Polly: A New-Fashioned Girl, L. T. Meade [unputdownable books txt] 📗
- Author: L. T. Meade
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For three or four generations the Maybright family had lived at Sleepy Hollow, which was the name of the square gray house, with its large vegetable garden, its sheltered clump of forest trees, and its cultivated flower and pleasure grounds. Here, in the old nursery, Polly had first opened her bright blue-black eyes; in this house Dr. Maybright’s eight children had lived happily, and enjoyed all the sunshine of the happiest of happy childhoods to the full. They were all high-spirited and fearless; each child had a certain amount of individuality. Perhaps Polly was the naughtiest[Pg 5] and the most peculiar; but her little spurt of insubordination speedily came to nothing, for mother, without ever being angry, or ever saying anything that could hurt Polly’s sensitive feelings, had always, with firm and gentle hand, put an extinguisher on them.
Mother was really, then, the life of the house. She was young to have such tall slips of daughters, and such little wild pickles of sons; and she was so pretty and so merry, and in such ecstasies over a picnic, and so childishly exultant when Helen, or Polly, or Katie, won a prize or did anything the least bit extraordinary, that she was voted the best playfellow in the world.
Mother was never idle, and yet she was always at leisure, and so she managed to obtain the confidences of all the children; she thoroughly understood each individual character, and she led her small brood with silken reins.
Dr. Maybright was a great deal older than his wife. He was a tall man, still very erect in his figure, with square shoulders, and a keen, bright, kindly face. He had a large practice, extending over many miles, and although he had not the experience which life in a city would have given him, he was a very clever physician, and many of his brothers in the profession prophesied eminence for him whenever he chose to come forward and take it. Dr. Maybright was often absent from home all day long, sometimes also in the dead of night the children heard his carriage wheels as they bowled away on some errand of mercy. Polly always thought of her father as a sort of angel of healing, who came here, there, and everywhere, and took illness and death away with him.
“Father won’t let Josie Wilson die,” Polly used to say; or, “What bad toothache Peter Simpkins has to-day—but when father sees him he will be all right.”
Polly had a great reverence for her father, although she loved her beautiful young mother best. The children never expected Dr. Maybright to join in their games, or to be sympathetic over their joys or their woes. They reverenced him much, they loved him well, but he was too busy and too great to be troubled by their little concerns. Of course, mother was different, for mother was part and parcel of their lives.
There were six tall, slim, rather straggling-looking Maybright girls—all overgrown, and long of limb, and short of frock. Then there came two podgy boys, greater pickles than the girls, more hopelessly disreputable, more defiant of all authority, except mother’s. Polly was as bad as her brothers in this respect, but the other five girls were docility itself compared to these black lambs, whose proper names were Charley and John, but who never had been called anything, and never would be called anything in that select circle, but Bunny and Bob.
This was the family; the more refined neighbors rather dreaded them, and even the villagers spoke of most of them as “wondrous rampageous!” But Mrs. Maybright always smiled when unfriendly comments reached her ears.
“Wait and see,” she would say; “just quietly wait and see—they are all, every one of them, the sweetest and most healthy-minded children in the world. Let them alone, and don’t interfere with them. I should not like perfection, it would have nothing to grow to.”
Mrs. Maybright taught the girls herself, and the boys had a rather frightened-looking nursery-governess, who often was seen to rush from the schoolroom dissolved in tears; but was generally overtaken half-way up the avenue by two small figures, nearly throttled by two pairs of repentant little arms, while eager lips vowed, declared, and vociferated, that they would never, never be naughty again—that they would never tease their own sweet, sweetest of Miss Wilsons any more.
Nor did they—until the next time.
Polly was fourteen on that hot July afternoon when she lay on the grass and skillfully captured the living thrushes, and held them to her smooth, glowing young cheeks. Her birthday had been over for a whole fortnight; it had been a day full of delight, love, and happiness, and mother had said a word or two to the exultant, radiant child at the close. Something about her putting away some of the childish things, and taking up the gentler and nobler ways of first young girlhood now. She thought in an almost undefined way of mother’s words as she held the fluttering thrushes to her lips and kissed their downy breasts. Then had come the unlooked-for interruption. Polly’s life seemed cloudless, and all of a sudden there appeared a speck in the firmament—a little cloud which grew rapidly, until the whole heavens were covered with it. Mother had gone away for ever, and there were now nine children in the old gray house.
“Wasn’t father with her?” Polly had said when she could find her voice late that evening. “Wasn’t father there? I thought father—I always thought father could keep death away.”
She was lying on her pretty white bed when she spoke. She had lain there now for a couple of days—not crying nor moaning, but very still, taking no notice of any one. She looked dull and heavy—her sisters thought her very ill.
Dr. Maybright said to Helen—
“You must be very careful of Polly, she has had a shock, and she may take some time recovering. I want you to nurse her yourself, Nell, and to keep the others from the[Pg 7] room. For the present, at least, she must be kept absolutely quiet—the least excitement would be very bad for her.”
