Kitabı oku: «Georgina of the Rainbows», sayfa 6

She gave her pillow an impatient thump with her hard knuckles.

"Deliver me from people who make it their business in life always to act cheerful no matter what. The Scripture itself says 'There's a time to laugh and a time to weep, a time to mourn and a time to dance.' When the weeping time comes I can't abide either people or books that go around spreading cheerful sayings on everybody like salve!"

Tippy, lying there with her hair screwed into a tight little button on the top of her head, looked strangely unlike herself. Georgina descended to the kitchen, much offended. It hurt her feelings to have her good offices spurned in such a way. She didn't care how bad anybody's rheumatism was she muttered. "It was no excuse for saying such nasty things to people who were trying to be kind to them."

Belle suggested presently that the customary piano practice be omitted that morning for fear it might disturb Aunt Maria, so when the usual little tasks were done Georgina would have found time dragging, had it not been for the night letter which a messenger boy brought soon after breakfast. Grandfather Shirley was better than she had expected to find him, Barby wired. Particulars would follow soon in a letter. It cheered Georgina up so much that she took a pencil and tablet of paper up into the willow tree and wrote a long account to her mother of the birthday happenings. What with the red-candled cake and the picture show and the afternoon in the boat it sounded as if she had had a very happy day. But mostly she wrote about the prism, and what Uncle Darcy had told her about the magic glass of Hope. When it was done she went in to Belle.

"May I go down to the post-office to mail this and stop on my way back at the Green Stairs and see if Richard can come and play with me?" she asked.

Belle considered. "Better stay down at the Milford's to do your playing," she answered. "It might bother Aunt Maria to have a boy romping around here."

So Georgina fared forth, after taking off her prism and hanging it in a safe place. Only Captain Kidd frisked down to meet her when she stood under the studio window and gave the alley yodel which Richard had taught her. There was no answer. She repeated it several times, and then Mr. Moreland appeared at the window, in his artist's smock with a palette on his thumb and a decidedly impatient expression on his handsome face. Richard was posing, he told her, and couldn't leave for half an hour. His tone was impatient, too, for he had just gotten a good start after many interruptions.

Undecided whether to go back home or sit down on the sand and wait, Georgina stood looking idly about her. And while she hesitated, Manuel and Joseph and Rosa came straggling along the beach in search of adventure.

It came to Georgina like an inspiration that it wasn't Barby who had forbidden her to play with them, it was Tippy. And with a vague feeling that she was justified in disobeying her because of her recent crossness, she rounded them up for a chase over the granite slabs of the breakwater. If they would be Indians, she proposed, she'd be the Deer-slayer, like the hero of the Leather-Stocking Tales, and chase 'em with a gun.

They had never heard of those tales, but they were more than willing to undertake any game which Georgina might propose. So after a little coaching in war-whoops, with a battered tin pan for a tom-tom, three impromptu Indians sped down the beach under the studio windows, pursued by a swift-footed Deer-slayer with flying curls. The end of a broken oar was her musket, which she brandished fiercely as she echoed their yells.

Mr. Moreland gave a groan of despair as he looked at his model when those war-whoops broke loose. Richard, who had succeeded after many trials in lapsing into the dreamy attitude which his father wanted, started up at the first whoop, so alert and interested that his nostrils quivered. He scented excitement of some kind and was so eager to be in the midst of it that the noise of the tom-tom made him wriggle in his chair.

He looked at his father appealingly, then made an effort to settle down into his former attitude. His body assumed the same listless pose as before, but his eyes were so eager and shining with interest that they fairly spoke each time the rattly drumming on the tin pan sounded a challenge.

"It's no use, Dicky," said his father at last. "It's all up with us for this time. You might as well go on. But I wish that little tom-boy had stayed at home."

And Richard went, with a yell and a hand-spring, to throw in his lot with Manuel and Joseph and be chased by the doughty Deer-slayer and her hound. In the readjustment of parts Rosa was told to answer to the name of Hector. It was all one to Rosa whether she was hound or redskin, so long as she was allowed a part in the thrilling new game. Richard had the promise of being Deer-slayer next time they played it.

