Rainbow Cottage (24 page)

Malcolm was still trying to reach his cousin, but it looked from shore as if the sea itself had determined to keep them apart. At every stroke he was caught and whirled around.

And Betty saw with quick surprise that Malcolm was not trying to save himself. The ancestral Galbraith courage was still working. Jacqueline saw and wondered. Jacqueline was white and frightened. Death seemed so near, so inevitable for all three. She hated thoughts of death. She began to wish she had never left her house party in the mountains and come questing after a man who wasn’t in the least interested in her, a man who was out in the sea making a hero of himself to save another girl.

Then just as Grandmother was beginning to feel that her knees were going to crumple under her, Angus caught the rope flung out, and slowly, steadily, they pulled him toward the shore. While Malcolm battled his way shoreward alone, till at last, almost as if the sea were tired of trifling, it flung them all angrily forth where they reached a solid footing.

Angus staggered up to safety and stood for an instant holding his burden and gasping for breath.

Sheila lay in his arms, limp and inert, her long dark hair streaming down like a wet garment, her sodden clothes clinging to her quiet form. Grandmother’s heart gave a great shudder as she looked at her. Was she gone already? Had it been too late?

Then Angus started slowly toward them, staggering with weakness, and just an instant later Malcolm gained the shore and sprang forward to help.

Angus reached the car just as Betty arrived with blankets. She folded one around the unconscious girl, gathered up her dripping hair and wrung it out capably, tucking it out of the way inside the blanket.

Malcolm, just behind, seized another blanket with a great red border and threw it around his scantily attired cousin. Then he tried to take Sheila, but Angus would not give her up.

“Get into the car quick,” said Grandmother. “You can’t work over her here, and The Cliffs is too hard a climb. Somebody send the doctor down.”

“I’ve already sent Rose up to tell him,” said Betty quietly. “He’ll likely be there as soon as you are.”

“There are two hot-water bags,” said Grandmother. “Betty, put one under her hands and the other at her feet. Angus, pull that blanket over your chest. We must drive fast. Now, Jacqueline, get us there as quick as possible.”

Jacqueline, white lipped and silent, drove like Jehu across the sand, even down into the edge of the waves in one or two places where the dunes were impassable. Malcolm, looking stern and anxious, his white flesh gleaming in the rain, stood on the running board, holding lightly to the top of the car, and Betty, whom no one had remembered, came running, panting far behind in the rain, getting her feet wet, stumbling and even falling, crying out with a sobbing breath. They were all sure that Sheila was dead.

Back at the cliff halfway up the rocky climb, old Marget Galbraith halted to get her breath and mop the wet gray hair out of her eyes. She turned her sad eyes out to sea, looked at the cruel rocks, and shuddered. Then she said aloud, “Oh, my God, I thank Thee!”

After that she climbed on up to her home to wait for news.

As soon as the car stopped, Grandmother clambered down on her trembling limbs and hurried into the house.

“Get a fire on the hearth as soon as possible, Janet,” she ordered as Janet threw open the door.

“I already done it M’s Ainslee,” said Janet.

For Janet had taken up her stand at a second-story back window and had seen the two men come up out of the sea, one bearing a limp burden. Her eyes were red with anticipatory tears and wide with question, but she would not ask.

“The doctor will be here soon,” said the mistress.

“He’s on the upper road now, drivin’ hard,” said Janet. “I seen him from the window. I got hot blankets in her bed and a flannel ni’gown heatin’. I got hot coffee an’tea both, ef anybody wants it.” Grandmother swept her a grateful look and turned to hold open the door, for they were bringing Sheila in, and the doctor’s car was just driving up beside the wicket gate.

Jacqueline lingered a long time outside with her car, getting it parked just to suit her. She hoped that either Angus or Malcolm would come out to help her. Not that she needed help, but she was really afraid to go in. She was fearfully, desperately afraid of death. Was Sheila dead?

She didn’t understand why one of the men didn’t come out to see what had become of her. Men usually did that when she absented herself even briefly. But no one came, so she slowly, reluctantly, walked into the house.

