Books: Pollyanna Grows Up
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Eleanor H. Porter >> Pollyanna Grows Up
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"To my boy, Jimmy. Not to be opened until his thirtieth birthday
except in case of his death, when it shall be opened at once."
There were times when Jimmy speculated a good deal as to the contents
of that envelope. There were other times when he forgot its existence.
In the old days, at the Orphans' Home, his chief terror had been that
it should be discovered and taken away from him. In those days he wore
it always hidden in the lining of his coat. Of late years, at John
Pendleton's suggestion, it had been tucked away in the Pendleton safe.
"For there's no knowing how valuable it may be," John Pendleton had
said, with a smile. "And, anyway, your father evidently wanted you to
have it, and we wouldn't want to run the risk of losing it."
"No, I wouldn't want to lose it, of course," Jimmy had smiled back, a
little soberly. "But I'm not counting on its being real valuable, sir.
Poor dad didn't have anything that was very valuable about him, as I
remember."
It was this Packet that Jimmy came so near mentioning to Mrs. Carew
one day,--if only John Pendleton had not interrupted them.
"Still, maybe it's just as well I didn't tell her about it," Jimmy
reflected afterwards, on his way home. "She might have thought dad had
something in his life that wasn't quite--right. And I wouldn't have
wanted her to think that--of dad."
CHAPTER XXV
THE GAME AND POLLYANNA
Before the middle of September the Carews and Sadie Dean said good-by
and went back to Boston. Much as she knew she would miss them,
Pollyanna drew an actual sigh of relief as the train bearing them away
rolled out of the Beldingsville station. Pollyanna would not have
admitted having this feeling of relief to any one else, and even to
herself she apologized in her thoughts.
"It isn't that I don't love them dearly, every one of them," she
sighed, watching the train disappear around the curve far down the
track. "It's only that--that I'm so sorry for poor Jamie all the time;
and--and--I am tired. I shall be glad, for a while, just to go back to
the old quiet days with Jimmy."
Pollyanna, however, did not go back to the old quiet days with Jimmy.
The days that immediately followed the going of the Carews were quiet,
certainly, but they were not passed "with Jimmy." Jimmy rarely came
near the house now, and when he did call, he was not the old Jimmy
that she used to know. He was moody, restless, and silent, or else
very gay and talkative in a nervous fashion that was most puzzling and
annoying. Before long, too, he himself went to Boston; and then of
course she did not see him at all.
Pollyanna was surprised then to see how much she missed him. Even to
know that he was in town, and that there was a chance that he might
come over, was better than the dreary emptiness of certain absence;
and even his puzzling moods of alternating gloominess and gayety were
preferable to this utter silence of nothingness. Then, one day,
suddenly she pulled herself up with hot cheeks and shamed eyes.
"Well, Pollyanna Whittier," she upbraided herself sharply, "one would
think you were in LOVE with Jimmy Bean Pendleton! Can't you think of
ANYTHING but him?"
Whereupon, forthwith, she bestirred herself to be very gay and lively
indeed, and to put this Jimmy Bean Pendleton out of her thoughts. As
it happened, Aunt Polly, though unwittingly, helped her to this.
With the going of the Carews had gone also their chief source of
immediate income, and Aunt Polly was beginning to worry again,
audibly, about the state of their finances.
"I don't know, really, Pollyanna, what IS going to become of us," she
would moan frequently. "Of course we are a little ahead now from this
summer's work, and we have a small sum from the estate right along;
but I never know how soon that's going to stop, like all the rest. If
only we could do something to bring in some ready cash!"
It was after one of these moaning lamentations one day that
Pollyanna's eyes chanced to fall on a prize-story contest offer. It
was a most alluring one. The prizes were large and numerous. The
conditions were set forth in glowing terms. To read it, one would
think that to win out were the easiest thing in the world. It
contained even a special appeal that might have been framed for
Pollyanna herself.
"This is for you--you who read this," it ran. "What if you never have
written a story before! That is no sign you cannot write one. Try it.
That's all. Wouldn't YOU like three thousand dollars? Two thousand?
One thousand? Five hundred, or even one hundred? Then why not go after
it?"
"The very thing!" cried Pollyanna, clapping her hands. "I'm so glad I
saw it! And it says I can do it, too. I thought I could, if I'd just
try. I'll go tell auntie, so she needn't worry any more."
Pollyanna was on her feet and half way to the door when a second
thought brought her steps to a pause.
"Come to think of it, I reckon I won't, after all. It'll be all the
nicer to surprise her; and if I SHOULD get the first one--!"
Pollyanna went to sleep that night planning what she COULD do with
that three thousand dollars.
