CHAPTER IX
THE BIRTHDAY PRISM
THE Towncrier, passing along the street on an early morning trip to thebakery, stopped at the door of the antique shop, for a word with Mrs.Yates, the lady who kept it. She wanted him to "cry" an especial bargainsale of old lamps later in the week. That is how he happened to bestanding in the front door when the crash came in the rear of the shop,and it was because he was standing there that the crash came.
Because Mrs. Yates was talking to him she couldn't be at the back doorwhen the fish-boy came with the fish, and nobody being there to take itthe instant he knocked, the boy looked in and threw it down on the tablenearest the door. And because the fish was left to lie there a momentwhile Mrs. Yates finished her conversation, the cat, stretched out onthe high window ledge above the table, decided to have his breakfastwithout waiting to be called. He was an enormous cat by the name of"Grandpa," and because he was old and ponderous, and no longer light onhis feet, when he leaped from the window-sill he came down clumsily inthe middle of the very table full of the old lamps which were set asidefor the bargain sale.
Of course, it was the biggest and fanciest lamp in the lot that wasbroken--a tall one with a frosted glass shade and a row of crystalprisms dangling around the bowl of it. It toppled over on to a pair ofold brass andirons, smashing into a thousand pieces. Bits of glass flewin every direction, and "Grandpa," his fur electrified by his frightuntil he looked twice his natural size, shot through the door as iffired from a cannon, and was seen no more that morning.
Naturally, Mrs. Yates hurried to the back of the store to see what hadhappened, and Mr. Darcy, following, picked up from the wreck the onlypiece of the lamp not shattered to bits by the fall. It was one of theprisms, which in some miraculous way had survived the crash, a beautifulcrystal pendant without a single nick or crack.
He picked it up and rubbed his coat sleeve down each of its three sides,and when he held it up to the light it sent a ripple of rainbows dancingacross the shop. He watched them, pleased as a child; and when Mrs.Yates, loud in her complaints of Grandpa, came with broom and dustpan tosweep up the litter, he bargained with her for the prism.
That is how he happened to have an offering for Georgina's birthday whenhe reached the house a couple of hours later, not knowing that it washer birthday. Nobody had remembered it, Barby being gone.
It seemed to Georgina the forlornest day she had ever opened her eyesupon. The very fact that it was gloriously sunny with a delicious summerbreeze ruffling the harbor and sending the white sails scudding alonglike wings, made her feel all the more desolate. She was trying her bestto forget what day it was, but there wasn't much to keep her mind offthe subject. Even opportunities for helping Tippy were taken away, forBelle had come to stay during Barby's absence, and she insisted on doingwhat Georgina otherwise would have done.
If Barby had been at home there would have been no piano practice onsuch a gala occasion as a tenth birthday. There would have been no timefor it in the program of joyful happenings. But because time dragged,Georgina went to her scales and five-finger exercises as usual. With thehour-glass on the piano beside her, she practised not only heraccustomed time, till the sand had run half through, but until all but aquarter of it had slipped down. Then she sauntered listlessly out intothe dining-room and stood by one of the open windows, looking outthrough the wire screen into the garden.
On any other day she would have found entertainment in the kitchenlistening to Belle and Mrs. Triplett. Belle seemed doubly interestingnow that she had heard of the unused wedding dress and the sorrow thatwould "blight her whole life." But Georgina did not want anyone to seehow bitterly she was disappointed.
Just outside, so close to the window that she could have reached out andtouched it had it not been for the screen, stood the holiday tree. Ithad held out its laden arms to her on so many festal occasions thatGeorgina had grown to feel that it took a human interest in all hercelebrations. To see it standing bare now, like any ordinary tree, madeher feel that her last friend was indifferent. Nobody cared. Nobody wasglad that she was in the world. In spite of all she could do to checkthem, two big tears welled up and rolled down her cheeks; then anotherand another. She lifted up the hem of her dress to wipe them away, andas she did so Uncle Darcy came around the house.
He looked in at the open window, then asked: "Weather a bit squally,hey? Better put into port and tie up till storm's over. Let your UncleDarcy have a hand at the helm. Come out here, Barby, and let's talk itover on the door-step."
There was something so heartening in the cheery voice that Georgina madeone more dab at her eyes with the hem of her dress skirt, then droppedit and went out through the screen door to join him on the steps whichled down into the garden. At first she was loath to confess the cause ofher tears. She felt ashamed of being caught crying simply because no onehad remembered the date. It wasn't that she wanted presents, shesobbed. It was that she wanted someone to be glad that she'd been bornand it was so lonesome without Barby----
In the midst of her reluctant confession Mr. Darcy bethought himself ofthe prism in his pocket.
"Here," he said, drawing it out. "Take this and put a rainbow aroundyour troubles. It's a sort of magic glass. When you look through it, itshows you things you can't see with your ordinary eyes. Look what itdoes to the holiday tree."
There was a long-drawn breath of amazement from Georgina as she held theprism to her eyes and looked through it at the tree.
