Polly Oliver's Problem

And now life, on the whole, save for one carking care that perched on his shoulder by day and sat on his eyelids at night, was very pleasant; though he could not flatter himself that he was absolutely a free agent.

After all ordinary engagements of concerts, theatres, lectures, or what not, he entered the house undisturbed, and noiselessly sought his couch. But one night, when he ventured to stay out till after midnight, just as he was stealing in softly, Mrs. Oliver's gentle voice came from the head of the stairs, saying, "Good-night, Edgar, the lamp is lighted in your room!"

Edgar closed his door and sat down disconsolately on the bed, cane in hand, hat on the back of his head. The fire had burned, to a few glowing coals; his slippers lay on the hearth, and his Christmas "easy jacket" hung over the back of his great armchair; his books lay open under the student-lamp, and there were two vases of fresh flowers in the room: that was Polly's doing.

"Mrs. Oliver was awake and listening for me; worrying about me, probably; I dare say she thought I 'd been waylaid by bandits," he muttered discontentedly. "I might as well live in the Young Women's Christian Association! I can't get mad with an angel, but I did n't intend being one myself! Good gracious! why don't they hire me a nurse and buy me a perambulator!"

But all the rest was perfect; and his chief chums envied him after they had spent an evening with the Olivers. Polly and he had ceased to quarrel, and were on good, frank, friendly terms. "She is no end of fun," he would have told you; "has no nonsensical young-lady airs about her, is always ready for sport, sings all kinds of songs from grave to gay, knows a good joke when you tell one, and keeps a fellow up to the mark as well as a maiden aunt."

All this was delightful to everybody concerned. Meanwhile the household affairs were as troublesome as they could well be. Mrs. Oliver developed more serious symptoms, and Dr. George asked the San Francisco physician to call to see her twice a week at least. The San Francisco physician thought "a year at Carlsbad, and a year at Nice, would be a good thing;" but, failing these, he ordered copious quantities of expensive drugs, and the reserve fund shrank, though the precious three hundred and twelve dollars was almost intact.

Poor Mrs. Chadwick sent tearful monthly letters, accompanied by checks of fifty to sixty-five dollars. One of the boarders had died; two had gone away; the season was poor; Ah Foy had returned to China; Mr. Greenwood was difficult about his meals; the roof leaked; provisions were dear; Mrs. Holmes in the next street had decided to take boarders; Eastern people were grumbling at the weather, saying it was not at all as reported in the guide-books; real-estate and rents were very low; she hoped to be able to do better next month; and she was Mrs. Oliver's "affectionate Clementine Churchill Chadwick."

Polly had held a consultation with the principal of her school, who had assured her that as she was so well in advance of her class, she could be promoted the next term, if she desired. Accordingly, she left school in order to be more with her mother, and as she studied with Edgar in the evening, she really lost nothing.

Mrs. Howe remitted four dollars from the monthly rent, in consideration of Spanish lessons given to her two oldest children. This experiment proved a success, and Polly next accepted an offer to come three times a week to the house of a certain Mrs. Baer to amuse (instructively) the four little Baer cubs, while the mother Baer wrote a "History of the Dress-Reform Movement in English-Speaking Nations."

For this service Polly was paid ten dollars a month in gold coin, while the amount of spiritual wealth which she amassed could not possibly be estimated in dollars and cents. The ten dollars was very useful, for it procured the services of a kind, strong woman, who came on these three afternoons of Polly's absence, put the entire house in order, did the mending, rubbed Mrs. Oliver's tired back, and brushed her hair until she fell asleep.

So Polly assisted in keeping the wolf from the door, and her sacrifices watered her young heart and kept it tender. "Money may always be a beautiful thing. It is we who make it grimy."

Edgar shared in the business conferences now. He had gone into convulsions of mirth over Polly's system of accounts, and insisted, much against her will, in teaching her book-keeping, striving to convince her that the cash could be kept in a single box, and the accounts separated in a book.

These lessons were merry occasions, for there was a conspicuous cavity in Polly's brain where the faculty for mathematics should have been.

"Your imbecility is so unusual that it 's a positive inspiration," Edgar would say. "It is n't like any ordinary stupidity; there does n't seem to be any bottom to it, you know; it 's abnormal, it 's fascinating, Polly!"

