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 tonight, 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!”

All of Pollyanna’s life these days revolved around Aunt Polly, and it is doubtful if even Aunt Polly herself realized how exacting she had become, and how entirely her niece was giving up her life to her.

It was on a particularly gloomy day in March that matters came, in a way, to a climax. Pollyanna, upon arising, had looked at the sky with a sigh – Aunt Polly was always more difficult on cloudy days. With a gay little song, however, that still sounded a bit forced – Pollyanna descended to the kitchen and began to prepare breakfast.

“I reckon I’ll make corn muffins,” she told the stove confidentially; “then maybe Aunt Polly won’t mind – other things so much.”

Half an hour later she tapped at her aunt’s door.

“Up so soon? Oh, that’s fine! And you’ve done your hair yourself!”

“I couldn’t sleep. I had to get up,” sighed Aunt Polly, wearily. “I had to do my hair, too. YOU weren’t here.”

“But I didn’t suppose you were ready for me, auntie,” explained Pollyanna, hurriedly. “Never mind, though. You’ll be glad I wasn’t when you find what I’ve been doing.”

“Well, I sha’n’t – not this morning,” frowned Aunt Polly, perversely. “Nobody could be glad this morning. Look at it rain! That makes the third rainy day this week.”

“That’s so – but you know the sun never seems quite so perfectly lovely as it does after a lot of rain like this,” smiled Pollyanna, deftly arranging a bit of lace and ribbon at her aunt’s throat. “Now come. Breakfast’s all ready. Just you wait till you see what I’ve got for you.”

Aunt Polly, however, was not to be diverted, even by corn muffins, this morning. Nothing was right, nothing was even endurable, as she felt; and Pollyanna’s patience was sorely taxed before the meal was over. To make matters worse, the roof over the east attic window was found to be leaking, and an unpleasant letter came in the mail. Pollyanna, true to her creed, laughingly declared that, for her part, she was glad they had a roof – to leak; and that, as for the letter, she’d been expecting it for a week, anyway, and she was actually glad she wouldn’t have to worry any more for fear it would come. It COULDN’t come now, because it HAD come; and ’twas over with.

All this, together with sundry other hindrances and annoyances, delayed the usual morning work until far into the afternoon – something that was always particularly displeasing to methodical Aunt Polly, who ordered her own life, preferably, by the tick of the clock.

“But it’s half-past three, Pollyanna, already! Did you know it?” she fretted at last. “And you haven’t made the beds yet.”

“No, dearie, but I will. Don’t worry.”

“But, did you hear what I said? Look at the clock, child. It’s after three o’clock!”

“So ’tis, but never mind, Aunt Polly. We can be glad ’tisn’t after four.”

Aunt Polly sniffed her disdain.

“I suppose YOU can,” she observed tartly.

Pollyanna laughed.

“Well, you see, auntie, clocks ARE accommodating things, when you stop to think about it. I found that out long ago at the Sanatorium. When I was doing something that I liked, and I didn’t WANT the time to go fast, I’d just look at the hour hand, and I’d feel as if I had lots of time – it went so slow. Then, other days, when I had to keep something that hurt on for an hour, maybe, I’d watch the little second hand; and you see then I felt as if Old Time was just humping himself to help me out by going as fast as ever he could. Now I’m watching the hour hand to-day, ’cause I don’t want Time to go fast. See?” she twinkled mischievously, as she hurried from the room, before Aunt Polly had time to answer.

It was certainly a hard day, and by night Pollyanna looked pale and worn out. This, too, was a source of worriment to Aunt Polly.

“Dear me, child, you look tired to death!” she fumed. “WHAT we’re going to do I don’t know. I suppose YOU’LL be sick next!”

“Nonsense, auntie! I’m not sick a bit,” de clare d Pollyanna, dropping herself with a sigh on to the couch. “But I AM tired. My! how good this couch feels! I’m glad I’m tired, after all – it’s so nice to rest.”

Aunt Polly turned with an impatient gesture.

“Glad – glad – glad! Of course you’re glad, Pollyanna. You’re always glad for everything. I never saw such a girl. Oh, yes, I know it’s the game,” she went on, in answer to the look that came to Pollyanna’s face. “And it’s a very good game, too; but I think you carry it altogether too far. This eternal doctrine of ‘it might be worse’ has got on my nerves, Pollyanna. Honestly, it would be a real relief if you WOULDN’t be glad for something, sometime!”

“Why, auntie!” Pollyanna pulled herself half erect.

“Well, it would. You just try it sometime, and see.”

“But, auntie, I – ” Pollyanna stopped and eyed her aunt reflectively. An odd look came to her eyes; a slow smile curved her lips. Mrs. Chilton, who had turned back to her work, paid no heed; and, after a minute, Pollyanna lay back on the couch without finishing her sentence, the curious smile still on her lips.

