CHAPTER X
MOVING PICTURES
IT often happens that when one is all primed and cocked for trouble,that trouble flaps its wings and flies away for a time, leaving nothingto fire at. So Georgina, going home with her prism and her "line to liveby," ready and eager to prove how bravely she could meetdisappointments, found only pleasant surprises awaiting her.
Mrs. Triplett had made a birthday cake in her absence. It was on thesupper table with ten red candles atop. And there was a note from Barbybeside her plate which had come in the last mail. It had been posted atsome way-station. There was a check inside for a dollar which she was tospend as she pleased. A dear little note it was, which made Georgina'sthroat ache even while it brought a glow to her heart. Then Belle, whohad 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 neverat night. It was an adventure in itself just to be down in the part oftown where the shops were, when they were all lighted, and when thesummer people were surging along the board-walk and out into the middleof the narrow street in such crowds that the automobiles and"accommodations" had to push their way through slowly, with a greathonking of warning horns.
The Town Hall was lighted for a dance when they passed it. The windowsof the little souvenir shops seemed twice as attractive as when seen byday, and early as it was in the evening, people were already lined up inthe drug-store, three deep around the soda-water fountain.
Georgina, thankful that Tippy had allowed her to wear her gold locketfor the occasion, walked down the aisle and took her seat near thestage, feeling as conspicuous and self-conscious as any debutanteentering a box at Grand Opera.
It was a hot night, but on a line with the front seats, there was adouble side door opening out onto a dock. From where Georgina sat shecould look out through the door and see the lights of a hundred boatstwinkling in long wavy lines across the black water, and now and then asalt breeze with the fishy tang she loved, stole across the room andtouched her cheek like a cool finger.
The play was not one which Barbara would have chosen for Georgina tosee, being one that was advertised as a thriller. It was full ofhair-breadth escapes and tragic scenes. There was a shipwreck in it,and passengers were brought ashore in the breeches buoy, just as she hadseen sailors brought in on practice days over at the Race PointLife-saving station. And there was a still form stretched out stark anddripping under a piece of tarpaulin, and a girl with long fair hairstreaming wildly over her shoulders knelt beside it wringing her hands.
Georgina stole a quick side-glance at Belle. That was the way it hadbeen in the story of Emmett Potter's drowning, as they told it on theday of Cousin Mehitable's visit. Belle's hands were locked together inher lap, and her lips were pressed in a thin line as if she were tryingto keep from saying something. Several times in the semi-darkness of thehouse her handkerchief went furtively to her eyes.
Georgina's heart beat faster. Somehow, with the piano pounding out thatdeep tum-tum, like waves booming up on the rocks, she began to feelstrangely confused, as if _she_ were the heroine on the films; as if_she_ were kneeling there on the shore in that tragic moment of partingfrom her dead lover. She was sure that she knew exactly how Belle feltthen, how she was feeling now.
When the lights were switched on again and they rose to go out, Georginawas so deeply under the spell of the play that it gave her a littleshock of surprise when Belle began talking quite cheerfully and in herordinary manner to her next neighbor. She even laughed in response tosome joking remark as they edged their way slowly up the aisle to thedoor. It seemed to Georgina that if she had lived through a scene likethe one they had just witnessed, she could never smile again. On the wayout 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 bumped into constantlyby people dodging back to escape the jam when the crowd had to part tolet a vehicle through. But after a few blocks of such jostling the goingwas easier. The drug-store absorbed part of the throng, and most of theprocession turned up Carver Street to the Gifford House and the cottagesbeyond on Bradford Street.
By the time Georgina and Belle came to the last half-mile of the plankwalk, scarcely a footstep sounded behind them. After passing the GreenStairs there was an unobstructed view of the harbor. A full moon washigh overhead, flooding the water and beach with such a witchery oflight that Georgina moved along as if she were in a dream--in a silverdream beside a silver sea.
Belle pointed to a little pavilion in sight of the breakwater. "Let's goover there and sit down a few minutes," she said. "It's a waste of goodmaterial to go indoors on a night like this."
