"Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,Look upon a little child."
"Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,Look upon a little child."
Poppea rose to her feet, grasping the back of the seat in front of her: the hymn was the first that Gilbert had taught her while she still slept in the hooded cradle. At last God was merciful: the tension broke; tears rained from her strained eyes and began to quench the fire in her brain.
Burying her face in her hood to stifle the blessed sobs, she again crouched in the pew corner.
At the same time, the door opened and Mrs. Latimer came into the church; feeling her way, she steadied herself by the door of the pew where Poppea lay until her eyes focussed to the surroundings. As Latimer reluctantly closed the keyboard with the lingering of one parting from a friend, she called, walking toward him as she spoke: "Stevie dear, what have you been about? It is half-past seven and the popovers that I made for tea have grown quite discouraged. I was expecting you hours ago, but Hugh Oldys came rushing in looking so ghastly that he put everything else out of my head. He was coming home with Poppy Gilbert from skating, they took the short cut across the graveyard—" then, as Mrs. Latimer reached her husband, she leaned over his shoulder and finished the sentence, but the crouching girl knew its import perfectly.
In a moment, husband and wife were hurrying from the church. As Stephen Latimer stooped to bolt the swinging inner door, Poppea heard Mrs. Latimer say, "Elisha Potts and Hugh are hunting everywhere, but if they do not find her by nine o'clock, don't you think we would better ring the church bells to collect the skaters and have a general search?"
"Yes, if it must be; but I wish we could find some less public way of reaching her, she is such a sensitive child, yet very proud beneath the surface. Do you know, Jeanne, she very often reminds me of you yourself. If you had fled before a cruel hurt, would you like to be brought home by the ringing of bells?"
"No, Stevie, all I should neednowwould be time to remember and know that you were waiting for me with your arms outstretched."
Then the doors closed, and Poppea was a prisoner. Yet in those few moments she had been given a glimpse of the perfection of one of the great mysteries of life, and it made a lasting impression on the soul of the girl who was pushed into womanhood in a single night. For the time being she had what she most needed, rest and silence, with the single lamp that had been forgotten, to prevent the oppression of darkness. She was too physically numb to care what happened during the next hour or realize the possible necessity of the ringing of the bells. Fixing herself as comfortably as might be on the narrow seat, she fell into a heavy sleep pillowed by the little carpet stool worn bare by the restless feet of the infant class children.
Meanwhile 'Lisha Potts and Hugh Oldys had gone to all the places where Poppea would have been likely to take refuge, and finally, a little before nine o'clock, meeting with Stephen Latimer at the Feltons', where they snatched a hasty supper, held an impromptu consultation.
"Do you think," sobbed Miss Emmy, "that she could have drowned herself? It's all open water below the dam at Harley's Mills."
"No," almost shouted Latimer, "and do not let us give the ugly thought shape even by suggestion. To a healthy-minded, responsible girl such as Poppea, the idea would not even occur, for suicide is the final proof of irresponsibility. That she may be wandering, dazed, in the bay marshes is my greatest fear; still, before we make a general hue and cry, let us go back to Gilbert's and ask him his exact wishes. Whoever may be her father after the flesh, Gilbert is now according to the law."
"Yes," seconded 'Lisha, "we'd best go back and ask Daddy, and keep a good lookout by the way. She may head for home after a while, but not have push enough to get there."
For the third time during the twelve hours the mood of the weather had changed. The wind had parted and banished the heavier snow clouds, and the moon, edging its way persistently through those that remained, made the lanterns that the three men carried almost unnecessary.
Oliver Gilbert had sorted and distributed the seven o'clock mail, closed the post-office at the earliest legal moment, and was sitting by the kitchen fire; that is, he sat there in the brief intervals when he was not peering from the window toward the road or listening at the different doors where the wind kept up a disconcerting tapping and rattling.
For the third time Satira Pegrim spread supper before her brother, but she had ceased urging him to eat. Mixing his coffee exactly to his taste, she set it close to his elbow and then silently left the room. As she closed the door at the bottom of the attic stairs and began a creaking ascent, Gilbert called after her: "Satiry, will you fetch the pair of little iron fire dogs from under the eaves when you come down? They lie to the north side under where the seed corn is hung."
Noticing the food apparently for the first time, he ate a few morsels, drank the coffee slowly, and then going to the side porch collected a large armful of logwood topped with kindlings which he proceeded to carry upstairs with no little difficulty, and coming in collision with his sister on the landing at the top.
