A SURPRISE FOR MRS. CAREW
The matter of repairs and improvements having been properly and
efficiently attended to, Mrs. Carew told herself that she had done her
duty, and that the matter was closed. She would forget it. The boy was
not Jamie--he could not be Jamie. That ignorant, sickly, crippled boy
her dead sister's son? Impossible! She would cast the whole thing from
her thoughts.
It was just here, however, that Mrs. Carew found herself against an
immovable, impassable barrier: the whole thing refused to be cast from
her thoughts. Always before her eyes was the picture of that bare
little room and the wistful-faced boy. Always in her ears was that
heartbreaking "What if it WERE Jamie?" And always, too, there was
Pollyanna; for even though Mrs. Carew might (as she did) silence the
pleadings and questionings of the little girl's tongue, there was no
getting away from the prayers and reproaches of the little girl's
eyes.
Twice again in desperation Mrs. Carew went to see the boy, telling
herself each time that only another visit was needed to convince her
that the boy was not the one she sought. But, even though while there
in the boy's presence, she told herself that she WAS convinced, once
away from it, the old, old questioning returned. At last, in still
greater desperation, she wrote to her sister, and told her the whole
story.
"I had not meant to tell you," she wrote, after she had stated the
bare facts of the case. "I thought it a pity to harrow you up, or to
raise false hopes. I am so sure it is not he--and yet, even as I write
these words, I know I am NOT sure. That is why I want you to come--why
you must come. I must have you see him.
"I wonder--oh, I wonder what you'll say! Of course we haven't seen our
Jamie since he was four years old. He would be twelve now. This boy is
twelve, I should judge. (He doesn't know his age.) He has hair and
eyes not unlike our Jamie's. He is crippled, but that condition came
upon him through a fall, six years ago, and was made worse through
another one four years later. Anything like a complete description of
his father's appearance seems impossible to obtain; but what I have
learned contains nothing conclusive either for or against his being
poor Doris's husband. He was called 'the Professor,' was very queer,
and seemed to own nothing save a few books. This might, or might not
signify. John Kent was certainly always queer, and a good deal of a
Bohemian in his tastes. Whether he cared for books or not I don't
remember. Do you? And of course the title 'Professor' might easily
have been assumed, if he wished, or it might have been merely given
him by others. As for this boy--I don't know, I don't know--but I do
hope YOU will!
"Your distracted sister,
"RUTH."
Della came at once, and she went immediately to see the boy; but she
did not "know." Like her sister, she said she did not think it was
their Jamie, but at the same time there was that chance--it might be
he, after all. Like Pollyanna, however, she had what she thought was a
very satisfactory way out of the dilemma.
"But why don't you take him, dear?" she proposed to her sister. "Why
don't you take him and adopt him? It would be lovely for him--poor
little fellow--and--" But Mrs. Carew shuddered and would not even let
her finish.
"No, no, I can't, I can't!" she moaned. "I want my Jamie, my own
Jamie--or no one." And with a sigh Della gave it up and went back to
her nursing.
If Mrs. Carew thought that this closed the matter, however, she was
again mistaken; for her days were still restless, and her nights were
still either sleepless or filled with dreams of a "may be" or a "might
be" masquerading as an "it is so." She was, moreover, having a
difficult time with Pollyanna.
Pollyanna was puzzled. She was filled with questionings and unrest.
For the first time in her life Pollyanna had come face to face with
real poverty. She knew people who did not have enough to eat, who wore
ragged clothing, and who lived in dark, dirty, and very tiny rooms.
Her first impulse, of course, had been "to help." With Mrs. Carew she
made two visits to Jamie, and greatly did she rejoice at the changed
conditions she found there after "that man Dodge" had "tended to
things." But this, to Pollyanna, was a mere drop in the bucket. There
were yet all those other sick-looking men, unhappy-looking women, and
ragged children out in the street--Jamie's neighbors. Confidently she
looked to Mrs. Carew for help for them, also.
"Indeed!" exclaimed Mrs. Carew, when she learned what was expected of
her, "so you want the whole street to be supplied with fresh paper,
paint, and new stairways, do you? Pray, is there anything else you'd
like?"
"Oh, yes, lots of things," sighed Pollyanna, happily. "You see, there
are so many things they need--all of them! And what fun it will be to
get them! How I wish I was rich so I could help, too; but I'm 'most as
glad to be with you when you get them."
Mrs. Carew quite gasped aloud in her amazement. She lost no
time--though she did lose not a little patience--in explaining that
she had no intention of doing anything further in "Murphy's Alley,"
and that there was no reason why she should. No one would expect her
to. She had canceled all possible obligations, and had even been
really very generous, any one would say, in what she had done for the
tenement where lived Jamie and the Murphys. (That she owned the
tenement building she did not think it necessary to state.) At some
length she explained to Pollyanna that there were charitable
institutions, both numerous and efficient, whose business it was to
aid all the worthy poor, and that to these institutions she gave
frequently and liberally.
Even then, however, Pollyanna was not convinced.
"But I don't see," she argued, "why it's any better, or even so nice,
for a whole lot of folks to club together and do what everybody would
like to do for themselves. I'm sure I'd much rather give Jamie a--a
nice book, now, than to have some old Society do it; and I KNOW he'd
like better to have me do it, too."
"Very likely," returned Mrs. Carew, with some weariness and a little
exasperation. "But it is just possible that it would not be so well
for Jamie as--as if that book were given by a body of people who knew
what sort of one to select."
