Rainbow Cottage Read online

  © 2013 by Grace Livingston Hill

  Print ISBN 978-1-62029-390-4

  eBook Editions:

  Adobe Digital Edition (.epub) 978-1-62416-114-8

  Kindle and MobiPocket Edition (.prc) 978-1-62416-113-1

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted for commercial purposes, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without written permission of the publisher.

  All scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.

  Cover design: Faceout Studio, www.faceoutstudio.com

  Published by Barbour Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 719, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683, www.barbourbooks.com

  Our mission is to publish and distribute inspirational products offering exceptional value and biblical encouragement to the masses.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  1930s

  Eastern United States

  Grandmother lived down by the sea in summer, with a lovely stone seawall all around the garden and pillar roses climbing over it in pink riot.

  The cottage was long and low and thatched, like Ann Hathaway’s, and there was ivy growing thick on the gable toward the sea, even climbing courageously up the great stone chimney and trailing down on the thatch.

  Over against the back wall there were hollyhocks thickly massed, and all around the kitchen wall were morning glories, mostly blue and white. There were borders that blazed with portulaca and quieter ones of forget-me-nots and sweet alyssum and candytuft. There was a whole corner where the soft yellow of “hose-in-hose” cowslips shimmered in the spring sunshine and lit up the delicate tint of blue phlox, and a little later blazed with the brilliance of great oriental poppies; a long stretch of cheerful Shirley poppies shot here and there with bachelor buttons; farther on there was a mass of larkspur, pink and white and blue against the ivy on the back wall. Tall pale blue delphinium and Madonna lilies stood near the house, with the tea rose beds just across the path, and down beside the walk that led from the house to the arched gateway and the sea there was a great drift of blue flax as blue as the sea itself. It was a wonderful garden in a marvelous setting, and being there so unexpectedly just on the edge of the great rock-rimmed beach itself was all the more astonishing.

  Grandmother was a brisk little old lady with a face that had survived many troubles and wise, bright eyes that would not be too sympathetic for one’s good, yet could twinkle with the youngest.

  Grandmother stayed in her nest by the sea till the water began to beat high above her seawall and the garden had gone into shrouds for the winter. Then she made brief, bright visits to her sons and daughters and grandchildren and returned to get her house in order as soon as the first hint of spring came.

  Grandmother still put up fruit in the old-fashioned way, pound for pound, and made jams and jellies enough for a hotel. She stocked her two deep cookie jars—one with molasses cookies, the other with big sugary caraway cookies—whenever a chick or child was coming to visit her. She had a little maid to help her, but she kept her skilled hand firmly over every bit of cookery that was concocted in her wide, white-tiled kitchen.

  Grandmother had fine old engravings and oil paintings on her walls—pictures of other days, each one with a story to it—and many a child had sat at her feet and heard the stories over and over again, learning history, geography, political science—yes, and religion—at her feet.

  Grandmother did not play bridge. She had never had time. And when anybody suggested her learning she would say, “Pooh! What would I want to waste my time like that for?”

  She could knit, even the new intricate stitches. She had recently knit her oldest granddaughter a wonderful three-piece sports suit in delft blue and apricot colors for a gift toward her wedding trousseau, proving she was up-to-date to the last minute. Yet she still had a big print Bible on the little marble-topped stand that always stood by her own deeply cushioned resting chair. There was a rare old antimacassar, crocheted of finest thread in an intricate pattern, covering the marble of the little stand, and on that the Bible rested. Yes, and she read it, too, morning and night as she sat in her softly cushioned corner with her eyes far away on another world.

  The youngest grandson called her “Gram” and considered her a chum. The youngest granddaughter called her “Babbie” and sat at her feet learning how to use a thimble. The oldest grandson called her “Grand” and said she was a good sport. The middle-sized granddaughter called her “Gwannie” and wheeled the very eyeteeth out of her. But every one of them adored her and delighted to have her come and visit, or better still to go down to the sea and spend the summer with her as they often did.

  One day in the early summer a little pilgrim arrived at the wicket gate that swung in the rose-trimmed arch of the garden wall. A little battered, tempest-tossed soul, wayworn and weary and half-afraid. Shyly, hesitantly, half-defiantly she lifted the latch, opened the gate, and stepped within, gazing breathlessly around on the riot of joyous color, blinking her eyes and staring, unable to believe it was all true.

  “Great God!” she said under her breath in a reverent, awestruck voice. “I never knew there could be anything as lovely as this!” Then after an instant, with conviction, “This can’t be the place, of course, but maybe they wouldn’t mind if I just stood and looked a minute, and perhaps they’ll be able to tell me where to find the right place; but I just must look at this while I’m here. I’ll never see anything like it again on earth, I’m sure. I’ve heard of heaven on earth! This must be it!”

  She set down the cheap, antiquated little suitcase that held her worldly goods—and yet had room to sag with an emaciated air—and gazed around, her shoulders drooping from weariness, her fingers slowly unbending with relief from long carrying the burden.

