Polly Oliver's Problem

"I don't want it to fade!" cried Polly passionately. "I never want to look back at it without tears! I want to be faithful always; I want never to forget, and never to feel less sorrow than I do this minute!"

"Take that blue-covered Emerson on the table, Polly; open it at the essay on 'Compensation,' and read the page marked with the orange leaf."

The tears were streaming down Polly's cheeks, but she opened the book, and read with a faltering voice:–

"We cannot part with our f–fr–friends. We cannot let our angels go. [Sob.] We do not see that they only go out that archangels may come in. . . . We do not believe there is any force in to-day to rival or re-create that beautiful yesterday. [Sob.] We linger in the ruins of the old tent where once we had shelter. . . . We cannot again find aught so dear, so sweet, so graceful. [Sob.] But we sit and weep in vain. We cannot stay amid the ruins. The voice of the Almighty saith, 'Up and onward for evermore!' . . . The sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all sorrow. . . . The man or woman who would have remained a sunny garden flower, with no room for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener is made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide neighborhoods of men."

"She opened the book and read."

"Do you see, Polly?"

"Yes, I see; but oh, I was so happy being a garden flower with the sunshine on my head, and I can't seem to care the least little bit for being a banian-tree!"

"Well," said Mrs. Noble, smiling through her own tears, "I fear that God will never insist on your 'yielding shade and fruit to wide neighborhoods of men' unless you desire it. Not all sunny garden flowers become banian-trees by the falling of the walls. Some of them are crushed beneath the ruins, and never send any more color or fragrance into the world."

"The garden flower had happiness before the walls fell," said Polly. "It is happiness I want."

"The banian-tree had blessedness after the walls fell, and it is blessedness I want; but then, I am forty-seven, and you are seventeen!" sighed Mrs. Noble, as they walked through the orange orchard to the house.

CHAPTER XIV.

EDGAR DISCOURSES OF SCARLET RUNNERS

One day, in the middle of October, the mail brought Polly two letters: the first from Edgar, who often dashed off cheery scrawls in the hope of getting cheery replies, which never came; and the second from Mrs. Bird, who had a plan to propose.

Edgar wrote:–

. . . "I have a new boarding-place in San Francisco, a stone's throw from Mrs. Bird's, whose mansion I can look down upon from a lofty height reached by a flight of fifty wooden steps,–good training in athletics! Mrs. Morton is a kind landlady and the house is a home, in a certain way,–

"But oh, the difference to me'Twixt tweedledum and tweedledee!

"There is a Morton girl, too; but she neither plays nor sings nor jokes, nor even looks,–in fine, she is not Polly! I have come to the conclusion, now, that girls in a house are almost always nuisances,–I mean, of course, when, they are not Pollies. Oh, why are you so young, and so loaded with this world's goods, that you will never need me for a boarder again? Mrs. Bird is hoping to see you soon, and I chose my humble lodging on this hill-top because, from my attic's lonely height, I can watch you going in and out of your 'marble halls;' and you will almost pass my door as you take the car. In view of this pleasing prospect (now, alas! somewhat distant), I send you a scrap of newspaper verse which prophesies my sentiments. It is signed 'M. E. W.,' and Tom Mills says whoever wrote it knows you."

WHEN POLLY GOES BY'T is but poorly I 'm lodged in a little side-street,Which is seldom disturbed by the hurry of feet,For the flood-tide of life long ago ebbed awayFrom its homely old houses, rain-beaten and gray;And I sit with my pipe in the window, and sighAt the buffets of fortune–till Polly goes by.There 's a flaunting of ribbons, a flurry of lace,And a rose in the bonnet above a bright face,A glance from two eyes so deliriously blueThe midsummer seas scarcely rival their hue;And once in a while, if the wind 's blowing high,The sound of soft laughter as Polly goes by.Then up jumps my heart and begins to beat fast."She 's coming!" it whispers. "She 's here! She has passed!"While I throw up the sash and lean breathlessly downTo catch the last glimpse of her vanishing gown,Excited, delighted, yet wondering whyMy senses desert me if Polly goes by.Ah! she must be a witch, and the magical spellShe has woven about me has done its work well,For the morning grows brighter, and gayer the airThat my landlady sings as she sweeps down the stair;And my poor lonely garret, up close to the sky,Seems something like heaven when Polly goes by.

