The Project Gutenberg EBook of When Polly was Eighteen, by Emma C. Dowd This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: When Polly was Eighteen Author: Emma C. Dowd Release Date: December 22, 2018 [EBook #58512] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHEN POLLY WAS EIGHTEEN *** Produced by MFR and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) WHEN POLLY WAS EIGHTEEN Cover Frontispiece Title page WHEN POLLY WAS EIGHTEEN BY EMMA C. DOWD Colophon BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1921 COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY EMMA C. DOWD ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TO MY FRIEND JULIA DARLING PECK IN HAPPY MEMORY OF SHELBURNE SUMMERS CONTENTS I. “Why don’t you laugh?” 1 II. The Letter 8 III. David makes a Request 15 IV. The Birthday Fête 21 V. “I will take care of Paradise Ward” 32 VI. “Maybe” 41 VII. Gladys Guinevere 52 VIII. Couches of Clover 58 IX. No. 45678 64 X. The Top of the World 71 XI. Dr. Abbe 79 XII. Patricia and a Few Others 85 XIII. What Sardis said 93 XIV. Paradise Ward on Wheels 100 XV. The First Day 115 XVI. Benedicta makes it go 124 XVII. A Picture and a Message 129 XVIII. An Attempt at Matchmaking 135 XIX. An Uninvited Guest and a Mystery 146 XX. The Telegram 155 XXI. “Ten Little Girls” and Sardis Merrifield 164 XXII. A Little Lame Duck 177 XXIII. In the “Garden of Eden” 187 XXIV. Rosalind Ferne 195 XXV. The Storm 207 XXVI. Clementina asks Questions 217 XXVII. The Butterfly Lady stays 223 XXVIII. Benedicta’s Opportunity 239 XXIX. Trouble in the Kitchen 251 XXX. The New Cook 259 [vii] [viii] WHEN POLLY WAS EIGHTEEN [1] P WHEN POLLY WAS EIGHTEEN . . . CHAPTER I “WHY DON’T YOU LAUGH?” OLLY leaned back against the great oak, her eyes bent on David’s face. She wondered—and wondered hard. If she could only fathom that inscrutable expression! The young man, stretched on the grass among the waving shadows, was gazing across the valley to the hills in their soft afternoon veiling. It was a June picture beautiful enough to hold the attention of any one, yet it was plain that David’s thoughts were not on the landscape. They had come out for a walk, which had led them miles to the south and finally to the top of Chimney Hill, where they had stopped to rest. At the start David had been talkative enough, in fact unusually merry; then, from no discernible cause, his lips had shut gravely and Polly had not been able to draw out more than monosyllables and short, matter-of-fact sentences. As she watched the unreadable face she tried to guess what the trouble might be. As in the old days before college, her lover had his occasional jealous moods, and although they were less frequent they grew more and more bitter. Still, during the happy intervals Polly would coax herself to believe that they were past forever. Now she thought over the route, bit by bit, trying to find something which could have disturbed him. At last, baffled in her endeavors, she ventured suddenly:— “David, why don’t you laugh?” He turned instantly. “At what?” “Anything—nothing,” she answered lightly. “You seemed to be weighing some heavy matter.” “No, I was only—” He halted, then went on without completing his sentence. “I am going away to-morrow,” he announced. Polly’s smile vanished in surprise. “Where?” she asked with her usual eagerness. “Spitzbergen or the South Pole?” David did not appear to notice her pleasantry. “To the Adirondacks,” he said simply. “Oh!” Polly exclaimed. “Were you just making up your mind?” David reddened. “N-no,” he denied; “but Converse invited me only a day or two ago, and I didn’t decide at once.” “Going with Child Converse?” queried Polly’s lips, while her thoughts ran along, “Why didn’t he tell me sooner? We were together all yesterday morning and this afternoon—never a word until now!” “Yes,” David was saying, “he is going to take me up to their camp. His father and mother are in Seattle, you know.” “M-h’m,” she bowed. “How long you going to stay?” “I don’t know. He hasn’t set any time.” “It’ll be great, won’t it?” Polly smiled in her friendliest way. He nodded gravely, slipping abruptly into complaint. “You do not like Converse. You have never taken the trouble to know him.” [2] [3] The girl’s eyes twinkled. “I certainly ought to adore him,” she said; “it is the first time you ever wanted me to look at any boy except Your Royal Highness.” “Oh, you don’t understand!” sighed David. “I am always wondering,” Polly went on, a tiny scowl wrinkling her smooth forehead, “how it is that Converse happens to attract you.” “He is a good fellow,” said David positively. “But he has no stock of prittle-prattle.” “It isn’t his lack of nonsense,” Polly smiled. “He is too pretty. That combined with his name—but he can’t help either, poor boy! Anyway, he looks like a nice baby—” “Baby!” sniffed David. “Well, he does. With his round face and rosy cheeks and curly hair—honestly, I always want to take him on my knee and trot him.” David laughed, though as if against his will. “There’s nothing of the baby about him,” he asserted, “and a fellow can’t help his looks.” Polly shook her head. “No,” she agreed. “If only he and his sister could exchange faces! Maybe, after all, it is she that