"Sakes alive, man, what are you doing!" she cried, almost dropping the heavy andirons.
"I'm going to take out the chimney board in Poppy's room and start a fire so's it will look real cheerful when she comes home—for—she'll be tired and cold—most like. Mayhap the hearth'll need brushing," he added; "the swallows' nests always fall down of a winter."
The spare bedroom that was now Poppea's had an empty look, in spite of the bright-flowered wall paper and braided rugs. The straight white drapery at the windows, and on the old high-posted bed in which several generations had been ushered into the world, suggested ice and snow to Gilbert rather than a soft fabric.
"Haven't you got a warm-looking comfortable to throw over that?" he said to Mrs. Pegrim, who was standing in the doorway, jerking his thumb over his shoulder toward the bed without looking at it. When, after a few minutes of kneeling on the hearth and coaxing with the bellows, the ruddy glow of the fire had penetrated all the ghostly nooks, Gilbert got up and looked about with a sigh of satisfaction, letting his eyes rest upon the white bed for the first time.
Asking Satira to watch the fire until the sparks from the kindlings had subsided, he lit a lantern and made his way slowly to the little workshop back of the post-office, and seating himself before his desk, drew out the shabby ledger in which was written the record of the years since Poppea's coming. Below the record of the previous day he drew a heavy line. Then writingDecember twenty-eighth, across the entire page, he traced under it, writing painfully and making three strokes to every letter,—"This day has the Lord taken the pen from my hand to put it into hers. In three days comes a New Year. Amen." From a panel beneath the drawer, that flew open when he touched the spring, he drew the miniature and its slender chain, wrapped in a piece of chamois leather.
It was several years since he had looked at it; yes, he was almost sure that the young woman must be of Poppea's blood, if not her mother, for the likeness between the two was now more than mere fancy. Dropping it into his pocket, he returned to Poppea's bedroom, where he fastened the miniature against the frilled pincushion on top of the high chest of drawers, and lighting the candles in the two straight glass holders that had been Miss Emmy's Christmas gift, set one on either side of it, then laid the precious book upon her work-table by the window, and crept back to the kitchen, where Mack was whining uneasily as though he missed some one, and scratching at the door to be let out.
Elisha Potts took the lead as the three men started on their slippery walk from Quality Hill down through the main street of the village. As they reached the Rectory, Mrs. Latimer flitted out to ask for news. When they came abreast of the church, her husband, who had a veiled idea that he had left the lamp burning, glanced up at the chancel window only to be reassured that all was dark within.
Brief as the stop was, Hugh Oldys, who had half turned toward the flagged pathway, saw something fluttering from one of the shrubs; raising his lantern he recognized it as a fraying of Poppea's scarf.
"She has passed this way," he cried, "and since the snow has stopped, for the worsted is quite dry, while the bush is crusted!" but lowering the lantern to the pavement, the footprints there shown were confused and told nothing, as Mrs. Latimer had gone in alone and come out with her husband.
"Have you the keys, Mr. Latimer? We must look here, though of course she may have merely stumbled into the bushes and gone on."
"I have them in my pocket, but I was in the church alone until half-past seven and heard no one."
"Most likely not, if you was a-playin' the organ," said 'Lisha, "for you kin make her beller powerful disconcertin', Parson. Lemme have them keys."
How long Poppea slept, she did not know. When she awoke, the church was in total darkness, the lamp having burned out, and the cold of the floor was creeping up to where she lay. Sitting up, she touched everything in reach, yet could not place herself. Was it one of the mazes of a bad dream?
Then the pungence of the fir trees came to her, and the moon without outlined the long window over the chancel.
Something shook the outer door, and then some one fumbled at the keyhole of the inner. The door was cautiously pushed open, and Poppea heard Hugh Oldys's voice saying, "Go quietly and don't stamp so, Potts; she may be asleep," and then Stephen Latimer's lantern was turned so full upon her face that she raised her arm to shield her dazzled eyes.
Hugh and Elisha drew back into the doorway, and it was Latimer who, sitting beside her, said: "We have come to take you home, Poppea. How long have you been here?" The answer came in a whisper.
"Ever since six o'clock."
"Then you were here while I was playing; it was you who were struggling with yourself. It seemed to me suddenly as I played that some one was in hard conflict, and that I must play to help them in some unseen way. I did not dream that it was you, my child. Now I know from the soul that struggled with me that you are ready to go home."
