Rainbow Cottage Read online

  “Why, yes, I know most of the people around this vicinity. I ought to. I’ve lived here around forty years,” said Grandmother briskly, running swiftly over the names of the winter settlers thereabouts. “What was the name of the people you wanted to find? Are they fishing people?”

  The girl looked startled. “Why, no, I don’t think so,” she said thoughtfully. “I really don’t know, but I don’t think there are any men in the family now, at least not at home. It’s a Mrs. Ainslee I’m hunting. Do you happen to know anyone by that name?”

  “Ainslee!” exclaimed Grandmother, looking at the girl with a puzzled frown. “Why, my name is Ainslee! But I don’t know anybody else in this region by that name. What are the initials?”

  “Mrs. Harmon Ainslee,” said the girl with a wondering look at her.

  “Well, that’s my name,” said Grandmother with a grim, almost startled look at the girl. “What was it you—who told you to come to me—? That is, why did you—” Grandmother stopped short in a kind of dismay, not knowing just which question she wanted to ask. This girl didn’t seem like either a beggar or a book agent. Perhaps she wanted to hire out for housework or something. Well, she must get this business over quickly before Sheila arrived.

  “But—I don’t understand!” said the girl wearily, giving a wondering look around that included the garden and the sea and the hummingbird by the lily. “It just couldn’t be a place like this. There must be some mistake.”

  The girl swayed and caught hold of the pillar by the door, and a sudden dazed look in her eyes pulled at Grandmother’s heartstrings.

  “You’d better come in and sit down and rest a bit anyway,” said Grandmother, opening the door and putting out a hand gingerly to the shabby serge sleeve.

  But the girl swayed again and leaned against the pillar.

  “I have a letter here,” she said, fumbling in the worn little leather handbag she carried.

  “A letter?” said Grandmother, half closing the door again. Then she was a beggar or an agent. They always carried letters, dirty, tattered letters that one didn’t want to touch.

  “Yes,” said the girl, bringing out a crisply folded letter.

  “I’m sorry,” said Grandmother almost curtly, “but I really haven’t time to read letters this morning. I’m expecting a guest any minute. If you could just tell me in a word what it is you want—”

  The letter suddenly fell from the girl’s nerveless fingers and fluttered down on the brick pavement.

  “Please excuse me,” she said with a frightened look in her eyes, “but I’ve just got to sit down for a minute, if you don’t mind.” And she suddenly collapsed to the step, her head swaying back to rest unsteadily against the pillar and her long lashes sweeping down across her pale cheeks.

  Grandmother pushed wide the door in consternation and knelt down beside her, calling, “Janet, Janet, come here quick!”

  But even as she knelt, she had that strange feeling tugging at her heart that she had seen those long lashes before somewhere lying on a round baby cheek.

  Janet slatted the last pan of cookies down on the marble-topped kitchen table and came, gave one look, and dashed out beside her mistress. “We better get her inside outta this sun,” she said briefly. She gathered the frail girl into her strong arms, lifted her, and bore her in, laying her gently on the floor. “I’ll get the aromatics,” she said efficiently. “Don’t you go to worry, M’s Ainslee. She ain’t bad. She’s jes’ passed out fer the minit. She’ll be awright!”

  She was back in a trice with the aromatic spirits of ammonia and a clean rag, wafting the pungent odor in front of the girl’s face. “Here, you hold that to her nose,” she commanded Grandmother, “and I’ll fix her a dose.” She handed over the restorative and went to get a glass of water and fix the drops.

  “Now,” she said, coming back with the tumbler and spoon, “I’ll lift her head up, and you get some of that inside her lips.”

  A moment more and consciousness returned. The girl opened her eyes slowly and looked up puzzled, gazed about on the strange ceiling, the walls, then gradually focused her eyes on the two women bending over her, and intelligence came back to her face.

  “The letter!” she murmured, fumbling feebly for her bag.

