The Rainbow Game
With her arm stiff and cramped from being held so long in one position,
Georgina waked suddenly and looked around her in bewilderment. Uncle
Darcy was in the room, saying something about her riding home in the
machine. He didn't want to hurry her off, but Mr. Milford was waiting at
the gate, and it would save her a long walk home----.
While he talked he was leaning over Aunt Elspeth, patting her cheek, and
she was clinging to his hand and smiling up at him as if he had just been
restored to her after a long, long absence, instead of a separation of
only a few hours. And he looked so glad about something, as if the nicest
thing in the world had happened, that Georgina rubbed her eyes and stared
at him, wondering what it could have been.
Evidently, it was the honk of the horn which had aroused Georgina, and
when it sounded again she sprang up, still confused by the suddenness of
her awakening, with only one thing clear in her mind, the necessity for
haste. She snatched her prism from the window and caught up her hat as
she ran through the next room, but not until she was half-way home did
she remember that she had said nothing about the eggs and had asked no
questions about the trip to Brewster. She had not even said good-bye.
Mr. Milford nodded pleasantly when she went out to the car, saying, "Hop
in, kiddie," but he did not turn around after they started and she did
not feel well enough acquainted with him to shout out questions behind
his back. Besides, after they had gone a couple of blocks he began
explaining something to Richard, who was sitting up in front of him,
about the workings of the car, and kept on explaining all the rest of the
way home. She couldn't interrupt.
Not until she climbed out in front of her own gate with a shy "Thank you,
Mr. Milford, for bringing me home," did she find courage and opportunity
to ask the question she longed to know.
"Did you find the woman? _Was_ it her pouch?"
Mr. Milford was leaning forward in his seat to examine something that had
to do with the shifting of the gears, and he answered while he
investigated, without looking up.
"Yes, but she couldn't remember where the letter was from, so we're not
much wiser than we were before, except that we know for a certainty that
Dan was alive and well less than two months ago. At least Uncle Dan'l
believes it is Dan. The woman calls him Dave, but Uncle Dan'l vows
they're one and the same."
Having adjusted the difficulty, Mr. Milford, with a good-bye nod to
Georgina, started on down the street again. Georgina stood looking after
the rapidly disappearing car.
"Well, no wonder Uncle Darcy looked so happy," she thought, recalling his
radiant face. "It was knowing that Danny is alive and well that made it
shine so. I wish I'd been along. Wish I could have heard every thing each
one of them said. I could have remembered every single word to tell
Richard, but he won't remember even half to tell me."
It was in the pursuit of all the information which could be pumped out of
Richard that Georgina sought the Green Stairs soon after breakfast next
morning. Incidentally, she was on her way to a nearby grocery and had
been told to hurry. She ran all the way down in order to gain a few extra
moments in which to loiter. As usual at this time of morning, Richard was
romping over the terraces with Captain Kidd.
"Hi, Georgina," he called, as he spied her coming. "I've got a new game.
A new way to play tag. Look."
Plunging down the steps he held out for her inspection a crystal
paperweight which he had picked up from the library table. Its round
surface had been cut into many facets, as a diamond is cut to make it
flash the light, and the spots of color it threw as he turned it in the
sun were rainbow-hued.
"See," he explained. "Instead of tagging Captain Kidd with my hand I
touch him with a rainbow, and it's lots harder to do because you can't
always make it light where you want it to go, or where you think it is
going to fall. I've only tagged him twice so far in all the time I've
been trying, because he bobs around so fast. Come on, I'll get you before
you tag me," he added, seeing that her prism hung from the ribbon on her
neck.
She did not wear it every day, but she had felt an especial need for its
comforting this morning, and had put it on as she slowly dressed. The
difficulty of restoring the eggs loomed up in front of her as a real
trouble, and she needed this to remind her to keep on hoping that some
way would soon turn up to end it.