They crossed over, sinking in the sand as they stepped from the road tothe beach, till Georgina had to take off her slippers and shake thembefore she could settle down comfortably on the bench in the pavilion.They sat there a while without speaking, just as they had sat before thepictures on the films, for never on any film was ever shown a scene ofsuch entrancing loveliness as the one spread out before them. In thebroad path made by the moon hung ghostly sails, rose great masts,twinkled myriads of lights. It was so still they could hear the swish ofthe tide creeping up below, the dip of near-by oars and the chug of amotor boat, far away down by the railroad wharf.
Then Belle began to talk. She looked straight out across the shiningpath of the moon and spoke as if she were by herself. She did not lookat Georgina, sitting there beside her. Perhaps if she had, she wouldhave realized that her listener was only a child and would not have saidall she did. Or maybe, something within her felt the influence of thenight, the magical drawing of the moon as the tide feels it, and shecould not hold back the long-repressed speech that rose to her lips.Maybe it was that the play they had seen, quickened old memories intopainful life again.
It was on a night just like this, she told Georgina, that Emmett firsttold 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 upwardglance at her companion. Belle did not look old, sitting there in herwhite dress, like a white moonflower in that silver radiance, a littlelock of soft blonde hair fluttering across her cheek.
In a rush of broken sentences with long pauses between which somehowtold almost as much as words, Belle recalled some of the scenes of thatsummer, and Georgina, who up to this night had only glimpsed the dimoutlines of romance, as a child of ten would glimpse them through oldbooks, suddenly saw it face to face, and thereafter found it somethingto 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 scoldif I keep you out any longer."
Going home, she was like the Belle whom Georgina had always known--sodifferent from the one lifting the veil of memories for the little whilethey sat in the pavilion.
Georgina had thought that with no Barby to "button her eyes shut with akiss" 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 neverthought 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 imaginedherself as rescuing an only child who was drowning. The whole town stoodby and cheered when she came up with it, dripping, and the mother tookher in her arms and said, "_You_ are our prism, Georgina Huntingdon! Butfor your noble act our lives would be, indeed, desolate. It is you whohave filled them with rainbows."
Then she was in a ship crossing the ocean, and a poor sailor hearing herspeak of Cape Cod would come and ask her to tell him of its people, andshe would find he was Danny. She would be the means of restoring him tohis parents.
The clock downstairs struck twelve, but still she went on with thepleasing pictures moving through her mind as they had moved across thefilms earlier in the evening. The last one was a combination of what shehad seen there and what Belle had told her.
She was sitting beside a silver sea across which a silver moon wasmaking a wonderful shining path of silver ripples, and somebody wastelling her--what Emmett had told Belle ten years ago. And she knew pastall doubting that if that shadowy somebody beside her should die, shewould carry the memory of him to her grave as Belle was doing. It seemedsuch a sweet, sad way to live that she thought it would be moreinteresting to have her life like that, than to have it go along likethe lives of all the married people of her acquaintance. And if _he_ hada father like Emmett's father she would cling to him as Belle did, andgo to see him often and take the part of a real daughter to him. But shewouldn't want him to be like Belle's "Father Potter." He was an oldfisherman, too crippled to follow the sea any longer, so now he was justa mender of nets, sitting all day knotting twine with dirtytar-blackened fingers.
The next morning when she went downstairs it was Belle and not Mrs.Triplett who was stepping about the kitchen in a big gingham apron,preparing breakfast. Mrs. Triplett was still in bed. Such a thing hadnever happened before within Georgina's recollection.
"It's the rheumatism in her back," Belle reported. "It's so bad shecan't lie still with any comfort, and she can't move without groaning.So she's sort of 'between the de'il and the deep sea.' And touchy is noname for it. She doesn't like it if you don't and she doesn't like itif you do; but you can't wonder when the pain's so bad. It's pretty nearlumbago."
Georgina, who had finished her dressing by tying the prism around herneck, was still burning with the desire which Uncle Darcy's talk hadkindled within her, to be a little comfort to everybody.
"Let me take her toast and tea up to her," she begged. With that toastand tea she intended to pass along the good word Uncle Darcy had givenher--"the line to live by." But Tippy was in no humor to be adjured by achit of a child to bear up and steer right onward. Such advice wouldhave been coldly received just then even from her minister.
"You don't know what you're talking about," she exclaimed testily. "Bearup? Of course I'll bear up. There's nothing else _to_ do withrheumatism, but you needn't come around with any talk of puttingrainbows around it or me either."
