It seemed hard for him to go on, for again he paused, looking off toward the lighthouse in the distance. Then he said slowly, in a voice that shook at times:

"Once--I had a boy--that I set all my hopes on--just as a man puts all his cargo into one vessel; and n.o.body was ever prouder than I was, when that little craft went sailing along with the best of them. I used to look at him and think, '_Danny'll_ weather the seas no matter how rough they are, and he'll bring up in the harbor I'm hoping he'll reach, with all flags flying.' And then--something went wrong----"

The tremulous voice broke. "My little ship went down--all my precious cargo lost----"

Another and a longer pause. In it Georgina seemed to hear Cousin Mehitable's husky voice, half whispering:

"_And the lamp threw a shadow on the yellow blind, plain as a photograph. The shadow of an old man sitting with his arms flung out across the table and his head bowed on them. And he was groaning, 'Oh, my Danny! My Danny! If you could only have gone that way.'_"

For a moment Georgina felt the cruel hurt of his grief as if the pain had stabbed her own heart. The old man went on:

"If it had only been any other kind of a load, anything but _disgrace_, I could have carried it without flinching. But _that_, it seemed I just couldn't face. Only the good Lord knows how I lived through those first few weeks. Then your grandfather Huntingdon came to me. He was always a good friend. And he asked me to row him out here on the water. When we pa.s.sed the Figurehead House he pointed up at that head. It was all white and fair in those days, before the paint wore off. And he said, 'Dan'l Darcy, _as long as a man keeps Hope at the prow he keeps afloat_. As soon as he drops it he goes to pieces and down to the bottom, the way that ship did when it lost its figurehead. You mustn't let go, Dan'l.

You _must_ keep Hope at the prow.

"'Somewhere in G.o.d's universe either in this world or another your boy is alive and still your son. You've got to go on hoping that if he's innocent his name will be cleared of this disgrace, and if he's guilty he'll wipe out the old score against him some way and make good.'

"And then he gave me a line to live by. A line he said that had been written by a man who was stone blind, and hadn't anything to look forward to all the rest of his life but groping in the dark. He said he'd not

"'_Bate a jot Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer Right onward._'

"At first it didn't seem to mean anything to me, but he made me say it after him as if it were a sort of promise, and I've been saying it every day of every year since then. I'd said it to myself first, when I met people on the street that I knew were thinking of Danny's disgrace, and I didn't see how I was going to get up courage to pa.s.s 'em. And I said it when I was lying on my bed at night with my heart so sore and heavy I couldn't sleep, and after a while it did begin to put courage into me, so that I could hope in earnest. And when I did _that_, little la.s.s----"

He leaned over to smile into her eyes, now full of tears, he had so wrought upon her tender sympathies----

"When I did that, it put a rainbow around my trouble just as that prism did around your empty holiday tree. It changed the looks of the whole world for me.

"_That's_ what I brought you out here to tell you, Georgina. I want to give you the same thing that your grandfather Huntingdon gave me--that line to live by. Because troubles come to everybody. They'll come to you, too, but I want you to know this, Baby, they can't hurt you as long as you keep Hope at the prow, because Hope is a magic gla.s.s that makes rainbows of our tears. Now you won't forget that, will you? Even after Uncle Darcy is dead and gone, you'll remember that he brought you out here on your birthday to give you that good word--'_still bear up and steer right onward_,' no matter what happens. And to tell you that in all the long, hard years he's lived through, he's proved it was good."

Georgina, awed and touched of soul, could only nod her a.s.sent. But because Childhood sometimes has no answer to make to the confidences of Age is no reason that they are not taken to heart and stowed away there for the years to build upon. In the unbroken silence with which they rowed back to sh.o.r.e, Georgina might have claimed three score years besides her own ten, so perfect was the feeling of comradeship between them.

As they pa.s.sed the pier back of the antique shop, a great gray cat rose and stretched itself, then walked ponderously down to the water's edge.