"Let me give her some supper and go up with her," begged Jeanne Latimer in her husband's ear, as she, alarmed by their long stay in the church, joined them when they were leaving. "Send Hugh home, and ask Potts to let Oliver Gilbert know that she will soon be there. She needs a woman of her own sort to be with her at this moment, not Satira Pegrim."
A pressure of the hand from Latimer told her that she was right, and putting an arm about Poppea, she drew her into the Rectory and ministered to her by the dim firelight, and presently the two were driven to the post-office house by Potts, going together to Poppea's room without meeting any one except old Mack.
For a moment Poppea paused, her hand on the doorknob. The crackling sound of the fire within made her turn it quickly. Mrs. Latimer hastened to undress her, for she was nervously exhausted, and a red spot glowed in the middle of each white cheek.
As Poppea stood before the chest of drawers to braid her straggling hair, her eyes fell on the miniature. Seizing it, she gazed at the face intently, and then, with dilating eyes, turned to Mrs. Latimer.
"Who is it?" she whispered; "how did it come here?"
"You brought it with you about your neck the night you came. We do not know, Daddy and I; we can't be sure, but we think it must have been your mother."
Without speaking, Poppea looked at it once more, put her hand to her face as though struggling intently with memory, pressed the picture to her lips, and then slipped the chain about her neck.
Lying back between the white curtains with the flowery counterpane across her breast, her loosely braided hair wreathing her head, the resemblance to the miniature became almost startling, but Jeanne Latimer put a restraint upon her tongue and all she wished to say. Stooping, she quickly kissed Poppea good-night.
"Shall I never know anything more?" Poppea asked pleadingly; "isn't there anything to tell except that I am not me—that I don't belong to them?"
"Yes, a little more, but the telling of that belongs to Daddy." Then even as Mrs. Latimer spoke, Poppea's expression changed, the mouth hardened, and a rigid expression mantled the delicate features, that remained after the long fringed lashes shut out the changeful fire of her eyes.
Waiting a moment to see if they would open again, Mrs. Latimer tiptoed out.
From forcing her eyes shut, Poppea really dozed, and only awakened as the candles gave their final splutter before going out. Mack lay upon the mat before the fire twitching and whining in his sleep. Starting up, she felt, rather than saw, that there was some one in the room. Peering around the curtain, she came face to face with Oliver Gilbert, who, wrapped in his double gown, was sitting in the deep chintz chair by her bedside.
Instantly a long, thin hand was laid upon hers that struggled under it for a moment but could not pull itself away.
"Some things are real if others are hid from us for a little while, Poppy. You see your home is here, yours to have and hold under love and law, and you see you've still got a Daddy; perhaps if you'dsaythe word just once, we'd both feel better."
The prisoned hand stopped struggling; raising herself on one arm she repeated slowly, "Yes, I've a Daddy." Then she hid her face upon his shoulder, the miniature of the other Poppea dangling from her neck.
When she fell asleep, he did not go away, but sat there, replenishing the fire lest she should wake in some new terror.
Thus Gilbert kept his second vigil until dawn. In putting a last stick upon the embers he stumbled over Mack, who did not move; his faithful old life had gone out peacefully in the night, and with it his mistress's careless girlhood.
It being Saturday and market-day, Satira Pegrim had gone to Bridgeton with 'Lisha Potts to look at furniture, for liberal as to matters of time though Potts was as a wooer, he had told Satira on Christmas Day that when a man reached fifty it was time he did something more about settling down than talk of it. Satira, on the whole, had enjoyed a very pleasant courtship during the years of her reign at the post-office. It is given to few women to attend the county fair for thirteen consecutive years at the expense of the same man without incurring further responsibility.
She was now divided between conscientious motives about leaving her brother until Poppea was able to keep house, and the fear lest 'Lisha become discouraged and transfer his affections to Judith, daughter of the widow Baker. This veteran, having failed to secure a second spouse for herself, was now trying to checkmate in turn every available man in the county for the benefit of her daughter. The Bakers lived almost opposite the Pegrim farm that 'Lisha leased, and well Satira knew that nearness means a good deal, especially in winter, so she had consented to look at furniture, saying demurely at the same time:—
"Of course, if you wish my housekeepin' 'xperience in trading, it'll pleasure me to give it, but if you want a woman that can rush into things helterskelter and unthinkin', why not try Judy Baker?"
"No old maids for me, Satiry," he flung back, slapping his knees to give emphasis to his words. "When I get spliced, it'll hev to be either a young woman or a widder, the last bespoke and preferred."
"Sakes alive! and what's Judy but a young woman? She's only turning twenty-four."
