|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 38
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 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 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?"
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|