WHILE THEY WAITED
"THERE comes the boy from the telegraph office." Mrs. Triplett spoke
with such a raven-like note of foreboding in her voice that Georgina,
practising her daily scales, let her hands fall limply from the keys.
"The Tishbite!" she thought uneasily. What evil was it about to send
into the house now, under cover of that yellow envelope? Would it take
Barby away from her as it had done before?
Sitting motionless on the piano stool, she waited in dread while Mrs.
Triplett hurried to the door before the boy could ring, signed for the
message and silently bore it upstairs. The very fact that she went up
with it herself, instead of calling to Barby that a message had come,
gave Georgina the impression that it contained bad news.
"A _cablegram_ for me?" she heard Barby ask. Then there was a moment's
silence in which she knew the message was being opened and read. Then
there was a murmur as if she were reading it aloud to Tippy and then--an
excited whirlwind of a Barby flying down the stairs, her eyes like happy
stars, her arms outstretched to gather Georgina into them, and her
voice half laugh, half sob, singing:
"_Oh, he's coming home to me
Baby mine!_"
Never before had Georgina seen her so radiant, so excited, so
overflowingly happy that she gave vent to her feelings as a little
schoolgirl might have done. Seizing Georgina in her arms she waltzed her
around the room until she was dizzy. Coming to a pause at the piano
stool she seated herself and played, "The Year of Jubilee Has Come," in
deep, crashing chords and trickly little runs and trills, till the old
tune was transformed into a paen of jubilation.
Then she took the message from her belt, where she had tucked it and
re-read it to assure herself of its reality.
"Starting home immediately. Stay three months, dragon captured."
"That must mean that his quest has been fairly successful," she said.
"If he's found the cause of the disease it'll be only a matter of time
till he finds how to kill it."
Then she looked up, puzzled.
"How strange for him to call it the _dragon_. How could he know we'd
understand, and that we've been calling it that?"
Georgina's time had come for confession.
"Oh, I wrote him a little note after you told me the story and told him
I was proud of having a Saint-George-kind of a father, and that we hoped
every day he'd get the microbe."
"You darling!" exclaimed Barbara, drawing her to her for another
impulsive hug. She did not ask as Georgina was afraid she would:
"Why didn't you tell me you were writing to your father?" Barbara
understood, without asking, remembering the head bowed in her lap after
that confession of her encounter with the prying stranger in the bakery.
Suddenly Georgina asked:
"Barby, what is the 'Tishbite?'"
"The what?" echoed Barby, wrinkling her forehead in perplexity.
"The _Tishbite_. Don't you know it says in the Bible, Elijah and the
Tishbite----"
"Oh, no, dear, you've turned it around, and put the and in the wrong
place. It is '_And_ Elijah the Tishbite,' just as we'd say William the
Norman or Manuel the Portuguese."
"Well, for pity sakes!" drawled Georgina in a long, slow breath of
relief. "Is _that_ all? I wish I'd known it long ago. It would have
saved me a lot of scary feelings."
Then she told how she had made the wish on the star and tried to prove
it as Belle had taught her, by opening the Bible at random.
"If you had read on," said Barby, "you'd have found what it meant your
own self."
"But the book shut up before I had a chance," explained Georgina. "And I
never could find the place again, although I've hunted and hunted. And I
was sure it meant some sort of devil, and that it would come and punish
me for using the Bible that way as if it were a hoodoo."
"Then why didn't you ask me?" insisted Barby. "There's another time you
see, when a big worry and misunderstanding could have been cleared away
with a word. To think of your living in dread all that time, when the
Tishbite was only a good old prophet whose presence brought a blessing
to the house which sheltered him."
That night when Georgina's curls were being brushed she said, "Barby, I
know now who my Tishbite is; it's Captain Kidd. He's brought a blessing
ever since he came to this town. If it hadn't been for his barking that
day we were playing in the garage I wouldn't be here now to tell the
tale. If it hadn't been for him I wouldn't have known Richard, and we'd
never have started to playing pirate. And if we hadn't played pirate
Richard wouldn't have asked to borrow the rifle, and if he hadn't asked
we never would have found the note hidden in the stock, and if we hadn't
found the note nobody would have known that Danny was innocent. Then if
Captain Kidd hadn't found the pouch we wouldn't have seen the compass
that led to finding the wild-cat woman who told us that Danny was alive
and well."