"Age hasn't got a thing to do with it; there's old maids at twenty and women folks turning forty that though unmarried ain't, and is young."
"Oliver Gilbert, he hit them differences plumb on the head once't some years back, when he was havin' considerable trouble in making folks understand that he wasn't calculatin' to take a second. Gilbert he's read lots of unor'nary thoughts in books, and he says, says he: ''Lisha, there's three kinds o' females when it comes to considerin' matrimony: widders that understand us men through 'xperience; just plain nice women folks that know what's necessary about us by intooition, as the Lord meant they should; and old maids that thinks they're dead wise, but all they know's by suspicion. Now don't you take one of those last, 'cause they suspect so much more bad of us than we really are that their idee is darned hard to live up tew!' Well, just at that time what I took to, was not gettin' married, but to the woods, and went in for trapping and lumbering for quite a spell.
"Judy Baker's terrible knowin' by suspicion. When she shakes hands, she'll jerk hern away before a man's really caught his grip, like she mostknewhe was goin' to squeeze it, which he, bein' I, hadn't no such idee. Then she looks mad, 'cause he, bein' I, didn't."
After this complete understanding, Satira Pegrim, who felt that in addition to the trip of inspection 'Lisha deserved some more positive encouragement, told him that if he would begin and mend the fence up at the farm and reshingle the buildings, she would begin to sew her carpet rags and sheets, and that would give them both time to be ready by Poppea's sixteenth birthday—this being the earliest age in Newfield County at which a well-brought-up girl could be expected to keep house, with a neighbor to accommodate in matter of washing and house cleaning.
'Lisha, jubilant over something so definite, not only bought tickets for Christy's Minstrels that chanced to be in Bridgeton that night, but insisted that they two sup at the Railway Hotel as well. Hence Satira's prolonged absence.
Thus it chanced that in two days after the night of Poppea's awakening, the post-office house, put in order from attic to porch, was left in her charge, and in the afternoon she read Gilbert's record written in the old ledger, they two sitting together in the long kitchen where the first scene had been set.
As she read, Gilbert, from the south window, where he sat fitting and adjusting an intricate bit of clockwork, furtively watched the varying color and expression of her face. After slowly reading his simple story, Poppea could not feel for a second that she was an unloved intruder, or fail herself to be filled anew with love for the old man who had opened his door. Her quick intuition and rapidly developing mentality scanned between the lines, learning of many acts of self-sacrifice and devotion that Gilbert believed locked securely in his own thoughts. It was thewhyof it all that rankled: the circumstances, people, or both that had made the charity necessary. When the girl thought of this, a steely flash came from her eyes, and the will that had been latent, except for childish bursts of impetuosity, set its signals at the corners of lips and nostrils, making the watcher sigh.
"Well, perhaps she may need it to stiffen her up by and by, who knows," said Gilbert to himself; "if only the Lord lets her always love something harder than she hates something else."
Dear, patient Oliver Gilbert, in those few words he summed up the struggle that Poppea must fight her way through in the next ten years. Would she be victor or vanquished? As a girl glides unconsciously into womanhood, the mysteries that surround her are like the intangible, yet real, mists of daybreak that may clear away before the purifying rays of the sun, or solidify into angry storm clouds to blot out the entire day.
In addition to these, over Poppea there hung what to her was a darker cloud,—the mystery of the name; and the only rays that could penetrate its shadow must come from the sun of love.
Presently Poppea closed the book, and after resting with her arms clasped about it for a moment, laid it on the table. Going to the window where Gilbert was sitting, she stood behind him, stroking his hair gently and smoothing back one troublesome lock that kept falling over his eyes. Then stooping and laying her cheek upon his, she whispered:—
"Daddy, please say that I need not go away anywhere to school. I can learn a great deal more at the Academy if I try, and besides the Felton Aunties and Mr. Oldys lend me so many books, and they are going to have a French teacher next summer, and Miss Emmy has asked me to read with them. I want to work hard at my music, so that by and by I can play an organ perhaps, or sing in a Bridgeton choir. And I must help you in the post-office. You've said so often lately that people are more careless of their spelling than they used to be, and do not write the addresses well, that I'm quite sure your eyes are getting tired. Please, Daddy? It will make things so much easier."
Gilbert paused a moment in order to control his eagerness to assent.