"Oh! Oh! It _does_ put a rainbow around every branch and every littletuft of green needles. It's even lovelier than the colored lanternswere. Isn't it wonderful? It puts a rainbow around the whole outdoors."
Her gaze went from the grape arbor to the back garden gate. Then shejumped up and started around the house, the old man following, andsmiling over each enthusiastic "oh" she uttered, as the prism showed hernew beauty at every step. He was pleased to have been the source of hernew pleasure.
"It's like looking into a different world," she cried, as she reachedthe kitchen door, and eagerly turned the prism from one object toanother. Mrs. Triplett was scowling intently over the task of trying toturn the lid of a glass jar which refused to budge.
"Oh, it even puts a rainbow around Tippy's frown," Georgina criedexcitedly. Then she ran to hold the prism over Belle's eyes.
"Look, what Uncle Darcy brought me for my birthday. See how it puts arainbow around every blessed thing, even the old black pots and pans!"
In showing it to Tippy she discovered a tiny hole in the end of theprism by which it had been hung from the lamp, and she ran upstairs tofind a piece of ribbon to run through it. When she came down again, theprism hanging from her neck by a long pink ribbon, Uncle Darcy greetedher with a new version of the Banbury Cross song:
"_Rings on her fingers and ribbon of rose, She shall have rainbows wherever she goes._"
"That's even better than having music wherever you go," answeredGeorgina, whirling around on her toes. Then she stopped in a listeningattitude, hearing the postman.
When she came back from the front door with only a magazine herdisappointment was keen, but she said bravely:
"Of course, I _knew_ there couldn't be a letter from Barby this soon.She couldn't get there till last night--but just for a minute I couldn'thelp hoping--but I didn't mind it half so much, Uncle Darcy, when Ilooked at the postman through the prism. Even his whiskers were blue andred and yellow."
That afternoon a little boat went dipping up and down across the waves.It was _The Betsey_, with Uncle Darcy pulling at the oars and Georginaas passenger. Lifting the prism which still hung from her neck by thepink ribbon, she looked out upon what seemed to be an enchanted harbor.It was filled with a fleet of rainbows. Every sail was outlined withone, every mast edged with lines of red and gold and blue. Even the graywharves were tinged with magical color, and the water itself, to herreverent thought, suggested the "sea of glass mingled with fire," whichis pictured as one of the glories of the New Jerusalem.
> "Isn't it _wonderful_, Uncle Darcy?" she asked in a hushed, awed tone."It's just like a miracle the way this bit of glass changes the wholeworld. Isn't it?"
Before he could answer, a shrill whistle sounded near at hand. They werepassing the boathouse on the beach below the Green Stairs. Looking upthey saw Richard, hanging out of the open doors of the loft, waving tothem. Georgina stood up in the boat and beckoned, but he shook his head,pointing backward with his thumb into the studio, and disconsolatelyshrugged his shoulders.
"He wants to go _so_ bad!" exclaimed Georgina. "Seems as if his father'sa mighty slow painter. Maybe if you'd ask him the way you did before,Uncle Darcy, he'd let Richard off this one more time--being my birthday,you know."
She looked at him with the bewitching smile which he usually foundimpossible to resist, but this time he shook his head.
"No, I don't want him along to-day. I've brought you out here to showyou something and have a little talk with you alone. Maybe I ought towait till you're older before I say what I want to say, but at my timeof life I'm liable to slip off without much warning, and I don't want togo till I've said it to you."
Georgina put down her prism to stare at him in eager-eyed wonder. Shewas curious to know what he could show her out here on the water, andwhat he wanted to tell her that was as important as his solemn wordsimplied.
"Wait till we come to it," he said, answering the unspoken question inher eyes. And Georgina, who dearly loved dramatic effects in her ownstory-telling, waited for something--she knew not what--to burst uponher expectant sight.
They followed the line of the beach for some time, dodging in betweenmotor boats and launches, under the high railroad wharf and around thesmaller ones where the old fish-houses stood. Past groups of children,playing in the sand they went, past artists sketching under their whiteumbrellas, past gardens gay with bright masses of color, past dryingnets spread out on the shore.
Presently Uncle Darcy stopped rowing and pointed across a vacant stripof beach between two houses, to one on the opposite side of the street.
"There it is," he announced. "That's what I wanted to show you."
Georgina followed the direction of his pointing finger.
"Oh, that!" she said in a disappointed tone. "I've seen that all mylife. It's nothing but the Figurehead House."
She was looking at a large white house with a portico over the frontdoor, on the roof of which portico was perched half of the wooden figureof a woman. It was of heroic size, head thrown back as if looking off tosea, and with a green wreath in its hands. Weather-beaten anddiscolored, it was not an imposing object at first glance, and many ajibe and laugh it had called forth from passing tourists.
Georgina's disappointment showed in her face.
"I know all about that," she remarked. "Mrs. Tupman told me herself. Shecalls it the Lady of Mystery. She said that years and years ago aschooner put out from this town on a whaling cruise, and was gone morethan a year. When it was crossing the equator, headed for home, thelook-out at the masthead saw a strange object in the water that lookedlike a woman afloat. The Captain gave orders to lower the boats, andwhen they did so they found this figurehead. She said it must have comefrom the prow of some great clipper in the East India trade. They werein the Indian Ocean, you know.
