Rainbow Cottage (2 page)

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.”

“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.