"I never wanted you to go away, child, but for your own good, and now—it doesn't seem to me that I could bear it. Miss Emmy thinks, though, that you'd be better of a little change, and she's spoken with me about your going down to them next month to spend a fortnight or so, to see the city, hear some good singing, the Opery she calls it, and things like that. Wouldn't you like it, Poppy? Yes, I thought so. Well, you go try your wings outside of Harley's Mills a bit, dearie. Mayhap you'll think you've never tasted life before, but if you get homesick for Daddy and the post-office, and feel peeky for a sight o' the river again and a sniff of the salt harbor wind that blows over Quality Hill, they'll be here, and all you've got to do is just to come right back."
A month later, Poppea was standing between the heavy crimson curtains of one of the Feltons' parlor windows on Madison Avenue, overlooking the Square. The sound of the traffic from the opposite side where Fifth Avenue and Broadway meet and cross was deadened to a sullen roar by the heavy double windows except when the stages passed, and then for a moment the distinct sound of hoof and wheel was distinguishable.
Over in the park many children were playing, rolling hoops to and fro, or wheeling about on roller-skates, having a row of small wheels set lengthwise under the foot that made the sport as much a matter of equipoise as ice skating.
Poppea longed to join them, to rush along and feel the air around her and facing the wind, meet it halfway. For an airing she went to drive every day with the Felton ladies in the new landau which was lined with tufted blue satin, with little mirrors let into the side panels. Sometimes they drove up Fifth Avenue to Central Park, through the east drive to the turn and back again, at a decorous and leisurely pace, Poppea and Mr. Esterbrook sitting opposite the ladies, who were continually bowing and smiling to those in other carriages that they passed. Even as late as 1874 to 1876, all those who kept private equipages were well known to one another, and if a stranger appeared in Mrs. —— barouche, the identity was soon revealed by the sending out of cards for a more or less stately reception to meet the guest. The informal and irresponsible afternoon teas of the last two decades of the century, their chief motive, as voiced by the Autocrat, being to "gabble, gobble, and git," were as yet unconceived. Sometimes a party of young folks on horseback, followed by an instructor, would come in sight, winding among the trees that separate drive from bridlepath, and pass before Poppea, all eagerness, could really see them, for except on very mild days the carriage windows were closed in spite of Miss Emmy's protestation that she never really breathed except in the open air. The windows of Madam Felton's coach had always been closed against the east winds of Boston fifty years before, and Miss Elizabeth felt that to do otherwise would be too much of an exhibition of change. If Miss Emmy chose to sleep with her bedroom window open, that was a different matter; eccentric, of course, but inconspicuous.
One day Mr. Esterbrook had suggested that they two should leave the carriage, walk back to the entrance gate and take a stage or a horse-car home. How Poppea had enjoyed it. There had been enough wind to ripple the water of the reservoir, and the gulls were flying over it, preparing to bed down for the night as they did on Moosatuck. Another time, the ladies always being interested in everything concerning the good of the city, had driven across the park and out the west side of it to see where the building of the Museum of Natural History was to be located, the laying of the corner-stone by President Grant having been set for the following June. Continuing on over poorly paved streets or muddy roadways that ran between partly decayed country houses, or the shanties of squatter settlements, they came within sight of the Hudson, making their way northward through Manhattanville and Bloomingdale to a hill called Claremont, where there was a place of refreshment in an old farm-house.
The sight of the glorious river sweeping down between the high walls of the palisades, with shadowy suggestion of headlands and mountains, made the young girl's breath come quick and short. She could not keep her eyes from the window and she spoke either in monosyllables or kept silent. Could she, might she go out on the bank and see, not through the glass, and feel the wind that was bending the old tulip trees with the rattling seed cups?
Alas, no; it was a place of public entertainment where one, especially a young lady, must be very careful to do nothing unusual. So, though Miss Emmy looked as though she would not only have encouraged Poppea in her desire but gone with her if it had not been so cruelly windy, they turned their backs on the wonderful panorama, while Patrick sought an easier, if less picturesque, way home.
He, in fact, scowled upon the whole trip to such an extent that it was not repeated. The horses, used to half a dozen miles at most, had sweated unduly; the rim of one of the newly painted wheels had sunk between two cobbles and become badly scratched, while Patrick himself had been jolted to such an extent that he had been obliged, in order to keep his seat, to adapt himself to circumstances and do something more than sit on the box and hold the reins, a new condition which raised his ire. It may be said with truth that the tyrannical family coachman of the old régime in New York was the logical and fitting ancestor of the arbitrary chauffeur of to-day. The first, however, having only the "lame horse" plea as his weapon; the other, any one of an endless series of complicated intestinal diseases concealed in the corpulent tonneau.