  “Your letter is all right, dearie,” said Grandmother solicitously. “Janet will pick it up for you. Just lie still a minute until you feel better.”

  The long lashes fluttered on the pale cheeks again but opened wide in a minute or two, and the blue eyes looked steadily at the kindly old face bending over her. Then the girl lifted her head and struggled to rise.

  “I’m all right now,” she said feebly, trying to smile. “I’m sorry to have made so much trouble. You’ve been very kind. I didn’t think I’d go to pieces like that. You see, I—”

  “There, there, child, don’t trouble to explain now. Wait till you feel better. Here’s your letter. Now Janet, let’s get her up on the couch where she can lie more comfortably.”

  Janet stopped and swung a strong young arm under the slight girlish form and got her to the couch without trouble. Grandmother came and stood over her, feeling her pulse with a practiced hand.

  “You are so good and kind,” murmured the girl with another attempt at a smile. “I’m quite all right now. I really didn’t mean to arrive this way, I really didn’t. But it was just the smell of those heavenly cookies that did it, I think. It kind of overcame me.”

  “You dear child!” said Grandmother quickly. “I’ll get you some. You’ve had a long walk and must have been hungry. You probably had your breakfast early.”

  “I—didn’t eat any breakfast this morning. I guess that was it.”

  “You didn’t eat any breakfast? That’s no way to do. You never should do that! Try to walk on an empty stomach! It’s never wise, especially in hot weather. Why didn’t you eat your breakfast?”

  “Well, you see, the train got in early—at least, I thought it was going to—and I didn’t think it was worthwhile to go into the dining car. But then the train was late—”

  “Oh! Late, was it?” said Grandmother with a quick look out the door still in search of the missing taxi. “Which way did you come from? South or west?”

  “West,” said the girl, drawing a long, trembling breath.

  “Oh!” said Grandmother, going over to the door quickly and giving another long look up toward the road from the village. “That explains it then. You see, I’m expecting my granddaughter from the West this morning, and I couldn’t understand why she didn’t arrive. But” —with a quick look at the girl—“if you walked all that distance, she certainly ought to have got here before you in a taxi. She was to take a taxi. Still, perhaps she came on another section. They sometimes have two sections on those through trains, I know.”

  The girl on the couch lay very still for a minute with her eyes closed. Then she slowly opened her eyes and looked at the old lady and spoke, hesitantly: “I guess, perhaps she’s here,” she said in a grave, reserved voice. “I couldn’t believe it would be such a wonderful place as this, but if you say you are Mrs. Harmon Ainslee, then it must be true. I’m Sheila Ainslee!”

  Chapter 2

  Grandmother whirled around and gave one long, penetrating look at the threadbare little waif who had drifted to her door. Then she swung around to the kitchen door and called, “Janet, bring the pitcher of lemonade and some hot cookies right away.”

  She said it in the tone in which one might have said, “Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him…and shoes on his feet!”

  Then she whirled around to the girl again. “So that’s whose eyes you’ve got—my little Andy’s eyes, and his long bright lashes. I might have known, poor fool I!”

  And she was down on her knees beside the couch working with the buttons of the shabby blue coat, pulling off the dejected felt hat, and smoothing back the waves of hair from the white forehead.

  But Sheila put up her hands to protect the coat from being unbuttoned and reach
ed ashamedly for her hat. “No, please,” she said feebly. “I’m not fit to be seen until I’ve cleaned up a little. I’ve had five days and nights in the common car, and I’m a sight! My blouse is fairly black! And please, I can’t get fixed up nor anything until I’ve said what I’ve come to say.”

  Janet came in just then, and Grandmother rose regally and took the tray from the reluctant Janet, who did not want her cookies and carefully prepared drink wasted on a little tramp-girl.