"P. S. Tony has returned to the university. He asked after the health of the 'sunset-haired goddess' yesterday. You 'd better hurry back and take care of me! No, joking aside, don't worry about me, little missionary; I 've outgrown Tony, and I hope I don't need to be reformed oftener than once a year.

"Yours ever, EDGAR.

"P. S. No. II. I saw you twice after–you know–and I was dumb on both occasions. Of all people in the world I ought to have been able to say something helpful to you in your trouble, I, who lived with you and your dear mother through all those happy months before she left us. It will be just the same when I see you again: I shall never be able to speak, partly, I suppose, because I am a man, or on the road to becoming one. I know this is making you cry; I can see the tears in your eyes across all the distance; but it is better even that you should cry than that you should think me cold or unmindful of your sorrow. Do you know one of the sacred memories of my life? It is that, on that blessed night when your mother asked me to come and live under her roof, she said she should be glad to feel that in any sudden emergency you and she would, have a near friend to lean upon. There was a 'royal accolade,' if you like! I felt in an instant as if she had bestowed the order of knighthood upon me, and as if I must live more worthily in order to deserve her trust. How true it is, Polly, that those who believe in us educate us!

"Do you remember (don't cry, dear!) that night by the fireside,–the night when we brought her out of her bedroom after three days of illness,–when we sat on either side of her, each holding a hand while she told us the pretty romance of her meeting and loving your father? I slipped the loose wedding ring up and down her finger, and stole a look at her now and then. She was like a girl when she told that story, and I could not help thinking it was worth while to be a tender, honorable, faithful man, to bring that look into a woman's face after eighteen years. Well, I adored her, that is all I can say; and I can't say even that, I have to write it. Don't rob me, Polly, of the right she gave me, that of being a 'near friend to lean upon.' I am only afraid, because you, more than any one else, know certain weaknesses and follies of mine, and, indeed, pulled me out of the pit and held me up till I got a new footing. I am afraid you will never have the same respect for me, nor believe that a fellow so weak as I was could be strong enough to lean upon. Try me once, Polly, just to humor me, won't you? Give me something to do,–something hard! Lean just a little, Polly, and see how stiff I 'll be,–no, bother it, I won't be stiff, I'll be firm! To tell the truth, I can never imagine you as 'leaning;' though they say you are pale and sad, and out of sorts with life. You remind me of one of the gay scarlet runners that climb up the slender poles in the garden below my window. The pole holds up the vine at first, of course, but the vine keeps the pole straight; not in any ugly and commonplace fashion, but by winding round, and round about it, and hanging its blossoms in and out and here and there, till the poor, serviceable pole is forgotten in the beauty that makes use of it.

"Good-by, little scarlet runner! You will bloom again some day, when the storm that has beaten you down has passed over and the sky is clear and the sun warm. Don't laugh at me, Polly!

"Always yours, whether you laugh or not,

"EDGAR."

"P. S. No. III. I should n't dare add this third postscript if you were near enough to slay me with the lightning of your eye, but I simply wish to mention that a wise gardener chooses young, strong timber for poles,–saplings, in fact! Mr. John Bird is too old for this purpose. Well seasoned he is, of course, and suitable as a prop for a century-plant, but not for a scarlet runner! I like him, you know, but I 'm sure he 'd crack if you leaned on him; in point of fact, he 's a little cracked now!            E. N."

The ghost of a smile shone on Polly's April face as she folded Edgar's letter and laid it in its envelope; first came a smile, then a tear, then a dimple, then a sob, then a wave of bright color.

"Edgar is growing up so fast," she thought, "I shall soon be afraid to scold him or advise him, and

"'What will poor Robin do then, poor thing?'

"Upon my word, if I caught him misbehaving nowadays, I believe I should hesitate to remonstrate with him. He will soon be capable of remonstrating with me, at this rate. He is a goose,–oh, there 's no shadow of doubt as to that, but he 's an awfully nice goose."