Thus, after the first week, Poppea's exercise was limited to the correct walk for girls of her age, up or down Fifth Avenue to Washington Square, or with Nora for attendant, dressed in the neat garb of a city maid, down Twenty-third Street and eastward to Gramercy Park, a key to which exclusive enclosure had been given to the Misses Felton by one of their many friends in the surrounding houses. She often looked longingly at the girls of her own age who walked in groups of twos and threes, chatting vivaciously, the maid following far enough away to be out of sight if not out of mind. At home she had never felt lonely. Now, for the first time, she realized that she had no real girl companions of her own age.
This particular afternoon when she stood between the curtains, a hand on each, looking alternately out into the square and then down the length of the three great rooms, divided by marble columns, their size further magnified by the vistas seen in the pier and mantel mirrors, she felt like some wild thing at bay. The ladies had gone in the carriage to Staten Island to visit a distant relative who was ill, taking Nora with them. Mr. Esterbrook had lunched as usual at his club, the Union League, only a few blocks further up the avenue, it having been his considerate custom to leave the house to the ladies and their friends at mid-day ever since luncheon had taken the place of early dinner.
Poppea tried to open first a front and then a back window to get a breath of air, but without success. She was too wise now to refresh herself by sitting on the outer doorstep, since the doing of it, during the first week, had brought a very decided remonstrance from the usually sympathetic Miss Emmy.
For a minute she was minded to get her hat and join the children in the square; then some street musicians with harp and violins struck up before the next house, riveting her attention. The playing was spirited and the time good, though imperfect as to technique. The pent-up energy in Poppea began to surge and sway her body to the music. Stepping from the recessed window before the long mirror, where there was a space clear of furniture, she began to dance, not with set steps or calculated gestures, merely letting the music lead her.
When she finally stopped, head forward, a sort of half-mocking courtesy to the looking-glass, laughing,—her good temper restored,—she was startled to see a reflection besides her own, that of a young man of perhaps eight and twenty, of medium height, clean shaven at a time when this was uncommon, immaculate as to clothes, having an air of being perfectly at ease in unusual surroundings that Poppea noticed even in her confusion.
Caleb had ushered him through the sliding door unthinkingly, for the colored servitor was standing transfixed, one hand raised in warning, saying in the brief time that it took Poppea to prepare for flight:—
"Sho, I didn't know you was here, Miss Poppy; I 'lowed Marsa Esterbrook was corned in."
Then in a confidential whisper to the caller as the girl slipped past him and flew rather than ran up the thickly padded stairs, he added:—
"It's jest Miss Poppy, a young missy from de country that Miss Emmy thinks a mighty heap of. She was lonesome-like I reckon, and just a-dancin' to keep up her spirits. Do set down, Marsa Winslow; the ladies should shuah be back by now and they'll feel powerful bad to have missed you. I well recomember your lady mother back in the old Boston time; she and Miss Emmy was like two twins for standing up for each other.
"Oh, so you'se livin' in New York an' can drop in any time. I'll deliber your message wif honah, sah, to the ladies' pleasure," and Caleb bowed the young man out, laying the silver salver with the bit of pasteboard in a spot upon the hall table where it could not fail to attract attention. The card read, Bradish Winslow, The Loiterers' Club.
"I should like to meet that girl four or five years hence; she's a wonderful bit of live color already," was Winslow's mental comment as he went down the steps, hesitating at the foot whether he should go up or down the avenue, or across the square.
Poppea, having gained her room, where the windows consisted of a single sash, threw one of them wide open, and kneeling on the floor so that her chin rested on the sill, drew in a long, refreshing breath.
For a moment she wondered who the caller might be, and thought of her dancing with regret, but on the return of the Misses Felton they had such a delightful bit of news to impart that she forgot even to ask his name. The following week the opera of Lohengrin was to be sung, Christine Nilsson taking the part of Elsa for the last time in New York.
No such voice, Miss Felton declared, had been heard in America, except possibly that of Nilsson's countrywoman, Jenny Lind. To hear her would be a musical education in itself for Poppea; so not only had a box been secured for the night, but Stephen Latimer and his wife were coming to complete the party, in spite of the fact that there were some who thought the witnessing of all dramatic performances unclerical. That evening Miss Emmy played some fragments of the opera on the grand piano, promising Poppea that Stephen Latimer should explain its construction and motive to her when he came.
For a few days Poppea forgot her desire to run away in thinking of the opera, and trying to pick out bits from the score, but its complication baffled her and she had to content herself with persuading Nora to continue their walk from Gramercy Park down Irving Place to Fourteenth Street that she might look at the outside of the Academy of Music that was her Mecca.
