THE RAINBOW

Bertram King, in all the years she had known him, had not dwelt in Linda's mind so often as in these days. She felt aggrieved to have the thought of him thrust upon her as it had been by her aunt and Mrs. Porter and now by Harriet.

It had been a settled fact in her thought that she and Bertram could never again be friends. The mental picture of his haggard face as he made love to her on a June evening, again as he bade her good-bye before the University Club, and later, the dazed look in his eyes under her accusation in the library—all these pictures of him were a gallery apart from the remembrance of the successful man whose unspoken criticism had so often piqued her.

She thought also of that Sunday afternoon at Harriet's when he had laid his teasing admiration at her feet. She had admired him too, reluctant as was her approval. She exulted in achievement, and Bertram King stood high among young Chicago men who had achieved. Considerable jealousy had entered into her feeling for him. The words, "Bertram thinks," or "Bertram wishes," were often on her father's lips, and occasionally she had felt that she herself was gently set aside in deference to some plan of Bertram's. An unwilling secret acknowledgment of his superiority had fled in the cataclysm of her wild resentment and despair; and now that she was made to feel that she stood alone in her condemnation, and was silently condemned for it by those who loved her, Bertram's image persistently arose as something to be reckoned with.

Fairness had been the characteristic upon which, in school, Linda had greatly prided herself: fairness which excluded preferences. She had so impressed her impersonality upon her classmates that she had won a high reputation as social umpire and was often called upon to decide vexed questions. Now, therefore, she looked Bertram King's insistent image straight in the tired eyes, with her grave, severe estimate, and sustained no pricks of conscience. Time, the wondrous healer, brought her, however, as weeks went on, to raise him from the status of a mere criminal to the rank of a fellow sufferer. All the same, they could never again be friends. The thought of her wronged father, her beloved, must rise between them to the end of their lives. It went without saying that the young man must suffer, even though his pride would not permit him to confess his error. He was not a callous person. Doubtless his punishment had been heavy. Thus her thoughts would run on in the hours that she spent alone.

She was granted the boon of utter freedom. Mrs. Lindsay and her daughter Madge had essayed to be neighborly, but Mrs. Porter acted as an effective buffer between Linda and all social assaults, and as the weeks went by, slowly they brought the girl back from morbid dwelling on a dead past to recognition of the living present. She remained subdued and quiet, but elasticity was returning to her mind and body.

Miss Barry, busy about her home duties, left her niece, with lessening anxiety, to her own devices, and Mrs. Porter was careful to allow Linda to make every advance; but the steady shining of the older woman's happy personality was a magnet toward which the girl was constantly attracted and they were often together.

Blanche Aurora was also a little unconscious missionary. There was something about her youth, her intrepid spirit, stern practicality, and scanty wardrobe which continually touched Linda's sense of humor and compassion.

One day she sent for the child to come up to her room. Blanche Aurora was always glad when duty sent her to sweep and dust this apartment. The hint of violets in the air, the dainty toilet articles on the dresser, the filmy lingerie, which she put in place caressingly with her tanned hands, all bespoke the world of which she had read. She had adored Linda from the moment when unlimited chocolates had been pressed upon her acceptance, but never before had the guest sent for her to come to her room.

As she ascended the stairs, Miss Barry's "help" swiftly reviewed her own sins of commission, but decided that neglect of any duty toward Linda had not been among them. Indeed, her mistress often reprimanded her for lingering over her duties above stairs where perhaps the small chambermaid was hanging hypnotized over a wrist-watch with tiny sparkles that caught the light, or endeavoring to decipher the monogram on a handbag, or examining some other object in the fascinating room from which her round orbs could scarcely detach themselves.

To-day as she entered, Linda in her black gown was sitting by her charming window, reading.

She looked up as Blanche Aurora, conscience-free, and expressionless as ever of countenance, stepped inside and stood waiting.

The faded gingham was getting more outgrown and hueless every day. Linda wondered that her aunt never seemed to observe or care about the child's clean forlornness.

"What do you want?" asked the "help" bluntly.

Harriet Radcliffe, at this moment rowing her small son around a Wisconsin lake, would have enjoyed seeing her sister's eyes suddenly sparkle and match the little laugh that fell from her lips.

"You should say," she remarked to the small maid, all wrists and with her thin legs looking long above the sneakers she wore,—"you should say, 'Did you call me, Miss Linda?'"

"Well, you did, didn't you?" returned Blanche Aurora.

Linda regarded her for a silent moment, appreciatively.

"Are you in a hurry?" she asked then.

"If I wasn't I'd get fired," returned the "help" promptly.

