The End Of The Rainbow Part 17

"There he is again," she cried. "I suppose he's taken Peter home and found his pig for him. I don't believe I could bear the thought of all the misery on Willow Lane if I didn't know that Old Angus McRae was doing so much to lighten it."

Helen turned. Angus had pulled up in front of the Perkins' house and the idiot lad with queer cries of delight came stumbling out to meet him. The girl named Gladys ran out too, and the old man handed her a sheaf of glowing crimson dahlias. She buried her face in them and hugged them to her in a pa.s.sion of admiration for their beauty.

"Look, look at Mrs. Ca.s.sidy will you?" cried Madame in delight.

Mrs. Ca.s.sidy had come to the door at the first sound of the wheels, and when she saw who was near, she darted out and swiftly and stealthily removed the obstruction from her neighbour's window. Then she went to the gate to greet Old Angus, suave and gentle of speech, and as innocent looking as the meek heap of boards now lying in a corner of her yard.

"Well, well, well," laughed Madame as they walked on. "Even if Old Angus would merely drive up and down Willow Lane I believe he would make the people better."

When Helen reached Rosemount she slipped in at the side door and up the back stair. It was the day the Misses Armstrong entertained the whist club, and a clatter of teacups and a hum of voices told her the guests were not yet gone. She removed her hat, and smoothed her hair absently; her thoughts were down on Willow Lane busy with the complex problem of the Perkins family. The windows were opened, and the sound of swishing skirts and laughing voices came up to her from the garden walk. A couple of well-dressed women were going out at the gate.

"Poor old things," cried one in a light merry voice. "They do get up the most comical concoctions at their teas. And Miss Annabel in a ten-year-old dress! Will she ever grow up?"

"The poor dears can't afford anything better. They are just struggling along," answered her companion. "They had that house left them, and the old lady gets her allowance, but the daughters hadn't a cent left them, and they would both fall dead if they weren't invited to everything. But I don't know where they get money to dress at all."

"I suppose that is why they took that girl to board."

"Of course, poor old Elinor is so scared--" The voice died away and a sharp rap on her door took Helen from the window. She opened the door and there, to her surprise, stood Miss Leslie Graham, looking very handsome in the splendour of her rose silk gown. She smiled radiantly.

"Good day, Miss Murray. I think you know who I am and I think it's time we met. I ran up here to get away from that jam of people. Those women take such an lasting age to get away. May I sit with you for a minute?"

Helen offered her a chair gladly. She had often seen Miss Graham, and her unfailing gay spirits had made her wish she could know her. The visitor flung her silver purse upon the bed, her gloves upon the table, her white parasol upon the bureau, and sank into the chair.

"Oh I'm dead," she groaned. "I've pa.s.sed ten thousand cups of tea, and twenty thousand sandwiches. Don't you pity and despise people that don't know any better than to come to a thing indoors on a hot day?"

Helen smiled. "But you came," she said.

"But I had to. When any of my relations give a tea I am always tethered to a tray and a plate of biscuits." She stopped suddenly and looked at Helen keenly, with a stare that puzzled the girl. Then she jumped up and seated herself upon the bed, rumpling the counterpane.

In the few minutes since she had entered the room she had made the place look as if a whirlwind had swept through it, and Helen felt a nervous fear of Miss Armstrong's walking in and witnessing her untidy condition.

"Do you like it here?" she enquired directly.

"Yes, I--think I do. Algonquin is so beautiful, but--"

"But you can't stand my poky aunts, and Grandma's jokes, eh?"

"Oh, no," cried Helen aghast. "Both the Misses Armstrong have been very kind and Mrs. Armstrong is delightful--but, of course, I get homesick." She stopped suddenly for that was a subject upon which she dared not dwell.

The other girl stared. "My goodness. I would love to know what homesickness is like, just for once. I've never been away from home except for a visit somewhere in the holidays, and then I was always having such a ripping time, that the thought of going home made me sick."

She sat for a little while, again looking steadily at Helen. "You certainly are pretty," she exclaimed. "There's no doubt about that."

"I beg your pardon!" said Helen amazed, and doubting if she had heard aright.

"Oh, nothing, never mind!" cried the other with a laugh. She tore off her costly hat and flung it on top of the table. Then she threw herself backwards on the bed staring at the ceiling. She made such a complete wreck of the starched pillow covers and the prim white bedspread that were the pride of Miss Armstrong's heart, that Helen shuddered.