When the strain began again and she was once more longing for freedom and a five-mile walk up the bank of the Moosatuck, alone or with Hugh, the magic day came and with it the Latimers, Mrs. Stephen dimpling under a bewitching spring bonnet entirely of her own manufacture, a cherished possession. This, Miss Emmy told her playfully but firmly, she couldnotwear to the opera, but that Bachmann should dress her hair when she came to do theirs.
"No matter what Stephen may say to-night, I'm going to dress you to suit myself," said Miss Emmy. "This pink brocade with the silver trimmings, your hair loosened into a crown of puffs with the pink feather at the side, and the coral comb. The coral necklace and the white lace shawl for shoulder drapery, if you think low neck a trifle too much for a clergyman's lady, and these white gloves topped with coral bands."
"I will wear the white gloves gladly," said Jeanne Latimer, looking at her two forefingers rather ruefully. One was roughened by the use of the vegetable knife, for the times had been hard and houseworkers scarce at Harley's Mills that winter; while the other was pricked deep from the sewing of harsh muslin for the clothing that some would otherwise have lacked. "But really, Miss Emmy, don't you think it would look more honest if I wore my own gown?"
Miss Emmy laughingly acknowledged that perhaps it might, yet held her point with determination, and eight o'clock saw the party of six gathered in the opera-box, their faces differing almost as much in expression as the details of their clothing.
Jeanne Latimer and Miss Emmy were what might be called very much dressed without having overstepped the bounds of good taste. Miss Emmy wore pale blue satin with much fine lace and pearl ornaments; though pale in the morning, her color always grew somewhat hectic at night and helped justify a combination by far too young for her years.
While Jeanne Latimer enjoyed the novel sensation of wearing her gay attire, Miss Emmy's pleasure came from the conscious result of wearing hers. Miss Felton, who sat behind her sister, wore an almost straight robe of black velvet; the point lace fichu crossed in front and fastened by a heavy diamond brooch, her only ornament, covered all but her slim white throat. Her hair was parted in bandeaux and coiled at the back of her head as usual, the only addition being two waxy white camelias tucked into the mass. During the last two years, however, a decided thread of silver had woven itself among the dark coils. Talking in short sentences to, rather than with, Mr. Esterbrook, who sat next her, she had an anxious air and seemed to be striving to keep him awake, for scarcely had they been seated when an air of intense weariness came over his elaborately dressed person, and he began to nod.
The remaining two of the party thus had the right-hand corner of the box to themselves, Poppea, in her simple white summer muslin relieved by a cherry sash, sitting in a low chair, with Stephen Latimer back of her. From the moment of their entrance, he had busied himself in explaining the great building to her, from the arrangement of the seats, boxes, and orchestra, to the uses of the prompter's egg-shaped box. Music and certain phases of human nature that he felt allied to the Divine were the food for this man's dreams, and to-night he would have both very near.
Presently the orchestra took their places, falling into silence at the tap of the leader's baton and the prelude to the first act began with the high notes of the Grail motif, rising to a climax of trumpets and trombones, then fading away to silence again. With a word here and there to focus the story of the libretto, Latimer called Poppea's attention to the new theme, where the Herald calls for a champion for the accused girl, the Elsa motif is voiced by the wood-wind instruments, and presently Lohengrin appears in the boat drawn by the swan.
To Poppea the scene had the mystery of fairyland, but it was, at the same time, her first glimpse of visible active romance, and through the scenes that followed came her primal realization of the love of man and woman as separate from the friendship of girl and boy.
When Lohengrin sets the one condition for the marriage that Elsa shall never ask him his name and Latimer explained theMystery of the Namemotif, Poppea with hands clasped in the folds of her gown sat with strained eyes and parted lips scarcely breathing. Once heard, this motif never left her ears, whether it was whispered by the wood-wind instruments, the horn, or proclaimed by the whole orchestra, as when in the scene of the bridal chamber the knight calls Elsa passionately by name, but she, not knowing his, may not speak it, and so at last rebels and demands to know.
As Latimer watched Poppea's face, he saw the change that fell upon it. The joy of music, color, and pageant faded from it, until, finally, when the boat, now guided by the Dove of the Grail, bears Lohengrin, its knight, away and Elsa falls fainting, he saw Poppea's lips, from which the color had fled, frame rather than say:—
"She would not marry him because she did not know his name, and when at last she knew it, he had to go away; suppose, oh, suppose—?" Poppea turned her head from him, but Latimer, through the music and the dreaming, read the thought that had taken possession of her.