It was raining again when Pollyanna got up the next morning, and a northeast wind was still whistling down the chimney. Pollyanna at the window drew an involuntary sigh; but almost at once her face changed.

“Oh, well, I’m glad —” She clapped her hands to her lips. “Dear me,” she chuckled softly, her eyes dancing, “I shall forget – I know I shall; and that’ll spoil it all! I must just remember not to be glad for anything – not ANYTHING to-day.”

Pollyanna did not make corn muffins that morning. She started the breakfast, then went to her aunt’s room.

Mrs. Chilton was still in bed.

“I see it rains, as usual,” she observed, by way of greeting.

“Yes, it’s horrid – perfectly horrid,” scolded Pollyanna. “It’s rained ’most every day this week, too. I hate such weather.”

Aunt Polly turned with a faint surprise in her eyes; but Pollyanna was looking the other way.

“Are you going to get up now?” she asked a little wearily.

“Why, y-yes,” murmured Aunt Polly, still with that faint surprise in her eyes. “What’s the matter, Pollyanna? Are you especially tired?”

“Yes, I am tired this morning. I didn’t sleep well, either. I hate not to sleep. Things always plague so in the night, when you wake up.”

“I guess I know that,” fretted Aunt Polly. “I didn’t sleep a wink after two o’clock myself. And there’s that roof! How are we going to have it fixed, pray, if it never stops raining? Have you been up to empty the pans?”

“Oh, yes – and took up some more. There’s a new leak now, further over.”

“A new one! Why, it’ll all be leaking yet!”

Pollyanna opened her lips. She had almost said, “Well, we can be glad to have it fixed all at once, then,” when she suddenly remembered, and substituted, in a tired voice:

“Very likely it will, auntie. It looks like it now, fast enough. Anyway, it’s made fuss enough for a whole roof already, and I’m sick of it!” With which statement, Pollyanna, her face carefully averted, turned and trailed listlessly out of the room.

“It’s so funny and so – so hard, I’m afraid I’m making a mess of it,” she whispered to herself anxiously, as she hurried down-stairs to the kitchen.

Behind her, Aunt Polly, in the bedroom, gazed after her with eyes that were again faintly puzzled.

Aunt Polly had occasion a good many times before six o’clock that night to gaze at Pollyanna with surprised and questioning eyes. Nothing was right with Pollyanna. The fire would not burn, the wind blew one particular blind loose three times, and still a third leak was discovered in the roof. The mail brought to Pollyanna a letter that made her cry (though no amount of questioning on Aunt Polly’s part would persuade her to tell why). Even the dinner went wrong, and innumerable things happened in the afternoon to call out fretful, discouraged remarks.

Not until the day was more than half gone did a look of shrewd suspicion suddenly fight for supremacy with the puzzled questioning in Aunt Polly’s eyes. If Pollyanna saw this she made no sign. Certainly there was no abatement in her fretfulness and discontent. Long before six o’clock, however, the suspicion in Aunt Polly’s eyes became conviction, and drove to ignominious defeat the puzzled questioning. But, curiously enough then, a new look came to take its place, a look that was actually a twinkle of amusement.

At last, after a particularly doleful complaint on Pollyanna’s part, Aunt Polly threw up her hands with a gesture of half-laughing despair.

“That’ll do, that’ll do, child! I’ll give up. I’ll confess myself beaten at my own game. You can be – GLAD for that, if you like,” she finished with a grim smile.

“I know, auntie, but you said – ” began Pollyanna demurely.

“Yes, yes, but I never will again,” interrupted Aunt Polly, with emphasis. “Mercy, what a day this has been! I never want to live through another like it.” She hesitated, flushed a little, then went on with evident difficulty: “Furthermore, I – I want you to know that – that I understand I haven’t played the game myself – very well, lately; but, after this, I’m going to – to try – WHERE’s my handkerchief?” she finished sharply, fumbling in the folds of her dress.

Pollyanna sprang to her feet and crossed instantly to her aunt’s side.

“Oh, but Aunt Polly, I didn’t mean – It was just a – a joke,” she quavered in quick distress. “I never thought of your taking it THAT way.”

“Of course you didn’t,” snapped Aunt Polly, with all the asperity of a stern, repressed woman who abhors scenes and sentiment, and who is mortally afraid she will show that her heart has been touched. “Don’t you suppose I know you didn’t mean it that way? Do you think, if I thought you HAD been trying to teach me a lesson that I’d – I’d —” But Pollyanna’s strong young arms had her in a close embrace, and she could not finish the sentence.