It had rained the night before, but when Shirley Blythe woke the clouds were gone and the sun was shining steadily down on the watery world. There were leftover raindrops and dewdrops everywhere, and the sun was taking advantage of them, scattering prisms of rainbows all over creation. He thought, as he dressed and let himself out of the still-quiet house, of the passage in the Bible where God sent his rainbow as a covenant that no more harm should come to his people. He was strangely comforted by this.
And what better place to look at rainbows than Rainbow Valley? He made his way slowly there, taking a roundabout route so that he could pass all of the places that he loved-- the Four Winds Light, the old House of Dreams garden, and a quiet little house that slept amidst the apple tress at the end of the Harbor Road. When he got to Rainbow Valley he was surprised to see a long figure already there-- a girl in a white dress, sitting on the very green grass. For a moment, he thought he had stumbled into a dream and was seeing the ghost of Una, as she had been before.
But then the apparition spoke.
"Father!"
When had his little girl gotten so womanly? Where had she learned to tilt her head in that knowing way-- when had her gap-toothed smile of yore changed to that secret, subtle, wise one? Surely she couldn't have changed so much just in the months that she had been away-- it must have been happening all along, and he had never noticed. Shirley sat down next to her cautiously and felt as shy as he had with feminine creatures in the days of yore. If he hardly recognized Cecilia on the outside, it was certain that he would not be familiar with her on the inside, either. He had once been able to know all that she had thought, and now he did not have the slightest inkling what was going on beneath her cap of shining black hair.
They sat in silence for a while, and watched the sun burn the rainbows away as it rose higher in the sky.
"I am-- so-- glad you're here, Dad," said Cecilia, taking his hand, and realizing that her Father was too amazed at--well, something-- to speak. So she must. "But-- dearest of all Dads-- why did you come?"
Her inky blue eyes and feathery brows were furrowed with concern and Shirley's heart turned inside out. She was too young to be always expecting bad news-- always bracing herself for the worst! In that moment she looked very young-- like his old Cecilia-- and he slipped easily back into the old camaraderie they had shared.
"You've been told what's--happened," he said. "I'm glad-- some people say children shouldn't know about things like this, but I wouldn't have wanted to keep things from you, Cee. But you don't know all that's happened, and I wanted to answer any questions you might have. But not over the telephone-- in person."
He had cut right to the chase, without dallying around with pleasantries. That was his way. Cecilia sighed in relief-- and dread. She was not sure how much more she wanted to know.
"I suppose," she faltered. "I suppose I want to know-- oh Dad! How could she do it? I just don't see how she could want to do it!"
Shirley said, "I hope that you'll never understand that kind of pain."
"We all--miss-- Susan," Cecilia went on, large tears beginning to tumble quietly from her eyes. "But it isn't fair-- for her to want to leave me, too! Don't I count for anything to her, Dad? For so long after Susan died she took no notice of me-- it was as if I had died, too-- and I felt like a ghost! I'm still her girl-- and I'm still alive--I'm still alive!"
All of the pent up feelings that Cecilia had felt for the past weeks-- months-- in the entire year since Susan had been gone-- filled her heart and overflowed. She wept a torrent of tears into her Father's shoulder.
Father let her cry herself out. "Cecilia," he said, when she had come to the end of her crying jag. "You mustn't-- hate-- your mother."
"Hate her!" Cecilia said fervently. "I don't hate her-- could never hate her. I love her! That's the point."
Shirley nodded. "There is an old legend," he said pensively, almost more to himself than Cecilia. "Long ago a group of people built a city near a waterfall-- it was very loud-- louder than the brook babbling to itself down amongst those trees. This waterfall didn't sing-- it roared. The people of that little city had to shout to be heard over it. Well, it must have been very loud and distracting at first, but over generations the townspeople got used to its rumble, until the day that a visitor came to the town. 'How do you stand living so close to that noise?' he shouted to the townsfolk. 'What noise?' they shouted back. They'd grown so used to it they didn't even hear it anymore."
"That's Cicero," Cecilia said, wiping her eyes. "Miss Branston and I read it together last month. Go on, Father, please?"
"Grief is like that waterfall," Father said. "Though I'd give my last breath for it never to touch you, darling girl, there will be grief in your life-- there is some in everyone's life. Some people grow so used to living with it that they don't notice it anymore, like the waterfall in the story. Grandmother, for example. She had a hard life before she came to Green Gables, and then she lost little Joyce-- and Walter-- but you'd never know it from looking at her. Some people find a way to adapt, and to go on. But some people--"
"Get swept away in the current," Cecilia said. "I understand, Dad. But-- I suppose-- I always thought Mother was stronger than that."
"She is strong," Father said. "She had to be to get this far. But she has had a very difficult life, Cecilia. She lost her mother at a young age-- she was just young enough to remember her, but not old enough to have learned to do without her. To lose Susan was just the cap to her sorrow. There was so much pain for all of us during the Great War and she-- and-- and--"
Shirley broke off there, perhaps thinking of a little, bloodstained book of poems.