Mrs. Bird's letter ran thus:–

"MY DEAREST POLLYKINS:–We have lived without you just about as long as we can endure it. The boys have returned to school and college. Mr. Bird contemplates one more trip to Honolulu, and brother John and I need some one to coddle and worry over. I have not spoken to you of your future, because I wished to wait until you opened the subject. It is too late for you to begin your professional training this year, and I think you are far too delicate just now to undertake so arduous a work; however, you are young, and that can wait for a bit. As to the story-telling in the hospitals and asylums, I wish you could find courage and strength to go on with that, not for your own sake alone, but for the sake of others.

"As I have told you before, the money is set aside for that special purpose, and the work will be carried on by somebody. Of course I can get a substitute if you refuse, and that substitute may, after a little time, satisfy the impatient children, who flatten their noses against the window-panes and long for Mias Pauline every day of their meagre lives. But I fear the substitute will never be Polly! She may 'rattle round in your place' (as somebody said under different circumstances), but she can never fill it! Why not spend the winter with us, and do this lovely work, keeping up other studies if you are strong enough? It will be so sweet for you to feel that out of your own sadness you can comfort and brighten the lives of these lonely, suffering children and these motherless or fatherless ones. It will seem hard to begin, no doubt; but new life will flow in your veins when you take up your active, useful work again. The joyousness that God put into your soul before you were born, my Polly, is a sacred trust. You must not hide it in a napkin, dear, or bury it, or lose it. It was given to you only that you should share it with others. It was intended for the world at large, though it was bestowed upon you in particular. Come, dear, to one who knows all about it,–one whom you are sweet enough to call

"YOUR FAIRY GODMOTHER."

"Mrs. Noble," said Polly, with a sober smile, "the Ancon sails on the 20th, and I am going to sail with her."

"So soon? What for, dear?"

"I am going to be a banian-tree, if you please," answered Polly.

CHAPTER XV.

LIFE IN THE BIRDS' NEST

Polly settled down in the Birds' Nest under the protecting wing of Mrs. Bird, and a very soft and unaccustomed sort of shelter it was.

A room had been refurnished expressly for the welcome guest, and as Mrs. Bird pushed her gently in alone, the night of her arrival, she said, "This is the Pilgrim Chamber, Polly. It will speak our wishes for us."

It was not the room in which Polly had been ill for so many weeks; for Mrs. Bird knew the power of associations, and was unwilling to leave any reminder of those painful days to sadden the girl's new life.

As Polly looked about her, she was almost awed by the dazzling whiteness. The room was white enough for an angel, she thought. The straw matting was almost concealed by a mammoth rug made of white Japanese goatskins sewed together; the paint was like snow, and the furniture had all been painted white, save for the delicate silver lines that relieved it. There were soft, full curtains of white bunting fringed with something that looked like thistle-down, and the bedstead had an overhanging canopy of the same. An open fire burned in the little grate, and a big white and silver rattan chair was drawn cosily before it. There was a girlish dressing-table with its oval mirror draped in dotted muslin; a dainty writing-desk with everything convenient upon it; and in one corner was a low bookcase of white satinwood. On the top of this case lay a card, "With the best wishes of John Bird," and along the front of the upper shelf were painted the words: "Come, tell us a story!" Below this there was a rich array of good things. The Grimms, Laboulaye, and Hans Christian Andersen were all there. Mrs. Ewing's "Jackanapes" and Charles Kingsley's "Water-Babies" jostled the "Seven Little Sisters" series; Hawthorne's "Wonder-Book" lay close to Lamb's "Tales from Shakespeare;" and Whittier's "Child-Life in Prose and Poetry" stood between Mary Howitt's "Children's Year" and Robert Louis Stevenson's "Child's Garden of Verses."

Polly sat upon the floor before the bookcase and gloated over her new treasures, each of which bore her name on the fly-leaf.

As her eye rose to the vase of snowy pampas plumes and the pictured Madonna and Child above the bookcase, it wandered still higher until it met a silver motto painted on a blue frieze that finished the top of the walls where they met the ceiling.

Polly walked slowly round the room, studying the illuminated letters: "And they laid the Pilgrim in an upper chamber, and the name of the chamber was Peace."

This brought the ready tears to Polly's eyes. "God seems to give me everything but what I want most," she thought; "but since He gives me so much, I must not question any more: I must not choose; I must believe that He wants me to be happy, after all, and I must begin and try to be good again."