Polly glowed under this unstinted praise. "I am glad you like it," she said. "I always like to have a thing first-class of its kind, though I can't pride myself that it compares with your Spanish accent, Edgar; that stands absolutely alone and unapproachable for badness. I don't worry about my mathematical stupidity a bit since I read Dr. Holmes, who says that everybody has an idiotic area in his mind."

There had been very little bookkeeping to-night. It was raining in torrents. Mrs. Oliver was talking with General M– in the parlor, while Edgar and Polly were studying in the dining-room.

Polly laid down her book and leaned back in her chair. It had been a hard day, and it was very discouraging that a new year should come to one's door laden with vexations and anxieties, when everybody naturally expected new years to be happy, through January and February at least.

"Edgar," she sighed plaintively, "I find that this is a very difficult world to live in, sometimes."

Edgar looked up from his book, and glanced at her as she lay back with closed eyes in the Chinese lounging-chair. She was so pale, so tired, and so very, very pretty just then, her hair falling in bright confusion round her face, her whole figure relaxed with weariness, and her lips quivering a little, as if she would like to cry if she dared.

Polly with dimples playing hide and seek in rosy cheeks, with dazzling eyes, and laughing lips, and saucy tongue, was sufficiently captivating; but Polly with bright drops on her lashes, with a pathetic droop in the corners of her mouth and the suspicion of a tear in her voice,–this Polly was irresistible.

"What's the matter, pretty Poll?"

"Nothing specially new. The Baer cubs were naughty as little demons to-day. One of them had a birthday-party yesterday, with four kinds of frosted cake. Mrs. Baer's system of management is n't like mine, and until I convince the children I mean what I say, they give me the benefit of the doubt. The Baer place is so large that Mrs. Baer never knows where disobedience may occur, and that she may be prepared she keeps one of Mr. Baer's old slippers on the front porch, one in the carriage-house, one in the arbor, one in the nursery, and one under the rose hedge at the front gate. She showed me all these haunts, and told me to make myself thoroughly at home. I felt tempted to-day, but I resisted."

"You are working too hard, Polly. I propose we do something about Mrs. Chadwick. You are bearing all the brunt of other people's faults and blunders."

"But, Edgar, everything is so mixed: Mrs. Chadwick's year of lease is n't over; I suppose she cannot be turned out by main force, and if we should ask her to leave the house it might go unrented for a month or two, and the loss of that money might be as much as the loss of ten or fifteen dollars a month for the rest of the year. I could complain of her to Dr. George, but there again I am in trouble. If he knew that we are in difficulties, he would offer to lend us money in an instant, and that would make mamma ill, I am sure; for we are under all sorts of obligations to him now, for kindnesses that can never be repaid. Then, too, he advised us not to let Mrs. Chadwick have the house. He said that she had n't energy enough to succeed; but mamma was so sorry for her, and so determined to give her a chance, that she persisted in letting her have it. We shall have to find a cheaper flat, by and by, for I 've tried every other method of economizing, for fear of making mamma worse with the commotion of moving."

CHAPTER X.

EDGAR GOES TO CONFESSION

"I 'm afraid I make it harder, Polly, and you and your mother must be frank with me, and turn me out of the Garden of Eden the first moment I become a nuisance. Will you promise?"

"You are a help to us, Edgar; we told you so the other night. We could n't have Yung Lee unless you lived with us, and I could n't earn any money if I had to do all the housework."

"I 'd like to be a help, but I 'm so helpless!"

"We are all poor together just now, and that makes it easier."

"I am worse than poor!" Edgar declared.

"What can be worse than being poor?" asked Polly, with a sigh drawn from the depths of her boots.

"To be in debt," said Edgar, who had not the slightest intention of making this remark when he opened his lips.

Now the Olivers had only the merest notion of Edgar's college troubles; they knew simply what the Nobles had told them, that he was in danger of falling behind his class. This, they judged, was a contingency no longer to be feared; as various remarks dropped by the students who visited the house, and sundry bits of information contributed by Edgar himself, in sudden bursts of high spirits, convinced them that he was regaining his old rank, and certainly his old ambition.