"Well, I don't wonder at you getting homesick here. These ceilings are such a vast distance away they make you feel as if you were a hundred miles from everywhere. I remember sleeping in this room once, when there was an epidemic of scarlet fever or something among the Armstrong kids. All the well ones were dumped on our aunts, after the custom of the family, and I was sent off with a dozen others and we were marooned upstairs, like a gang of prisoners, the girls in this room and the boys in Grandma's. Six in a bed--more or less. I remember we used to lie awake in the early morning before Aunt Elinor would let us get up, and study the outburst of robins and grapes on the ceiling. And one day we got the boys in with their toy guns and tried to shoot the tails off the birds. Cousin Harry Armstrong hit one. Do you see the ghastly remains of that bird without the tail? That was the one. I never hit anything, but I tried hard enough. I am responsible for the bangs on the ceiling. Each one tells when I missed my aim."

Helen laughed all unawares. She was surprised at herself. It was so long since she had laughed she thought she had forgotten how.

"That robin proved to be the Albatross for us," continued Leslie Graham, sitting up again, "for Aunt Elinor found out about it, and we had no more good luck from that day till we went home." She sprang up.

"Dear me! here I am jabbering away, and Mother must be gone." She caught up her hat, dislodging a couple of books that went over on the floor. "Oh, dear, I've knocked something over." She did not make any motion to pick them up, however. "Mother says I always leave a trail behind me."

She stood before the gla.s.s arranging her hat, a radiant figure. Helen looked at her wistfully. There was nothing this girl wanted, surely, that she could not have; and yet she seemed so restless and dissatisfied.

"Do you go out much?" she asked.

"Not very much," said Helen. "My school keeps me busy." She did not say that she knew so very few young people she had no one to go with.

Miss Graham turned to the mirror again. She seemed embarra.s.sed. "The lake's lovely here for paddling. Only the season is nearly over. Have you been out on the water much?" She did not look at the girl as she asked the question.

"No," said Helen, and the other faced round and stared at her. "I don't know how to paddle and I am rather afraid of a canoe."

"Do you mean to say you've never been on the lake since you came here?"

asked Leslie Graham, standing and staring with a hat-pin in her mouth.

"Oh, yes, I was--once," said Helen innocently. She did not think it necessary to tell all about Roderick's rescue of her from the point; for already she had heard the Misses Armstrong coupling his name with their niece's in tones of high disapproval. "I was once--but only once."

Leslie Graham's face grew radiant.

"Is that all?" she cried in a tone expressing decided relief.

She amazed Helen by suddenly darting towards her and putting her arm around her. "Why you poor little lonesome thing," she cried, "you must learn to paddle; I will teach you myself. Now, good-bye, I think we are going to be real good friends." She kissed Helen warmly and tripped out, singing a gay song, and leaving her late hostess standing amazed in the middle of her dishevelled room.

CHAPTER IX

"DEAF TO THE MELODY"

Autumn painted Algonquin in new and splendid tints. She coloured the maples that lined the streets a dazzling gold, with here and there at the corners, a scarlet tree for variety or one of rose pink or even deep purple. And when the leaves began to fall the whole world was a bewildering flutter of rainbows. The November rains came and washed the gorgeous picture away, and the artist went all over it again in soberer tints, soft greys and tender blues with a hint of coming frost in the deep tones of the sky.

October was almost over before the busy, bustling Lawyer Ed had a chance to think of the promise he had made in the summer to Old Angus, and he called J. P. Thornton and Archie Blair and Roderick together into his office one bright morning to enquire what could be done about getting a local option by-law for Algonquin submitted on the next munic.i.p.al election day.

The general consensus of opinion was that they were too late for the coming election on New Year's; but that they must start an educational campaign immediately to stir up public opinion on the subject of temperance. And they would get their pet.i.tion ready for the spring and march to victory a year from the coming January.

J. P. Thornton, who was the most energetic man on the town council, was busy getting a drain dug through Willow Lane to carry off the disease breeding stagnant waters that lay about the little houses. And he declared in a fine oratorical outburst, that if they started this temperance campaign early, and dug deep enough, by a year from the next election day, they would have such a trench projected through Algonquin as would carry away in a flood all the foul, death-breeding liquid that inundated their beautiful town, and pour it into the swamps of oblivion.

Lawyer Ed gave a cheer when he was through, and Archie Blair quoted Burns:

"_Now, Robinson, harrangue na mair, But steek your gab forever, Or try the wicked town of Ayr, For there they'll think you clever._"

For though, as a citizen, the doctor was convinced that a prohibitory liquor law would be a good thing for Algonquin, personally he was not inclined to look upon the beverage as foul death-breeding liquid.

Roderick McRae sat silently listening to the older man. He was wondering what Alexander Graham would say, when he found his lawyer arrayed on the side of the temperance forces. For he knew that his wealthy client had heavy investments in breweries, and also owned secretly, the bigger share of Algonquin's leading hotel and bar-room.