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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.
"'Somewhere in God's universe either in this world or another your boy is alive and still your son. You've got to go on hoping that if he's innocent his name will be cleared of this disgrace, and if he's guilty he'll wipe out the old score against him some way and make good.'
"And then he gave me a line to live by. A line he said that had been written by a man who was stone blind, and hadn't anything to look forward to all the rest of his life but groping in the dark. He said he'd not
"'Bate a jot
Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer
Right onward.'
"At first it didn't seem to mean anything to me, but he made me say it after him as if it were a sort of promise, and I've been saying it every day of every year since then. I'd said it to myself first, when I met people on the street that I knew were thinking of Danny's disgrace, and I didn't see how I was going to get up courage to pass 'em. And I said it when I was lying on my bed at night with my heart so sore and heavy I couldn't sleep, and after a while it did begin to put courage into me, so that I could hope in earnest. And when I did that, little lass – "
He leaned over to smile into her eyes, now full of tears, he had so wrought upon her tender sympathies —
"When I did that, it put a rainbow around my trouble just as that prism did around your empty holiday tree. It changed the looks of the whole world for me.
"That's what I brought you out here to tell you, Georgina. I want to give you the same thing that your grandfather Huntingdon gave me – that line to live by. Because troubles come to everybody. They'll come to you, too, but I want you to know this, Baby, they can't hurt you as long as you keep Hope at the prow, because Hope is a magic glass that makes rainbows of our tears. Now you won't forget that, will you? Even after Uncle Darcy is dead and gone, you'll remember that he brought you out here on your birthday to give you that good word – 'still bear up and steer right onward,' no matter what happens. And to tell you that in all the long, hard years he's lived through, he's proved it was good."
Georgina, awed and touched of soul, could only nod her assent. But because Childhood sometimes has no answer to make to the confidences of Age is no reason that they are not taken to heart and stowed away there for the years to build upon. In the unbroken silence with which they rowed back to shore, Georgina might have claimed three score years besides her own ten, so perfect was the feeling of comradeship between them.
As they passed the pier back of the antique shop, a great gray cat rose and stretched itself, then walked ponderously down to the water's edge. It was "Grandpa." Georgina, laughing a little shakily because of recent tears, raised her prism to put a rainbow around the cat's tail, unknowing that but for him the crystal pendant would now be hanging from an antique lamp instead of from the ribbon around her neck.
CHAPTER X
MOVING PICTURES
IT often happens that when one is all primed and cocked for trouble, that trouble flaps its wings and flies away for a time, leaving nothing to fire at. So Georgina, going home with her prism and her "line to live by," ready and eager to prove how bravely she could meet disappointments, found only pleasant surprises awaiting her.
Mrs. Triplett had made a birthday cake in her absence. It was on the supper table with ten red candles atop. And there was a note from Barby beside her plate which had come in the last mail. It had been posted at some way-station. There was a check inside for a dollar which she was to spend as she pleased. A dear little note it was, which made Georgina's throat ache even while it brought a glow to her heart. Then Belle, who had not known it was her birthday in time to make her a present, announced that she would take her to a moving picture show after supper, instead.
Georgina had frequently been taken to afternoon performances, but never at night. It was an adventure in itself just to be down in the part of town where the shops were, when they were all lighted, and when the summer people were surging along the board-walk and out into the middle of the narrow street in such crowds that the automobiles and "accommodations" had to push their way through slowly, with a great honking of warning horns.
The Town Hall was lighted for a dance when they passed it. The windows of the little souvenir shops seemed twice as attractive as when seen by day, and early as it was in the evening, people were already lined up in the drug-store, three deep around the soda-water fountain.
Georgina, thankful that Tippy had allowed her to wear her gold locket for the occasion, walked down the aisle and took her seat near the stage, feeling as conspicuous and self-conscious as any debutante entering a box at Grand Opera.