It was "Grandpa." Georgina, laughing a little shakily because of recent tears, raised her prism to put a rainbow around the cat's tail, unknowing that but for him the crystal pendant would now be hanging from an antique lamp instead of from the ribbon around her neck.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER X

MOVING PICTURES

IT often happens that when one is all primed and c.o.c.ked for trouble, that trouble flaps its wings and flies away for a time, leaving nothing to fire at. So Georgina, going home with her prism and her "line to live by," ready and eager to prove how bravely she could meet disappointments, found only pleasant surprises awaiting her.

Mrs. Triplett had made a birthday cake in her absence. It was on the supper table with ten red candles atop. And there was a note from Barby beside her plate which had come in the last mail. It had been posted at some way-station. There was a check inside for a dollar which she was to spend as she pleased. A dear little note it was, which made Georgina's throat ache even while it brought a glow to her heart. Then Belle, who had not known it was her birthday in time to make her a present, announced that she would take her to a moving picture show after supper, instead.

Georgina had frequently been taken to afternoon performances, but never at night. It was an adventure in itself just to be down in the part of town where the shops were, when they were all lighted, and when the summer people were surging along the board-walk and out into the middle of the narrow street in such crowds that the automobiles and "accommodations" had to push their way through slowly, with a great honking of warning horns.

The Town Hall was lighted for a dance when they pa.s.sed it. The windows of the little souvenir shops seemed twice as attractive as when seen by day, and early as it was in the evening, people were already lined up in the drug-store, three deep around the soda-water fountain.

Georgina, thankful that Tippy had allowed her to wear her gold locket for the occasion, walked down the aisle and took her seat near the stage, feeling as conspicuous and self-conscious as any debutante entering a box at Grand Opera.

It was a hot night, but on a line with the front seats, there was a double side door opening out onto a dock. From where Georgina sat she could look out through the door and see the lights of a hundred boats twinkling in long wavy lines across the black water, and now and then a salt breeze with the fishy tang she loved, stole across the room and touched her cheek like a cool finger.

The play was not one which Barbara would have chosen for Georgina to see, being one that was advertised as a thriller. It was full of hair-breadth escapes and tragic scenes. There was a shipwreck in it, and pa.s.sengers were brought ash.o.r.e in the breeches buoy, just as she had seen sailors brought in on practice days over at the Race Point Life-saving station. And there was a still form stretched out stark and dripping under a piece of tarpaulin, and a girl with long fair hair streaming wildly over her shoulders knelt beside it wringing her hands.

Georgina stole a quick side-glance at Belle. That was the way it had been in the story of Emmett Potter's drowning, as they told it on the day of Cousin Mehitable's visit. Belle's hands were locked together in her lap, and her lips were pressed in a thin line as if she were trying to keep from saying something. Several times in the semi-darkness of the house her handkerchief went furtively to her eyes.

Georgina's heart beat faster. Somehow, with the piano pounding out that deep tum-tum, like waves booming up on the rocks, she began to feel strangely confused, as if _she_ were the heroine on the films; as if _she_ were kneeling there on the sh.o.r.e in that tragic moment of parting from her dead lover. She was sure that she knew exactly how Belle felt then, how she was feeling now.

When the lights were switched on again and they rose to go out, Georgina was so deeply under the spell of the play that it gave her a little shock of surprise when Belle began talking quite cheerfully and in her ordinary manner to her next neighbor. She even laughed in response to some joking remark as they edged their way slowly up the aisle to the door. It seemed to Georgina that if she had lived through a scene like the one they had just witnessed, she could never smile again. On the way out she glanced up again at Belle several times, wondering.

Going home the street was even more crowded than it had been coming.

They could barely push their way along, and were b.u.mped into constantly by people dodging back to escape the jam when the crowd had to part to let a vehicle through. But after a few blocks of such jostling the going was easier. The drug-store absorbed part of the throng, and most of the procession turned up Carver Street to the Gifford House and the cottages beyond on Bradford Street.