Pollyanna began her story the next day. That is, she, with a very
important air, got out a quantity of paper, sharpened up half-a-dozen
pencils, and established herself at the big old-fashioned Harrington
desk in the living-room. After biting restlessly at the ends of two of
her pencils, she wrote down three words on the fair white page before
her. Then she drew a long sigh, threw aside the second ruined pencil,
and picked up a slender green one with a beautiful point. This point
she eyed with a meditative frown.
"O dear! I wonder WHERE they get their titles," she despaired. "Maybe,
though, I ought to decide on the story first, and then make a title to
fit. Anyhow, I'M going to do it." And forthwith she drew a black line
through the three words and poised the pencil for a fresh start.
The start was not made at once, however. Even when it was made, it
must have been a false one, for at the end of half an hour the whole
page was nothing but a jumble of scratched-out lines, with only a few
words here and there left to tell the tale.
At this juncture Aunt Polly came into the room. She turned tired eyes
upon her niece.
"Well, Pollyanna, what ARE you up to now?" she demanded.
Pollyanna laughed and colored guiltily.
"Nothing much, auntie. Anyhow, it doesn't look as if it were
much--yet," she admitted, with a rueful smile. "Besides, it's a
secret, and I'm not going to tell it yet."
"Very well; suit yourself," sighed Aunt Polly. "But I can tell you
right now that if you're trying to make anything different out of
those mortgage papers Mr. Hart left, it's useless. I've been all over
them myself twice."
"No, dear, it isn't the papers. It's a whole heap nicer than any
papers ever could be," crowed Pollyanna triumphantly, turning back to
her work. In Pollyanna's eyes suddenly had risen a glowing vision of
what it might be, with that three thousand dollars once hers.
For still another half-hour Pollyanna wrote and scratched, and chewed
her pencils; then, with her courage dulled, but not destroyed, she
gathered up her papers and pencils and left the room.
"I reckon maybe I'll do better by myself up-stairs," she was thinking
as she hurried through the hall. "I THOUGHT I ought to do it at a
desk--being literary work, so--but anyhow, the desk didn't help me any
this morning. I'll try the window seat in my room."
The window seat, however, proved to be no more inspiring, judging by
the scratched and re-scratched pages that fell from Pollyanna's hands;
and at the end of another half-hour Pollyanna discovered suddenly that
it was time to get dinner.
"Well, I'm glad 'tis, anyhow," she sighed to herself. "I'd a lot
rather get dinner than do this. Not but that I WANT to do this, of
course; only I'd no idea 'twas such an awful job--just a story, so!"
During the following month Pollyanna worked faithfully, doggedly, but
she soon found that "just a story, so" was indeed no small matter to
accomplish. Pollyanna, however, was not one to set her hand to the
plow and look back. Besides, there was that three-thousand-dollar
prize, or even any of the others, if she should not happen to win the
first one! Of course even one hundred dollars was something! So day
after day she wrote and erased, and rewrote, until finally the story,
such as it was, lay completed before her. Then, with some misgivings,
it must be confessed, she took the manuscript to Milly Snow to be
typewritten.
"It reads all right--that is, it makes sense," mused Pollyanna
doubtfully, as she hurried along toward the Snow cottage; "and it's a
real nice story about a perfectly lovely girl. But there's something
somewhere that isn't quite right about it, I'm afraid. Anyhow, I don't
believe I'd better count too much on the first prize; then I won't be
too much disappointed when I get one of the littler ones."
Pollyanna always thought of Jimmy when she went to the Snows', for it
was at the side of the road near their cottage that she had first seen
him as a forlorn little runaway lad from the Orphans' Home years
before. She thought of him again to-day, with a little catch of her
breath. Then, with the proud lifting of her head that always came now
with the second thought of Jimmy, she hurried up the Snows' doorsteps
and rang the bell.
As was usually the case, the Snows had nothing but the warmest of
welcomes for Pollyanna; and also as usual it was not long before they
were talking of the game: in no home in Beldingsville was the glad
game more ardently played than in the Snows'.
"Well, and how are you getting along?" asked Pollyanna, when she had
finished the business part of her call.
"Splendidly!" beamed Milly Snow. "This is the third job I've got this
week. "Oh, Miss Pollyanna, I'm so glad you had me take up typewriting,
for you see I CAN do that right at home! And it's all owing to you."
"Nonsense!" disclaimed Pollyanna, merrily.
"But it is. In the first place, I couldn't have done it anyway if it
hadn't been for the game--making mother so much better, you know, that
I had some time to myself. And then, at the very first, you suggested
typewriting, and helped me to buy a machine. I should like to know if
that doesn't come pretty near owing it all to you!"