“Polly never cries,” said Helen, whose own blue eyes were swollen almost past recognition; “she never cries, she does not even moan. I think, father, what really upset Polly so was when she heard that you—you were there. Polly thinks, she always did think that you could keep death away.”
Here poor Helen burst into fresh sobs herself.
“I think,” she added, choking as she spoke, “that was what quite broke Polly down—losing mother, and losing faith in your power at the same time.”
“I am glad you told me this, Helen,” said Dr. Maybright, quietly. “This alters the case. In a measure I can now set Polly’s heart at rest. I will see her presently.”
“Presently” did not mean that day, nor the next, nor the next, but one beautiful summer’s evening just when the sun was setting, and just when its long low western rays were streaming into the lattice-window of the pretty little bower bed-room where Polly lay on her white bed, Dr. Maybright opened the door and came in. He was a very tall man, and he had to stoop as he passed under the low, old-fashioned doorway, and as he walked across the room to Polly’s bedside the rays of the setting sun fell on his face, and he looked more like a beautiful healing presence than ever to the child. She was lying on her back, with her eyes very wide open; her face, which had been bright and round and rosy, had grown pale and small, and her tearless eyes had a pathetic expression. She started up when she saw her father come in, gave a glad little cry, and then, remembering something, hid her face in her hands with a moan.
Dr. Maybright sat down in the chair which Helen had occupied the greater part of the day. He did not take any notice of Polly’s moan, but sat quite still, looking out at the beautiful, glowing July sunset. Wondering at his stillness, Polly presently dropped her hands from her face, and looked round at him. Her lips began to quiver, and her eyes to fill.
“If I were you, Polly,” said the doctor, in his most matter-of-fact and professional manner, “I would get up and come down to tea. You are not ill, you know. Trouble, even great trouble, is not illness. By staying here in your room you are adding a little to the burden of all the others. That is not necessary, and it is the last thing your mother would wish.”
“Is it?” said Polly. The tears were now brimming over in her eyes, but she crushed back her emotion. “I didn’t want to get up,” she said, “or to do anything right any more. She doesn’t know—she doesn’t hear—she doesn’t care.”
“Hush, Polly—she both knows and cares. She would be much better pleased if you came down to tea to-night. I want you, and so does Helen, and so do the other girls and the little boys. See, I will stand by the window and wait, if you dress yourself very quickly.”[Pg 8]
“Give me my pocket-handkerchief,” said Polly. She dashed it to her eyes. No more tears flowed, and by the time the doctor reached the window he heard a bump on the floor; there was a hasty scrambling into clothes, and in an incredibly short time an untidy, haggard-looking, but now wide-awake, Polly stood by the doctor’s side.
“That is right,” he said, giving her one of his quick, rare smiles.
He took no notice of the tossed hair, nor the stained, crumpled, cotton frock.
“Take my arm, Polly,” he said, almost cheerfully. And they went down together to the old parlor where mother would never again preside over the tea-tray.
It was more than a week since Mrs. Maybright had died, and the others were accustomed to Helen’s taking her place, but the scene was new to the poor, sore-hearted child who now come in. Dr. Maybright felt her faltering steps, and knew what her sudden pause on the threshold meant.
“Be brave, dear,” he whispered. “You will make it easier for me.”
After that Polly would have fought with dragons rather than shed a ghost of a tear. She slipped into a seat by her father, and crumbled her bread-and-butter, and gulped down some weak tea, taking care to avoid any one’s eyes, and feeling her own cheeks growing redder and redder.
In mother’s time Dr. Maybright had seldom spoken. On many occasions he did not even put in an appearance at the family tea, for mother herself and the group of girls kept up such a chatter that, as he said, his voice would not be heard; now, on the contrary, he talked more than any one, telling the children one or two most interesting stories on natural history. Polly was devoted to natural history, and in spite of herself she suspended her tea-cup in the air while she listened.
“It is almost impossible, I know,” concluded Dr. Maybright as he rose from the table. “But it can be done. Oh, yes, boys, I don’t want either of you to try it, but still it can be done. If the hand is very steady, and poised in a particular way, then the bird can be caught, but you must know how to hold him. Yes—what is the matter, Polly?”
“I did it!” burst from Polly, “I caught two of them—darlings—I was kissing them when—oh, father!”
Polly’s face was crimson. All the others were staring at her.
“I want you, my dear,” said her father, suddenly and tenderly. “Come with me.”
Again he drew her hand protectingly through his arm, and led her out of the room.
“You were a very good, brave child at tea-time,” he said. “But I particularly wish you to cry. Tears are natural, and you will feel much better if you have a good cry. Come upstairs now to Nurse and baby.”[Pg 9]
“Oh, no, I can’t—I really can’t see baby!”
“Why not?—She is a dear little child, and when your mother went away she left her to you all, to take care of, and cherish and love. I think she thought specially
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