EDGAR GOES TO CONFESSION.
"I 'm afraid I make it harder, Polly, and you and your mother must be
frank with me, and turn me out of the Garden of Eden the first moment I
become a nuisance. Will you promise?"
"You are a help to us, Edgar; we told you so the other night. We could
n't have Yung Lee unless you lived with us, and I could n't earn any
money if I had to do all the housework."
"I 'd like to be a help, but I 'm so helpless!"
"We are all poor together just now, and that makes it easier."
"I am worse than poor!" Edgar declared.
"What can be worse than being poor?" asked Polly, with a sigh drawn
from the depths of her boots.
"To be in debt," said Edgar, who had not the slightest intention of
making this remark when he opened his lips.
Now the Olivers had only the merest notion of Edgar's college troubles;
they knew simply what the Nobles had told them, that he was in danger
of falling behind his class. This, they judged, was a contingency no
longer to be feared; as various remarks dropped by the students who
visited the house, and sundry bits of information contributed by Edgar
himself, in sudden bursts of high spirits, convinced them that he was
regaining his old rank, and certainly his old ambition.
"To be in debt," repeated Edgar doggedly, "and to see no possible way
out of it. Polly, I 'm in a peck of trouble! I 've lost money, and I
'm at my wits' end to get straight again!"
"Lost money? How much? Do you mean that you lost your pocket-book?"
"No, no; not in that way."
"You mean that you spent it," said Polly. "You mean you overdrew your
allowance."
"Of course I did. Good gracious, Polly! there are other ways of losing
money than by dropping it in the road. I believe girls don't know
anything more about the world than the geography tells them,--that it's
a round globe like a ball or an orange!"
"Don't be impolite. The less they know about the old world the better
they get on, I dare say. Your colossal fund of worldly knowledge does
n't seem to make you very happy, just now. How could you lose your
money, I ask? You 're nothing but a student, and you are not in any
business, are you?"
"Yes, I am in business, and pretty bad business it is, too."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that I 've been winding myself up into a hard knot, the last
six months, and the more I try to disentangle myself, the worse the
thing gets. My allowance is n't half enough; nobody but a miser could
live on it. I 've been unlucky, too. I bought a dog, and some one
poisoned him before I could sell him; then I lamed a horse from the
livery-stable, and had to pay damages; and so it went. The fellows all
kept lending me money, rather than let me stay out of the little club
suppers, and since I 've shut down on expensive gayeties they've gone
back on me, and all want their money at once; so does the livery-stable
keeper, and the owner of the dog, and a dozen other individuals; in
fact, the debtors' prison yawns before me."
"Upon my word, I 'm ashamed of you!" said Polly, with considerable
heat. "To waste money in that way, when you knew perfectly well you
could n't afford it, was--well, it was downright dishonest, that's what
it was! To hear you talk about dogs, and lame horses, and club
suppers, anybody would suppose you were a sporting man! Pray, what
else do they do in that charming college set of yours?"
"I might have known you would take that tone, but I did n't, somehow.
I told you just because I thought you were the one girl in a thousand
who would understand and advise a fellow when he knows he's made a fool
of himself and acted like a cur! I did n't suppose you would call hard
names, and be so unsympathizing, after all we have gone through
together!"
"I 'm not!--I did n't!--I won't do it again!" said Polly incoherently,
as she took a straight chair, planted her elbows on the table, and
leaned her chin in her two palms. "Now let's talk about it; tell me
everything quickly. How much is it?"
"Nearly two hundred dollars! Don't shudder so provokingly, Polly; that
's a mere bagatelle for a college man, but I know it's a good deal for
me,--a good deal more than I know how to get, at all events."
"Where is the debtors' prison?" asked Polly in an awestruck whisper.
"Oh, there is n't any such thing nowadays! I was only chaffing; but of
course, the men to whom I am in debt can apply to father, and get me in
a regular mess. I 've pawned my watch to stave one of them off. You
see, Polly, I would rather die than do it; nevertheless, I would write
and tell father everything, and ask him for the money, but
circumstances conspire just at this time to make it impossible. You
know he bought that great ranch in Ventura county with Albert Harding
of New York. Harding has died insolvent, and father has to make
certain payments or lose control of a valuable property. It's going to
make him a rich man some time, but for a year or two we shall have to
count every penny. Of course the fruit crop this season has been the
worst in ten years, and of course there has been a frost this winter,
the only severe one within the memory of the oldest inhabitant,--that's
the way it always is,--and there I am! I suppose you despise me,
Polly?"
"Yes, I do!" (hotly)--"No, I don't altogether, and I 'm not good enough
myself to be able to despise people. Besides, you are not a despisable
boy. You were born manly and generous and true-hearted, and these
hateful things that you have been doing are not a part of your nature a
bit; but I 'm ashamed of you for yielding to bad impulses when you have
so many good ones, and--oh dear!--I do that very same thing myself, now
that I stop to think about it. But how could you, _you_, Edgar Noble,
take that evil-eyed, fat-nosed, common Tony Selling for a friend? I
wonder at you!"
"He is n't so bad in some ways. I owe him eighty dollars of that
money, and he says he 'll give me six months to pay it."
