The End Of The Rainbow Part 9

And it had a dear mother-face peeping in at the door to chide her gently if she sat too late writing those long letters to d.i.c.k.

The memory of it all came over her with such a rush that she felt she must throw herself upon that broad white bed and sob herself sick. But she sat still, holding her hands tightly clenched, and choking back the tears. She had work to do and she must be ready for that work. To give way in private meant inefficiency in public to-morrow.

School-teaching was a new, untried field of labour for her, and if she went to bed and cried herself to sleep, as she wanted to do, she would have a headache for to-morrow and she would fail. And she must not fail, she told herself desperately; she dared not fail, for Mother was depending upon her success. And yet she had no idea how that success was to be gained. She knew only too well that she was not fitted for her task. She had never wanted to teach school, and had never dreamed she would need to. Her place had always been at home, and a big place she had filled as Mother's help and the minister's right hand. But her father had insisted upon her taking her teacher's certificate. "It's easy to carry about, Nellie," he was wont to say, "and may come useful some day."

So Helen had gone, with good-natured indulgence of Father's whim, and studied at a training school, with one eye on her books and the other watching for d.i.c.k to come up the street. And when she brought home her despised diploma, there was a diamond ring on the hand that placed it on her father's desk. That had been a year ago. And almost immediately after, her father had been taken from them. The old home went next. The boys and girls scattered to earn their own living.

Mother had gone with Betty, who had married, and who lived away in the West. And then the last and best treasure had been taken, the diamond with its marvellous lights and colours, and with it had gone out all the light and colour of life.

She was just twenty-three, and she had been given the task of working out a new strange life unaided, with nothing ahead of her but work and loneliness.

At first she had given way to a numb despair, then necessity and the needs of the family aroused her. There was something for her to do, something that had to be done, and back of all the wreck of her life, dimmed by clouds of sorrow, there stood her father's G.o.d. In spite of all the despair and dismay she felt instinctively He must be somewhere, behind it all. She did not know as yet, that that a.s.surance spelled hope. But she knew that there was work for her and there was Mother waiting until she should make her a home.

She sprang up, as her misery threatened to overwhelm her again, and began swiftly to change her dress and arrange her hair. She pulled back the stiff curtains of one of the tall windows and leaned out. A soft blue haze, the first glimpse of September's tender eyes, was settling on the distant hills. The sun was setting, and away up the street towards the west flamed a gold and crimson sky, and away down in the east flamed its gold and crimson reflection on the mirror of Lake Algonquin. From the garden below, the scent of the opening nicotine blossoms came up to her.

She was sitting there, trying to admire the beauty of it all, but her heart protesting against the feeling of utter loneliness it bred, when there came a sharp tap on the door. It opened the next moment and a young lady tripped in.

"Good evening, Miss Murray. I just bounced in to say welcome to Rosemount. I'm so glad you've come. I've just been dying to have a girl in the house of my own age."

She caught Helen's two hands in hers with genuine kindliness.

She was a plump fair lady with fluffy yellow hair and big blue eyes.

She was dressed in a pink flowered muslin trimmed with girlish frills and wore a big hat wreathed with nodding roses. Helen was puzzled.

This wasn't Miss Annabel, then; for her mother had said the Misses Armstrong were both over forty.

"I'm Annabel Armstrong," she said, settling the question. Helen gave her a second look and saw that Miss Annabel carried signs of maturity in her face and form, albeit she carried them very blithely indeed.

"And I can't tell you how glad I am you've come. You'll just adore Algonquin. It's the gayest place on earth, a dance or a tea or a bridge or some sort of kettle-drum every day. What a love of a dress!

It's the very colour of your eyes, my dear. Come away now; you must meet Mother. She always takes supper in her own room now, and I must carry it to her. Our little maid is about as much use as a p.u.s.s.y-cat and if I'm not in the kitchen every ten minutes to tramp on her tail she'll go to sleep. Come along!"

She danced away down the hall, Helen following her, feeling extremely old and prim. Grandma Armstrong's bedroom was at the back of the house overlooking the orchard and kitchen-garden. She was sitting up in bed, a very handsome little old lady in cap and ribbons. She gave the strange girl's hand a gentle pressure.

"Here she is, Muzzy," cried Miss Annabel in an apologetic tone. "It's too bad you didn't see her sooner, but she was so busy."