By the time Georgina and Belle came to the last half-mile of the plank walk, scarcely a footstep sounded behind them. After pa.s.sing the Green Stairs there was an un.o.bstructed view of the harbor. A full moon was high overhead, flooding the water and beach with such a witchery of light that Georgina moved along as if she were in a dream--in a silver dream beside a silver sea.

Belle pointed to a little pavilion in sight of the breakwater. "Let's go over there and sit down a few minutes," she said. "It's a waste of good material to go indoors on a night like this."

They crossed over, sinking in the sand as they stepped from the road to the beach, till Georgina had to take off her slippers and shake them before she could settle down comfortably on the bench in the pavilion.

They sat there a while without speaking, just as they had sat before the pictures on the films, for never on any film was ever shown a scene of such entrancing loveliness as the one spread out before them. In the broad path made by the moon hung ghostly sails, rose great masts, twinkled myriads of lights. It was so still they could hear the swish of the tide creeping up below, the dip of near-by oars and the chug of a motor boat, far away down by the railroad wharf.

Then Belle began to talk. She looked straight out across the shining path of the moon and spoke as if she were by herself. She did not look at Georgina, sitting there beside her. Perhaps if she had, she would have realized that her listener was only a child and would not have said all she did. Or maybe, something within her felt the influence of the night, the magical drawing of the moon as the tide feels it, and she could not hold back the long-repressed speech that rose to her lips.

Maybe it was that the play they had seen, quickened old memories into painful life again.

It was on a night just like this, she told Georgina, that Emmett first told her that he cared for her--ten years ago this summer. Ten years!

The whole of Georgina's little lifetime! And now Belle was twenty-seven.

Twenty-seven seemed very old to Georgina. She stole another upward glance at her companion. Belle did not look old, sitting there in her white dress, like a white moonflower in that silver radiance, a little lock of soft blonde hair fluttering across her cheek.

In a rush of broken sentences with long pauses between which somehow told almost as much as words, Belle recalled some of the scenes of that summer, and Georgina, who up to this night had only glimpsed the dim outlines of romance, as a child of ten would glimpse them through old books, suddenly saw it face to face, and thereafter found it something to wonder about and dream sweet, vague dreams over.

Suddenly Belle stood up with a complete change of manner.

"My! it must be getting late," she said briskly. "Aunt Maria will scold if I keep you out any longer."

Going home, she was like the Belle whom Georgina had always known--so different from the one lifting the veil of memories for the little while they sat in the pavilion.

Georgina had thought that with no Barby to "b.u.t.ton her eyes shut with a kiss" at the end of her birthday, the going-to-sleep time would be sad.

But she was so busy recalling the events of the day that she never thought of the omitted ceremony. For a long time she lay awake, imagining all sorts of beautiful scenes in which she was the heroine.

First, she went back to what Uncle Darcy had told her, and imagined herself as rescuing an only child who was drowning. The whole town stood by and cheered when she came up with it, dripping, and the mother took her in her arms and said, "_You_ are our prism, Georgina Huntingdon! But for your n.o.ble act our lives would be, indeed, desolate. It is you who have filled them with rainbows."

Then she was in a ship crossing the ocean, and a poor sailor hearing her speak of Cape Cod would come and ask her to tell him of its people, and she would find he was Danny. She would be the means of restoring him to his parents.

And then, she and Richard on some of their treasure-hunting expeditions which they were still planning every time they met, would unearth a casket some dark night by the light of a fitful lantern, and inside would be a confession written by the man who had really stolen the money, saying that Dan Darcy was innocent. And Uncle Darcy and Aunt Elspeth would be so heavenly glad----The tears came to Georgina's eyes as she pictured the scene in the little house in Fishburn Court, it came to her so vividly.

The clock downstairs struck twelve, but still she went on with the pleasing pictures moving through her mind as they had moved across the films earlier in the evening. The last one was a combination of what she had seen there and what Belle had told her.