It was a hot night, but on a line with the front seats, there was a double side door opening out onto a dock. From where Georgina sat she could look out through the door and see the lights of a hundred boats twinkling in long wavy lines across the black water, and now and then a salt breeze with the fishy tang she loved, stole across the room and touched her cheek like a cool finger.
The play was not one which Barbara would have chosen for Georgina to see, being one that was advertised as a thriller. It was full of hair-breadth escapes and tragic scenes. There was a shipwreck in it, and passengers were brought ashore in the breeches buoy, just as she had seen sailors brought in on practice days over at the Race Point Life-saving station. And there was a still form stretched out stark and dripping under a piece of tarpaulin, and a girl with long fair hair streaming wildly over her shoulders knelt beside it wringing her hands.
Georgina stole a quick side-glance at Belle. That was the way it had been in the story of Emmett Potter's drowning, as they told it on the day of Cousin Mehitable's visit. Belle's hands were locked together in her lap, and her lips were pressed in a thin line as if she were trying to keep from saying something. Several times in the semi-darkness of the house her handkerchief went furtively to her eyes.
Georgina's heart beat faster. Somehow, with the piano pounding out that deep tum-tum, like waves booming up on the rocks, she began to feel strangely confused, as if she were the heroine on the films; as if she were kneeling there on the shore in that tragic moment of parting from her dead lover. She was sure that she knew exactly how Belle felt then, how she was feeling now.
When the lights were switched on again and they rose to go out, Georgina was so deeply under the spell of the play that it gave her a little shock of surprise when Belle began talking quite cheerfully and in her ordinary manner to her next neighbor. She even laughed in response to some joking remark as they edged their way slowly up the aisle to the door. It seemed to Georgina that if she had lived through a scene like the one they had just witnessed, she could never smile again. On the way out she glanced up again at Belle several times, wondering.
Going home the street was even more crowded than it had been coming. They could barely push their way along, and were bumped into constantly by people dodging back to escape the jam when the crowd had to part to let a vehicle through. But after a few blocks of such jostling the going was easier. The drug-store absorbed part of the throng, and most of the procession turned up Carver Street to the Gifford House and the cottages beyond on Bradford Street.
By the time Georgina and Belle came to the last half-mile of the plank walk, scarcely a footstep sounded behind them. After passing the Green Stairs there was an unobstructed view of the harbor. A full moon was high overhead, flooding the water and beach with such a witchery of light that Georgina moved along as if she were in a dream – in a silver dream beside a silver sea.
Belle pointed to a little pavilion in sight of the breakwater. "Let's go over there and sit down a few minutes," she said. "It's a waste of good material to go indoors on a night like this."
They crossed over, sinking in the sand as they stepped from the road to the beach, till Georgina had to take off her slippers and shake them before she could settle down comfortably on the bench in the pavilion. They sat there a while without speaking, just as they had sat before the pictures on the films, for never on any film was ever shown a scene of such entrancing loveliness as the one spread out before them. In the broad path made by the moon hung ghostly sails, rose great masts, twinkled myriads of lights. It was so still they could hear the swish of the tide creeping up below, the dip of near-by oars and the chug of a motor boat, far away down by the railroad wharf.
Then Belle began to talk. She looked straight out across the shining path of the moon and spoke as if she were by herself. She did not look at Georgina, sitting there beside her. Perhaps if she had, she would have realized that her listener was only a child and would not have said all she did. Or maybe, something within her felt the influence of the night, the magical drawing of the moon as the tide feels it, and she could not hold back the long-repressed speech that rose to her lips. Maybe it was that the play they had seen, quickened old memories into painful life again.
It was on a night just like this, she told Georgina, that Emmett first told her that he cared for her – ten years ago this summer. Ten years! The whole of Georgina's little lifetime! And now Belle was twenty-seven. Twenty-seven seemed very old to Georgina. She stole another upward glance at her companion. Belle did not look old, sitting there in her white dress, like a white moonflower in that silver radiance, a little lock of soft blonde hair fluttering across her cheek.