CHAPTER XI
THE OLD RIFLE GIVES UP ITS SECRET

OUT of that game with forbidden playmates, grew events which changed the lives of several people. It began by Richard's deciding that a real gun was necessary for his equipment if he was to play the part of Leather-Stocking properly. Also, he argued, it would be a valuable addition to their stock of fire-arms. The broken old horse-pistols were good enough to play at pirating with, but something which would really shoot was needed when they started out in earnest on a sure-enough adventure.

Georgina suggested that he go to Fishburn Court and borrow a rifle that she had seen up in Uncle Darcy's attic. She would go with him and do the asking, she added, but Belle had promised to take her with her the next time she went to see the net-mender, and the next time would be the following afternoon, if Tippy was well enough to be up and around. Georgina couldn't miss the chance to see inside the cottage that had been the home of a hero and Belle's drowned lover. She wanted to see the newspaper which Mr. Potter showed everybody who went to the house. It had an account of the wreck and the rescue in it, with Emmett's picture on the front page, and black headlines under it that said, "Died like a hero."

Tippy was well enough to be up next day, so Richard went alone to Fishburn Court, and Georgina trudged along the sandy road with Belle to the weather-beaten cottage on the edge of the cranberry bog. Belle told her more about the old man as they walked along.

"Seems as if he just lives on that memory. He can't get out in the boats any more, being so crippled up, and he can't see to read much, so there's lots of time for him to sit and think on the past. If it wasn't for the nets he'd about lose his mind. I wouldn't say it out, and you needn't repeat it, but sometimes I think it's already touched a mite. You see the two of them lived there together so long alone, that Emmett was all in all to his father. I suppose that's why Emmett is all he can talk about now."

When they reached the cottage Mr. Potter was sitting out in front as usual, busy with his work. Georgina was glad that he did not offer to shake hands. His were so dirty and black with tar she felt she could not bear to touch them. He was a swarthy old man with skin like wrinkled leather, and a bushy, grizzled beard which grew up nearly to his eyes. Again Georgina wondered, looking at Belle in her crisp, white dress and white shoes. How could she care for this unkempt old creature enough to call him Father?

As she followed Belle around inside the dreary three-room cottage she wanted to ask if this would have been her home if Emmett had not been drowned, but she felt a delicacy about asking such a question. She couldn't imagine Belle in such a setting, but after she had followed her around a while longer she realized that the house wouldn't stay dreary with such a mistress. In almost no time the place was put to rights, and there was a pan of cookies ready to slip into the oven.

When the smell of their browning stole out to the front door the old man left his bench and came in to get a handful of the hot cakes. Then, just as Belle said he would, he told Georgina all that had happened the night of the wreck.

"That's the very chair he was sittin' in, when Luke Jones come in with the word that men were needed. He started right off with Luke soon as he could get into his oil-skins, for 'twas stormin' to beat the band. But he didn't go fur. Almost no time it seemed like, he was comin' into the house agin, and he went into that bedroom there, and shet the door behind him. That of itself ought to 'uv made me know something out of the usual was beginnin' to happen, for he never done such a thing before. A few minutes later he came out with an old rifle that him and Dan Darcy used to carry around in the dunes for target shootin' and he set it right down in that corner by the chimney jamb.

"'First time anybody passes this way goin' down to Fishburn Court,' he says, 'I wish you'd send this along to Uncle Dan'l. It's his by rights, and he'd ought a had it long ago.'

"An' them was his last words to me, except as he pulled the door to after him he called 'Good-bye Pop, if I don't see you agin.'

"I don't know when he'd done such a thing before as to say good-bye when he went out, and I've often wondered over it sence, could he 'a had any warnin' that something was goin' to happen to him?"

Georgina gazed at the picture in the newspaper long and curiously. It had been copied from a faded tin-type, but even making allowances for that Emmett didn't look as she imagined a hero should, nor did it seem possible it could be the man Belle had talked about. She wished she hadn't seen it. It dimmed the glamor of romance which seemed to surround him like a halo. Hearing about him in the magical moonlight she had pictured him as looking as Sir Galahad. But if this was what he really looked like – Again she glanced wonderingly at Belle. How could she care so hard for ten long years for just an ordinary man like that?

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.