This led her to say much, also (none of which Pollyanna in the least
understood), about "pauperizing the poor," the "evils of
indiscriminate giving," and the "pernicious effect of unorganized
charity."
"Besides," she added, in answer to the still perplexed expression on
Pollyanna's worried little face, "very likely if I offered help to
these people they would not take it. You remember Mrs. Murphy
declined, at the first, to let me send food and clothing--though they
accepted it readily enough from their neighbors on the first floor, it
seems."
"Yes, I know," sighed Pollyanna, turning away. "There's something
there somehow that I don't understand. But it doesn't seem right that
WE should have such a lot of nice things, and that THEY shouldn't have
anything, hardly."
As the days passed, this feeling on the part of Pollyanna increased
rather than diminished; and the questions she asked and the comments
she made were anything but a relief to the state of mind in which Mrs.
Carew herself was. Even the test of the glad game, in this case,
Pollyanna was finding to be very near a failure; for, as she expressed
it:
"I don't see how you can find anything about this poor-people business
to be glad for. Of course we can be glad for ourselves that we aren't
poor like them; but whenever I'm thinking how glad I am for that, I
get so sorry for them that I CAN'T be glad any longer. Of course we
COULD be glad there were poor folks, because we could help them. But
if we DON'T help them, where's the glad part of that coming in?" And
to this Pollyanna could find no one who could give her a satisfactory
answer.
Especially she asked this question of Mrs. Carew; and Mrs. Carew,
still haunted by the visions of the Jamie that was, and the Jamie that
might be, grew only more restless, more wretched, and more utterly
despairing. Nor was she helped any by the approach of Christmas.
Nowhere was there glow of holly or flash of tinsel that did not carry
its pang to her; for always to Mrs. Carew it but symbolized a child's
empty stocking--a stocking that might be--Jamie's.
Finally, a week before Christmas, she fought what she thought was the
last battle with herself. Resolutely, but with no real joy in her
face, she gave terse orders to Mary, and summoned Pollyanna.
"Pollyanna," she began, almost harshly, "I have decided to--to take
Jamie. The car will be here at once. I'm going after him now, and
bring him home. You may come with me if you like."
A great light transfigured Pollyanna's face.
"Oh, oh, oh, how glad I am!" she breathed. "Why, I'm so glad I--I want
to cry! Mrs. Carew, why is it, when you're the very gladdest of
anything, you always want to cry?"
"I don't know, I'm sure, Pollyanna," rejoined Mrs. Carew,
abstractedly. On Mrs. Carew's face there was still no look of joy.
Once in the Murphys' little one-room tenement, it did not take Mrs.
Carew long to tell her errand. In a few short sentences she told the
story of the lost Jamie, and of her first hopes that this Jamie might
be he. She made no secret of her doubts that he was the one; at the
same time, she said she had decided to take him home with her and give
him every possible advantage. Then, a little wearily, she told what
were the plans she had made for him.
At the foot of the bed Mrs. Murphy listened, crying softly. Across the
room Jerry Murphy, his eyes dilating, emitted an occasional low "Gee!
Can ye beat that, now?" As to Jamie--Jamie, on the bed, had listened
at first with the air of one to whom suddenly a door has opened into a
longed-for paradise; but gradually, as Mrs. Carew talked, a new look
came to his eyes. Very slowly he closed them, and turned away his
face.
When Mrs. Carew ceased speaking there was a long silence before Jamie
turned his head and answered. They saw then that his face was very
white, and that his eyes were full of tears.
"Thank you, Mrs. Carew, but--I can't go," he said simply.
"You can't--what?" cried Mrs. Carew, as if she doubted the evidence of
her own ears.
"Jamie!" gasped Pollyanna.
"Oh, come, kid, what's eatin' ye?" scowled Jerry, hurriedly coming
forward. "Don't ye know a good thing when ye see it?"
"Yes; but I can't--go," said the crippled boy, again.
"But, Jamie, Jamie, think, THINK what it would mean to you!" quavered
Mrs. Murphy, at the foot of the bed.
"I am a-thinkin'," choked Jamie. "Don't you suppose I know what I'm
doin'--what I'm givin' up?" Then to Mrs. Carew he turned tear-wet
eyes. "I can't," he faltered. "I can't let you do all that for me. If
you--CARED it would be different. But you don't care--not really. You
don't WANT me--not ME. You want the real Jamie, and I ain't the real
Jamie. You don't think I am. I can see it in your face."
"I know. But--but--" began Mrs. Carew, helplessly.
"And it isn't as if--as if I was like other boys, and could walk,
either," interrupted the cripple, feverishly. "You'd get tired of me
in no time. And I'd see it comin'. I couldn't stand it--to be a burden
like that. Of course, if you CARED--like mumsey here--" He threw out
his hand, choked back a sob, then turned his head away again. "I'm not
the Jamie you want. I--can't--go," he said. With the words his thin,
boyish hand fell clenched till the knuckles showed white against the
tattered old shawl that covered the bed.
There was a moment's breathless hush, then, very quietly, Mrs. Carew
got to her feet. Her face was colorless; but there was that in it that
silenced the sob that rose to Pollyanna's lips.
"Come, Pollyanna," was all she said.
"Well, if you ain't the fool limit!" babbled Jerry Murphy to the boy
on the bed, as the door closed a moment later.
But the boy on the bed was crying very much as if the closing door had
been the one that had led to paradise--and that had closed now
forever.