In a rush of broken sentences with long pauses between which somehow told almost as much as words, Belle recalled some of the scenes of that summer, and Georgina, who up to this night had only glimpsed the dim outlines of romance, as a child of ten would glimpse them through old books, suddenly saw it face to face, and thereafter found it something to wonder about and dream sweet, vague dreams over.
Suddenly Belle stood up with a complete change of manner.
"My! it must be getting late," she said briskly. "Aunt Maria will scold if I keep you out any longer."
Going home, she was like the Belle whom Georgina had always known – so different from the one lifting the veil of memories for the little while they sat in the pavilion.
Georgina had thought that with no Barby to "button her eyes shut with a kiss" at the end of her birthday, the going-to-sleep time would be sad. But she was so busy recalling the events of the day that she never thought of the omitted ceremony. For a long time she lay awake, imagining all sorts of beautiful scenes in which she was the heroine.
First, she went back to what Uncle Darcy had told her, and imagined herself as rescuing an only child who was drowning. The whole town stood by and cheered when she came up with it, dripping, and the mother took her in her arms and said, "You are our prism, Georgina Huntingdon! But for your noble act our lives would be, indeed, desolate. It is you who have filled them with rainbows."
Then she was in a ship crossing the ocean, and a poor sailor hearing her speak of Cape Cod would come and ask her to tell him of its people, and she would find he was Danny. She would be the means of restoring him to his parents.
And then, she and Richard on some of their treasure-hunting expeditions which they were still planning every time they met, would unearth a casket some dark night by the light of a fitful lantern, and inside would be a confession written by the man who had really stolen the money, saying that Dan Darcy was innocent. And Uncle Darcy and Aunt Elspeth would be so heavenly glad – The tears came to Georgina's eyes as she pictured the scene in the little house in Fishburn Court, it came to her so vividly.
The clock downstairs struck twelve, but still she went on with the pleasing pictures moving through her mind as they had moved across the films earlier in the evening. The last one was a combination of what she had seen there and what Belle had told her.
She was sitting beside a silver sea across which a silver moon was making a wonderful shining path of silver ripples, and somebody was telling her – what Emmett had told Belle ten years ago. And she knew past all doubting that if that shadowy somebody beside her should die, she would carry the memory of him to her grave as Belle was doing. It seemed such a sweet, sad way to live that she thought it would be more interesting to have her life like that, than to have it go along like the lives of all the married people of her acquaintance. And if he had a father like Emmett's father she would cling to him as Belle did, and go to see him often and take the part of a real daughter to him. But she wouldn't want him to be like Belle's "Father Potter." He was an old fisherman, too crippled to follow the sea any longer, so now he was just a mender of nets, sitting all day knotting twine with dirty tar-blackened fingers.
The next morning when she went downstairs it was Belle and not Mrs. Triplett who was stepping about the kitchen in a big gingham apron, preparing breakfast. Mrs. Triplett was still in bed. Such a thing had never happened before within Georgina's recollection.
"It's the rheumatism in her back," Belle reported. "It's so bad she can't lie still with any comfort, and she can't move without groaning. So she's sort of 'between the de'il and the deep sea.' And touchy is no name for it. She doesn't like it if you don't and she doesn't like it if you do; but you can't wonder when the pain's so bad. It's pretty near lumbago."
Georgina, who had finished her dressing by tying the prism around her neck, was still burning with the desire which Uncle Darcy's talk had kindled within her, to be a little comfort to everybody.
"Let me take her toast and tea up to her," she begged. With that toast and tea she intended to pass along the good word Uncle Darcy had given her – "the line to live by." But Tippy was in no humor to be adjured by a chit of a child to bear up and steer right onward. Such advice would have been coldly received just then even from her minister.
"You don't know what you're talking about," she exclaimed testily. "Bear up? Of course I'll bear up. There's nothing else to do with rheumatism, but you needn't come around with any talk of putting rainbows around it or me either."
