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.
"And I don"t wonder. There is magic in that girl for sick or sorrowing people. I wish you could have seen and heard her. Her hair is full of warmth and color; her lips and cheeks are pink; her eyes are bright with health and mischief, and beaming with love, too; her smile is like sunshine, and her voice as glad as a wild bird"s. I never saw a creature so alive and radiant, and I could feel that the weak little creatures drank in her strength and vigor, without depleting her, as flowers drink in the sunlight.
"As she stood up and made ready to go, she caught sight of me, and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, with the most astonished face, "Why, it is my lady in black!" Then, with a blush, she added, "Excuse me! I spoke without thinking--I always do. I have thought of you very often since I gave you the flowers; and as I did n"t know your name, I have always called you my lady in black."
""I should be very glad to be your "lady" in any color," I answered, "and my other name is Mrs. Bird." Then I asked her if she would not come and see me. She said, "Yes, with pleasure," and told me also that her mother was ill, and that she left her as little as possible; whereupon I offered to go and see her instead.
"Now, here endeth the first lesson, and here beginneth the second, namely, my new plan, on which I wish to ask your advice. You know that all the money Donald and I used to spend on Carol"s nurses, physicians, and what not, we give away each Christmas Day in memory of her. It may be that we give it in monthly installments, but we try to plan it and let people know about it on that day. I propose to create a new profession for talented young women who like to be helpful to others as well as to themselves. I propose to offer this little Miss Oliver, say twenty-five dollars a month, if she will go regularly to the Children"s Hospital and to the various orphan asylums just before supper and just before bedtime, and sing and tell stories to the children for an hour.
I want to ask her to give two hours a day only, going to each place once or twice a week; but of course she will need a good deal of time for preparation. If she accepts, I will see the managers of the various inst.i.tutions, offer her services, and arrange for the hours. I am confident that they will receive my protegee with delight, and I am sure that I shall bring the good old art of story-telling into fashion again, through this gifted girl. Now, John, what do you think?"
"I heartily approve, as usual. It is a novelty, but I cannot see why it "s not perfectly expedient, and I certainly can think of no other way in which a monthly expenditure of twenty-five dollars will carry so much genuine delight and comfort to so many different children. Carol would sing for joy if she could know of your plan."
"Perhaps she does know it," said Mrs. Bird softly.
And so it was settled.
Polly"s joy and grat.i.tude at Mrs. Bird"s proposal baffles the powers of the narrator. It was one of those things pleasant to behold, charming to imagine, but impossible to describe. After Mrs. Bird"s carriage had been whirled away, she watched at the window for Edgar, and, when she saw him nearing the steps, did not wait for him to unlock the door, but opened it from the top of the stairs, and flew down them to the landing as lightly as a feather.
As for Edgar himself, he was coming up with unprecedented speed, and they nearly fell into each other"s arms as they both exclaimed, in one breath, "Hurrah!" and then, in another, "Who told you?"
"How did you know it?" asked Edgar. "Has Tom Mills been here?"
"What is anybody by the name of Mills to me in my present state of mind!" exclaimed Polly. "Have you some good news, too? If so, speak out quickly."
"Good news? I should think I had; what else were you hurrahing about?
I "ve won the scholarship, and I have a chance to earn some money! Tom Mills"s eyes are in bad condition, and the oculist says he must wear blue goggles and not look at a book for two months. His father wrote to me to-day, and he asks if I will read over the day"s lessons with Tom every afternoon or evening, so that he can keep up with the cla.s.s; and says that if I will do him this great service he will be glad to pay me any reasonable sum. He "ventured" to write me on Professor Hope"s recommendation."
"Oh, Edgar, that is too, too good!" cried Polly, jumping up and down in delight. "Now hear my news. What do you suppose has happened?"
"Turned-up noses have come into style."
"Insulting! That is n"t the spirit I showed when you told me your good news."
"You "ve found the leak in the gas stove."
"On the contrary, I don"t care if all the gas in our establishment leaks from now to--the millennium. Guess again, stupid!"
"Somebody has left you a million."
"No, no!" (scornfully.) "Well, I can"t wait your snail"s pace. My lady in black, Mrs. Donald Bird, has been here all the afternoon, and she offers me twenty-five dollars a month to give up the Baer cubs and tell stories two hours a day in the orphan asylums and the Children"s Hospital! Just what I love to do! Just what I always longed to do!
Just what I would do if I were a billionaire! Is n"t it heavenly?"
"Well, well! We are in luck, Polly. Hurrah! Fortune smiles at last on the n.o.ble-Oliver household. Let"s have a jollification! Oh, I forgot. Tom Mills wants to come to dinner. Will you mind?"
"Let him come, goggles and all, we "ll have the lame and the halt, as well as the blind, if we happen to see any. Mamma won"t care. I told her we "d have a feast to-night that should vie with any of the old Roman banquets! Here "s my purse; please go down on Sutter Street--ride both ways--and buy anything extravagant and unseasonable you can find. Get forced tomatoes; we"ll have "chops and tomato sauce"
a la Mrs. Bardell; order fried oysters in a browned loaf; get a quart of ice cream, the most expensive variety they have, a loaf of the richest cake in the bakery, and two chocolate eclairs apiece. Buy hothouse roses, or orchids, for the table, and give five cents to that dirty little boy on the corner there. In short, as Frank Stockton says, "Let us so live while we are up that we shall forget we have ever been down"!" and Polly plunged upstairs to make a toilet worthy of the occasion.