"Indeed I generally notice that I am left to the last, when any new person comes to the house," said Grandma Armstrong in a grieved tone.

"Well, my dear, I am pleased to see the Rev. Walter Murray's son in my house. You look like him--yes, very much, just the image of him in fact, only of course he was a man and wore a portmanteau when I knew him."

Grandma Armstrong's separate faculties were all alert and as keen as they had ever been in youth. But some strange lack of connection between her tongue and her memory, seemed to have befallen the old lady, so that they did not always agree, and she was wont to intersperse her otherwise quite intelligent conversation with words having no remotest connection with the context.

"A moustache, you mean, Muzzy dear," said her daughter. "Mother forgets you know," she added, in a hasty, low apology to Helen.

"Why do you interrupt me, Annabel? I said a moustache. I hope you sleep well here, my dear. I had that room of yours for some time, but I had to move back here, I could never get to sleep after they put up the Israelite at the corner. It shone right over my bed. Let me see now. You are the second daughter, are you not? Your father was a fine man, my dear. Yes, indeed. We knew him well as a student. He preached one summer in--where was that, Annabel? Alaska?"

"Muskoka, Mother."

"Oh, yes, Muskoka, and the Rev. Walter Hislop, your father, was there as a student."

"Murray, you mean, Mother."

"Don't interrupt me, Annabel. Your uncle preached there two summers, my dear, and I thought my daughter Annabel and he--"

"It was Elizabeth, Mother, not me! Good gracious, how old do you think I am?" demanded Miss Annabel, quite alarmed.

"Oh, Elizabeth, of course. I really thought she and your brother, the Rev. Mr. McIntosh, should have become engaged before the summer was over. But we had other plans for our daughter, and we thought it wiser for her to go to the sea-sh.o.r.e the next summer."

"Now, Mother," said Miss Annabel tactfully. "Miss Murray doesn't want to hear all that ancient history. She has to get her supper. She's tired and hungry."

Helen slept soundly that night. Two big windows of her room looked out to the west where, beyond the town, ran a high wooded ridge, and the low organ tones of the evening wind singing through the trees made her forget her grief and lulled her to sleep.

She set off to her work early in the morning, nervous and apprehensive.

Her hostesses all wished her well. Miss Armstrong, in her quiet stately fashion hoped she would find her employment congenial, and Grandma expressed the desire that Miss Carstairs would enjoy her work at the cemetery, a remark which the worried young teacher felt was more appropriate than the kindly old lady guessed. Miss Annabel followed her to the gate, with instructions regarding the road to school. She plucked a big crimson dahlia from its bed and stuck it in the belt of Helen's blue dress.

"Good luck, dearie, and cheer up!" she cried, seeing the look in the sad blue eyes. "School teaching's heaps of fun, I feel sure. Don't worry about it. We're going to have great times in the evenings.

There's always something on. Bye bye, and good luck," and she tripped up the garden path waving her hand gaily.

Helen had scarcely gone half a block under the elm boughs, when she heard her name called out in a musical roar from far up the street behind her. She had not been in Algonquin twenty-four hours, but she knew that voice. She was just a bit scandalised as she turned to see a man waving his cane, as he hurried to overtake her. But she had not yet learned that no one minded being hailed half-a-mile away by Lawyer Ed.

He was accompanied by a lady, a tall woman of such ample proportions, that she had some ado to keep up with Lawyer Ed's brisk step. She wore a broad old-fashioned hat tied under her round chin, and a gay flowered muslin dress that floated about her with an easy swaying motion. She wore, too, a pair of soft low-heeled slippers, that gave forth a soothing accompaniment to the rhythm of her movements. She was surrounded by a perfect bodyguard of children. They danced behind her and ahead of her, they clung to her hands and peeped from the flowing muslin draperies, while she moved among them, serene and smiling like a great flower surrounded by a cloud of buzzing little bees.

"Good morning, good morning!" shouted the chairman of the school board.

"Abroad bright and early and ready for work! Well, well, well," he added admiringly, as he shook her hands violently, "if the Algonquin air hasn't commenced to do its work already! Now, my dear, brace up and don't be frightened. It is my duty as chairman of the school board to introduce you to your stern princ.i.p.al. Miss Murray, I have the honour of presenting you to Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby, known in private life as Mrs. Adam; but if you are as nice as you look, you may one day be admitted to the inner circle of her friends, and then you will be allowed to call her Madame."