  She was a forlorn little creature, dressed in a shabby serge suit of a long-ago vintage, obviously sponged and pressed recently by an amateur hand. A little faded felt hat was pulled down over dark hair, which rioted out in places and caught the sunlight in little rings and waves and framed a face of delicate loveliness, whose fragile beauty was only the more startling perhaps because of the great dark rings under the sea-blue eyes. Even the sweetly curved lips drooped with weariness, and her whole slender figure sagged with exhaustion. She had walked all the way from the station, six miles away, and the heels of her shabby little shoes were worn crooked so that her feet were thrown out of balance. Besides, it was hot walking in the blazing sun, even on the hard, smooth beach, for her serge coat was thick, and the drabbled little white blouse she wore beneath it, besides being soiled with the journey, had acquired a great rip under one arm and would not do to appear in.

  She put up the back of a small hand garbed in an old black kid glove much too large for it, pushed back the hair from her damp forehead, drew a d
eep breath, and stared off at the beauty spread before her. Over the waves of the flax bed, blue as the sea beyond and blowing like real waves in the breeze, over the blaze of the portulaca borders, up to the lovely old house, the green cool darkness of the ivy-covered walls, the riot of the flowers, her gaze lingering tenderly on the lilies in their blue setting, on the curves of a great pale rose in the rose bed, on the gray of the stone wall with its garland of roses, and then beyond to the blue sea itself with the fitting white sails here and there. From inside this safe, sweet enclosure, somehow the sea looked better, more restful, more wonderful to look at than when she had been walking all alone on that great empty stretch of shore with the sea like a monster that might approach at any moment and swallow her up.

  Just a step farther inside the wicket was a rose-trellised seat. Would it be any harm to sit down for a minute and rest? It was cool in here, and she was so faint, so tired. She had not eaten yet that morning and it was nearing high noon.

  With a stealthy step, she slid over to the seat and sat down, watching the house furtively. If anyone came out she would ask her way and go at once, of course. If it was a pleasant person she might find courage to ask for a drink of water. How good a drink of water would taste!

  She dared to lean her head back against the arbor and close her eyes for a moment. How good the breeze felt on her hot cheeks. She pulled off her shabby little hat and smoothed her hair back. She must look very disheveled, and if she was to venture to the door to ask the way she must not look like a tramp.

  She fitted her hat carefully on her head again, tucked in the soft tendrils of hair till they were demurely smooth, and then sat back looking off toward the sea. She could just get a glimpse of the blue with one sail at a place where the wall dipped down to meet the lower level of the front. Oh, it was lovely here. It was like resting in Fairyland. It was almost like coming into a deserted island. Was there nobody at home?

  She turned her eyes cautiously toward the house. Yes, the front door stood open, disclosing a wide hall, or perhaps it was a living room, with a glimpse of low stairs in the dimness and the outline of a stone fireplace under the stair landing. A lovely house. Of course they would not go off and leave such a beautiful house alone with the front door wide open. There must be someone there, and eventually whoever it was would appear.

  Yes, there was the unmistakable slam of an oven door in the region of what must be the kitchen, the clatter of a hot pan upon a table, and an instant later the delicious odor of something hot and crisp and sweet and spicy wafted on the air. Cookies, or it might be gingerbread! And homemade! How wonderful it smelled! How hungry she was!

  What if she should dare to rush in and grab a cookie? How ravenous she felt! Probably if she should ask for something to eat they might give it to her, but she would rather starve than do it. She laughed quietly to herself, a trifle bitterly, over the thought of following out her hungry desire and rushing into that strange kitchen to grab something to eat. How terrible to have come to such a pass. She ought never to have started to come here with so little money. To think that she was down to her last five cents!

  And when she arrived at her vague destination, suppose she found it just as impossible as the place she came from? How was she to get back?

  Well, that would be to settle if the time came. At least she was so far on her way, but with only five cents left for emergencies. How long would five cents satisfy a hunger and a weariness like hers?

  There! There was that sound of the oven door and that delicious wave of spicy fragrance again that brought on another wave of sickening hunger. Another pan of cookies put in to bake! It smelled as if there were raisins in them.

  This would not do. She was growing maudlin. She must get out of here or she would go to pieces. This was too nice a place to spoil by collapsing. She would go to the door, inquire her way, and get on. If she was going to pass out, it would be more decent to do it out there on a lonely stretch of sand than here in this lovely home entrance.

  So she rose with a deep breath to draw courage and took one more wistful glance around the garden where butterflies were circling in droves above the poppies and a green-gold hummingbird was spinning pinwheels over a great white lily. Ah, to get a glimpse of heaven and to have to leave it!

  Grandmother Ainslee had come down to Rainbow Cottage rather late that year on account of having had to wait on the multitudinous festivities attending the marriage of the oldest granddaughter. She had been at the shore only a couple of weeks, hardly time enough to get everything going for the summer. She never had come down so late in all the summers that had gone before. She still was regretting having missed the cowslips and blue phlox.

