Black Rainbow (5 page)

In the evening, after Lina had been handed over to the nursemaid, Megan sat with Miss Mandeville in the latter's
pleasant little parlor, next to her bedroom. There was nothing extraordinary in this—a governess was expected to perform the duties of a companion when her employers required it—but gradually the two girls, so close in age, drifted into something akin to friendship. After a time Miss Mandeville suggested they use each other's first names.

"We must be formal in company, I suppose," she said with a shrug. "But I am a firm believer in following my own inclinations instead of the stupid dictates of propriety, and I am always thinking of you as 'Megan' now."

The evenings were quiet ones—Jane never went out and seemed to have few callers—but Megan enjoyed them. Like Lina, Jane could not sit with idle hands, and when she was not working on some garment for the child, who wore them out at an astonishing rate, she was doing Berlin wool work or sketching. One skill she lacked was music; her admiration for Megan's playing and singing was unbounded, and almost every evening ended with a little recital.

Rapidly as the friendship developed, it was almost a month after Megan's arrival before Jane confided her worry about Edmund.

"I have written to him every day, but have received only two brief notes in reply," she said, frowning at the unoffending fire screen she was embroidering. "I expected him long before this; I pray he is not worse."

The same fear had occurred to Megan, but she said reassuringly, "Surely his friends would communicate with you if they had any concern for his health."

"No doubt you wonder why I don't go to London and see for myself," Jane said. She had a disconcerting habit of making accurate guesses of that sort, as if she could read other people's minds. "I don't because Edmund asked me not to leave Grayhaven. He says his mind is more at ease if he knows I am looking after things here."

"Perhaps he doesn't want you fussing over him," Megan said with a smile. "Men hate that."

"Not Edmund. He adores being coddled. Or at least he did
when he was young." Jane's hands, holding the needle with its trail of scarlet wool, dropped into her lap. Her eyes took on a far-off look. "Sometimes, when he had no other boys to play with, he would let me play Soldiers and Radicals with him. You may guess, Megan, who was the Radical! When the gallant soldier was wounded, the radical became the nurse instead. I tore up my petticoats to make bandages and stole quantities of sweets and preserves to tempt his appetite. . . . How I was scolded! But I was used to that; my petticoat was often in tatters, for I was a sad tomboy."

The bright vision of childhood faded. Jane's smile was tinged with sadness. "I missed him desperately when he went off to school, and I have seen so little of him since. ... This last year was the worst; every newspaper I read was filled with horrors. But you know of the awful suffering in the trenches before Sevastopol. I visualized Edmund freezing on those bleak heights in winter, wounded and abandoned—and the hospitals were worse than the trenches. It is still going on; and I feel guilty, Megan, when I thank God for Edmund's miraculous survival, when so many are still suffering and dying."

Her voice broke. Touched by this rare demonstration of sensibility, Megan put her hand over the fingers that had given up all pretense of working.

"It will soon be over, everyone says so. And conditions have improved; you know of Miss Nightingale and the wonderful things she has done with the hospitals."

"Yes, God bless her. She makes me proud to be a woman. Well, but this is a depressing conversation. Shall we have some music? Play something very loud and very cheerful, please."

When she knelt beside her comfortable bed that night, Megan prayed for the suffering men in the Crimea. Her plea that she be allowed to remain in the house that was daily becoming more dear to her was tacked on to the end of the petition instead of constituting its main thesis.

Her unselfish
piety was rewarded, as is so often the case, by a day of extreme personal discomfort. She awoke to the sound of rain and the sight of dreary gray skies. A tightness at the back of her throat warned her of the beginning of a cold, and as the day wore on, all the other horrid symptoms of that affliction made their appearance. Deprived of outdoor exercise by the weather, Lina was maddeningly naughty. When she finished the day's misadventures by burning her hand on the fender, after being warned a dozen times to stay away from the fire, Megan snapped at her instead of expressing sympathy. Lina howled, Megan blew her nose, and the cat spat at both of them before leaving the room in search of more civilized companionship.