Linda laughed again. "I do really believe you exaggerate," she returned. "I'm sure Aunt Belinda thinks a great deal of you."

"She knows I'm the only kind of a girl she can keep," said Blanche Aurora coolly, "Grown-up ones won't stand it."

"What do you mean by 'it,' you naughty child?" asked Linda, her eyes laughing toward the fishhook braids and the freckles. "Aunt Belinda is a very kind woman."

"Oh, yes, if you was sick she'd call the doctor, but even if you was sick you'd have to hang each rag on its own separate hook and let her smell o' the fish-pans after you'd scrubbed 'em."

"It's nice to be particular," returned Linda, laughing again.

"Huh!" vouchsafed Blanche Aurora; but her eyes, roving around the magic room, had seen something unusual.

"Good," she thought. "She's goin' out o' mournin'. I'll bet she looks pretty in them." Her round gaze cleaving to the bed saw three gowns lying there; one of blue, one of pink, and a tailored skirt and coat of a small black-and-white check.

"Do you like those dresses?" asked Linda, following her regard.

"Yes, they're real sightly."

"Come here, Blanche Aurora."

The child advanced slowly until she stood beside the black-clothed figure. Linda indicated her father's photograph in its silver frame on a neighboring stand. Before it stood a single wild rose in a small glass: a wild rose of the sea: deep in color and twice the size of its inland sisters.

Linda took one of the child's hard tanned hands in her satin-smooth one, and Blanche Aurora started and held her own imprisoned hand stiff and straight.

"Every morning when I come upstairs I find a fresh rose like that in front of my father's picture. At first I couldn't speak of it." Silence. "There are some things too precious to speak of. At last one day I thanked Mrs. Porter for the lovely thought. She said it was a lovely thought, but not hers. Then I wondered if Aunt Belinda could possibly—but one day I met you as you were coming downstairs." Silence. "Blanche Aurora"—Linda's voice stopped again.

Had Blanche Aurora been accused of highway robbery she could not look more guilty. Not one freckle was discernible in the sea of red; but her unwinking stare was fixed on the window.

Linda placed her other hand over the one she held.

"I thank you," she added.

"You gave me the candy," blurted out Blanche Aurora. "I couldn't think of anything else to do. My Pa's dead, too. He drinked, though," she added in a tone which seemed to suggest no flowers.

Linda squeezed the hard little hand and released it, to its owner's relief.

"Your mother has so many children, and so little time to sew. Have you a suit at home, Blanche Aurora?"

"What do you mean—a suit?"

"A coat and skirt alike."

"Not alike. I've got a brown skirt that was Ma's and a jacket I wear to church when it's cold. 'Tain't cold now, though. I wear a white waist on Sunday."

No suspicion of Linda's intentions enlightened her.

The girl arose and walked over to the bed and the blue eyes followed her.

"I sent to Chicago for these dresses of mine."

"I seen the big box come yesterday," returned the other, gravitating toward the bed, and gloating over the color of the fine fabrics.

"Yes, I thought perhaps I could fix some of my things for you."

"What things?" returned Blanche Aurora mechanically.

"These," indicating the bed.

Blanche Aurora gasped.

"For me!" she cried, the loudness of her usual tones restored, with a crack of excitement added. "They ain't serviceable nor durable."

Linda bit her lip. "This one is," she said, picking up the black-and-white checked skirt.

Blanche Aurora handled it reverently. "Why, Miss Linda," she said in the same high key, "how can you give away—"

"You'd better ask how can I fix them for you. I'm such an ignoramus, and yet I'm just conceited enough to try. Aunt Belinda has a machine."

"Oh, yes,"—eagerly,—"she's got a real good one. I can run it, too, if you want me to, and she can spare me."

"All right, child." Linda patted the bony shoulder. "Run along now." Her eyes had a humorous light as she observed the string woven tightly in the tortured red braids. "I'll have to do some ripping to these dresses first, and then I'm sure Mrs. Porter will help me, though probably she doesn't know much more than I do."

The child's reluctant feet drew slowly away from the bed, but not before she had laid her hand lovingly on the pink and blue gowns.

"Miss Linda," she said, looking beatifically at her benefactress, "I used to think that more than anything in this whole world I'd rather have that teeny clock o' yourn that you punch and it tells you jest what time it is; but now I don't even want that!"

Without another word she walked on clouds out of the room, and Linda went up to her father's picture, and lifting it, pressed her cheek against the cool glass.

"'Instead of the thorn,'" she murmured.

Blanche Aurora tripped downstairs, the red still obliterating the freckles on her cheeks. She was too absorbed in her daydream to observe her usual caution in opening the swing door, and simultaneously with her energetic shove a cry sounded from Miss Barry accompanied by a clattering of glass on tin.