They had taken Sheila upstairs. She couldn’t tell whether she was alive or not. She was afraid to listen to find out. She could hear grave voices and now and then Grandmother asking questions.

Janet came down pretty soon with something dark and wet in her hand. She dropped it into a big enamel pan and hurried back upstairs with trays of cups and the coffeepot. Janet didn’t turn her head nor look at Jacqueline standing there at the window with her back to the room, gazing at that tearing, tossing sea and shuddering at the thought of one having to die in the sea.

Jacqueline would sooner have cut her tongue out than ask Janet how Sheila was. She hoped that Janet had not seen her.

She began to wonder what had become of the rest of the Galbraith party. She went softly into the kitchen to look out the back window down the beach and saw Betty coming, her head out to the gale. What had Betty come for? What a fool Betty was! Did she think she could hold her husband by standing around glowering?

Jacqueline turned away from the window and saw the wet thing that Janet had brought down and put in the pan. She shuddered and tried to turn away her gaze as if it had been a casket or something connected with death, but her eyes were held irresistibly upon it. Was that a hole—several holes—right in the front breadth of what looked like a skirt?

She stepped closer. It was blue serge, and those were burned places in the fabric!

Then slowly the color stole up into Jacqueline’s selfish little face, and she turned sharply away.

Was that the dress she had put in the fire the day Sheila arrived? Was that what Sheila had worn away when she left? Was it all, perhaps, that she had of her own?

Jacqueline could scarcely conceive of such a state of things, but somehow she sensed the truth, and an unaccustomed, surprising shame filled her. She did not know what to make of it. A feeling that she, Jacqueline Lammorelle, the favored one, the anointed cherub of her world, had been unworthy. It had never entered her head before that such a thing could be, and she would not accept the thought, but it stayed with her even against her will and made her more uncomfortable than even the thought of death could do.

She hurried away from the offensive sight of the pathetic little worn-out dress with the holes that she had put into it. But as she passed through the dining room, she heard Betty’s footsteps going up the stairs.

Not to be outdone and to lose no chance of making Betty jealous, Jacqueline prodded herself to follow.

The two men, wrapped in togas of blankets, were standing barefoot in the hall outside Sheila’s door, drinking cups of coffee that Janet was serving them and conversing in grave tones. They seemed to Jacqueline ages removed from her suddenly. They did not look up when she came, nor seem to notice her. She was almost upon them before she realized that this would be so. She looked blankly around her, and there was nowhere for her to go but to follow Betty into Sheila’s room, and she did not want to go to Sheila. Yet she had to.

Sheila was lying softly in the blankets, tucked to the chin, her long hair with seaweed twined among it was spread upon the pillow, curling into little wet rings on the ends and around her brow.

The doctor was standing by her side feeling her pulse, and Grandmother was leaning over administering a spoonful of something. Sheila’s eyes were closed. But she could not be dead or they would not be feeding her, would they?

If she was dying, perhaps she would have to stand there and see her die! Oh, that would be awful!

Yet somehow she couldn’t go out there in the hall and stand with two men who did not see her. She had never experienced men before who did not see her.

Betty had gone over to the bedside and was already making herself useful, holding the medicine glass for Grandmother. But there was nothing for Jacqueline to do. Jacqueline was ornamental, not usually very useful.

Then, just as she stood there uncertainly in the doorway, trying to think what to do, Sheila opened her eyes and looked straight at her.

There was bewilderment at first in Sheila’s eyes and then a dawning eagerness. Startlingly she spoke.

“I’m sorry, Jacqueline, that I slapped you!” she said in a weak little voice, yet every word was clear. “I—was afraid—God was—going to take me—before—I got a chance—to tell—you—how ashamed I am—that I got—so angry! Please—forgive—me!”

The voice was very sweet, though exceedingly weak. Jacqueline was quite sure that it could be heard out in the hall. She was quite conscious that the two grave voices had ceased speaking when Sheila uttered the first word. Jacqueline’s face grew crimson up into the sheeny black of her hair. She stood dumbfounded before the girl on the bed, unable to stir or speak, or even to show anything in her usually well-controlled face except consternation. She was aware that two pairs of bare feet had moved in the hall and were standing in front of the door. She felt in her heart that two pairs of grave eyes were looking straight at her.