It was a fascinating game. Such tags are elusive, uncertain things. The
pursuer can never be certain of touching the pursued. Georgina entered
into it, alert and glowing, darting this way and that to escape being
touched by the spots of vivid color. Her prism threw it in bars,
Richard's in tiny squares and triangles.
"Let's make them fight!" Richard exclaimed in the midst of it, and for a
few moments the color spots flashed across each other like flocks of
darting birds. Suddenly Georgina stopped, saying:
"Oh, I forgot. I'm on my way to the grocery, and I must hurry back. But I
wanted to ask you two things. One was, tell me all about what the woman
said yesterday, and the other was, think of some way for me to earn
twenty cents. There isn't time to hear about the first one now, but think
right quick and answer the second question."
She started down the street, skipping backwards slowly, and Richard
walked after her.
"Aw, I don't know," he answered in a vague way. "At home when we wanted
to make money we always gave a show and charged a penny to get in, or we
kept a lemonade stand; but we don't know enough kids here to make that
pay."
Then he looked out over the water and made a suggestion at random. A boy
going along the beach towards one of the summer cottages with a pail in
his hand, made him think of it.
"Pick blueberries and sell them."
"I thought of that," answered Georgina, still progressing towards the
grocery backward. "And it would be a good time now to slip away while
Tippy's busy with the Bazaar. This is the third day. But they've done so
well they're going to keep on with it another day, and they've thought up
a lot of new things to-morrow to draw a crowd. One of them is a kind of
talking tableau. I'm to be in it, so it wouldn't do for me to go and get
my hands all stained with berries when I'm to be dressed up as a part of
the show for the whole town to come and take a look at me."
Richard had no more suggestions to offer, so with one more flash of the
prism and a cry of "last tag," Georgina turned and started on a run to
the grocery. Richard and the paperweight followed in hot pursuit.
Up at one of the front windows of the bungalow, two interested spectators
had been watching the game below. One was Richard's father, the other was
a new guest of Mr. Milford's who had arrived only the night before. He
was the Mr. Locke who was to take Richard and his father and Cousin James
away on his yacht next morning. He was also a famous illustrator of
juvenile books, and he sometimes wrote the rhymes and fairy tales himself
which he illustrated. Everybody in this town of artists who knew anything
at all of the world of books and pictures outside, knew of Milford Norris
Locke. Now as he watched the graceful passes of the two children darting
back and forth on the board-walk below, he asked:
"Who's the little girl, Moreland? She's the child of my dreams--the very
one I've been hunting for weeks. She has not only the sparkle and spirit
that I want to put into those pictures I was telling you about, but the
grace and the curls and the mischievous eyes as well. Reckon I could get
her to pose for me?"
That is how it came about that Georgina found Richard's father waiting
for her at the foot of the Green Stairs when she came running back from
the grocery. When she went home a few minutes later, she carried with her
something more than the cake of sweet chocolate that Tippy had sent her
for in such a hurry. It was the flattering knowledge that a famous
illustrator had asked to make a sketch of her which would be published in
a book if it turned out to be a good one.
With a sailing party and a studio reception and several other engagements
to fill up his one day in Provincetown, Mr. Locke could give only a part
of the morning to the sketches, and wanted to begin as soon as possible.
So a few minutes after Georgina went dancing in with the news, he
followed in Mr. Milford's machine. He arrived so soon after, in fact,
that Tippy had to receive him just as she was in her gingham house dress
and apron.
After looking all over the place he took Georgina down to the garden and
posed her on a stone bench near the sun-dial, at the end of a tall,
bright aisle of hollyhocks. There was no time to waste.
"We'll pretend you're sitting on the stone rim of a great fountain in the
King's garden," he said. "You're trying to find some trace of the
beautiful Princess who has been bewitched and carried away to a castle
under the sea, that had 'a ceiling of amber, a pavement of pearl.'"
Georgina looked up, delighted that he had used a line from a poem she
loved. It made her feel as if he were an old friend.