"To be in debt," repeated Edgar doggedly, "and to see no possible way out of it. Polly, I 'm in a peck of trouble! I 've lost money, and I 'm at my wits' end to get straight again!"

"Lost money? How much? Do you mean that you lost your pocket-book?"

"No, no; not in that way."

"You mean that you spent it," said Polly. "You mean you overdrew your allowance."

"Of course I did. Good gracious, Polly! there are other ways of losing money than by dropping it in the road. I believe girls don't know anything more about the world than the geography tells them,–that it's a round globe like a ball or an orange!"

"Don't be impolite. The less they know about the old world the better they get on, I dare say. Your colossal fund of worldly knowledge does n't seem to make you very happy, just now. How could you lose your money, I ask? You 're nothing but a student, and you are not in any business, are you?"

"Yes, I am in business, and pretty bad business it is, too."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I 've been winding myself up into a hard knot, the last six months, and the more I try to disentangle myself, the worse the thing gets. My allowance is n't half enough; nobody but a miser could live on it. I 've been unlucky, too. I bought a dog, and some one poisoned him before I could sell him; then I lamed a horse from the livery-stable, and had to pay damages; and so it went. The fellows all kept lending me money, rather than let me stay out of the little club suppers, and since I 've shut down on expensive gayeties they've gone back on me, and all want their money at once; so does the livery-stable keeper, and the owner of the dog, and a dozen other individuals; in fact, the debtors' prison yawns before me."

"Upon my word, I 'm ashamed of you!" said Polly, with considerable heat. "To waste money in that way, when you knew perfectly well you could n't afford it, was–well, it was downright dishonest, that's what it was! To hear you talk about dogs, and lame horses, and club suppers, anybody would suppose you were a sporting man! Pray, what else do they do in that charming college set of yours?"

"I might have known you would take that tone, but I did n't, somehow. I told you just because I thought you were the one girl in a thousand who would understand and advise a fellow when he knows he's made a fool of himself and acted like a cur! I did n't suppose you would call hard names, and be so unsympathizing, after all we have gone through together!"

"I 'm not!–I did n't!–I won't do it again!" said Polly incoherently, as she took a straight chair, planted her elbows on the table, and leaned her chin in her two palms. "Now let's talk about it; tell me everything quickly. How much is it?"

"Nearly two hundred dollars! Don't shudder so provokingly, Polly; that 's a mere bagatelle for a college man, but I know it's a good deal for me,–a good deal more than I know how to get, at all events."

"Where is the debtors' prison?" asked Polly in an awestruck whisper.

"Oh, there is n't any such thing nowadays! I was only chaffing; but of course, the men to whom I am in debt can apply to father, and get me in a regular mess. I 've pawned my watch to stave one of them off. You see, Polly, I would rather die than do it; nevertheless, I would write and tell father everything, and ask him for the money, but circumstances conspire just at this time to make it impossible. You know he bought that great ranch in Ventura county with Albert Harding of New York. Harding has died insolvent, and father has to make certain payments or lose control of a valuable property. It's going to make him a rich man some time, but for a year or two we shall have to count every penny. Of course the fruit crop this season has been the worst in ten years, and of course there has been a frost this winter, the only severe one within the memory of the oldest inhabitant,–that's the way it always is,–and there I am! I suppose you despise me, Polly?"

"Yes, I do!" (hotly)–"No, I don't altogether, and I 'm not good enough myself to be able to despise people. Besides, you are not a despisable boy. You were born manly and generous and true-hearted, and these hateful things that you have been doing are not a part of your nature a bit; but I 'm ashamed of you for yielding to bad impulses when you have so many good ones, and–oh dear!–I do that very same thing myself, now that I stop to think about it. But how could you, you, Edgar Noble, take that evil-eyed, fat-nosed, common Tony Selling for a friend? I wonder at you!"

"He is n't so bad in some ways. I owe him eighty dollars of that money, and he says he 'll give me six months to pay it."

"I 'm glad he has some small virtues," Polly replied witheringly. "Now, what can we do, Edgar? Let us think. What can, what can we do?" and she leaned forward reflectively, clasping her knee with her hands and wrinkling her brow with intense thought.

