The End of the RainbowMacGregor, Mary Esther Miller
Philosophy
The End of the Rainbow
MacGregor, Mary Esther Miller
Canada -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
Roderick drove swiftly down the snowy road, his eyes blinded. For one
moment he hated success and money and fame and would have thrown them
all away to be able to go back to his father. Well he knew the parting
was more, far more than a temporal leave-taking. It was a departure
from the old paths where his father had taught him to walk.
As he sped along, his head down, he did not see a figure on the road
ahead of him. He was almost upon it when he suddenly jerked his horse
out of the way. It was Old Peter. Evidently he had drunk just enough
to make him tremendously polite. He stepped to the side of the road
and bowed profoundly.
Roderick made an attempt to pull up his horse and say good-bye. A
sudden impulse to take Peter home to his father seized him. Old Angus
would be so comforted to think that his boy's last act was giving a
helping hand on the Jericho Road. But his horse was impatient, and
Peter had already turned in at his own gate and was plunging through
the snow to his house. A bottle was sticking out of his pocket.
Evidently he intended to make a night of it. The sight of it made the
young man change his mind. There was no use, as he had so often said,
bothering with Peter Fiddle. He was determined to drink himself to
death and he would.
Roderick let his horse go and went spinning down the road. Then he
realised that he had given his arm a wrench, when he had pulled his
horse out of Peter's way. The pain in it grew intense for a few
moments. He resolved that as soon as he was settled at his new work he
would have it attended to. It was the relic of his old rainbow
expedition and though it had annoyed him only at intervals it had never
ceased to remind him that there was trouble there for him some future
day.
He had another hard parting to face, but one with hope in it for the
future. When he tied his horse at the school gate and went in he was
wondering how he would tell Helen how much the farewell meant to him.
For he was determined that she must know. The school was quiet, for
the hour for dismissing had not come. As he entered the hall, Madame
came swaying out of Miss Murray's room with a group of cherubs peeping
from behind her. "Now you, Johnnie Pickett," she was saying, "you just
come and tell me if anybody's bad and I'll fix them." Then she saw
Roderick, and greeted him with a rapturous smile.
"There's a dear boy," she cried, "to come and say good-bye to your old
teacher. Now, you Johnnie Pickett, what are you following me out here
for? Aren't you to watch the room for Miss Murray? Go on back. Well,
and you are really going this afternoon?" she said, turning to her
visitor again. "And how is your father standing it? What's the matter
now?"
A small youngster with blazing eyes shot from the room and launched
himself upon her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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