"And what, Dad?"
"Cecilia," said Shirley, "There are some things that Mother will have to tell you for herself, some day-- not because you aren't grown up, or trustworthy, now, but because she is not yet ready to tell them."
"I understand," Cecilia said sweetly, and tucked her own arm into her Father's and the two walked back toward Ingleside. "She-- won't-- do it again, though, will she, Dad?"
"No-- she won't--she won't hurt herself again, not while there's a breath in me," Shirley swore, in a low voice.
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The other grownups had breakfast on the table when they got back. Because Father had to fly out that afternoon, this was their one chance to have the whole family-- well, almost the whole family-- together for a meal. The grownups had their shining morning faces on, and the littlest of the children, Hannah and Nancy, half-drowsed and half-examined their unfamiliar uncle through half-closed eyes. Everyone was nicer in the morning, because they were too enthralled with the new day to spoil it by fighting.
Each one of them had news for Shirley of Cecilia-- news that she was too shy to pass along herself and news that he drank in gladly. Had Shirley heard that his daughter had sung the National Anthem at the Veteran's Day celebration, Aunt Faith wanted to know. Well, she had, and they were all still talking about it. Had Bruce told him what a capable nurse she was? Aunt Nan filled him in on her studies, and Aunt Rilla on her fashions. And she was so close to Mary Vance's two little urchins--who weren't really urchins as you'd expect, but sweet-as-pie girls-- they were thick as theives. Even Blythe joined in and told his uncle how Cecilia was so knacky at helping him find difficult rhymes for his poems.
Then Joyce spoke up.
"Has Cecilia told you about her boy-friend, Sid Gardiner?" she said, and then took a delicate bite of her eggs and chewed happily.
Cecilia flushed red with embarrassment, Aunt Nan hushed Joy with an angry, "Now miss, Uncle Shirley has far too much to think about that your gossip, I'm sure." Blythe turned a dagger-like glare on his sister. The young fry giggled.
Maybe Shirley could tell that Joyce relished telling him Cecilia's secrets, maybe he was far-away in thought what she's said did not fully register with him. In any event he said, quite calmly,
"Oh, how nice. Too bad I won't get to meet him this time around. Pass the bacon, Jem, please, old sport? Thank you."
Joy's triumphant smile fell off her face. They all began talking about Shirley's travel plans and Joyce was forgotten, except by Owen and Jake, who made faces at their cousin when the grownups weren't looking.
"Ain't it nice to see Joy get hers?" said Owen with relish. He had often been on the receiving end of his cousin's jabs and did not envy Cecilia her position.
"Yes, but who knew Uncle Shirley would take it so well?" said Jake, a trifle glumly. His father was always saying that if any boy laid a hand on Merry, he'd give him what for. Weren't all Fathers like that? So Jake had been expecting fireworks.
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"Goodbye, Ingleside!" Father called as he loaded the car.
"Oh, don't," Cecilia implored him. "Don't say goodbye, Father-- I want to pretend that you're only going for a drive and will be back by dinner. Goodbye sounds too final." She threw herself in his arms.
"I'm not in the habit of believing everything I'm told," Father said solemnly. "But Cee--do you really have a boy-friend?"
Cecilia suddenly wished her father would say good-bye, and be gone with him!
"Ye-ees," she said miserably, with a red face.
"Hey!" said Father with a smile. "No need to act embarrassed that you have a beau-- as Mary Vance once said to Auntie Rilla, 'There's more reason to be embarrassed if you ain't got one.' Well, is he a nice fellow?"
"Sid Gardiner is--lovely," said Cecilia with a faint glimmer of pleasure.
"Gardiner, you say? From Silver Bush, huh? Good family-- went to school with Tom Gardiner. Does he still have that full, ridiculous beard? Well, Cee, if you're happy, then I'm happy, too. But dearest-- I feel left out. How come everyone knew about it but me?"
"I was afraid that you would be sad-- or mad-- so I didn't tell you."
"There was your first mistake. There's nothing that will make me sad or mad enough that you can't tell me. I'm glad my girl is happy." Father gave her a kiss and got into the car. "But," he said with a grin, starting the engine, "If he lays one hand on you, I'll 'give him what for,' as Jem is so fond of saying."
Cecilia waved and waved to him until the car was out of sight, then collapsed against the porch rail, feeling spent. It had been nice to see Father but-- oh, Shakespeare was right. Parting was such sweet sorrow!
"I can't help but think when we'll see each other again," she said-- and shivered.
Shirley was thinking the same thing. He had to get his girl home soon. She was becoming more and more a stranger to him with every day that passed.
"And I'm lost without her," he admitted. "I'm lost without my girls."
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