And now, for almost the first time in her remembrance, Jacqueline had nothing to say and could not think of anything smart or funny to say in reply to this simple apology.

“Better not talk anymore,” said the doctor gently.

“Tell her you forgive her, Jacqueline,” commanded Grandmother without turning her head, and Betty stepped back and gave her a significant questioning look and a place to stand next to the bed.

Jacqueline found herself stepping forward and stooping down over Sheila; then she said in a strange voice that didn’t seem to be hers at all, “Oh, that’s quite all right, dear; don’t think of it again!”

She put in the “dear” as if it were a dose of medicine that had to be swallowed. She didn’t know why she said that dear; she was sure it wasn’t in her heart, not any feeling of dearness. Only a desire to get this awful ordeal over and to stand in well with the audience.

She had tried to put a little trill to her tone, to get back her perfect assurance that had always stood by her everywhere, but somehow something was wrong. It seemed as if some terrible Presence was in the room. She wondered if it could be that Death stood near, waiting for the ceremony to be over.

She looked apprehensively toward the doctor, standing there with his fingers on that little white wrist. Did he know? If she thought Sheila was about to die, she would certainly scream and rush from the room. She couldn’t stand it much longer.

She tried to think of something more to add to a gracious acceptance of an apology as between the dearest of friends, but words had failed her for once. Even thoughts had failed her. She felt as if she were standing before a judge and was more frightened than she had ever been in her life.

But she found to near amazement that nobody was thinking about her. Only that unseen Presence, which might be Death, standing over there in the corner behind the doctor in the shadow, seemed to be aware of her, and it was with the utmost effort that she kept herself from shuddering.

She who had delighted to flaunt herself in startlingly brief array, to uncover her flesh to the world in the merest scrap of a bathing suit, or bare her back to the public gaze with costly evening attire, felt suddenly that her little naked soul looked very small and mean and vulgar as she stood there in the quiet room with her onetime enemy lying there in a blanket forgiving her and trying to come alive again. And all because of a mean, untrue thing that she had said. She knew it was not true when she had said it. If she had not seen Moria Ainslee’s marriage certificate, she never would have thought it.

If her own jealousy and selfishness could have been visible and tangible, she would have seen them lying then at her feet, slimy creatures of the earth, coiled low, and looking up at her with slithering, evil eyes of green.

She found presently that she could fade away out of the room without causing any notice at all.

The two blanketed men had finished their coffee and stood aloof, conversing again in serious tones. What were they waiting for? She dared not ask them. She slipped past them with downcast eyes, appropriate to a state of sorrow on account of a near relative’s critical condition, and went back to her own room, closing and softly locking her door. No one noticed her going in the least. She had a strange feeling that she wanted to cry. And she never cried. Even when she was a small girl she had scorned to cry. She had always preferred to make somebody else do the crying.

She went and stood by her window, looking out toward the sea, tossing blackly, the window crossed and recrossed with wild, dashing rain. She reflected on what she had just done, just said, and was angry. Very angry to have been placed in such a situation.

The presence of Death was not in this room. She could take out her own natural feelings here and look them over, and she found herself furious.

What right had that girl, dug from whatever pit she was—as witnessed by the dress she had worn to go away—to apologize to
her
? Apologies were out of date. They belonged to the Victorian age. No one apologized anymore unless he wanted to make others feel that he was better than they. And that was the way that Sheila had taken to bring her into disrepute, to put her down and spit on her! To bring out the difference between them in the eyes of the household and the neighbors.

Ah! Sheila was perhaps no Victorian after all. Perhaps she was the wiser in her day and generation than anyone suspected. Perhaps she wasn’t sick and weak at all. Perhaps she was just a fine actress, making them all believe that. Perhaps even that thing in the shadows that had so terrified her was not the presence of Death. Perhaps it was just the devil in Sheila laughing in his sleeve that she, Jacqueline, had had sweetly to accept an apology! If Sheila’s mother had been a singer or an actress, perhaps Sheila was just acting with a consummate skill.