Georgina of the Rainbows

by Annie F. Johnston

The play was not one which Barbara would have chosen for Georgina to see, being one that was advertised as a thriller. It was full of hair-breadth escapes and tragic scenes. There was a shipwreck in it, and passengers were brought ashore in the breeches buoy, just as she had seen sailors brought in on practice days over at the Race Point Lifesaving station. And there was a still form stretched out stark and dripping under a piece of tarpaulin, and a girl with long fair hair streaming wildly over her shoulders knelt beside it wringing her hands.

Georgina stole a quick side-glance at Belle. That was the way it had been in the story of Emmett Potter’s drowning, as they told it on the day of Cousin Mehitable’s visit. Belle’s hands were locked together in her lap, and her lips were pressed in a thin line as if she were trying to keep from saying something. Several times in the semi-darkness of the house her handkerchief went furtively to her eyes.

Georgina’s heart beat faster. Somehow, with the piano pounding out that deep tum-tum, like waves booming up on the rocks, she began to feel strangely confused, as if _she_ were the heroine on the films; as if _she_ were kneeling there on the shore in that tragic moment of parting from her dead lover. She was sure that she knew exactly how Belle felt then, how she was feeling now.

When the lights were switched on again and they rose to go out, Georgina was so deeply under the spell of the play that it gave her a little shock of surprise when Belle began talking quite cheerfully and in her ordinary manner to her next neighbor. She even laughed in response to some joking remark as they edged their way slowly up the aisle to the door. It seemed to Georgina that if she had lived through a scene like the one they had just witnessed, she could never smile again. On the way out she glanced up again at Belie 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 constantly by people dodging back to escape the jam when the crowd had to part to let a vehicle through. But after a few blocks of such jostling the going was easier. The drug-store absorbed part of the throng, and most of the procession turned up Carver Street to the Gifford House and the cottages beyond on Bradford Street.

By the time Georgina and Belle came to the last half-mile of the plank walk, scarcely a footstep sounded behind them. After passing the Green Stairs there was an unobstructed view of the harbor. A full moon was high overhead, flooding the water and beach with such a witchery of light that Georgina moved along as if she were in a dream--in a silver dream beside a silver sea.

Belle pointed to a little pavilion in sight of the breakwater. “Let’s go over there and sit down a few minutes,” she said. “It’s a waste of good material to go indoors on a night like this.”

They crossed over, sinking in the sand as they stepped from the road to the beach, till Georgina had to take off her slippers and shake them before she could settle down comfortably on the bench in the pavilion. They sat there a while without speaking, just as they had sat before the pictures on the films, for never on any film was ever shown a scene of such entrancing loveliness as the one spread out before them. In the broad path made by the moon hung ghostly sails, rose great masts, twinkled myriads of lights. It was so still they could hear the swish of the tide creeping up below, the dip of near-by oars and the chug of a motor boat, far away down by the railroad wharf.

Then Belle began to talk. She looked straight out across the shining path of the moon and spoke as if she were by herself. She did not look at Georgina, sitting there beside her. Perhaps if she had, she would have realized that her listener was only a child and would not have said all she did. Or maybe, something within her felt the influence of the night, the magical drawing of the moon as the tide feels it, and she could not hold back the long-repressed speech that rose to her lips. Maybe it was that the play they had seen, quickened old memories into painful life again.

It was on a night just like this, she told Georgina, that Emmett first told 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 upward glance at her companion. Belle did not look old, sitting there in her white dress, like a white moonflower in that silver radiance, a little lock of soft blonde hair fluttering across her cheek.