CHAPTER XII.
THE GREAT SILENCE.
The months of April and May were happy ones. The weather was perfect, as only California weather understands the art of being; the hills were at their greenest; the wind almost forgot to blow; the fields blazed in wild-flowers; day after day rose in cloudless splendor, and day after day the Golden Gate shone like a sapphire in the sun.
Polly was inwardly nervous. She had the "awe of prosperity" in her heart, and everything seemed too bright to last.
Both she and Edgar were very busy. But work that one loves is no hardship, especially when one is strong and young and hopeful, and when one has great matters at stake, such as the health and wealth of an invalid mother, or the paying off of disagreeable debts.
Even the limp Mrs. Chadwick shared in the general joy; for Mr. Greenwood was so utterly discouraged with her mismanagement of the house, so determined not to fly to ills he knew not of, and so anxious to bring order out of chaos, that on the spur of the moment one day he married her. On the next day he discharged the cook, hired a better one the third, dunned the delinquent boarder the fourth, and collected from him on the fifth; so the May check (signed Clementine Chadwick Greenwood) was made out for eighty-five dollars.
But in the midst of it all, when everything in the outside world danced with life and vigor, and the little house could hardly hold its sweet content,--without a glimmer of warning, without a moment's fear or dread, without the precious agony of parting, Mrs. Oliver slipped softly, gently, safely, into the Great Silence.
Mercifully it was Edgar, not Polly, who found her in her accustomed place on the cushions, lying with closed eyelids and smiling lips.
It was half past five. . . . Polly must have gone out at four, as usual, and would be back in half an hour. . . . Yung Lee was humming softly in the little kitchen. . . . In five minutes Edgar Noble had suffered, lived, and grown ten years. He was a man. . . . And then came Polly,--and Mrs. Bird with her, thank Heaven!--Polly breathless and glowing, looking up at the bay window for her mother's smile of welcome.
In a few seconds the terrible news was broken, and Polly, overpowered with its awful suddenness, dropped before it as under a physical blow.