She did try to be good. She came down to breakfast the next morning, announcing to Mrs. Bird, with her grateful morning kiss, that she meant to "live up to" her room. "But it's going to be difficult," she confessed. "I shall not dare to have a naughty thought in it; it seems as if it would be written somewhere on the whiteness!"

"You can come and be naughty in my bachelor den, Polly," said Mr. Bird, smiling. "Mrs. Bird does n't waste any girlish frills and poetic decorations and mystical friezes on her poor brother-in-law! He is done up in muddy browns, as befits his age and sex."

Polly insisted on beginning her work the very next afternoon; but she had strength only for three appointments a week, and Mrs. Bird looked doubtfully after her as she walked away from the house with a languid gait utterly unlike her old buoyant step.

Edgar often came in the evenings, as did Tom and Blanche Mills, and Milly Foster; but though Polly was cheerful and composed, she seldom broke into her old flights of nonsense.

On other nights, when they were alone, she prepared for her hours of story-telling, and in this she was wonderfully helped by Mr. Bird's suggestions and advice; for he was a student of literature in many languages, and delighted in bringing his treasures before so teachable a pupil.

"She has a sort of genius that astonishes me," said he one morning, as he chatted with Mrs. Bird over the breakfast-table.

Polly had excused herself, and stood at the farther library window, gazing up the street vaguely and absently, as if she saw something beyond the hills and the bay. Mrs. Bird's heart sank a little as she looked at the slender figure in the black dress. There were no dimples about the sad mouth, and was it the dress, or was she not very white these latter days?–so white that her hair encircled her face with absolute glory, and startled one with its color.

"It is a curious kind of gift," continued Mr. Bird, glancing at his morning' papers. "She takes a long tale of Hans Andersen's, for instance, and after an hour or two, when she has his idea fully in mind, she shows me how she proposes to tell it to the younger children at the Orphan Asylum. She clasps her hands over her knees, bends forward toward the firelight, and tells the story with such simplicity and earnestness that I am always glad she is looking the other way and cannot see the tears in my eyes. I cried like a school-girl last night over 'The Ugly Duckling.' She has natural dramatic instinct, a great deal of facial expression, power of imitation, and an almost unerring taste in the choice of words, which is unusual in a girl so young and one who has been so imperfectly trained. I give her an old legend or some fragment of folk-lore, and straight-way she dishes it up for me as if it had been bone of her bone and marrow of her marrow; she knows just what to leave out and what to put in, somehow. You had one of your happy inspirations about that girl, Margaret,–she is a born story-teller. She ought to wander about the country with a lute under her arm. Is the Olivers' house insured?"

"Good gracious, Jack! you have a kangaroo sort of mind! How did you leap to that subject? I'm sure I don't know, but what difference does it make, anyway?"

"A good deal of difference," he answered nervously, looking into the library (yes, Polly had gone out); "because the house, the furniture, and the stable were burned to the ground last night,–so the morning paper says."

Mrs. Bird rose and closed the doors. "That does seem too dreadful to be true," she said. "The poor child's one bit of property, her only stand-by in case of need! Oh, it can't be burned; and, if it is, it must be insured. I 'm afraid a second blow would break her down completely just now, when she has not recovered from the first."

Mr. Bird went out and telegraphed to Dr. George Edgerton;–

Is Oliver house burned? What was the amount of insurance, if any? Answer.

JOHN BIRD.

At four o'clock the reply came:–

House and outbuildings burned. No insurance. Have written particulars. Nothing but piano and family portraits saved.

GEORGE EDGERTON.

In an hour another message, marked "Collect," followed the first one:–

House burned last night. Defective flue. No carelessness on part of servants or family. Piano, portraits, ice-cream freezer, and wash-boiler saved by superhuman efforts of husband. Have you any instructions? Have taken to my bed. Accept love and sympathy.

CLEMENTINE CHADWICK GEEENWOOD.

So it was true. The buildings were burned, and there was no insurance.

I know you will say there never is, in stories where the heroine's courage is to be tested, even if the narrator has to burn down the whole township to do it satisfactorily. But to this objection I can make only this answer: First, that this house really did burn down; secondly, that there really was no insurance; and thirdly, if this combination of circumstances did not sometimes happen in real life, it would never occur to a story-teller to introduce it as a test for heroes and heroines.