Having looked forward all day to the evening meeting with Jane, Megan was discouraged to find her friend in equally gloomy spirits. Soon after they settled down with their sewing, the maid entered to announce a visitor, the mention of whose name sent Jane into a rage.

"Belts? Mr. Belts? How dare he call at such an hour, without an invitation? I am not at home, Bessy."

"He says it is important, miss."

"I will be at the mill tomorrow if he wishes to see me. Why are you standing there, Bessy? Didn't you hear me clearly?"

The maid scuttled out, and Jane began to embroider furiously, jabbing her needle in and out of the canvas with a vigor that suggested she would have preferred a living target. Apparently Mr. Belts accepted his dismissal, for no further message was delivered. After a time Jane's temper cooled. She stopped attacking the canvas and apologized.

"You must think me very rude."

"Why, no. It is certainly a strange hour to call."

"But typical of George Belts. He continues to cherish the unfounded delusion that I am delighted to see him whenever he chooses to honor me with his presence."

"Oh?" There was inquiry in Megan's voice. She did not venture to express the question she wanted to ask, but it was not hard to fathom; and after a moment Jane began to laugh, falling into such a fit of merriment that her feet flew up in the air and the chair came perilously close to tipping over.

"You are so well bred, Megan," she chuckled, wiping her eyes. "Why don't you ask straight out? You are dying to know whether George Belts is a suitor, and whether I am playing coy in order to increase his ardor."

"Oh, Jane, I assure you—"

"Well, of course you are. It is the common habit of fashionable young ladies to act that way. But you ought to know me well enough by now to understand that I am not a fashionable young lady. And if you had seen Belts, you would wonder why I don't pour boiling water on his head from the window instead of just turning him away from the door."

"Is he very unattractive?" Megan asked interestedly.

"Oh, yes, very. He is rather too thin than too fat; his hair is not
much
gray for a man of sixty; he has very hairy hands with long grasping fingers. But the crowning unattractiveness is that he doesn't care a fig for me. He wants the mill."

"You do yourself an injustice, Jane," Megan protested. "Any man of taste would find you—"

"He is not a man of taste. He owns several clothing factories in Yorkshire, and he is looking for a source of cheap cloth."

"Dear me." Megan was disconcerted by this cynical appraisal.

"He never actually had the effrontery to propose," Jane continued. "But he was working up to it; I could see it coming on. So, rather than waste his time and mine, I told him I despised him and that I would rather burn the mill to the ground than see him have any share in it."

The soft, complacent voice in which she expressed these sentiments brought a reluctant smile to Megan's face.

"I wonder he would show his face here again, after that."

"Oh, he is impossible to insult. I wonder why he should reappear just now, though. Curse George Belts; I am tired of thinking and talking about the miserable creature. And you, poor girl, look terrible; your poor little nose is as red as a rose. I am sure you don't feel like singing tonight. Perhaps you had better go straight to bed, and I will have Lizzie rub you with goose grease."

Megan was not eager to enjoy this treat. She offered to play, but found it difficult on account of having to stop every few bars to blow her nose. After half an hour she said good night, hoping that Jane had forgotten the goose grease, but feeling fairly sure she had not. And indeed Lizzie was close on her heels, her round red face radiating delight at the prospect of a patient to be tended. After a hot drink and a vigorous rub with the aforesaid medicament—which smelled almost as bad as Megan had feared it would—she was put into a flannel nightgown that had been toasting in front of the fire till it was red-hot. Lizzie then piled four blankets on top of her, forbade her to remove a single one of them, and left.

Megan did not so much fall asleep as swoon with heat prostration. It might have been this discomfort or the inconvenience of the cold in the head that caused her to dream that night, for the first time since she had come to Grayhaven.