flavors my opinion of him.” “Marietta?” “Yes.” She was making little jabs in the soft moss with her slender forefinger, and a faint smile began to curve her lips. “She is a brainy girl,” was the somewhat stiff response, “and she has always been very pleasant to me.” “She is brainy enough,” replied Polly; “the trouble is, she knows it and she shows that she knows it.” “If she did not know it, there would be nothing to know,” said David severely. Polly’s smile broadened. “I was thinking,” she resumed, “of what Patricia said the other day. Marietta has just been elected president of the Much Ado Club in place of Ruth Mansfield. You know the Mansfields are going to live in California. Ruth has grown pretty stout, and Marietta looks as if she would blow away. Somebody was wondering if she could fill Ruth’s place, and Patricia said very soberly, ‘I think she’ll wabble about a little.’ Wasn’t that bright?” “Unkind,” he answered forbiddingly. “Oh, David!” she sighed, “you are so matter-of-fact. You don’t like Patty any better than ever.” “There is not much of her to like,” he said quietly. “David Collins!” “It is true.” “Every one but you thinks she is lovely,” asserted Polly. “Probably they don’t require depth.” “Patricia isn’t shallow,” she retorted. “It appears so to an outsider. Look at her and her gang!” “Gang!—David!” He gave a short laugh. “The truth is, Polly, seeing we are talking plainly, I don’t like the girls with whom you are so popular—the girls that have made you their queen. They—” “Queen! What are you talking about, David?” Polly broke in without ceremony. Her voice was scornful. “Yes, queen,” reiterated the young man. “Only they rule you, not you them.” “You don’t like it because I said yesterday I hadn’t time to have a flower garden,” accused Polly. [4] [5] “No,” denied David, “I was thinking of something else. You have too many clubs on your hands.” “They don’t amount to much in the way of time,” returned Polly. “They must be a great bore.” “No; they keep me out of a rut, put me in touch with everything.” “H’m!” scorned David. “I am glad I don’t need a posse of chattering girls to keep me up to date. Not a single club for me in vacation! Cut them out, Polly, every one! Why not?” The girl laughed. “What a queer fellow you are! I’ll write to you every day if you wish,” she added with seeming irrelevance, remembering a certain request when they had separated at the beginning of the last college year. David brightened perceptibly—until a sparkle of fun in her brown eyes swiftly altered his expression. “Yes, you will have as much as three minutes a day to give to me, won’t you!” he flashed, a tinge of bitterness in his tone. “No, truly, David, I am in earnest,” smiled Polly. “My clubs don’t take up nearly as much of my time as you think. If you would join some of them—the College, for instance—you would change your mind. You stand outside and criticize; you don’t get the right viewpoint. Try it, David! You won’t be sorry. I’ll propose your name at the next meeting.” “No, you will not!” was the prompt reply. “Nice time to join, while I am off in an Adirondack camp.” “Oh, well, you are not going to stay all summer, are you?” “I may.” Polly looked straight into the blue eyes opposite. “Do you mean it?” He bowed gravely. “It is more than possible.” He pulled out his watch. “Time we were on the march,” he said, springing to his feet. The walk home was like many another walk. Polly tried to make talk, with poor results. There were long silences, while she, watching her companion’s face, longed with all her heart to read what was being written behind those unreadable eyes. She felt a relief when the hospital was sighted. “You’ll be up in the morning, shan’t you?” she asked. “I think there will not be time,” David answered quietly. “Converse wishes to make an early start. I would better say good-bye now.” He took her hand in his strong grasp, held it a moment as if words were not ready, then said calmly, “I hope you will have a pleasant summer.” “Just as if I were some ordinary acquaintance he had met on the street,” Polly told herself in the seclusion of her own room. “What does ail him!” [6] [7] T CHAPTER II THE LETTER HE City Hall clock struck twelve, and Polly Dudley was still awake. The circumstances of the afternoon were passing before her. What David had said and what she had said, when he had laughed and when he had been silent, what they had seen on the way—it was all there in the procession that had no end. Just now they were at the corner of Webster Street, where it joined Clayton Avenue. An Italian boy with a push-cart was on the cross-walk, and Polly and David waited to let him pass. A young man was coming towards them, a handsome young man in a shining car. Now he was lifting his hat with his usual splendid smile, the smile that showed his gleaming, perfect teeth— “Oh!” Polly breathed suddenly, “that was it! Now I know! How could he be so silly! But it was! It is always some such little thing.” At last she had discovered the direct cause of her lover’s changed mood. She remembered how brilliantly Russell Ely had smiled to her as he passed, and then until this moment she had forgotten him altogether. Didn’t David want her even to bow to any