"I 'm glad he has some small virtues," Polly replied witheringly.
"Now, what can we do, Edgar? Let us think. What can, what _can_ we
do?" and she leaned forward reflectively, clasping her knee with her
hands and wrinkling her brow with intense thought.
That little "we" fell on Edgar's loneliness of spirit consolingly; for
it adds a new pang to self-distrust when righteous people withdraw from
one in utter disdain, even if they are "only girls" who know little of
a boy's temptations.
"If you can save something each month out of your allowance, Edgar,"
said Polly, finally, with a brighter look, "I can spare fifty or even
seventy-five dollars of our money, and you may pay it back as you can.
We are not likely to need it for several months, and your father and
mother ought not to be troubled with this matter, now that it's over
and done with."
The blood rushed to Edgar's face as he replied stiffly: "I may be
selfish and recklessly extravagant, but I don't borrow money from
girls. If you wanted to add the last touch to my shame, you 've done
it. Don't you suppose I have eyes, Polly Oliver? Don't you suppose I
've hated myself ever since I came under this roof, when I have seen
the way you worked and planned and plotted and saved and denied
yourself? Don't you suppose I 've looked at you twenty times a day,
and said to myself, 'You miserable, selfish puppy, getting yourself and
everybody who cares for you into trouble, just look at that girl and be
ashamed of yourself down to the ground!' And now you offer to lend me
money! Oh, Polly, I wouldn't have believed it of you!"
Polly felt convicted of sin, although she was not very clear as to the
reason. She blushed as she said hastily, "Your mother has been a very
good friend to us, Edgar; why should n't we help you a little, just for
once? Now, let us go in to see mamma and talk it all over together!"
"If you pity me, Polly, don't tell her; I could not bear to have that
saint upon earth worried over my troubles; it was mean enough to add a
feather's weight to yours."
"Well, we won't do it, then," said Polly, with maternal kindness in her
tone. "Do stop pacing up and down like a caged panther. We 'll find
some other way out of the trouble; but boys are such an anxiety! Do
you think, Edgar, that you have reformed?"
"Bless your soul! I 've kept within my allowance for two or three
months. As Susan Nipper says, 'I may be a camel, but I 'm not a
dromedary!' When I found out where I was, I stopped; I had to stop,
and I knew it. I 'm all right now, thanks to--several things. In
fact, I 've acquired a kind of appetite for behaving myself now, and if
the rascally debts were only out of the way, I should be the happiest
fellow in the universe."
"You cannot apply to your father, so there is only one thing to
do,--that is, to earn the money."
"But how, when I 'm in the class-room three fourths of the day?"
"I don't know," said Polly hopelessly. "I can tell you what to do, but
not how to do it; I 'm nothing but a miserable girl."
"I must stay in college, and I must dig and make up for lost time; so
most of my evenings will be occupied."
"You must put all your 'musts' together," said Polly decisively, "and
then build a bridge over them, or tunnel through them, or span them
with an arch. We 'll keep thinking about it, and I'm sure something
will turn up; I 'm not discouraged a bit. You see, Edgar," and Polly's
face flushed with feeling as she drew patterns on the tablecloth with
her tortoise-shell hairpin,--"you see, of course, the good fairies are
not going to leave you in the lurch when you 've turned your back on
the ugly temptations, and are doing your very best. And now that we
've talked it all over, Edgar, I 'm not ashamed of you! Mamma and I
have been so proud of your successes the last month. She believes in
you!"
"Of course," said Edgar dolefully; "because she knows only the best."
"But I know the best and the worst too, and I believe in you! It seems
to me the best is always the truest part of one, after all. No, we are
not going to be naughty any more; we are going to earn that hateful
Tony's money; we are going to take all the class honors, just for fun,
not because we care for such trifles, and we are going home for the
summer holidays in a blaze of glory!"
Edgar rose with a lighter heart in his breast than he had felt there
for many a week. "Good-night, Parson Polly," he said rather formally,
for he was too greatly touched to be able to command his tones; "add
your prayers to your sermons, and perhaps you 'll bring the black sheep
safely into the fold."
The quick tears rushed to Polly's eyes; for Edgar's stiff manner sat
curiously on him, and she feared she had annoyed him by too much
advice. "Oh, Edgar," she said, with a quivering lip, "I did n't mean
to pose or to preach! You know how full of faults I am, and if I were
a boy I should be worser I was only trying to help a little, eves if I
am younger and a girl! Don't--don't think I was setting myself up as
better than you; that's so mean and conceited and small! Edgar dear, I
am so proud to think you told me your troubles; don't turn away from
me, or I shall think you are sorry you trusted me!" and Polly laid a
persuasive, disarming hand on the lad's shoulder.
Suddenly Edgar's heart throbbed with a new feeling. He saw as in a
vision the purity, fidelity, and tender yearning of a true woman's
nature shining through a girl's eyes. In that moment he wished as
never before to be manly and worthy. He seemed all at once to
understand his mother, his sister, all women better, and with a quick
impulsive gesture which he would not have understood a month before, he
bent his head over astonished Polly's hand, kissed it reverently, then
opened the door and went to his room without a word.