It was the old familiar dream she had had many times before, from childhood on. The theme was always the same, though the locale and characters differed. She was hurrying to catch a ship or a train or a coach that left at a precise time. The destination was seldom clear, but it was a place she wanted desperately to reach, and she knew she would never get there unless she caught that particular vehicle. One after another, a dozen trifling errands detained her. The obstacles were as varied as her dreaming mind could invent, but all had the same effect—delay—and for some reason she was
helpless to pass by or over them, even though she was tormented by painful anxiety about the time and a growing conviction that she would be too late.

The dream always ended before she found out whether or not she had succeeded in reaching her conveyance. When her anxiety rose to fever pitch, she woke up. So it happened on this occasion; she lay lapped in steaming heat and could not decide whether the moisture on her cheek was perspiration or tears.

Whatever its cause, the dream was not a portent of evil. The next day they heard good news. Edmund was coming home.

The house and gardens were as fine as Lizzie could make them. She had driven the servants till even that
good-natured crew began to grumble, and one little housemaid had hysterics when criticized for leaving dust on the springs of Edmund's bed. Not that his room had been neglected; Lizzie had "turned it out" once a week, dripping tears on the furniture and floor when the war news was particularly bad. But when she heard Edmund was on his way home, it required four housemaids working for four days to clean it properly.

Even Jane lost her cool composure and rushed from the mill to the kitchen to the garden. The books must be in perfect order to show Edmund; the damask rose he had once admired must be coaxed to bloom; she would make his favorite food with her own hands—there was one rich plum cake she alone could concoct. Lina flew around the house like a miniature cyclone, and Megan was too excited to make more than a pretense at lessons.

Edmund's delay gave them time to accomplish all these things, even the Herculean amount of cleaning Lizzie considered necessary. On the day of his arrival, half the household was looking out the windows, on one pretense or another; and when the cry, "There he is!" went up, they dropped whatever they were doing and ran to the door.

Just as it was in the old days, Megan thought, as she watched Edmund dismount—the adoring tenantry crowding around to greet the young lord. He had a kind word for everyone and a hearty hug for Lizzie. Then he turned to Jane.

She had hung back a little. Lina clung to her skirts and stared openmouthed at the tall figure advancing toward her. For a moment brother and sister gazed at one another in silence. The top of Jane's smooth brown head did not even reach Edmund's shoulder; her face was turned up, as if tilted by the weight of the heavy bun at the back of her neck. Their faces were grave, and Megan's sympathetic imagination told her why; they were thinking of the man who should have been the first to greet the wanderer. Edmund's father had died soon after he left for the Crimea.

Then Jane put out her arms and Edmund lifted her off her feet in the exuberance of his greeting.

"You have shrunk," he exclaimed. "I told you it would happen, if you persisted in walking in the rain.... Jane, Jane, how good it is to be home!"

"I am half an inch taller than I was when you went away," Jane protested. "It is barely possible that you are the one who has grown. But here is someone who has grown even more—comparatively speaking!"

She lifted Lina in her arms. The child had been dressed in her best white muslin, frilled and ruffled and embroidered with flowers and butterflies by Aunt Jane's clever fingers. Golden ringlets clustered around her flushed face, and her eyes were as blue as cornflowers. The finger on which she was nervously sucking did not improve the total picture, but all in all she was a child of whom any adoptive father could be proud.

Edmund held out his arms. His eyes were filled with tears.

Lina shrank away. "Why is he crying?" she asked. "Why is the man crying?"

"Because he is happy," Jane said, and laughed at the foolishness of it.

Disconcerted by Lina's cool reception, Edmund resorted to bribery. "I am your guardian, Caroline, and I have come home to stay. There are some pretty presents for you in the parcels I sent home. Come with me and we will open them."

An angelic smile spread over Lina's face. She toppled forward into his waiting arms.

"You see, I have learned the way to a woman's heart," said Edmund to his sister.

"For shame! You were not so cynical once. But stay—you have not greeted Miss O'Neill. You owe her special courtesy now, to compensate for your earlier neglect."

Then, for the first time, his eyes met Megan's.