The banquet was such a festive occasion that Yung Lee"s Chinese reserve was sorely tried, and he giggled more than once, while waiting on the table.
Polly had donned a trailing black silk skirt of her mother"s, with a white chuddah shawl for a court train, and a white lace waist to top it. Her hair was wound into a knot on the crown of her head and adorned with three long black ostrich feathers, which soared to a great height, and presented a most magnificent and queenly appearance.
Tom Mills, whose father was four times a millionaire, wondered why they never had such gay times at his home, and tried to fancy his sister Blanche sparkling and glowing and beaming over the prospect of earning twenty-five dollars a month.
Then, when bedtime came, Polly and her mother talked it all over in the dark.
"Oh, mamacita, I am so happy! It"s such a lovely beginning, and I shall be so glad, so glad to do it! I hope Mrs. Bird did n"t invent the plan for my good, for I have been frightfully shabby each time she has seen me, but she says she thinks of nothing but the children. Now we will have some pretty things, won"t we? And oh! do you think, not just now, but some time in the distant centuries, I can have a string of gold beads?"
"I do, indeed," sighed Mrs. Oliver. "You are certainly in no danger of being spoiled by luxury in your youth, my poor little Pollykins; but you will get all these things some time, I feel sure, if they are good for you, and if they belong to you. You remember the lines I read the other day:--
""Hast not thy share? On winged feet, Lo! it rushes thee to meet; And all that Nature made thy own, Floating in air or pent in stone, Will rive the hills and swim the sea And, like thy shadow, follow thee.""
"Yes," said Polly contentedly; "I am satisfied. My share of the world"s work is rushing to meet me. To-night I could just say with Sarah Jewett"s Country Doctor, "My G.o.d, I thank thee for my future.""
CHAPTER XII.
THE GREAT SILENCE.
The months of April and May were happy ones. The weather was perfect, as only California weather understands the art of being; the hills were at their greenest; the wind almost forgot to blow; the fields blazed in wild-flowers; day after day rose in cloudless splendor, and day after day the Golden Gate shone like a sapphire in the sun.
Polly was inwardly nervous. She had the "awe of prosperity" in her heart, and everything seemed too bright to last.
Both she and Edgar were very busy. But work that one loves is no hardship, especially when one is strong and young and hopeful, and when one has great matters at stake, such as the health and wealth of an invalid mother, or the paying off of disagreeable debts.
Even the limp Mrs. Chadwick shared in the general joy; for Mr.
Greenwood was so utterly discouraged with her mismanagement of the house, so determined not to fly to ills he knew not of, and so anxious to bring order out of chaos, that on the spur of the moment one day he married her. On the next day he discharged the cook, hired a better one the third, dunned the delinquent boarder the fourth, and collected from him on the fifth; so the May check (signed Clementine Chadwick Greenwood) was made out for eighty-five dollars.
But in the midst of it all, when everything in the outside world danced with life and vigor, and the little house could hardly hold its sweet content,--without a glimmer of warning, without a moment"s fear or dread, without the precious agony of parting, Mrs. Oliver slipped softly, gently, safely, into the Great Silence.
Mercifully it was Edgar, not Polly, who found her in her accustomed place on the cushions, lying with closed eyelids and smiling lips.
It was half past five. . . . Polly must have gone out at four, as usual, and would be back in half an hour. . . . Yung Lee was humming softly in the little kitchen. . . . In five minutes Edgar n.o.ble had suffered, lived, and grown ten years. He was a man. . . . And then came Polly,--and Mrs. Bird with her, thank Heaven!--Polly breathless and glowing, looking up at the bay window for her mother"s smile of welcome.
In a few seconds the terrible news was broken, and Polly, overpowered with its awful suddenness, dropped before it as under a physical blow.
It was better so. Mrs. Bird carried her home for the night, as she thought, but a merciful blur stole over the child"s tired brain, and she lay for many weeks in a weary illness of delirium and stupor and fever.
Meanwhile, Edgar acted as brother, son, and man of the house. He it was who managed everything, from the first sorrowful days up to the closing of the tiny upper flat where so much had happened: not great things of vast outward importance, but small ones,--little miseries and mortifications and struggles and self-denials and victories, that made the past half year a milestone in his life.
A week finished it all! It takes a very short time, he thought, to scatter to the winds of heaven all the gracious elements that make a home. Only a week; and in the first days of June, Edgar went back to Santa Barbara for the summer holidays without even a sight of his brave, helpful girl-comrade.
He went back to his brother"s congratulations, his sister"s kisses, his mother"s happy tears, and his father"s hearty hand-clasp, full of renewed pride and belief in his eldest son. But there was a shadow on the lad"s high spirits as he thought of gay, courageous, daring Polly, stripped in a moment of all that made life dear.
"I wish we could do something for her, poor little soul," he said to his mother in one of their long talks in the orange-tree sitting-room.
"Tongue cannot tell what Mrs. Oliver has been to me, and I "m not a bit ashamed to own up to Polly"s influence, even if she is a girl and two or three years younger than I am. Hang it! I "d like to see the fellow that could live under the same roof as those two women, and not do the best that was in him! Has n"t Polly some relatives in the East?"