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 splendor1, and day after day the Golden Gate shone like a sapphire2 in the sun.
Polly was inwardly nervous. She had the "awe3 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 invalid5 mother, or the paying off of disagreeable debts.
Even the limp Mrs. Chadwick shared in the general joy; for Mr. Greenwood was so utterly6 discouraged with her mismanagement of the house, so determined7 not to fly to ills he knew not of, and so anxious to bring order out of chaos8, 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 delinquent9 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 vigor10, and the little house could hardly hold its sweet content,--without a glimmer11 of warning, without a moment's fear or dread12, 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 eyelids13 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 Noble 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 blur14 stole over the child's tired brain, and she lay for many weeks in a weary illness of delirium15 and stupor16 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 miseries17 and mortifications and struggles and self-denials and victories, that made the past half year a milestone18 in his life.
A week finished it all! It takes a very short time, he thought, to scatter19 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 hearty20 hand-clasp, full of renewed pride and belief in his eldest21 son. But there was a shadow on the lad's high spirits as he thought of gay, courageous22, 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-room23. "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?"
"No near ones, and none that she has ever seen. Still, she is not absolutely alone, as many girls would be under like circumstances. We would be only too glad to have her here; the Howards have telegraphed asking her to spend the winter with them in Cambridge; I am confident Dr. Winship will do the same when the news of Mrs. Oliver's death reaches Europe; and Mrs. Bird seems to have constituted herself a sort of fairy Godmother in chief. You see everybody loves Polly; and she will probably have no less than four homes open to her. The fact is, if you should put Polly on a desert island, the bees and the butterflies and the birds would gather about her; she draws everything and everybody to her magically. Then, too, she is not penniless. Rents are low, and she cannot hope to get quite as much for the house as before, but even counting repairs, taxes, and furnishings, we think she is reasonably certain of fifty dollars a month."
"She will never be idle, unless this sorrow makes a great change in her. Polly seems to have been created to 'become' by 'doing.'"
"Yet she does not in the least relish24 work, Edgar. I never knew a girl with a greater appetite for luxury. One cannot always see the deepest reasons in God's providence25 as applied26 to one's own life and character; but it is often easy to understand them as one looks at other people and notes their growth and development. For instance, Polly's intense love for her invalid mother has kept her from being selfish. The straitened circumstances in which she has been compelled to live have prevented her from yielding to self-indulgence or frivolity27. Even her hunger for the beautiful has been a discipline; for since beautiful things were never given to her ready-made, she has been forced to create them. Her lot in life, which she has always lamented28, has given her a self-control, a courage, a power, which she never would have had in the world had she grown up in luxury. She is too young to see it, but it is very clear to me that Polly Oliver is a glorious product of circumstances."
"But," objected Edgar, "that is not fair. You are giving all the credit to circumstances, and none to Polly's own nature."
"Not at all. If there had not been the native force to develop, experience would have had nothing to work upon. As it is, her lovely childish possibilities have become probabilities, and I look to see the girlish probabilities blossom into womanly certainties."
Meanwhile Polly, it must be confessed, was not at the present time quite justifying29 the good opinion of her friends.
She had few of the passive virtues30. She could bear sharp stabs of misfortune, which fired her energy and pride, but she resented pin pricks31. She could carry heavy, splendid burdens cheerfully, but she fretted32 under humble33 cares. She could serve by daring, but not by waiting. She would have gone to the stake or the scaffold, I think, with tolerable grace; but she would probably have recanted any article of faith if she had been confronted with life-imprisonment.
Trouble that she took upon herself for the sake of others, and out of love, she accepted sweetly. Sorrows that she did not choose, which were laid upon her without her consent, and which were "just the ones she did _not_ want, and did _not_ need, and would _not_ have, and could _not_ bear,"--these sorrows found her unwilling34, bitter, and impatient.
Yet if life is a school and we all have lessons to learn in it, the Great Teacher will be unlikely to set us tasks which we have already finished. Some review there must be, for certain things are specially4 hard to keep in mind, and have to be gone over and over, lest they fade into forgetfulness. But there must be continued progress in a life school. There is no parrot repetition, sing-song, meaningless, of words that have ceased to be vital. New lessons are to be learned as fast as the old ones are understood. Of what use to set Polly tasks to develop her bravery, when she was already brave?
Courage was one of the little jewels set in her fairy crown when she was born, but there was a round, empty space beside it, where Patience should have been. Further along was Daring, making a brilliant show, but again there was a tiny vacancy35 waiting for Prudence36.
The crown made a fine appearance, on the whole, because the large jewels were mostly in place, and the light of these blinded you to the lack of the others; but to the eye of the keen observer there was a want of symmetry and completeness.
Polly knew the unfinished state of her fairy crown as well as anybody else. She could not plead ignorance as an excuse; but though she would have gone on polishing the great gems37 with a fiery38 zeal39, she added the little jewels very slowly, and that only on compulsion.