"Blanche Aurora, will you ever remember to come through that door carefully? You knocked my arm and I nearly spilled all this jelly."

Miss Barry glared at the help as she spoke. She had just sealed a trayful of glasses and was about to deposit them on a shelf near the swing door.

"I'm glad—I mean I'm sorry!" said the culprit, her eyes still looking far away.

"Well," snapped Miss Barry, her elbow still smarting, "it would be well for you to be certain which. I was going to give you a glass of this jelly to take home to your mother, but now I think I ought to punish you."

"Yes'm," replied Blanche Aurora, gliding through the pantry into the kitchen.

Her employer caught her expression as she passed.

"Come here," she said sharply, and the little maid obeyed.

"Help me set these glasses on the shelf. Don't they look good?"

"Yes'm.—Real pink, some of 'em."

"Aren't you sorry I can't give you one?"

"No'm. Yes'm. I'm tryin' to be."

"Let them alone! I never knew you so awkward. You'll break one yet,"—as the glasses tinkled together dangerously.

Again Miss Barry scrutinized the flushed face and shining eyes above the flat-chested little figure.

"Where have you been, Blanche Aurora?"

"Up in Miss Linda's room."

"What doing? You got through up there hours ago."

"She hollered to me down the stairs to come when I got through in the dinin'-room."

Miss Barry's eyes wore their extracting expression. She wondered what form of intoxicant Linda had been administering now. The Scylla of the chocolate gorge had passed safely. What was this Charybdis that threatened?

"Well?" said Miss Barry suggestively.

"Well," returned the "help," dancing defiance in the round eyes which returned her employer's regard brazenly.

"Don't you be sassy, Blanche Aurora," warned Miss Barry.

"I ain't," answered the other; and as her mistress watched her radiant countenance, she had her first doubt as to whether Blanche Aurora was really so very homely. There were such things as ugly ducklings who outwitted their neighbors. "Has Miss Linda been giving you more candy?"

"No. Clo'es," returned the other in such a high key of ecstasy that Miss Barry recoiled and winked.

"How many times must I tell you that I'm not deaf!" she said sternly. "What kind of clothes?"

"Pink—and blue—and not worn out," was the blissful reply.

"Absurd. I can't imagine my niece having anything sensible and durable enough for a little girl."

"They ain't," declared Blanche Aurora, her eyes seeing visions. "They ain't sensible—nor durable—nor serviceable." Her smile was near-seraphic.

"Then they're not appropriate," said Miss Barry severely.

"No'm," assented the other sweetly.

Silence for a moment, then the mistress broke forth:—

"That's what came in that great package yesterday, then."

"Yes'm. She sent 'way to Chicago. She can't wear 'em 'count of her Pa dyin'," explained Blanche Aurora, with an evident tempering of grief at the loss of Lambert Barry, Esq., respected head of Barry & Co.

"Linda has no judgment!" The low vexed soliloquy was not directed at Miss Barry's "help," but she caught it.

"No, she ain't got no judgment," shrilled Blanche Aurora triumphantly, "but I bet she knows how a girl feels that ain't got anything pretty to wear, and has to go 'round lookin' like somethin' put up in the field to scare the crows."

The child's eyes glistened anew and her voice grew passionate.

"I tell you what I'm goin' to do, Miss Barry, the first day I wear that pink dress. I'm goin' to take this one,"—she plucked scornfully at a fold of the faded gingham,—"and I'm goin' to kick it into the ocean. Kick it—hard." She suited the action to the word, and the glasses tinkled again as she thumped the baseboard.

"That's very wrong, Blanche Aurora. That dress isn't ragged. Your mother mended that last tear very neatly. It would do quite well for your little sister."

"No, sir—I mean ma'am. Nobody else is goin' to have to hate this the way I have!"

"Pink," repeated Miss Barry disapprovingly. "The blue would look quite well on you, I dare say, but pink.—Don't you know your hair is red, and you'd look—"

Blanche Aurora winced. She was afraid to let her mistress go on for fear she was intending something crushing about freckles.

"I don't care—I don't care," she struck in wildly. "You don't know, she don't know, nobody knows how I love pink. Pink's happiness, pink is, whether you see it in the sky or in the roses or where! Don't, Miss Barry, don't!"

The loud voice broke, and two big tears suddenly overflowed from the round eyes and rushed down the freckled cheeks, while Blanche Aurora ran stormily through the second swing door into the kitchen.

The door swept back and forth under the swift impact, and Miss Barry stared at her jellies.

"Don't what!" she said to herself in silent amazement and injury. "Don't what!"