"This is for a fairy tale that has just begun to hatch itself out in my
mind, so you see it isn't all quite clear yet. There'll be lily pads in
the fountain. Maybe you can hear what they are saying, or maybe the gold-
fish will bring you a message, because you are a little mortal who has
such a kind heart that you have been given the power to understand the
speech of everything which creeps or swims or flies."
Georgina leaned over and looked into the imaginary fountain dubiously,
forgetting in her interest of the moment that her companion was the great
Milford Norris Locke. She was entering with him into the spirit of his
game of "pretend" as if he were Richard.
"No, I'll tell you," she suggested. "Have it a frog instead of a fish
that brings the message. He can jump right out of that lily pad on to the
edge of the fountain where I am sitting, and then when you look at the
picture you can see us talking together. No one could tell what I was
doing if they saw me just looking down into the fountain, but they could
tell right away if the frog was here and I was shaking my finger at him
as if I were saying:
"'Now tell me the truth, Mr. Frog, or the Ogre of the Oozy Marsh shall
eat you ere the day be done.'"
"Don't move. Don't move!" called Mr. Locke, excitedly. "Ah, that's
perfect. That's exactly what I want. Hold that pose for a moment or two.
Why, Georgina, you've given me exactly what I wanted and a splendid idea
besides. It will give the fairy tale an entirely new turn. If you can
only hold that position a bit longer, then you may rest."
His pencil flew with magical rapidity and as he sketched he kept on
talking in order to hold the look of intense interest which showed in her
glowing face.
"I dearly love stories like that," sighed Georgina when he came to the
end and told her to lean back and rest a while.
"Barby--I mean my mother--and I act them all the time, and sometimes we
make them up ourselves."
"Maybe you'll write them when you grow up," suggested Mr. Locke not
losing a moment, but sketching her in the position she had taken of her
own accord.
"Maybe I shall," exclaimed Georgina, thrilled by the thought. "My
grandfather Shirley said I could write for his paper some day. You know
he's an editor, down in Kentucky. I'd like to be the editor of a magazine
that children would adore the way I do the _St. Nicholas_."
Tippy would have said that Georgina was "run-ning on." But Mr. Locke did
not think so. Children always opened their hearts to him. He held the
magic key. Georgina found it easier to tell him her inmost feelings than
anybody else in the world but Barby.
"That's a beautiful game you and Dicky were playing this morning," he
remarked presently, "tagging each other with rainbows. I believe I'll put
it into this fairy tale, have the water-nixies do it as they slide over
the water-fall."
"But it isn't half as nice as the game we play in earnest," she assured
him. "In our Rainbow Club we have a sort of game of tag. We tag a person
with a good time, or some kindness to make them happy, and we pretend
that makes a little rainbow in the world. Do you think it does?"
"It makes a very real one, I am sure," was the serious answer. "Have you
many members?"
"Just Richard and me and the bank president, Mr. Gates, so far, but--but
you can belong--if you'd like to."
She hesitated a trifle over the last part of her invitation, having just
remembered what a famous man she was talking to. He might think she was
taking a liberty even to suggest that he might care to belong.
"I'd like it very much," he assured her gravely, "if you think I can live
up to the requirements."
"Oh, you already have," she cried. "Think of all the happy hours you have
made for people with your books and pictures--just swarms and bevies and
_flocks_ of rainbows! We would have put you on the list of honorary
members anyhow. Those are the members who don't know they are members,"
she explained. "They're just like the prisms themselves. Prisms don't
know they are prisms but everybody who looks at them sees the beautiful
places they make in the world."
"Georgina," he said solemnly, "that is the very loveliest thing that was
ever said to me in all my life. Make me club member number four and I'll
play the game to my very best ability. I'll try to do some tagging really
worth while."