But once again Pollyanna objected. This time she was interrupted by
Mrs. Snow from her wheel chair by the window. And so earnestly and
gravely did Mrs. Snow speak, that Pollyanna, in spite of herself,
could but hear what she had to say.
"Listen, child, I don't think you know quite what you've done. But I
wish you could! There's a little look in your eyes, my dear, to-day,
that I don't like to see there. You are plagued and worried over
something, I know. I can see it. And I don't wonder: your uncle's
death, your aunt's condition, everything--I won't say more about that.
But there's something I do want to say, my dear, and you must let me
say it, for I can't bear to see that shadow in your eyes without
trying to drive it away by telling you what you've done for me, for
this whole town, and for countless other people everywhere."
"MRS. SNOW!" protested Pollyanna, in genuine distress.
"Oh, I mean it, and I know what I'm talking about," nodded the
invalid, triumphantly. "To begin with, look at me. Didn't you find me
a fretful, whining creature who never by any chance wanted what she
had until she found what she didn't have? And didn't you open my eyes
by bringing me three kinds of things so I'd HAVE to have what I
wanted, for once?"
"Oh, Mrs. Snow, was I really ever quite so--impertinent as that?"
murmured Pollyanna, with a painful blush.
"It wasn't impertinent," objected Mrs. Snow, stoutly. "You didn't MEAN
it as impertinence--and that made all the difference in the world. You
didn't preach, either, my dear. If you had, you'd never have got me to
playing the game, nor anybody else, I fancy. But you did get me to
playing it--and see what it's done for me, and for Milly! Here I am so
much better that I can sit in a wheel chair and go anywhere on this
floor in it. That means a whole lot when it comes to waiting on
yourself, and giving those around you a chance to breathe--meaning
Milly, in this case. And the doctor says it's all owing to the game.
Then there's others, quantities of others, right in this town, that
I'm hearing of all the time. Nellie Mahoney broke her wrist and was so
glad it wasn't her leg that she didn't mind the wrist at all. Old Mrs.
Tibbits has lost her hearing, but she's so glad 'tisn't her eyesight
that she's actually happy. Do you remember cross-eyed Joe that they
used to call Cross Joe, be cause of his temper? Nothing went to suit
him either, any more than it did me. Well, somebody's taught him the
game, they say, and made a different man of him. And listen, dear.
It's not only this town, but other places. I had a letter yesterday
from my cousin in Massachusetts, and she told me all about Mrs. Tom
Payson that used to live here. Do you remember them? They lived on the
way up Pendleton Hill."
"Yes, oh, yes, I remember them," cried Pollyanna.
"Well, they left here that winter you were in the Sanatorium and went
to Massachusetts where my sister lives. She knows them well. She says
Mrs. Payson told her all about you, and how your glad game actually
saved them from a divorce. And now not only do they play it
themselves, but they've got quite a lot of others playing it down
there, and THEY'RE getting still others. So you see, dear, there's no
telling where that glad game of yours is going to stop. I wanted you
to know. I thought it might help--even you to play the game sometimes;
for don't think I don't understand, dearie, that it IS hard for you to
play your own game--sometimes."
Pollyanna rose to her feet. She smiled, but her eyes glistened with
tears, as she held out her hand in good-by.
"Thank you, Mrs. Snow," she said unsteadily. "It IS hard--sometimes;
and maybe I DID need a little help about my own game. But, anyhow,
now--" her eyes flashed with their old merriment--"if any time I think
I can't play the game myself I can remember that I can still always be
GLAD there are some folks playing it!"
Pollyanna walked home a little soberly that afternoon. Touched as she
was by what Mrs. Snow had said, there was yet an undercurrent of
sadness in it all. She was thinking of Aunt Polly--Aunt Polly who
played the game now so seldom; and she was wondering if she herself
always played it, when she might.
"Maybe I haven't been careful, always, to hunt up the glad side of the
things Aunt Polly says," she thought with undefined guiltiness; "and
maybe if I played the game better myself, Aunt Polly would play it--a
little. Anyhow I'm going to try. If I don't look out, all these other
people will be playing my own game better than I am myself!"
CHAPTER XXVI
JOHN PENDLETON
It was just a week before Christmas that Pollyanna sent her story (now
neatly typewritten) in for the contest. The prize-winners would not be
announced until April, the magazine notice said, so Pollyanna settled
herself for the long wait with characteristic, philosophical patience.