That little "we" fell on Edgar's loneliness of spirit consolingly; for it adds a new pang to self-distrust when righteous people withdraw from one in utter disdain, even if they are "only girls" who know little of a boy's temptations.

"If you can save something each month out of your allowance, Edgar," said Polly, finally, with a brighter look, "I can spare fifty or even seventy-five dollars of our money, and you may pay it back as you can. We are not likely to need it for several months, and your father and mother ought not to be troubled with this matter, now that it's over and done with."

The blood rushed to Edgar's face as he replied stiffly: "I may be selfish and recklessly extravagant, but I don't borrow money from girls. If you wanted to add the last touch to my shame, you 've done it. Don't you suppose I have eyes, Polly Oliver? Don't you suppose I 've hated myself ever since I came under this roof, when I have seen the way you worked and planned and plotted and saved and denied yourself? Don't you suppose I 've looked at you twenty times a day, and said to myself, 'You miserable, selfish puppy, getting yourself and everybody who cares for you into trouble, just look at that girl and be ashamed of yourself down to the ground!' And now you offer to lend me money! Oh, Polly, I wouldn't have believed it of you!"

Polly felt convicted of sin, although she was not very clear as to the reason. She blushed as she said hastily, "Your mother has been a very good friend to us, Edgar; why should n't we help you a little, just for once? Now, let us go in to see mamma and talk it all over together!"

"If you pity me, Polly, don't tell her; I could not bear to have that saint upon earth worried over my troubles; it was mean enough to add a feather's weight to yours."

"Well, we won't do it, then," said Polly, with maternal kindness in her tone. "Do stop pacing up and down like a caged panther. We 'll find some other way out of the trouble; but boys are such an anxiety! Do you think, Edgar, that you have reformed?"

"Bless your soul! I 've kept within my allowance for two or three months. As Susan Nipper says, 'I may be a camel, but I 'm not a dromedary!' When I found out where I was, I stopped; I had to stop, and I knew it. I 'm all right now, thanks to–several things. In fact, I 've acquired a kind of appetite for behaving myself now, and if the rascally debts were only out of the way, I should be the happiest fellow in the universe."

"You cannot apply to your father, so there is only one thing to do,–that is, to earn the money."

"But how, when I 'm in the class-room three fourths of the day?"

"I don't know," said Polly hopelessly. "I can tell you what to do, but not how to do it; I 'm nothing but a miserable girl."

"I must stay in college, and I must dig and make up for lost time; so most of my evenings will be occupied."

"You must put all your 'musts' together," said Polly decisively, "and then build a bridge over them, or tunnel through them, or span them with an arch. We 'll keep thinking about it, and I'm sure something will turn up; I 'm not discouraged a bit. You see, Edgar," and Polly's face flushed with feeling as she drew patterns on the tablecloth with her tortoise-shell hairpin,–"you see, of course, the good fairies are not going to leave you in the lurch when you 've turned your back on the ugly temptations, and are doing your very best. And now that we 've talked it all over, Edgar, I 'm not ashamed of you! Mamma and I have been so proud of your successes the last month. She believes in you!"

"Of course," said Edgar dolefully; "because she knows only the best."

"But I know the best and the worst too, and I believe in you! It seems to me the best is always the truest part of one, after all. No, we are not going to be naughty any more; we are going to earn that hateful Tony's money; we are going to take all the class honors, just for fun, not because we care for such trifles, and we are going home for the summer holidays in a blaze of glory!"

Edgar rose with a lighter heart in his breast than he had felt there for many a week. "Good-night, Parson Polly," he said rather formally, for he was too greatly touched to be able to command his tones; "add your prayers to your sermons, and perhaps you 'll bring the black sheep safely into the fold."

The quick tears rushed to Polly's eyes; for Edgar's stiff manner sat curiously on him, and she feared she had annoyed him by too much advice. "Oh, Edgar," she said, with a quivering lip, "I did n't mean to pose or to preach! You know how full of faults I am, and if I were a boy I should be worser I was only trying to help a little, eves if I am younger and a girl! Don't–don't think I was setting myself up as better than you; that's so mean and conceited and small! Edgar dear, I am so proud to think you told me your troubles; don't turn away from me, or I shall think you are sorry you trusted me!" and Polly laid a persuasive, disarming hand on the lad's shoulder.

