Rainbow Cottage (27 page)

“Then that’s settled. After lunch you can write out directions and whatever inscription you want put on it, and tell just how to find it. Now, Mr. Galbraith, will you ask the blessing?”

Sheila listened in wonder to the quiet words of reverent grace from the lips of the young man. To have a woman pray was nothing strange, but the men she had known did not speak to God except in curses. It gave her almost a feeling of awe toward him and made her have a shy kinship with him also, that he knew her God well enough to speak to Him.

It was a beautiful hour they had together with no inharmonious element at all, for Jacqueline had not come back, having elected to stay at The Cliffs for lunch, hoping that Angus would return.

It was pleasant and cozy; Grandmother and the guest did most of the talking, Sheila quietly enjoying it all. They purposely did not mention the terrors of yesterday. All were glad just to enjoy the security and warmth and coziness of the hearth and the nice luncheon and the feeling of home. The falling rain gave them a pleasant shut-in feeling.

But when they rose from the table and went into the other room by the fire, Sheila looked up to Galbraith and said, “I can’t ever thank you for saving my life. I can’t find words to tell you how wonderful it was to be lifted up out of that awfulness. It was so good that I just floated off into nothingness.”

He looked down at her with the sweetest smile.

“Don’t try to tell me now,” he said gently. “Sometime a long time off when we have got beyond the terror of finding you there almost beyond aid, I would like to know all about it. But now, let’s just be very thankful to God that He let me come in time. And you don’t know how glad I was that I was there!”

He reached down, took her hand and pressed it for just an instant, smiled, then put her in the nicest chair by the fire and went and sat down opposite her. Presently Grandmother came back, and they talked again. Such a nice, pleasant time. Sheila felt so happy—happier than she had felt since her mother left her.

By and by they spoke again of the mother’s grave. Sheila drew a rough diagram of it and told how she had outlined it with stones that she had herself brought. She located it for him between two other graves with wooden crosses, so that he could not mistake it. And then she wrote her mother’s name and the date of her birth and death.

Galbraith took the paper and read it and looked startled.

“Why, my mother knew a Moira McCleeve,” he said wonderingly. “There were two sisters, Moira and Sheila. They lived in a beautiful castle over in Ireland. I wonder if they could be related to your family.”

“How wonderful!” said Sheila with shining eyes. “My mother had a sister Sheila who died after they came to America. And they lived in a castle once. McCleeve Castle. I have a picture of it upstairs.”

“Run and get it child,” said Grandmother eagerly. “I haven’t seen that yet.”

So Sheila went up and brought down several little old photographs, faded and yellow with age, and an old daguerreotype of her mother’s father and mother.

“Yes, that’s the castle,” said Galbraith, looking at the picture. “I’ve been there myself. It’s a beautiful place.”

They looked a long time quietly at the sweet picture of the mother, Grandmother and her guest each secretly thinking how much Sheila resembled her. Then suddenly, while Angus still held the picture in his hand, the sun shot out unexpectedly. It shone through the window by the fireplace, laid a bright ray upon the little old photograph and glorified it. It was almost startling the way it brought the picture out and made it seem real, and so much like Sheila!

Then they looked up in astonishment, realizing that it had been raining all the morning, raining but just a moment before.

“Why, the storm is over!” said Galbraith. “Rejoice!”

“The sun is out!” said Grandmother. “And there’ll be a rainbow! Look! There it is!”

They hurried to the window, Galbraith and Sheila side by side, and there it was, the great bow in the garden, as if its colors were sucked up from the drenched flowers at its foot. And it reached up and up in a majestic span till it arched the heavens, its other foot in the sea, the wild, turbulent sea, which nevertheless had taken on new colors of gold and green and rose, colors that seemed to be drawn over the rainbow arch from the garden just behind the gray seawall.

It was a wonderful sight, and they stood silently and watched it for a moment. Then Galbraith quoted, “ ‘And I saw a new heaven and a new earth.’ I wonder! Will it be anything like that, Mrs. Ainslee?”

“ ‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him,’ ” softly answered the old lady. “Nevertheless, I think sometimes He opens the window of heaven a crack and lets us get a glimpse of what it might be.”

Janet opened the door just then to ask Grandmother a question, and Grandmother trotted away and left the two alone.

“It looks as if you could go out and touch it,” breathed Sheila.

“Let’s try it,” said Galbraith, catching her hand and leading her out.

They stood at the head of the garden walk, and there it was among the drenched lilies and roses, just a few yards away from them, yet so evanescent.

“I think this is your rainbow,” said the man, looking down at Sheila tenderly. “God is showing you that His bow of promise is always over you. He brought you out of the tempest into this.”

He looked down at her and found her face quivering with emotion.

“I knew about this,” she said slowly. “Grandmother had told me. And I thought about it when I first lay on that rock. I thought I would never see it. But here it is. I ought to have remembered that even if I had been drowned the Bible says there is a rainbow up around the throne.”

“And here you are,” said the young man gravely. “Oh, I’m glad God let me save you. I’m glad it is this rainbow you can be looking at for a while, and not the other one yet, not till by and by. We—
wanted
you here.”

His voice was very earnest, and it almost took Sheila’s breath away.

“It is good of you to care,” she said gravely. “I—think I’d like you to know, now, before you go away, because I might not have another chance to tell you, how wonderful it was to have your arm come under me just before that last wave. I thought that I was drowning and that it was an angel’s arm, and yet it seemed like you, too, as if God’s angel and you were all one.”

His face took on a very tender look. “May that always be true,” he said reverently.

Grandmother came down the garden path just then, and they said no more, and very soon Galbraith took his leave, but Sheila went up to her room and knelt by her bed to pray, to give thanks for the beautiful day and the beautiful friend—even if she never saw him again on earth, still he would be a beautiful friend—and the beautiful rainbow of promise!

J
acqueline came home late in the afternoon cross and disagreeable. She had spent the morning playing endless games of bridge with Betty’s husband while Betty sulked beside the fire reading a book, with eyes that held smoldering fires and did not see the words she was reading.

Though Betty’s invitation to lunch was most ungracious, Jacqueline had stayed because she hoped that Angus would return. No one seemed to know just where he had gone, nor when he would come back. She had turned on the Victrola and danced for a long time with Betty’s husband.

But now, at last Betty’s husband had palled somewhat upon her, and she upon him perhaps, and she dropped him at The Cliffs and came on to the cottage, thinking to call up later and beg Angus to come down and spend the evening. Then she would have him all to herself. She was planning to let Grandmother and Sheila understand that she wanted the living room for her own private use.

She put away her car and came in, finding Sheila alone in the living room curled up in a big chair by the reading lamp, engrossed in a book.

“Oh, it’s you, is it?” she greeted her cousin with a tone both indifferent and insolent.

Sheila looked up and smiled pleasantly.

“What kind of heroics are you staging for this evening?” Jacqueline asked disagreeably. “If you have any more tragedies up your sleeve I wish you’d give us warning. It’s awfully upsetting to have a thing like that sprung on one all at once.”

Sheila gave her a puzzled look, tried to smile. Was this a new style of kidding? Probably it was.

Jacqueline went upstairs to her room but presently came down again, dressed in a daring red evening frock with long jet earrings dangling down to her shoulders. And her lips matching her dress.

She walked straight over to Sheila and stuck out her hand under the light.

“How’s that for a ring?” she said triumphantly.

Sheila, with a hope that this was an overture of peace, looked up from her book again and saw a magnificent diamond on the third finger of Jacqueline’s left hand.

“Angus is a good picker of diamonds, don’t you think?” asked Jacqueline. “I thought he came across in great shape. I just thought I’d mention it, since you didn’t seem to pay attention to my claim on him.”

Something in Sheila’s heart seemed to click and go down way into the pit of her stomach and then rise up and choke her.

She tried to summon a faint smile. “Oh,” she managed to say weakly. “I’m sorry you feel that way about me. I’m not trying to get anyone’s property away.”