  But Grandmother thoroughly understood Janet. She placed the tray on a small table beside Sheila, poured her a glass of the tinkling frosty drink, pressed it to the girl’s lips till she drank eagerly, set a plate of cookies in her lap, and then in a voice that conveyed both rebuke and command to the maid, she ordered, “Janet, go up and see that everything is all right in Miss Sheila’s room, and draw the water for a bath. She has had a hard journey and will want to rest. You might open the bed and draw the shades down, for the sun will be shining on that side of the house by now perhaps.”

  Janet stared and turned hastily to do her mistress’s bidding, half sulky that things had turned out this way.

  But when Grandmother turned back to her guest she found her sitting up and putting on her hat again, a grave reserve in her manner.

  “Grandmother, you are very kind,” said Sheila, “and this is a wonderful place, far lovelier than I had ever dreamed any place could be, and not at all the kind of place I thought I was coming to. But I can’t take off my things, nor accept any of your hospitality, until I find out how you feel about one thing.”

  “Why, child!” said Grandmother aghast, sitting down suddenly in the nearest chair.

  “It’s about my mother!” said the girl. “I’ve grown up feeling that you hated my mother, and if that is so, I couldn’t stay here even for a short visit.”

  “I never hated any living soul!” defended Grandmother pitifully. “I certainly do not hate her. How could you get such an idea?”

  “You wrote my father long ago. We found the letter in an old coat pocket after he went away. You said something about his having married beneath him.”

  The blue eyes rested accusingly upon the old lady, and Grandmother sat up bravely under the challenge.

  “My son wrote me that he was marrying a girl who sang in a cabaret,” she answered with dignity. “That was all I knew about her. In my experience, girls who sing in cabarets are not usually well brought up, nor rightly educated nor cultured. I felt that my son would only add to the sorrow that he had brought to us all, by marrying”—Grandmother hesitated for a word—“out of his class,” she finished lamely.

  A white flame blazed into the eyes of the girl, and her lips grew hard and thin with anger as she answered: “That’s it. Out of his class! You thought she was out of his class when you knew nothing about it at all. You knew only one thing about her, and you judged her out of his class. Well, she was. She was in a class far above him. Don’t misunderstand me. I loved my father, but my mother was as far above him in every way as the stars are above the earth. You did not know that my mother’s mother was dying without the proper food and medicine when my mother began to sing in the cabaret and that she had to sing there even the day her mother died because she had not enough money to bury her. And that she had to go on singing there afterward because there was nothing else in the town that she could get to do while she paid the honest debts she had had to make while her mother was dying!”

  “No! I did not know that!” said Grandmother meekly, her eyes filled with a dawning trouble. “I only knew that my son wrote me he was going to be married and wanted money to finance what seemed to me a disaster to his life, which had already gone far toward ruin.”

  Sheila’s cheeks were burning now with excitement, and a new strength had come to her.

  “You did not know that my mother belonged to an old and honored family in Ireland once. There is a great castle over there where my mother’s mother used to live before their money was used to further what they felt to be a righteous cause.”

  “No,” said Grandmother sadly, “but it was not of things like that I was worrying. Money and castles and an honored name. I would have been satisfied if he had married a poor, obscure girl who was decent. But it did not seem to me that a girl—”

  “No,” said Sheila, “you did not ask questions. You did not know that my mother came over to this country with her father and mother when she was a young girl because her father thought that he had a chance to retrieve their fortune and save the castle to their name and that he was killed in a train accident before he ever succeeded in making much. My mother brought her mother out to the West to save her life because the doctor said it was her only hope. And they took every cent they had and spent it to save my grandmother’s life, and still she died. Then my mother was left alone and had to keep on at the only job there was. She hadn’t anybody, not anybody, to help her, and she hadn’t a cent. So she sang in that cabaret. And you hated her for it!”

  “No, child, no! I am not as bad as that. I did not hate her! I didn’t understand!”