"What a House-That-Jack-Built sort of tale that was!" exclaimed Barby,
much amused. "We'll have to do something in Captain Kidd's honor. Give
him a party perhaps, and light up the holiday tree."
The usual bedtime ceremonies were over, and Barby had turned out the
light and reached the door when Georgina raised herself on her elbow to
call:
"Barby, I've just thought of it. The wish I made on that star that night
is beginning to come true. Nearly everybody I know is happy about
something." Then she snuggled her head down on the pillow with a little
wriggle of satisfaction. "Ugh! this is such a good world. I'm so glad
I'm living in it. Aren't you?"
And Barby had to come all the way back in the dark to emphasize her
heartfelt "yes, indeed," with a hug, and to seal the restless eyelids
down with a kiss--the only way to make them stay shut.
Richard came back the next day. He brought a picture to Georgina from
Mr. Locke. It was the copy of the illustration he had promised her, the
fairy shallop with its sails set wide, coming across a sea of Dreams,
and at the prow, white-handed Hope, the angel girt with golden wings,
which swept back over the sides of the vessel.
"Think of having a painting by the famous Milford Norris Locke!"
exclaimed Barby. She hung over it admiringly. "Most people would be
happy to have just his autograph." She bent nearer to examine the name
in the corner of the picture. "What's this underneath? Looks like number
IV."
"Oh, that means he's number four in our Rainbow Club. Peggy Burrell is
number five and the Captain is number six. That's all the members we
have so far."
"Aren't you going to count me in?" asked Barby.
"Oh, you _are_ counted in. You've belonged from the beginning. We made
you an _honary_ member or whatever it is they call it, people who
deserve to belong because they're always doing nice things, but don't
know it. There's you and Uncle Darcy and Captain Kidd, because he saved
our lives and saved our families from having to have a double funeral."
Barby stooped to take the little terrier's head between her hands and
pat-a-cake it back and forth with an affectionate caress.
"Captain Kidd," she said gaily, "you shall have a party this very night,
and there shall be bones and cakes on the holiday tree, and you shall be
the best man with a 'normous blue bow on your collar, and we'll all
dance around in your honor this way."
Springing to her feet and holding the terrier's front paws, she waltzed
him around and around on his hind legs, singing:
"_All around the barberry bush,
Barberry bush, barberry bush.
All around the barberry bush
So early in the morning._"
Georgina, accustomed all her life to such frisky performances, took it
as a matter of course that Barby should give vent to her feelings in the
same way that she herself would have done, but Richard stood by,
bewildered. It was a revelation to him that anybody's mother could be so
charmingly and unreservedly gay. She seemed more like a big sister than
any of the mothers of his acquaintance. He couldn't remember his own,
and while Aunt Letty was always sweet and good to him he couldn't
imagine her waltzing a dog around on its hind legs any more than he
could imagine Mrs. Martha Washington doing it.
The holiday tree was another revelation to him, when he came back at
dusk to find it lighted with the colored lanterns and blooming with
flags and hung with surprises for Georgina and himself.
"You've never seen it lighted," Barby explained, "and Georgina's
birthday had to be skipped because I wasn't here to celebrate, so we've
rolled all the holidays into one, for a grand celebration in Captain
Kidd's honor."
It was to shorten the time of waiting that Barbara threw herself into
the children's games and pleasures so heartily. Every night she tore a
leaf off the calendar and planned something to fill up the next day to
the brim with work or play. They climbed to the top of the monument when
she found that Richard had never made the ascent, and stood long,
looking off to Plymouth, twenty miles away, and at the town spread out
below them, seeming from their great height, a tiny toy village. They
went to Truro to see the bayberry candle-dipping. They played Maud
Muller, raking the yard, because the boy whom old Jeremy had installed
in his place had hurt his foot. Old Jeremy, being well on toward ninety
now, no longer attempted any work, though still hale and hearty. But the
garden had been his especial domain too long for him to give it up
entirely, and he spent hours in it daily, to the disgust of his
easy-going successor.
There were picnics at Highland Light and the Race Point life-saving
station. There were long walks out the state road, through the dunes and
by the cranberry bogs. But everything which speeded Barbara's weeks of
feverish waiting, hurrying her on nearer her heart's desire, brought
Richard nearer to the time of parting from the old seaport town and the
best times he had ever known. He had kodak pictures of all their
outings. Most of them were light-struck or out of focus or over-exposed,
but he treasured them because he had taken them himself with his first
little Brownie camera. There was nothing wrong or queer with the
recollection of the scenes they brought to him. His memory photographed
only perfect days, and he dreaded to have them end.