“I didn’t say you were. I only gave you warning, see? And I don’t want any more rescues at sea staged or anything else to attract his attention, understand? Now that we’re really engaged, perhaps you’ll understand that you can’t get away with any of that tragic stuff again.”

Sheila’s eyes grew wide, and her indignation began to rise.

“I—don’t know what you—mean!” she said with dignity.

“Oh, yes, you jolly well know what I mean. Just lay off my property, that’s all. We’ve been out all the afternoon together and had a gorgeous time. Been miles up the coast looking at the sea.” Jacqueline tossed her head triumphantly. “And this is the result!” She held the hand out, and the great stone sparkled wickedly at Sheila.

But suddenly Sheila leaned back her head and laughed, a long, low, silvery laugh, without a bit of rancor in it.

Jacqueline whirled around angrily and watched her, and Sheila sobered at once.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” she said gravely. “Excuse me, please.”

“I hate apologies!” said Jacqueline. “Nobody makes them except to try to make you think they are better than you are!” And she whirled out into the kitchen where Janet was preparing the evening meal.

“Janet, I’m starved,” she declared. “Where are those little tarts you were making this morning?”

“Why, they were all et up at lunch, Miss Jacqueline,” said Janet with satisfaction in her tone.

“All of them? Why, how could they be? You must be a perfect pig yourself if that’s true. There was one apiece, for I counted them, and they were immense. I don’t see how you could possibly eat more than one yourself unless you eat between meals.”

“We had comp’ny ta lunch!” said Janet, offended.

“Company?” said Jacqueline, whirling around as if Janet were answerable to her for having had company without her permission. “What company did you have?”

“Mr. Angus Galbraith was here most all day. He jus’ left,” said Janet bitingly. “He et yours.”

Jacqueline whirled around angrily and stormed back to visit her wrath on Sheila, but Sheila had quietly taken her book and fled to her own room to smother her laughter in her pillow, for she meant, when she should go down to dinner, to allow no vestige of amusement or triumph to show in her face.

Somehow she felt as if she wanted to kneel down and thank God that He had let her know the truth about the man who had been so kind to her. If he hadn’t been here with her and Grandmother, she might never have known that Jacqueline’s tales were false. And she had to own that she wouldn’t have liked that ring story to be true, because if he were engaged to Jacqueline she wouldn’t have felt like even letting him fix Mother a little white stone in the wilderness to mark her grave. Was it wrong to want to keep a friend, just a friend and nothing more, for just a little while? She didn’t want to take him away from anyone, nor to hold him utterly for herself, but she did want to know that the kind things he had said and the way his arm had held her had really been hers to remember.

When Jacqueline retired to the telephone a little later and called up The Cliffs, Betty answered the call. Jacqueline asked for Angus.

“He has just gone away in his plane!” announced Betty bitingly. “I don’t know when he is coming back. He said he had some business that might even take him to the West Coast. In which case I don’t suppose he’ll be back before the end of summer.”

Jacqueline tried to get some information about where he had gone, but Betty was adept in saying a great deal without telling anything, and Jacqueline finally retired baffled from the field.

The next morning she brought down her suitcase when she answered the call to breakfast.

“I’m leaving, Aunt Myra,” she announced. “I had a long-distance call last night from the mountains, and they want me to come back for a weekend. I may return here afterwards and I may not. It depends.”

After breakfast Jacqueline slung her baggage into her car and, with little ceremony of farewell, drove away.

“Thank the Lord she’s gone!” said Grandmother fervently and reverently.

And Betty Galbraith, when she heard it later, echoed the same thought, if less reverently, still fully as fervently.

Betty came down that very afternoon to see Sheila.

Grandmother and Sheila were sitting in the garden, reading. Grandmother had several lovely, comfortable garden chairs that were easily transported to a shady nook and a little marble table that stayed out in the rain all summer, so it was easy to live in the garden on pleasant days.

Sheila had been reading aloud to Grandmother, in a little gray book, and stopping now and then to answer questions about her past and her mother and father. But she was deeply interested in the book they were reading. Its subject was the life of victory that is the right of every believer in Christ. Sheila had never heard anything like that. She gathered it all in hungrily.