There had been seven or eight weeks of partial unconsciousness, when the sorrow and the loneliness of life stole into her waking dreams only vaguely40 and at intervals41; when she was unhappy, and could not remember why; and slept, to wake and wonder and sleep again.
Then there were days and weeks when the labor42 of living was all that the jaded43 body could accomplish; when memory was weak; when life began at the pillow, and ended at the foot of the bed, and the universe was bounded by the chamber44 windows.
But when her strength came back, and she stood in the middle of the floor, clothed and in her right mind, well enough to remember,--oh! then indeed the deep waters of bitterness rolled over poor Polly's head and into her heart, and she sank beneath them without a wish or a struggle to rise.
"If it had been anything else!" she sobbed45. "Why did God take away my most precious, my only one to live for, when I was trying to take care of her, trying to be good, trying to give back the strength that had been poured out on me,--miserable, worthless me! Surely, if a girl was willing to do without a father and sisters and brothers, without good times and riches, willing to work like a galley46 slave, willing to 'scrimp' and plan and save for ever and ever; surely 'they' might be willing that she should keep her mother!"
Poor Polly! Providence at this time seemed nothing more than a collection of demons47 which she classified under the word "they," and which she felt certain were scourging48 her pitilessly and needlessly. She could not see any reason or justification49 in "their" cruelties,--for that was the only term she could apply to her afflictions.
Mrs. Bird had known sorrow, and she did her best to minister to the troubled and wrong little heart; but it was so torn that it could be healed only by the soft balm of Time.
Perhaps, a long while after such a grief,--it is always "perhaps" in a great crisis, though the certainty is ours if we will but grasp it,--perhaps the hidden meaning of the sorrow steals gently into our softened50 hearts. We see, as in a vision, a new light by which to work; we rise, cast off the out-grown shell, and build us a more stately mansion51, in which to dwell till God makes that home also too small to hold the ever-growing soul!
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1
splendor
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| n.光彩；壮丽，华丽；显赫，辉煌 | |
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sapphire
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| n.青玉，蓝宝石；adj.天蓝色的 | |
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awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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invalid
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| n.病人，伤残人；adj.有病的，伤残的；无效的 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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delinquent
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| adj.犯法的，有过失的；n.违法者 | |
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vigor
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| n.活力，精力，元气 | |
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glimmer
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| v.发出闪烁的微光；n.微光，微弱的闪光 | |
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dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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eyelids
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| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
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blur
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| n.模糊不清的事物；vt.使模糊，使看不清楚 | |
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delirium
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| n. 神智昏迷,说胡话;极度兴奋 | |
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stupor
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| v.昏迷；不省人事 | |
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miseries
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| n.痛苦( misery的名词复数 )；痛苦的事；穷困；常发牢骚的人 | |
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milestone
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| n.里程碑；划时代的事件 | |
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scatter
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| vt.撒，驱散，散开；散布/播；vi.分散，消散 | |
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hearty
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| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
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eldest
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| adj.最年长的，最年老的 | |
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courageous
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| adj.勇敢的，有胆量的 | |
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sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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relish
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| n.滋味，享受，爱好，调味品；vt.加调味料，享受，品味；vi.有滋味 | |
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providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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frivolity
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| n.轻松的乐事，兴高采烈；轻浮的举止 | |
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lamented
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| adj.被哀悼的，令人遗憾的v.（为…）哀悼，痛哭，悲伤( lament的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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justifying
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| 证明…有理( justify的现在分词 )； 为…辩护； 对…作出解释； 为…辩解（或辩护） | |
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virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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pricks
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| 刺痛( prick的名词复数 )； 刺孔； 刺痕； 植物的刺 | |
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fretted
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| 焦躁的，附有弦马的，腐蚀的 | |
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humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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vacancy
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| n.（旅馆的）空位，空房，（职务的）空缺 | |
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prudence
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| n.谨慎，精明，节俭 | |
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gems
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| growth； economy； management； and customer satisfaction 增长 | |
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fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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zeal
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| n.热心，热情，热忱 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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43
jaded
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| adj.精疲力竭的；厌倦的；（因过饱或过多而）腻烦的；迟钝的 | |
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chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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sobbed
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| 哭泣，啜泣( sob的过去式和过去分词 )； 哭诉，呜咽地说 | |
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galley
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| n.（飞机或船上的）厨房单层甲板大帆船；军舰舰长用的大划艇； | |
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demons
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| n.恶人( demon的名词复数 )；恶魔；精力过人的人；邪念 | |
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scourging
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| 鞭打( scourge的现在分词 )； 惩罚，压迫 | |
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49
justification
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| n.正当的理由；辩解的理由 | |
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50
softened
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| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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mansion
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| n.大厦，大楼；宅第 | |
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