Before those weeks were over Richard began to feel that he belonged to
Barby in a way, and she to him. There were many little scenes of which
no snapshot could be taken, which left indelible impressions.
For instance, those evenings in the dim room lighted only by the
moonlight streaming in through the open windows, when Barby sat at the
piano with Georgina beside her, singing, while he looked out over the
sea and felt the soul of him stir vaguely, as if he had wings somewhere,
waiting to be unfurled.
The last Sunday of his vacation he went to church with Barbara and
Georgina. It wasn't the Church of the Pilgrims, but another
white-towered one near by. The president of the bank was one of the
ushers. He called Richard by name when he shook hands with the three of
them at the door. That in itself gave Richard a sense of importance and
of being welcome. It was a plain old-fashioned church, its only
decoration a big bowl of tiger-lilies on a table down in front of the
pulpit. When he took his seat in one of the high front pews he felt that
he had never been in such a quiet, peaceful place before.
They were very early. The windows were open, and now and then a breeze
blowing in from the sea fluttered the leaves of a hymn-book lying open
on the front seat. Each time they fluttered he heard another sound also,
as faint and sweet as if it were the ringing of little crystal bells.
Georgina, on the other side of Barby, heard it too, and they looked at
each other questioningly. Then Richard discovered where the tinkle came
from, and pointed upward to call her attention to it. There, from the
center of the ceiling swung a great, old-fashioned chandelier, hung with
a circle of pendant prisms, each one as large and shining as the one
Uncle Darcy had given her.
Georgina knew better than to whisper in such a place, but she couldn't
help leaning past Barby so that Richard could see her lips silently form
the words, "Rainbow Club." She wondered if Mr. Gates had started it.
There were enough prisms for nearly every member in the church to claim
one.
Barby, reading the silent message of her lips and guessing that Georgina
was wondering over the discovery, moved her own lips to form the words,
"just _honorary_ members."
Georgina nodded her satisfaction. It was good to know that there were so
many of them in the world, all working for the same end, whether they
realized it or not.
Just before the service began an old lady in the adjoining pew next to
Richard, reached over the partition and offered him several cloves. He
was too astonished to refuse them and showed them to Barby, not knowing
what to do with them. She leaned down and whispered behind her fan:
"She eats them to keep her awake in church."
Richard had no intention of going to sleep, but he chewed one up,
finding it so hot it almost strangled him. Every seat was filled in a
short time, and presently a drowsiness crept into the heated air which
began to weave some kind of a spell around him. His shoes were new and
his collar chafed his neck. His eyelids grew heavier and heavier. He
stared at the lilies till the whole front of the church seemed filled
with them. He looked up at the chandelier and began to count the prisms,
and watch for the times that the breeze swept across them and set them
to tinkling.
Then, the next thing that he knew he was waking from a long doze on
Barby's shoulder. She was fanning him with slow sweeps of her
white-feathered fan which smelled deliciously of some faint perfume, and
the man from Boston was singing all alone, something about still waves
and being brought into a haven.
A sense of Sabbath peace and stillness enfolded him, with the beauty of
the music and the lilies, the tinkling prisms, the faint, warm perfume
wafted across his face by Barby's fan. The memory of it all stayed with
him as something very sacred and sweet, he could not tell why, unless it
was that Barby's shoulder was such a dear place for a little motherless
lad's head to lie.
Georgina, leaning against Barby on the other side, half asleep, sat up
and straightened her hat when the anthem began. Being a Huntingdon she
could not turn as some people did and stare up at the choir loft behind
her when that wonderful voice sang alone. She looked up at the prisms
instead, and as she looked it seemed to her that the voice was the voice
of the white angel Hope, standing at the prow of a boat, its golden
wings sweeping back, as storm-tossed but triumphant, it brought the
vessel in at last to happy anchorage.
The words which the voice sang were the words on which the rainbow had
rested, that day she read them to Aunt Elspeth: "_So He bringeth them
into their desired haven._" They had seemed like music then, but now,
rolling upward, as if Hope herself were singing them at the prow of
Life's tossing shallop, they were more than music. They voiced the joy
of great desire finding great fulfilment.
[Illustration]