He had been sketching constantly all the time he talked, and now,
impelled by curiosity, Georgina got up from the stone bench and walked
over to take a look at his work. He had laid aside the several outline
studies he had made of her, and was now exercising his imagination in
sketching a ship.
"This is to be the one that brings the Princess home, and in a minute I
want you to pose for the Princess, for she is to have curls, long, golden
ones, and she is to hold her head as you did a few moments ago when you
were talking about looking off to sea."
Georgina brought her hands together in a quick gesture as she said
imploringly, "Oh, _do_ put Hope at the prow. Every time I pass the
Figurehead House and see Hope sitting up on the portico roof I wish I
could see how she looked when she was riding the waves on the prow of a
gallant vessel. That's where she ought to be, I heard a man say. He said
Hope squatting on a portico roof may look ridiculous, but Hope breasting
the billows is superb."
[Illustration: Coming across a Sea of Dreams]
Mr. Locke was no stranger in the town. He knew the story of the
figurehead as the townspeople knew it, now he heard its message as Uncle
Darcy knew it. He listened as intently to Georgina as she had listened to
him. At the end he lifted his head, peering fixedly through half-closed
eyes at nothing.
"You have made me see the most beautiful ship," he said, musingly. "It is
a silver shallop coming across a sea of Dreams, its silken sails set
wide, and at the prow is an angel. 'White-handed Hope, thou hovering
angel girt with golden wings,'" he quoted. "Yes, I'll make it with golden
wings sweeping back over the sides this way. See?"
His pencil flew over the paper again, showing her in a few swift strokes
an outline of the vision she had given him. And now Tippy would have
said not only that Georgina was "running on," but that she was "wound
up," for with such a sympathetic and appreciative listener, she told him
the many things she would have taken to Barby had she been at home.
Especially, she talked about her difficulties in living up to the aim of
the club. In stories there are always poor people whom one can benefit;
patient sufferers at hospitals, pallid children of the slums. But in the
range of Georgina's life there seemed to be so few opportunities and
those few did not always turn out the way they should.
For instance, there was the time she tried to cheer Tippy up with her
"line to live by," and her efforts were neither appreciated nor
understood. And there was the time only yesterday when she stayed with
Aunt Elspeth, and got into trouble with the eggs, and now had a debt on
her conscience equal to eight eggs or twenty cents.
It showed how well Mr. Locke understood children when he did not laugh
over the recital of that last calamity, although it sounded unspeakably
funny to him as Georgina told it. In such congenial company the time flew
so fast that Georgina was amazed when Mr. Milford drove up to take his
distinguished guest away. Mr. Locke took with him what he had hoped to
get, a number of sketches to fill in at his leisure.
"They're exactly what I wanted," he assured her gratefully as he shook
hands at parting. "And that suggestion of yours for the ship will make
the most fetching illustration of all. I'll send you a copy in oils when
I get time for it, and I'll always think of you, my little friend, as
_Georgina of the Rainbows_."
With a courtly bow he was gone, and Georgina went into the house to look
for the little blank book in which she had started to keep her two lists
of Club members, honorary and real. The name of Milford Norris Locke she
wrote in both lists. If there had been a third list, she would have
written him down in that as the very nicest gentleman she had ever met.
Then she began a letter to Barby, telling all about her wonderful
morning. But it seemed to her she had barely begun, when Mr. Milford's
chauffeur came driving back with something for her in a paper bag. When
she peeped inside she was so astonished she nearly dropped it.
"Eggs!" she exclaimed. Then in unconscious imitation of Mrs. Saggs, she
added, "Can you beat _that_!"
One by one she took them out and counted them. There were exactly eight.
Then she read the card which had dropped down to the bottom of the bag.
"Mr. Milford Norris Locke."
Above the name was a tiny rainbow done in water colors, and below was
scribbled the words, "Last tag."
It was a pity that the new member could not have seen her face at that
instant, its expression was so eloquent of surprise, of pleasure and of
relief that her trouble had thus been wiped out of existence.