Georgina of the Rainbows

by Annie F. Johnston

The Doctor paused as if waiting for some encouragement to read.

“Go on,” said Dave. “I’d like to hear it, best in the world.”

He turned his chair so that he could look out of the window at the harbor. The Chinese sampans of every color were gliding across the water like a flock of gaily-hued swans. He seemed to be dividing his attention between those native boats and the letter when the Doctor first began to read. It was Georgina’s rainbow letter, and the colors of the rainbow were repeated again and again by the reds and yellows and blues of that fleet of sampans.

But as the Doctor read on Dave listened more intently, so intently, in fact, that he withdrew his attention entirely from the window, and leaning forward, buried his face in his hands, his elbows resting on his knees. The Doctor found him in this attitude when he looked up at the end, expecting some sort of comment. He was used to Dave’s silences, but he had thought this surely would call forth some remark. Then as he studied the bowed figure, it flashed into his mind that the letter must have touched some chord in the boy’s own past. Maybe Dave had an old father somewhere, longing for his return, and the memory was breaking him all up.

Silently, the Doctor turned aside to the pile of letters still unread. Georgina’s stern little note beginning “Dear Sir” was the next in order and was in such sharp contrast to the loving, intimate way she addressed her mother, that he felt the intended reproach of it, even while it amused and surprised him. But it hurt a little. It wasn’t pleasant to have his only child regard him as a stranger. It was fortunate that the next letter was the one in which she hastened to call him “a Saint-George-and-the-dragon sort of father.”

When he read Barbara’s explanation of his long silence and Georgina’s quick acceptance of it, he wanted to take them both in his arms and tell them how deeply he was touched by their love and loyalty; that he hadn’t intended to be neglectful of them or so absorbed in his work that he put it first in his life. But it was hard for him to put such things into words, either written or spoken. He had left too much to be taken for granted he admitted remorsefully to himself.

For a long time he sat staring sternly into space. So people had been gossiping about him, had they? And Barbara and the baby had heard the whispers and been hurt by them----He’d go home and put a stop to it. He straightened himself up and turned to report his sudden decision to Dave. But the chair by the window was empty. The Doctor glanced over his shoulder. Dave had changed his seat and was sitting behind him. They were back to back, but a mirror hung in such a way the Doctor could see Dave’s face.

With arms crossed on a little table in front of him, he was leaning forward for another look at the photograph which he had propped up against a vase. A hungry yearning was in his face as he bent towards it, gazing into it as if he could not look his fill. Suddenly his head went down on his crossed arms in such a hopeless fashion that in a flash Doctor Huntingdon divined the reason, and recognized the resemblance that had haunted him. Now he understood why the boy had stayed behind to nurse him. Now a dozen trifling incidents that had seemed of no importance to him at the time, confirmed his suspicion.

His first impulse was to Cry out “Dan!” but his life-long habit of repression checked him. He felt he had no right to intrude on the privacy which the boy guarded so jealously. But Uncle Darcy’s son! Off here in a foreign land, bowed down with remorse and homesickness! How he must have been tortured with all that talk of the old town and its people!