"I don't know, anyhow, but I'm glad 'tis so long," she told herself,
"for all winter I can have the fun of thinking it may be the first one
instead of one of the others, that I'll get. I might just as well
think I'm going to get it, then if I do get it, I won't have been
unhappy any. While if I don't get it--I won't have had all these weeks
of unhappiness beforehand, anyway; and I can be glad for one of the
smaller ones, then." That she might not get any prize was not in
Pollyanna's calculations at all. The story, so beautifully typed by
Milly Snow, looked almost as good as printed already--to Pollyanna.
Christmas was not a happy time at the Harrington homestead that year,
in spite of Pollyanna's strenuous efforts to make it so. Aunt Polly
refused absolutely to allow any sort of celebration of the day, and
made her attitude so unmistakably plain that Pollyanna could not give
even the simplest of presents.
Christmas evening John Pendleton called. Mrs. Chilton excused herself,
but Pollyanna, utterly worn out from a long day with her aunt,
welcomed him joyously. But even here she found a fly in the amber of
her content; for John Pendleton had brought with him a letter from
Jimmy, and the letter was full of nothing but the plans he and Mrs.
Carew were making for a wonderful Christmas celebration at the Home
for Working Girls: and Pollyanna, ashamed though she was to own it to
herself, was not in a mood to hear about Christmas celebrations just
then--least of all, Jimmy's.
John Pendleton, however, was not ready to let the subject drop, even
when the letter had been read.
"Great doings--those!" he exclaimed, as he folded the letter.
"Yes, indeed; fine!" murmured Pollyanna, trying to speak with due
enthusiasm.
"And it's to-night, too, isn't it? I'd like to drop in on them about
now."
"Yes," murmured Pollyanna again, with still more careful enthusiasm.
"Mrs. Carew knew what she was about when she got Jimmy to help her, I
fancy," chuckled the man. "But I'm wondering how Jimmy likes
it--playing Santa Claus to half a hundred young women at once!"
"Why, he finds it delightful, of course!" Pollyanna lifted her chin
ever so slightly.
"Maybe. Still, it's a little different from learning to build bridges,
you must confess."
"Oh, yes."
"But I'll risk Jimmy, and I'll risk wagering that those girls never
had a better time than he'll give them to-night, too."
"Y-yes, of course," stammered Pollyanna, trying to keep the hated
tremulousness out of her voice, and trying very hard NOT to compare
her own dreary evening in Beldingsville with nobody but John Pendleton
to that of those fifty girls in Boston--with Jimmy.
There was a brief pause, during which John Pendleton gazed dreamily at
the dancing fire on the hearth.
"She's a wonderful woman--Mrs. Carew is," he said at last.
"She is, indeed!" This time the enthusiasm in Pollyanna's voice was
all pure gold.
"Jimmy's written me before something of what she's done for those
girls," went on the man, still gazing into the fire. "In just the last
letter before this he wrote a lot about it, and about her. He said he
always admired her, but never so much as now, when he can see what she
really is."
"She's a dear--that's what Mrs. Carew is," declared Pollyanna, warmly.
"She's a dear in every way, and I love her."
John Pendleton stirred suddenly. He turned to Pollyanna with an oddly
whimsical look in his eyes.
"I know you do, my dear. For that matter, there may be others,
too--that love her."
Pollyanna's heart skipped a beat. A sudden thought came to her with
stunning, blinding force. JIMMY! Could John Pendleton be meaning that
Jimmy cared THAT WAY--for Mrs. Carew?
"You mean--?" she faltered. She could not finish.
With a nervous twitch peculiar to him, John Pendleton got to his feet.
"I mean--the girls, of course," he answered lightly, still with that
whimsical smile. "Don't you suppose those fifty girls--love her 'most
to death?"
Pollyanna said "yes, of course," and murmured something else
appropriate, in answer to John Pendleton's next remark. But her
thoughts were in a tumult, and she let the man do most of the talking
for the rest of the evening.
Nor did John Pendleton seem averse to this. Restlessly he took a turn
or two about the room, then sat down in his old place. And when he
spoke, it was on his old subject, Mrs. Carew.
"Queer--about that Jamie of hers, isn't it? I wonder if he IS her
nephew."
As Pollyanna did not answer, the man went on, after a moment's
silence.
"He's a fine fellow, anyway. I like him. There's something fine and
genuine about him. She's bound up in him. That's plain to be seen,
whether he's really her kin or not."
There was--another pause, then, in a slightly altered voice, John
Pendleton said:
"Still it's queer, too, when you come to think of it, that she
never--married again. She is certainly now--a very beautiful woman.
Don't you think so?"
"Yes--yes, indeed she is," plunged in Pollyanna, with precipitate
haste; "a--a very beautiful woman."