"There had been some frightful storms and afterwards they heard of manywrecks. This figurehead was so long they had to cut it in two to get itinto the hold of the vessel. They brought it home and set it up thereover the front door, and they call it the Lady of Mystery, because theysaid 'from whence that ship came, what was its fate and what was itsdestination will always be shrouded in mystery.' And Mrs. Tupman saidthat a famous artist looked at it once and said it was probably the workof a Spanish artist, and that from the pose of its head and the wreathin its hands he was sure it was intended to represent Hope. Was _that_what you were going to tell me?"
The old man had rested on his oars while she hurried through this tale,with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes, as if she thought she wasforestalling him. Now he picked them up again and began rowing out intothe harbor.
"That was a part of it," he admitted, "but that's only the part that thewhole town knows. That old figurehead has a meaning for me that nobodyelse that's living knows about. That's what I want to pass on to you."
He rowed several minutes more before he said slowly, with a wistfultenderness coming into his dim old eyes as he looked at her:
"Georgina, I don't suppose anybody's ever told you about the troublesI've had. They wouldn't talk about such things to a child like you.Maybe I shouldn't, now; but when I saw how disappointed you were thismorning, I said to myself, 'If she's old enough to feel trouble thatway, she's old enough to understand and to be helped by hearing aboutmine.'"
It seemed hard for him to go on, for again he paused, looking off towardthe lighthouse in the distance. Then he said slowly, in a voice thatshook at times:
"Once--I had a boy--that I set all my hopes on--just as a man puts allhis cargo into one vessel; and nobody was ever prouder than I was, whenthat little craft went sailing along with the best of them. I used tolook at him and think, '_Danny'll_ weather the seas no matter how roughthey are, and he'll bring up in the harbor I'm hoping he'll reach, withall flags flying.' And then--something went wrong----"
The tremulous voice broke. "My little ship went down--all my preciouscargo lost----"
Another and a longer pause. In it Georgina seemed to hear CousinMehitable's husky voice, half whispering:
"_And the lamp threw a shadow on the yellow blind, plain as aphotograph. The shadow of an old man sitting with his arms flung outacross 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 painhad 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 justcouldn't face. Only the good Lord knows how I lived through those firstfew weeks. Then your grandfather Huntingdon came to me. He was always agood friend. And he asked me to row him out here on the water. When wepassed the Figurehead House he pointed up at that head. It was all whiteand fair in those days, before the paint wore off. And he said, 'Dan'lDarcy, _as long as a man keeps Hope at the prow he keeps afloat_. Assoon as he drops it he goes to pieces and down to the bottom, the waythat ship did when it lost its figurehead. You mustn't let go, Dan'l.You _must_ keep Hope at the prow.
"'Somewhere in God's universe either in this world or another your boyis alive and still your son. You've got to go on hoping that if he'sinnocent his name will be cleared of this disgrace, and if he's guiltyhe'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 beenwritten by a man who was stone blind, and hadn't anything to lookforward to all the rest of his life but groping in the dark. He saidhe'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 itafter him as if it were a sort of promise, and I've been saying it everyday of every year since then. I'd said it to myself first, when I metpeople on the street that I knew were thinking of Danny's disgrace, andI didn't see how I was going to get up courage to pass 'em. And I saidit when I was lying on my bed at night with my heart so sore and heavy Icouldn'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 lass----"
He leaned over to smile into her eyes, now full of tears, he had sowrought upon her tender sympathies----
"When I did that, it put a rainbow around my trouble just as that prismdid around your empty holiday tree. It changed the looks of the wholeworld for me.
"_That's_ what I brought you out here to tell you, Georgina. I want togive you the
same thing that your grandfather Huntingdon gave me--thatline to live by. Because troubles come to everybody. They'll come toyou, too, but I want you to know this, Baby, they can't hurt you as longas you keep Hope at the prow, because Hope is a magic glass that makesrainbows of our tears. Now you won't forget that, will you? Even afterUncle Darcy is dead and gone, you'll remember that he brought you outhere on your birthday to give you that good word--'_still bear up andsteer right onward_,' no matter what happens. And to tell you that inall the long, hard years he's lived through, he's proved it was good."
Georgina, awed and touched of soul, could only nod her assent. Butbecause Childhood sometimes has no answer to make to the confidences ofAge is no reason that they are not taken to heart and stowed away therefor the years to build upon. In the unbroken silence with which theyrowed back to shore, Georgina might have claimed three score yearsbesides her own ten, so perfect was the feeling of comradeship betweenthem.
As they passed the pier back of the antique shop, a great gray cat roseand stretched itself, then walked ponderously down to the water's edge.It was "Grandpa." Georgina, laughing a little shakily because of recenttears, raised her prism to put a rainbow around the cat's tail,unknowing that but for him the crystal pendant would now be hanging froman antique lamp instead of from the ribbon around her neck.
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