She gave her pillow an impatient thump with her hard knuckles.
"Deliver me from people who make it their business in life always to actcheerful no matter _what_. The Scripture itself says 'There's a time tolaugh and a time to weep, a time to mourn and a time to dance.' When theweeping time comes I can't abide either people or books that go aroundspreading cheerful sayings on everybody like salve!"
Tippy, lying there with her hair screwed into a tight little button onthe top of her head, looked strangely unlike herself. Georginadescended to the kitchen, much offended. It hurt her feelings to haveher good offices spurned in such a way. She didn't care how badanybody's rheumatism was she muttered. "It was no excuse for saying suchnasty things to people who were trying to be kind to them."
Belle suggested presently that the customary piano practice be omittedthat morning for fear it might disturb Aunt Maria, so when the usuallittle tasks were done Georgina would have found time dragging, had itnot been for the night letter which a messenger boy brought soon afterbreakfast. Grandfather Shirley was better than she had expected to findhim, Barby wired. Particulars would follow soon in a letter. It cheeredGeorgina up so much that she took a pencil and tablet of paper up intothe willow tree and wrote a long account to her mother of the birthdayhappenings. What with the red-candled cake and the picture show and theafternoon in the boat it sounded as if she had had a very happy day. Butmostly she wrote about the prism, and what Uncle Darcy had told herabout the magic glass of Hope. When it was done she went in to Belle.
"May I go down to the post-office to mail this and stop on my way backat the Green Stairs and see if Richard can come and play with me?" sheasked.
Belle considered. "Better stay down at the Milford's to do yourplaying," she answered. "It might bother Aunt Maria to have a boyromping around here."
So Georgina fared forth, after taking off her prism and hanging it in asafe place. Only Captain Kidd frisked down to meet her when she stoodunder the studio window and gave the alley yodel which Richard hadtaught her. There was no answer. She repeated it several times, and thenMr. Moreland appeared at the window, in his artist's smock with apalette on his thumb and a decidedly impatient expression on hishandsome face. Richard was posing, he told her, and couldn't leave forhalf an hour. His tone was impatient, too, for he had just gotten a goodstart after many interruptions.
Undecided whether to go back home or sit down on the sand and wait,Georgina stood looking idly about her. And while she hesitated, Manueland Joseph and Rosa came straggling along the beach in search ofadventure.
It came to Georgina like an inspiration that it wasn't Barby who hadforbidden her to play with them, it was Tippy. And with a vague feelingthat she was justified in disobeying her because of her recentcrossness, she rounded them up for a chase over the granite slabs of thebreakwater. If they would be Indians, she proposed, she'd be theDeer-slayer, like the hero of the Leather-Stocking Tales, and chase 'emwith a gun.
They had never heard of those tales, but they were more than willing toundertake any game which Georgina might propose. So after a littlecoaching in war-whoops, with a battered tin pan for a tom-tom, threeimpromptu Indians sped down the beach under the studio windows, pursuedby a swift-footed Deer-slayer with flying curls. The end of a broken oarwas her musket, which she brandished fiercely as she echoed their yells.
Mr. Moreland gave a groan of despair as he looked at his model whenthose war-whoops broke loose. Richard, who had succeeded after manytrials in lapsing into the dreamy attitude which his father wanted,started up at the first whoop, so alert and interested that his nostrilsquivered. He scented excitement of some kind and was so eager to be inthe midst of it that the noise of the tom-tom made him wriggle in hischair.
He looked at his father appealingly, then made an effort to settle downinto his former attitude. His body assumed the same listless pose asbefore, but his eyes were so eager and shining with interest that theyfairly spoke each time the rattly drumming on the tin pan sounded achallenge.
"It's no use, Dicky," said his father at last. "It's all up with us forthis time. You might as well go on. But I wish that little tom-boy hadstayed at home."
And Richard went, with a yell and a hand-spring, to throw in his lotwith Manuel and Joseph and be chased by the doughty Deer-slayer and herhound. In the readjustment of parts Rosa was told to answer to the nameof Hector. It was all one to Rosa whether she was hound or redskin, solong as she was allowed a part in the thrilling new game. Richard hadthe promise of being Deer-slayer next time they played it.
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