As the lady took her hand and turned upon her a smile in proportion to her size, Helen suddenly realised why she had seemed so familiar even at the first glance. She was exactly like the wonderful fairy who cared for the water-babies at the bottom of the sea. And the resemblance was further heightened by the presence of the babies themselves who came swarming about to settle all over her, and when shoved out of the way, only came swarming back.

"Bless me, what a mistake!" she cried. "It's you that's the Princ.i.p.al and I'm the a.s.sistant. I'm so thankful you're young, my dear. I can't stand old folks, and middle-aged people are my abhorrence. I told Edward Brians that if he put me down there all alone with a middle-aged woman,--a young gay thing like me,--I just wouldn't stand it."

"I don't think there are any old people in Algonquin, are there?" asked Helen.

They were moving on down the street now, and their going was something of a triumphal procession. At every turn some one joined them,--young or old, and from every side greetings were called after them, until the bewildered stranger felt as if she had become part of a circus parade.

She was feeling almost light-hearted as the gay throng moved forward, when they pa.s.sed their escort's office, and in the doorway stood the young Mr. McRae who reminded her so sadly of the past.

"Hooray, Rod," roared his chief. "A graun beginnin', ma braw John Hielanman! Come down here off that perch and do your respects to the March of Education!"

Roderick obeyed very willingly. He had been a pupil of Madame's in his primary days, notwithstanding her extreme youth, and she welcomed him home and hoped he would be as good a boy as he had been when she had him. Then Lawyer Ed introduced him to the new teacher. She shook hands, but she did not say they had met before, and Roderick tactfully ignored the fact also, for which he fancied she gave him a glance of grat.i.tude. They moved on but soon the March of Education was again interrupted. Across the street, Doctor Archie Blair, with his black satchel in his hand and a volume of Burns beneath his arm, was preparing to climb into his buggy for a drive into the country. He stepped aside for a moment and crossed the street to tell Madame how glad he was to see her back from her holidays, for the town had been a howling wilderness without her.

"This is Miss Murray, the new teacher, I know," he added before Lawyer Ed could introduce him. "You will learn soon, Miss Murray, that if you want to find a stranger in Algonquin, especially a strange young lady, you have just to hunt up Lawyer Brians and there she is."

"And a very good place to be, Archie Blair," said Madame. "If every one looked after strangers as well as he does there wouldn't be many lonely people."

"Hear, hear, Madame," roared Lawyer Ed. "No one knows my virtues as you do. Did ye hear yon, Aerchie mon?"

"The trouble is, Miss Murray," said the doctor, without paying the slightest attention to the other two, "the trouble is that this gentleman doesn't give any one else a chance to do a good deed. He does everything himself. No one in Algonquin minds neglecting his duty, for he knows that Mr. Brians would be there ahead of him and get it done anyway, so where's the use of bothering? I'm a member of the school board, and I might be betraying my trust if I encouraged you to neglect your work, but I feel I ought to tell you that if any day you would like to take a few hours off, why, do so, Mr. Brians will teach for you."

There was a great deal more banter and fun, and the March of Education was resumed with small recruits in clean pinafores darting out of homes here and there to join it. It ended at last at the battered gate of the little schoolhouse. The East Ward was a small part of the town, consisting mostly of lake, so the population was not very large. There were but two grades, of which Mrs. Adam taught the younger.

The children scampered over the yard, and swarmed into the building.

Lawyer Ed ran about, scattering pink "bull's-eyes" all over the floor and yard, calling, "Chukie, Chukie!" with the whole school at his heels like a flock of noisy chickens. And when he had the place in an uproar, he shouted good-bye and rushed away in a fit of laughter.

Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby sank heavily into a chair, with a relieved smile, and said, as Helen hung up her hat, and looked about apprehensively, "Now, my dear child, I remember my first day at school-teaching distinctly, and if yours is anything the same, you are scared to death. So if you want to know anything or need any help, you just come right along into my room, and we'll fix it up. And whatever you do, don't worry. We're going to have just a glorious time together, you and I."

And the new teacher went to her first day's work with a heart far less heavy than she would have believed possible. Far ahead had begun to show the first faint glimmer of the light that was leading her through sorrow and pain to a higher and better life. And all unconsciously she had begun to follow its gleam.