never had had such a sweet time in her life, not since the days when her mother used to make strings of tiny paper dolls out of the paper that came around the sugar package and then blow them into the air, while Sheila would burst into gales of laughter.

It was so wonderful to have a great plane flying overhead, a handsome friendly face looking down above that shaft of light. She could not discern the good looks, but the friendliness was there in the trouble he was taking to show this courtesy and greeting. Of course most of it was for Grandmother. He knew her cousin, too. He was just being nice. Sheila had no foolish notions about it. But it was so lovely to be a part of this little play in the air above the garden.

Three times the great plane circled out over the sea and returned. The fourth time, with the shaft of light making big circles in the sky, it sailed away toward the southwest and presently was a mere speck of red light in the distance, a mere rumble in the night for a minute and then was gone.

Sheila stood still in the garden path where the sky had become a mere distant haze of night expanse and looked down at the little thing in her hand, feeling its smooth nickel sides, snapping it off and on again just to watch it come and go, then turning it into the cup of a lily and out again.

“Well, that was nice!” said Grandmother briskly. “He is a nice young man. He treated me as well as if I’d been a girl, too. There don’t seem to be too many nowadays that bother with an old woman.”

“Oh, Grandmother, he liked you! I could see it at once!”

“We must have him down to dinner when he gets back. Now, child, let’s walk around the garden, and then we must go in. You need to get to bed again. There still are dark circles under your eyes.”

So they walked around in the moonlight for a few minutes, Grandmother introducing her new granddaughter to the different flowers and giving their pedigrees.

“I think it is the most beautiful place I have ever seen—or even thought could be!” said the girl ecstatically.

“Well, it is pretty,” admitted Grandmother. “Especially sometimes. You know we call it Rainbow Cottage, don’t you?”

“No,” laughed Sheila. “What a pretty name! Is it because of the rainbow-colored garden?”

“No, though that might fit sometimes,” answered Grandmother. “It’s because we have a real rainbow here sometimes. Wait till you see it. Sometimes when the sun is just in the right position, and there’s been a storm, a great lovely rainbow will suddenly bloom out with one foot in the garden right among the flowers—as if it drew its colors from the flowers—and one foot out there on the sea—as if they belonged together, the garden and the sea, and there were no seawall to separate them. It is a wonderful sight. It doesn’t come often, but when it does, you just can’t do a thing but stand and watch it. It almost seems as if you could go out there and put your hand in the separate colors. I actually tried it once myself when no one was watching me, but all I found, of course, was misty sunshine, for I couldn’t handle the rainbow at all. It almost seemed as if it must have moved, run away laughing to hide when I came too near, you know; but when I went back to my window where I saw it first, there it was as clear as ever in all its bright colors! If I were an artist I would like to paint a picture of it to keep, only no artist could ever mix those clear, transparent, sparkling colors with the mystery of the sea and sky both in them, for if they tried, the paint would be too dull to hold them.”

“Oh, Grandmother!” said the girl, looking at the lovely little old lady with the silver of the moonlight on her white hair and the delicacy of her cameo profile against the blue blackness of the night. “I think you are a poet anyway, if you are not an artist. I do wish my mother could have known you!”

“Well, I wish I had known her. It’s to my everlasting shame that I neglected to do so. Now, let’s go in. Tomorrow is the Sabbath. We can’t go to church because they haven’t started the services in the little summer chapel yet. But we’ll have a service by ourselves and take a good rest day; and then if you are feeling quite rested we’re going to run down to Boston for a couple of days’ shopping. How is that?”

“Wonderful!” said Sheila. “I’ve always wanted to see Boston. But, won’t that cost a lot, Grandmother, to take me along? I could quite well stay here while you are gone.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” said Grandmother. “Just please remember I owe you a lot for my stupid actions in the past, and don’t mention money to me again. Now, run along to bed!”

T
he night that Sheila left her Western home so precipitately, Buck Hasbrouck had come into the Junction House a few minutes before train time and ordered a piece of apple pie and a cup of coffee while Sheila was hurrying around getting ready for the evening rush.

He had done that several times lately, always making it necessary for Sheila to wait upon him, usually managing to come when she happened to be alone in the serving room. Several times he had tried to be familiar, and she avoided him on all occasions possible.

This time, however, Mrs. Higgins called to her from the kitchen to wait on him, and she had no choice.