Элинор Портер - Pollyanna Crows up / Поллианна вырастает. Книга для чтения на английском языке

“I didn’t say so.”

“No; but you look it. I don’t see why I can’t. It isn’t like singing. You don’t have to have a voice for it. And it isn’t like an instrument that you have to learn how to play.”

“I think it is – a little – like that.” Jamie’s voice was low. His eyes were turned away.

“How? What do you mean? Why, Jamie, just a pencil and paper, so – that isn’t like learning to play the piano or violin!”

There was a moment’s silence. Then came the answer, still in that low, diffident voice; still with the eyes turned away.

“The instrument that you play on, Pollyanna, will be the great heart of the world; and to me that seems the most wonderful instrument of all – to learn. Under your touch, if you are skilful, it will respond with smiles or tears, as you will.”

Pollyanna drew a tremulous sigh. Her eyes grew wet.

“Oh, Jamie, how beautifully you do put things [119] how beautifully you do put things – ( разг. ) как замечательно ты говоришь (хорошо объясняешь) – always! I never thought of it that way. But it’s so, isn’t it? How I would love to do it! Maybe I couldn’t do – all that. But I’ve read stories in the magazines, lots of them. Seems as if I could write some like those, anyway. I LOVE to tell stories. I’m always repeating those you tell, and I always laugh and cry, too, just as I do when YOU tell them.”

Jamie turned quickly.

“DO they make you laugh and cry, Pollyanna – really?” There was a curious eagerness in his voice.

“Of course they do, and you know it, Jamie. And they used to long ago, too, in the Public Garden. Nobody can tell stories like you, Jamie. YOU ought to be the one writing stories; not I. And, say, Jamie, why don’t you? You could do it lovely, I know!”

There was no answer. Jamie, apparently, did not hear; perhaps because he called, at that instant, to a chipmunk that was scurrying through the bushes near-by.

It was not always with Jamie, nor yet with Mrs. Carew and Sadie Dean that Pollyanna had delightful walks and talks, however; very often it was with Jimmy, or John Pendleton.

Pollyanna was sure now that she had never before known John Pendleton. The old taciturn moroseness seemed entirely gone since they came to camp. He rowed and swam and fished and tramped with fully as much enthusiasm as did Jimmy himself, and with almost as much vigor. Around the camp-fire at night he quite rivaled Jamie with his story-telling of adventures, both laughable and thrilling, that had befallen him in his foreign travels.

“In the ‘Desert of Sarah,’ Nancy used to call it,” laughed Pollyanna one night, as she joined the rest in begging for a story.

Better than all this, however, in Pollyanna’s opinion, were the times when John Pendleton, with her alone, talked of her mother as he used to know her and love her, in the days long gone. That he did so talk with her was a joy to Pollyanna, but a great surprise, too; for, never in the past, had John Pendleton talked so freely of the girl whom he had so loved – hopelessly. Perhaps John Pendleton himself felt some of the surprise, for once he said to Pollyanna, musingly:

“I wonder why I’m talking to you like this.”

“Oh, but I love to have you,” breathed Pollyanna.

“Yes, I know – but I wouldn’t think I would do it. It must be, though, that it’s because you are so like her, as I knew her. You are very like your mother, my dear.”

“Why, I thought my mother was BEAUTIFUL!” cried Pollyanna, in unconcealed amazement.

John Pendleton smiled quizzically.

“She was, my dear.”

Pollyanna looked still more amazed.

“Then I don’t see how I CAN be like her!”

The man laughed outright.

“Pollyanna, if some girls had said that, I – well, never mind what I’d say. You little witch! – you poor, homely little Pollyanna!”

Pollyanna flashed a genuinely distressed reproof straight into the man’s merry eyes.

“Please, Mr. Pendleton, don’t look like that, and don’t tease me – about THAT. I’d so LOVE to be beautiful – though of course it sounds silly to say it. And I HAVE a mirror, you know.”

“Then I advise you to look in it – when you’re talking sometime,” observed the man sententiously.

Pollyanna’s eyes flew wide open.

“Why, that’s just what Jimmy said,” she cried.

“Did he, indeed [120] Did he, indeed – ( зд. ) Неужели он так и сказал – the young rascal!” retorted John Pendleton, dryly. Then, with one of the curiously abrupt changes of manner peculiar to him, he said, very low: “You have your mother’s eyes and smile, Pollyanna; and to me you are – beautiful.”

And Pollyanna, her eyes blinded with sudden hot tears, was silenced.

Dear as were these talks, however, they still were not quite like the talks with Jimmy, to Pollyanna. For that matter, she and Jimmy did not need to TALK to be happy. Jimmy was always so comfortable, and comforting; whether they talked or not did not matter. Jimmy always understood. There was no pulling on her heart-strings for sympathy, with Jimmy – Jimmy was delightfully big, and strong, and happy. Jimmy was not sorrowing for a long-lost nephew, nor pining for the loss of a boyhood sweetheart. Jimmy did not have to swing himself painfully about on a pair of crutches – all of which was so hard to see, and know, and think of. With Jimmy one could be just glad, and happy, and free. Jimmy was such a dear! He always rested one so – did Jimmy!

It was on the last day at camp that it happened. To Pollyanna it seemed such a pity that it should have happened at all, for it was the first cloud to bring a shadow of regret and unhappiness to her heart during the whole trip, and she found herself futilely sighing:

“I wish we’d gone home day before yesterday; then it wouldn’t have happened.”

But they had not gone home “day before yesterday,” and it had happened; and this was the manner of it.

Early in the morning of that last day they had all started on a two-mile tramp to “the Basin.”

“We’ll have one more bang-up fish dinner before we go,” Jimmy had said. And the rest had joyfully agreed.

With luncheon and fishing tackle, therefore, they had made an early start. Laughing and calling gaily to each other they followed the narrow path through the woods, led by Jimmy, who best knew the way.

At first, close behind Jimmy had walked Pollyanna; but gradually she had fallen back with Jamie, who was last in the line: Pollyanna had thought she detected on Jamie’s face the expression which she had come to know was there only when he was attempting something that taxed almost to the breaking-point his skill and powers of endurance. She knew that nothing would so offend him as to have her openly notice this state of affairs. At the same time, she also knew that from her, more willingly than from any one else, would he accept an occasional steadying hand over a troublesome log or stone. Therefore, at the first opportunity to make the change without apparent design, she had dropped back step by step until she had reached her goal, Jamie. She had been rewarded instantly in the way Jamie’s face brightened, and in the easy assurance with which he met and conquered a fallen tree-trunk across their path, under the pleasant fiction (carefully fostered by Pollyanna) of “helping her across.”

Once out of the woods, their way led along an old stone wall for a time, with wide reaches of sunny, sloping pastures on each side, and a more distant picturesque farmhouse. It was in the adjoining pasture that Pollyanna saw the goldenrod which she immediately coveted.