  But the cottage was in order from top to bottom, not a thing out of place. They had got in a fisherman’s daughter for three days to scrub and wash windows, and now everything was in shining order. For Grandmother was expecting company.

  “She should have been here half an hour since,” she said to Janet, the maid, as she stepped to the sea door and looked out toward a dim ship on the horizon, as if that should be bearing the guest. “I told her to take a taxi,” she soliloquized, “and there hasn’t been a taxi by this morning. She must have missed her train. Her telegram said this morning’s train. I hate people missing trains. It shows they have no order. One should never miss a train.” She said it sternly as if the maid were arguing otherwise, as if against her will she wanted to believe that it was all right to miss trains.

  “But mightn’t the train have been late?” argued Janet, as Grandmother had known she would.

  “The train is very seldom late!” said Grandmother severely. “It is usually the traveler, not the train, that is late. Have you got that pitcher of lemonade in the refrigerator, Janet?”

  “Yes, ma’am; it’s been in this half hour. It’s frosted nice by this time, all over the crystal of the big round pitcher. I like that pitcher M’s Ainslee. It looks like a big rock of ice.”

  “That’s a very old pitcher,” said Grandmother with a dreamy look in her eyes, as Janet had known there would be.

  “I had it when I was married. I’d feel it, Janet, if anything was to happen to that pitcher. I’ve always been so fond of it.”

  “Yes, ma’am, you would! And so would I, M’s Ainslee! I jus’ love that pitcher. I got two glasses like it on the little silver tray like you said. Jus’ ta think you had ’em all these years an’ ain’t one o’ the twelve broke yet. My I’d hate ef anythin’ was ta happen to ’em when I was washin’ up.”

  “You’re always very careful, Janet,” said the mistress softly.

  “Thank you, M’s Ainslee, I try ta be. There! There’s a knock. Would that be Miss Sheila? Sheila, my that’s a pretty name! Want I should go ta the door, M’s Ainslee?”

  Grandmother cast a quick apprehensive look at Janet, almost assenting, then shook her head.

  “No, Janet, I’d better go. If it should be Sheila it wouldn’t seem very hospitable. But—I didn’t hear the taxi, did you, Janet?”

  Grandmother was patting her soft curls into shape and taking off the big print apron that covered her pretty gray muslin.

  “No, M’s Ainslee, but then you’n’I ben talkin’a lot. Mighta ben.”

  Grandmother handed Janet the apron and darted away to the door. Janet sidled to the crack of the kitchen door and fixed a fine discerning eye where she could just get a glimpse of the front hall, and the cookies winked at each other and took occasion to burn with a fine sweet odor like incense.

  When Grandmother saw the little girl-tramp at the door, she almost turned back and let Janet go in her stead. Janet was much more successful in dealing with tramps and salesmen of all kinds than kindhearted Grandmother Ainslee. But something in the tired sag of the girl’s slender body, something in the shy wistfulness of the great blue eyes that peered anxiously in at the screen door, drew her in spite of herself.

  “Would you be so good as to give me a drink of water?”

  The girl’s voice
was sweet and clear. It was not the voice of a tramp-girl. It sounded almost cultured.

  “Why, of course,” answered Grandmother briskly. Then raising her voice as she came on toward the door with the intention of looking up toward the road to see if a taxi was in sight, she called, “Janet, bring a pitcher of water and a glass, will you?”

  But she brought her eyes to meet the blue ones of the girl first before she sought the road, and something haunting in those eyes caught and held her attention, something that stirred an old memory with a sweet, bitter stab of pain. Those eyes! Who did they remind her of?

  “I’m so sorry to have to trouble you,” said the sweet voice again, “but I’ve walked a long way and the sun is very hot. I think I must have turned the wrong way at the village, and I just couldn’t go all that way back without a drink of water.”

  “You poor child!” said Grandmother pityingly. “It’s no trouble at all. Here, Janet, I’ll take that, and you run back to your cookies. I smell them burning!”

  The girl drank the water eagerly, draining the glass, and handed it back with a grateful smile. “Oh, that is so good!” she said with a quiver in her voice. “I felt almost as if I was going to faint if I didn’t have some water.”

  “Won’t you sit down out there in the shade and rest awhile before you start back?” said Grandmother a shade hesitantly. It wasn’t exactly what she liked to plan for to have a little tramp-girl sitting under the trellis when Sheila arrived, but—well, one couldn’t be inhuman, and it was a hot morning in the sun.

  “Oh, thank you,” said the girl with that wonderful lighting up of her tired young face that gave a stab of haunting memory to the old lady again. Who was it she looked like? “I’d love to stay a little and just look at those wonderful flowers and that sea. It seemed like heaven here. I never saw such a lovely garden. But I must be getting on. I may have a long way to go yet. I wonder—” And she hesitated and looked shyly at Grandmother. “I suppose it wouldn’t be at all likely that you would know the people living up the other way, would you? I suppose I must have come in the wrong direction, for it seems as if I had walked about ten miles since I left the station.”