  “No, you didn’t understand! Well, I came here to tell you. When your invitation came for me to visit you, I wouldn’t. I even hated you. I knew how much you might have helped us in our trouble and you didn’t, and I felt I never wanted to come near you, not even if it could save me from starving to death. But afterward I got to thinking. You wrote a very nice letter to me. If it hadn’t been that you never suggested that you would like to know my mother, or to have her visit you, perhaps I would have thought it was loving, for I hadn’t found that letter in Father’s pocket then that showed how you had been against her from the first. That was before Mother died and—”

  Grandmother lifted a shocked face.

  “Your mother is dead?”

  “Yes,” said Sheila fiercely and suddenly bowed her head with a great overwhelming sob that shook her slender shoulders. “Yes, she is dead. She died six weeks ago. Worn out! It was after that I found the letter in an old coat pocket of Father’s when I was packing up to move to a cheaper place.”

  “My dear!” said Grandmother heartbrokenly. The tears were coursing down her wrinkled cheeks now. “Oh, my dear! I am so sorry! I did not even know she was sick! Your father has not written me in a long time. He was always remiss in so many things. My poor bad boy! My Andrew! But I would have thought he would have written me when his wife died!”

  “My father does not know,” said Sheila in a colorless voice, a full apathetic look coming into her eyes. “He has not been home in three years. That was what killed her. She loved him through everything.”

  “He has not been home?” The mother’s voice was filled with horror. “Not been in his home for three years! Why, where was he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? Why, what can you mean?”

  “He often went off,” said Sheila, drawing a weary breath. “He used to get tired of having us always needing things. He used to get tired of Mother being sick and not having good meals, but how could Mother get good meals when there wasn’t money to buy anything to cook? And he used to go off. The first time he went I was almost four years old. I remember he said he wasn’t coming back till he had enough money to live comfortably on.”

  Grandmother put her face down and wept silently into her hands. Sheila went on with her story in a sad little hopeless voice as if she had gone over it all so many times that the pain was all drained out of it. As if it were merely a ceremony she was performing.

  “It was then that Mother had to get a job.” She said it desolately. “And there wasn’t anything else she could get but to go back to the cabaret where she had been singing when Father found her and married her.”

  Grandmother made a sad little moan.

  “She had to take me with her,” went on the girl. “I remember there was an old couch in the dressing room where my mother changed into the dress she sang in, and I used to curl up with an old coat over me and go to sleep t
ill she was ready to go home.”

  Grandmother lifted her tear-wet face and spoke earnestly: “But surely your mother could have written me. She knew I had plenty.”

  “My mother was a proud woman,” said the girl with a little haughty lifting of her chin. “She was as proud as you are. She knew that my father had asked help of you at first, had told you that he was turning over a new leaf, and that marrying my mother was a part of it, and that if you would help him get a start you would never regret it. And all you did was to urge him to go away and never see her again.”

  “Oh,” groaned Grandmother, “I thought I was doing the right thing. I asked advice of several friends, and they all said that was what I ought to do. I did not trust my Andrew. He had made promises before and not kept them.”

  “Well, maybe they were right,” said the girl in a toneless voice. “Anyway, you can see why my mother did not write to you. And somehow we made out, and my mother managed to keep me in decent clothes and send me to school till my father came back again. And the first time he came back he brought a lot of money with him.”

  “Oh!” said Grandmother hopefully.

  “But it didn’t seem to bring happiness with it. My mother gave up her work and stayed at home, and we had a nicer place to live in—a nice little cottage with three rooms downstairs and two bedrooms. But Mother cried a great deal. And once in the night I woke up and heard them talking. Mother wanted to go away to another place and get away from all the old surroundings, but it seemed that Father was tied up in some way. He told her he didn’t dare. It had something to do with money, and he seemed to have to go around with a lot of men that my mother did not like. Men she thought were bad. They gambled a great deal, and they drank. I am sure my father gambled, for our money sometimes would all be gone in a night, and Mother would suffer so and cry so. And I know he drank. He would often come home drunk. I used to wonder if he wasn’t ashamed to come sober, because I know he loved Mother and hated to hurt her.”