There was a little break at the last in Pollyanna's voice. Pollyanna,
just then, had caught sight of her own face in the mirror
opposite--and Pollyanna to herself was never "a very beautiful woman."
On and on rambled John Pendleton, musingly, contentedly, his eyes on
the fire. Whether he was answered or not seemed not to disturb him.
Whether he was even listened to or not, he seemed hardly to know. He
wanted, apparently, only to talk; but at last he got to his feet
reluctantly and said good-night.
For a weary half-hour Pollyanna had been longing for him to go, that
she might be alone; but after he had gone she wished he were back. She
had found suddenly that she did not want to be alone--with her
thoughts.
It was wonderfully clear to Pollyanna now. There was no doubt of it.
Jimmy cared for Mrs. Carew. That was why he was so moody and restless
after she left. That was why he had come so seldom to see her,
Pollyanna, his old friend. That was why--
Countless little circumstances of the past summer flocked to
Pollyanna's memory now, mute witnesses that would not be denied.
And why should he not care for her? Mrs. Carew was certainly beautiful
and charming. True, she was older than Jimmy; but young men had
married women far older than she, many times. And if they loved each
other--
Pollyanna cried herself to sleep that night.
In the morning, bravely she tried to face the thing. She even tried,
with a tearful smile, to put it to the test of the glad game. She was
reminded then of something Nancy had said to her years before: "If
there IS a set o' folks in the world that wouldn't have no use for
that 'ere glad game o' your'n, it'd be a pair o' quarrellin' lovers!"
"Not that we're 'quarrelling,' or even 'lovers,'" thought Pollyanna
blushingly; "but just the same I can be glad HE'S glad, and glad SHE'S
glad, too, only--" Even to herself Pollyanna could not finish this
sentence.
Being so sure now that Jimmy and Mrs. Carew cared for each other,
Pollyanna became peculiarly sensitive to everything that tended to
strengthen that belief. And being ever on the watch for it, she found
it, as was to be expected. First in Mrs. Carew's letters.
"I am seeing a lot of your friend, young Pendleton," Mrs. Carew wrote
one day; "and I'm liking him more and more. I do wish, however--just
for curiosity's sake--that I could trace to its source that elusive
feeling that I've seen him before somewhere."
Frequently, after this, she mentioned him casually; and, to Pollyanna,
in the very casualness of these references lay their sharpest sting;
for it showed so unmistakably that Jimmy and Jimmy's presence were now
to Mrs. Carew a matter of course. From other sources, too, Pollyanna
found fuel for the fire of her suspicions. More and more frequently
John Pendleton "dropped in" with his stories of Jimmy, and of what
Jimmy was doing; and always here there was mention of Mrs. Carew. Poor
Pollyanna wondered, indeed, sometimes, if John Pendleton could not
talk of anything--but Mrs. Carew and Jimmy, so constantly was one or
the other of those names on his lips.
There were Sadie Dean's letters, too, and they told of Jimmy, and of
what he was doing to help Mrs. Carew. Even Jamie, who wrote
occasionally, had his mite to add, for he wrote one evening:
"It's ten o'clock. I'm sitting here alone waiting for Mrs. Carew to
come home. She and Pendleton have been to one of their usual socials
down to the Home."
From Jimmy himself Pollyanna heard very rarely; and for that she told
herself mournfully that she COULD be GLAD.
"For if he can't write about ANYTHING but Mrs. Carew and those girls,
I'm glad he doesn't write very often!" she sighed.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE DAY POLLYANNA DID NOT PLAY
And so one by one the winter days passed. January and February slipped
away in snow and sleet, and March came in with a gale that whistled
and moaned around the old house, and set loose blinds to swinging and
loose gates to creaking in a way that was most trying to nerves
already stretched to the breaking point.
Pollyanna was not finding it very easy these days to play the game,
but she was playing it faithfully, valiantly. Aunt Polly was not
playing it at all--which certainly did not make it any the easier for
Pollyanna to play it. Aunt Polly was blue and discouraged. She was not
well, too, and she had plainly abandoned herself to utter gloom.
Pollyanna still was counting on the prize contest. She had dropped
from the first prize to one of the smaller ones, however: Pollyanna
had been writing more stories, and the regularity with which they came
back from their pilgrimages to magazine editors was beginning to shake
her faith in her success as an author.
"Oh, well, I can be glad that Aunt Polly doesn't know anything about
it, anyway," declared Pollyanna to herself bravely, as she twisted in
her fingers the "declined-with-thanks" slip that had just towed in one
more shipwrecked story. "She CAN'T worry about this--she doesn't know
about it!"
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