Suddenly Edgar's heart throbbed with a new feeling. He saw as in a vision the purity, fidelity, and tender yearning of a true woman's nature shining through a girl's eyes. In that moment he wished as never before to be manly and worthy. He seemed all at once to understand his mother, his sister, all women better, and with a quick impulsive gesture which he would not have understood a month before, he bent his head over astonished Polly's hand, kissed it reverently, then opened the door and went to his room without a word.

CHAPTER XI.

THE LADY IN BLACK

"I 've had a little adventure," said Polly to her mother one afternoon. "I went out, for the sake of the ride, on the Sutler Street cable-cars with Milly Foster. When we came to the end of the line, Milly walked down to Greary Street to take her car home. I went with her to the corner, and as I was coming back I saw a lady in black alighting from an elegant carriage. She had a coachman and a footman, both with weeds on their hats, and she seemed very sad and grave; but she had such a sweet, beautiful face that I was sorry for her the first moment I looked at her. She walked along in front of me toward the cemetery, and there we met those boys that stand about the gate with bouquets. She glanced at the flowers as if she would like to buy some, but you know how hideous they always are, every color of the rainbow crowded in tightly together, and she looked away, dissatisfied. I don't know why she had n't brought some with her,–she looked rich enough to buy a whole conservatory; perhaps she had n't expected to drive there. However, Milly Foster had given me a whole armful of beautiful flowers,–you know she has a 'white garden:' there were white sweet peas, Lamarque roses, and three stalks of snowy Eucharist lilies. I need n't tell my own mother that I did n't stop to think twice; I just stepped up to her and said, 'I should like to give you my flowers, please. I don't need them, and I am sure they are just sweet and lovely enough for the place you want to lay them.'

"The tears came into her eyes,–she was just ready to cry at anything, you know,–and she took them at once, and said, squeezing my hand very tightly, 'I will take them, dear. The grave of my own, and my only, little girl lies far away from this,–the snow is falling on it to-day,–but whenever I cannot give the flowers to her, I always find the resting-places of other children, and lay them there. I know it makes her happy, for she was born on Christmas Day, and she was full of the Christmas spirit, always thinking of other people, never of herself.'

"She did look so pale, and sad, and sweet, that I began to think of you without your troublesome Polly, or your troublesome Polly without you; and she was pleased with the flowers and glad that I understood, and willing to love anything that was a girl or that was young,–oh, you know, mamacita,–and so I began to cry a little, too; and the first thing I knew I kissed her, which was most informal, if not positively impertinent. But she seemed to like it, for she kissed me back again, and I ran and jumped on the car, and here I am! You will have to eat your dinner without any flowers, madam, for you have a vulgarly strong, healthy daughter, and the poor lady in black has n't."

This was Polly's first impression of "the lady in black," and thus began an acquaintance which was destined before many months to play a very important part in Polly's fortunes and misfortunes.

What the lady in black thought of Polly, then and subsequently, was told at her own fireside, where she sat, some six weeks later, chatting over an after-dinner cup of coffee with her brother-in-law.

"Take the armchair, John," said Mrs. Bird; "for I have 'lots to tell you,' as the young folks say. I was in the Children's Hospital about five o'clock to-day. I have n't been there for three months, and I felt guilty about it. The matron asked me to go upstairs into the children's sitting-room, the one Donald and I fitted up in memory of Carol. She said that a young lady was telling stories to the children, but that I might go right up and walk in. I opened the door softly, though I don't think the children would have noticed if I had fired a cannon in their midst, and stood there, spellbound by the loveliest, most touching scene I ever witnessed. The room has an open fire, and in a low chair, with the firelight shining on her face, sat that charming, impulsive girl who gave me the flowers at the cemetery–I told you about her. She was telling stories to the children. There were fifteen or twenty of them in the room, all the semi-invalids and convalescents, I should think, and they were gathered about her like flies round a saucer of honey. Every child that could, was doing its best to get a bit of her dress to touch, or a finger of her hand to hold, or an inch of her chair to lean upon. They were the usual pale, weary-looking children, most of them with splints and weights and crutches, and through the folding-doors that opened into the next room I could see three more tiny things sitting up in their cots and drinking in every word with eagerness and transport.