"Well," said Mrs. Bird despairingly, "Polly must be told. Now, will you do it, or shall I? Of course you want me to do it! Men never have any courage about these things, nor any tact either."

At this moment the subject of conversation walked into the room, hat and coat on, and an unwonted color in her cheeks. Edgar Noble followed behind. Polly removed her hat and coat leisurely, sat down on a hassock on the hearth rug, and ruffled her hair with the old familiar gesture, almost forgotten these latter days.

Mrs. Bird looked warningly at the tell-tale yellow telegrams in Mr. Bird's lap, and strove to catch his eye and indicate to his dull masculine intelligence the necessity of hiding them until they could devise a plan of breaking the sad news.

Mrs. Bird's glance and Mr. Bird's entire obliviousness were too much for Polly's gravity. To their astonishment she burst into a peal of laughter.

"'My lodging is on the cold, cold ground,And hard, very hard is my fare!'"

she sang, to the tune of "Believe me, if all those endearing young charms." "So you know all about it, too?"

"How did you hear it?" gasped Mrs. Bird.

"I bought the evening paper to see if that lost child at the asylum had been found. Edgar jumped on the car, and seemed determined that I should not read the paper until I reached home. He was very kind, but slightly bungling in his attentions. I knew then that something was wrong, but just what was beyond my imagination, unless Jack Howard had been expelled from Harvard, or Bell Winship had been lost at sea on the way home; so I persisted in reading, and at last I found the fatal item. I don't know whether Edgar expected me to faint at sight! I 'm not one of the fainting sort!"

"I 'm relieved that you can take it so calmly. I have been shivering with dread all day, and Jack and I have been quarreling as to which should break it to you."

"Break it to me!" echoed Polly, in superb disdain. "My dear Fairy Godmother, you must think me a weak sort of person! As if the burning down of one patrimonial estate could shatter my nerves! What is a passing home or so? Let it burn, by all means, if it likes. 'He that is down need fear no fall.'"

"It is your only property," said Mr. Bird, trying to present the other side of the case properly, "and it was not insured."

"What of that?" she asked briskly. "Am I not housed and fed like a princess at the present moment? Have I not two hundred and fifty dollars in the bank, and am I not earning twenty-five dollars a month with absolute regularity? Avaunt, cold Fear!"

"How was it that the house was not insured?" asked Mr. Bird.

"I 'm sure I don't know. It was insured once upon a time, if I remember right; when it got uninsured, I can't tell. How do things get uninsured, Mr. Bird?"

"The insurance lapses, of course, if the premium is n't regularly paid."

"Oh, that would account for it!" said Polly easily. "There were quantities of things that were n't paid regularly, though they were always paid in course of time. You ought to have asked me if we were insured, Edgar,–you were the boy of the house,–insurance is n't a girl's department. Let me see the telegrams, please."

They all laughed heartily over Mrs. Greenwood's characteristic message.

"Think of 'husband' bearing that aged ice-cream freezer and that leaky boiler to a place of safety!" exclaimed Polly. "'All that was left of them, left of six hundred!' Well, my family portraits, piano, freezer, and boiler will furnish a humble cot very nicely in my future spinster days. By the way, the land did n't burn up, I suppose, and that must be good for something, is n't it?"

"Rather," answered Edgar; "a corner lot on the best street in town, four blocks from the new hotel site! It's worth eighteen hundred or two thousand dollars, at least."

"Then why do you worry about me, good people? I 'm not a heroine. If I were sitting on the curbstone without a roof to my head, and did n't know where I should get my dinner, I should cry! But I smell my dinner" (here she sniffed pleasurably), "and I think it 's chicken! You see, it's so difficult for me to realize that I 'm a pauper, living here, a pampered darling in the halls of wealth, with such a large income rolling up daily that I shall be a prey to fortune-hunters by the time I am twenty! Pshaw! don't worry about me! This is just the sort of diet I have been accustomed to from my infancy! I rather enjoy it!"

Whereupon Edgar recited an impromptu nonsense verse:–

"There 's a queer little maiden named Polly,Who always knows when to be jolly.    When ruined by fire    Her spirits rise higher.This most inconsistent Miss Polly."

CHAPTER XVI

THE CANDLE CALLED PATIENCE