one! But Russell was a member of the College Club! This explained everything. It seemed hours before sleep came to halt the wearying thoughts. Polly was called from breakfast to greet David. “We are not going to start as early as I expected,” he said, “not before nine. So I thought I would—just run up and say good-morning.” He smiled in almost his own cordial way. The girl beamed up at him. She never harbored a pique, and now she began to chat as gayly as usual, in seeming forgetfulness of yesterday. David, however, could not so lightly throw off the past. Recollections lingered to hamper his actions and retard his tongue. But he let his eyes rest upon Polly in gratification, laughing at her little pleasantries, and finally enjoying the present quite as if nothing in past or future could have any evil power for him. The parting was vastly different from that of the day before. After he had gone Polly ran upstairs humming a song. How glad she was that he had come! The days seemed long without David. Since they returned from college they had been much together, and now she missed him. The Randolphs were away, and Patricia and the rest could not quite fill the gap. The ladies of June Holiday Home always welcomed her with delight, and she called there occasionally; but their increased freedom of action carried them out-of-doors more than formerly, and she was apt not to find those at home whom she most wished to see. Then, too, the place had never seemed just the same since her beloved “Nita” had left it forever. She was returning, one afternoon, from a shopping excursion with Leonora, when she was overtaken by Russell Ely. He drove up to the curb, and threw open the door of his car. “Will you ride up the hill?” he asked. In a moment she was whirling along the shady avenue, arranging her bundles comfortably in her lap and listening to her companion’s bright talk. “This is a pleasant lift for me,” she said. “I have been round in the shops ever since luncheon, and I am tired.” “I shouldn’t have dared to ask you if that guardsman of yours were in town; but since the length of New England is between us I thought I might venture.” Polly laughed, and they talked on and on, until she noticed that they had not turned at the corner nearest home. “You don’t mind going a little farther, do you?” he asked. “I seldom get a glimpse of you nowadays. What do you say to running up to Castleboro Inn for some toast and tea? The air is just right for a drive.” But Polly refused, although the invitation became urgent; so the young man reluctantly left her at the hospital entrance. “What would David say?” raced through her head and would not stop. “What would David say? What would David say?” “He won’t know it!” Polly retorted. “And it’s all right if he should.” [8] [9] [10] [11] “What would David say? What would David say?” Polly went indoors and made herself ready for dinner. “What would David say? What would David say?” accompanied her upstairs and down, and even to the dining- room door. Once at the table in the presence of her father and mother, the teasing voice vanished. Yet it returned the minute she was alone, and kept up the vexing question until it was finally lost in sleep. Every morning came a letter from David, and Polly was invariably at the door to take it from the carrier. Sometimes it was little more than a note; but oftener it spread itself over page after page in familiar, affectionate talk. Two days after Russell Ely had brought her up the hill, an envelope with David’s well-known superscription was put into Polly’s hand. At first it seemed no more than the envelope itself, so thin it was. Then Polly saw that a single sheet was inside. “Guess he was in a hurry,” she told herself, as she hastened up to her room. She sat down by the broad window and noted the slight unevenness of the address. David’s chirography was a continual wonder to Polly, every line, every curve, according to rule. To-day, however, the “P” was a wee bit out of proportion, the “D” was slightly out of alignment, while the name showed a trifling tendency to run downhill. “Well!” she exclaimed under her breath, “what’s going to happen?” She dwelt upon it with a smile. Then she took up her paper-cutter and ran it under the flap. Her fingers were growing eager, and with a happy flutter of heart she pulled out the sheet. As she started to read, her face held a smile, but instantly a stare swept it away. Her eyes seemed to pierce the paper. They blazed with something like anger. “‘Appeal’!” she muttered scornfully, “‘appeal,’ indeed!” The letter fluttered to the floor, her hands went up to her face, and she began to cry. “Oh, David! David!” she whispered, “how could you! It isn’t true! You know it isn’t true!” She sat there a long time. Then she picked up the sheet and read it again. Her face grew hard and resentful. “‘Smile of understanding’! He won’t want me to smile at all pretty soon.” She sighed. “By next week he’ll be ‘appealing’ to me. He’ll be sure to come back, if I keep still. He always does. I know David! I’ve half a mind not to answer him when he does ‘appeal.’ Let him have a taste of his own porridge.” She went over the letter again, slowly, sentence by sentence. Miss Polly: Since it is plainly evident that you desire your freedom from the slender bonds that bind us together, I wish to assure you that from this moment they are broken, and you are free as if they had never been. To continue the relations which have existed between us for the few years past would only pile up wretchedness for us both, and it is best to annul them. Many times I have foreseen this. On the day we took that walk to Chimney Hill and I noted the smile of understanding which passed between you and that darned Ely, I knew that sooner or later this would come. Yesterday when I heard of your intimacy with the same unbearable puppy, your rides alone with him as soon as I was out of the way, convinced me that the time for the break has arrived. You need not attempt any explanation or appeal. My mind is made up forever. Nothing can change my decision. Very truly yours David Gresham Collins “‘Slender bonds’!” she muttered. “I didn’t know that I was bound at all, though I act as if I were. Of course, I’m ‘free,’ and I will be free, too, David Collins! As if you must tell me so! I wish I’d gone over to the Inn with Russell—I will next time he asks me. I won’t be under David’s thumb any longer! To think of his making such a fuss because I rode up with Russell—just rode up the hill with him! “But how did he hear of my being with him?” Polly questioned. “We didn’t meet anybody—yes, Doris Gaylord was out on the veranda. She may have seen me. I didn’t think so. Anything she knew, Marietta’d know—that is sure. And by this time Marietta may be up there herself.” She pondered the matter for some minutes, while alternately her face flushed and paled. “Could Marietta—?” She shut her lips with a contemptuous little breath. “Let her!” she scorned. “I won’t follow [12] [13] [14] David Collins’s lead.” T CHAPTER III DAVID MAKES A REQUEST HE next morning Polly was at the door as usual when the letter-carrier came. She could not have told why. Certainly she did not expect a letter. Mechanically she received the bunch of mail, mechanically she threw off the envelopes and papers, one by one, on the hall table. Then she stared. There was the familiar handwriting! The rest of the lot was dropped in an unsorted pile, and upstairs she sped with the letter from David. She locked her door and flew to the window-seat. This time she did not pause to note the lines of the superscription. She tore open the envelope with eager fingers. My darling Polly: I suppose before this you have received that horrible letter that I wrote you when I was grass-green with jealousy. Throw it in the fire right now! Don’t, don’t ever read it again! I was an outrageous cad to write it, anyhow. But when Marietta and Doris came up here with that story, I was just beside myself. I dare say Doris put in plenty of touches of her own. Do write that you are not angry with me! Write the very next mail! It is unbelievable that I could send you such a thing— Just my luck! The mail-boy is here, and not another chance to send to the office to-day! A longer letter to-morrow. Always your own David Polly read it over with a smile. Again, and the smile changed to a sigh. Once more, and sorrow came into her eyes. How like David! Mad with jealousy one day, and wild with penitence the next! Why must it be so? Why couldn’t he trust her? She drew a chair to her desk and made ready to write. Then she took out the letter of yesterday and looked it over; she read again the one just received; finally she dipped her pen in ink. She wrote fast until she had filled a sheet. Pausing to read it through, she crushed it in her hand, tossed it into the waste-basket, and began another. That went the way of the first, and a third was written. This appeared to bring more satisfaction, for she read it a second time. Dear David: Your two letters have made me take a long look ahead, and in view of what I see there I have come to a decision. There is no use in our going on as we have been going for four or five years. I cannot bear it. I must live my life in my own way—I must be free, I must be myself. You would put me in fetters of your own making. Instead of trusting me out in the world, you would keep me away from the world. In fact, you would make me a prim, silent, cold somebody else, whom in time you would cease to love because I should not be worth loving. You do not trust me, no matter what I say. You know that I care for you more than for anybody else. Many times I have told you so; still, reiteration does no good, for you will not believe. I see no way but for us to give up our plans for a future together. Even friends must trust each other, and marriage without confidence means unhappiness for two. Forever your friend Polly May Dudley As Polly expected, David resented the high stand she had taken, and his prompt answer consisted of alternate phrases of reproach and apology. His second letter, however, was milder in tone, gracefully acknowledging his mistakes, and agreeing, if she would give him one more chance, never again to cause her grief by any behavior such as he had been guilty of in the past. After long debates between head and heart, the latter won the fight, and Polly wrote a letter which made David go gayly for a week. [15] [16] [17]