The Latimers returned to Harley's Mills the next afternoon, and Stephen, at his wife's instigation, asked Miss Emmy if Poppea might not accompany them. "It's very hard for her, Stephen," she said; "she isn't in a natural frame of mind now at best, and all the new things she sees and feels exaggerate it. I know how it is; last night, at first I loved my fine feathers and then they pricked like pins, and I thought, 'Oh! suppose I should have to wear them always and play a part and turn into some one else and never go back to tell you what day of the week it is, Stevie, or play the organ and peel potatoes and make nighties for stiff old Mrs. Ricker, who scolds because it is so much trouble to wear and wash them!' It simply paralyzes me.
"Iknowthat Poppy feels, 'Suppose I should turn out to be somebody else, who was born to live indoors and be shut in by these double windows and never get back to Daddy and the post-office, and never any more hunt for lady's-slippers and arbutus in the Moosatuck woods with Hugh.'
"I never could understand why people's friends always try to get them away from home if there's anything they want them to forget. At home I can always keep a worry in one place and needn't go out of my way to look at it, but when one is away, it may turn up unexpectedly at any corner."
Miss Emmy, however, had replied: "Send Poppea home with you when she's only been here two weeks? Not a bit of it. The house hasn't been so gay in my memory, besides, I'm having Nora and the seamstress turn her out such a lot of pretty clothes. I'm sure, too, I'm giving her as nice a time as any girl could ask."
A few days later the roving mood returned, and would not be restrained. When the ladies had gone to a morning charitable meeting, leaving Poppea practising some little ballads she had found in one of their many music books, she slipped on her going-out things and, closing the front door, made her way quickly across the square to where the omnibus passed that Mr. Esterbrook had taken the day they two had left the carriage in Central Park. Once in the park, she felt sure she could find her way to that high bank overlooking the river, where she could feel the wind from the hills on her face and look at the water that was always coming, always passing, and yet never left one behind.
She had a small netted purse of dimes and nickels that Satira Pegrim had given her on parting, with the admonition, "'Tain't but what they'll feed and lodge you, Poppy, and more too; 'tisn't that, but mebbe you'd fancy an apple or a bit of spruce gum, and not be able to lay hand on it without buying, or need a penny for an organ monkey, for they do say that all the organs that goes through here in summer heads for New York in winter, and consequently monkeys must be plenty. There's 'busses in New York, too, they say, and most like you'd like to make a change from carriage riding."
Thus equipped, Poppea paid her fare and stole into a corner, where she remained until the omnibus reached the end of its route. Her walk up through the park to the northern outlet was easy, but after that, the other mile was broken and irregular; for though there were old country houses here and there, interspersed with newer buildings, the ground was hilly, many shanties perched upon the rocks and huddled together in the open fields.
Once she asked her way of a pleasant-faced woman at the gate of a large, brown building which proved to be an orphan asylum, and her informant told her that the location was called Bloomingdale, that another large building set in ample grounds that they could see to the northward was the asylum, and that if in going back she would walk down the Bloomingdale Road (Broadway) a piece, she would find a stage that would take her back through Manhattanville and Harlem into the heart of the city. Also she cautioned Poppea not to loiter, for the water side was a lonesome spot for girls.
At last the river was in sight. Getting her bearings, she crossed a lot where a friendly cow followed her, trying to lick the rough woollen of her coat, and crawling between some rails, reached the bank that she had remembered, sitting to rest upon a low stump, where had been laid low one of a group of giant tulip trees.
The grandeur of it almost oppressed Poppea for a moment, then it seemed to compact itself and close up until the river became the Moosatuck winding its way from the hill country down to the Mills, and then onward through the marshes to the bay. There were not many boats upon it, but one was hers, built by 'Lisha Potts, and one was Hugh Oldys's, and they two were deciding which boat they should use, and whether both should row or only Hugh, for often they rowed together. Then the second boat disappeared, and Poppea rowed her boat, and in the stern sat Daddy fishing—Daddy, who seldom took a holiday. How young he looked when he caught that fine big bass; what jolly stories he told, and how good Satira Pegrim's basket lunch had tasted. This vision was vivid, and reminded Poppea that she was hungry.
Close in some bushes beside her a song-sparrow warbled his clear spring ditty, and the lump that had been gathering in her throat tightened and would not be swallowed. Scrambling to her feet she took one final look up and down before turning homeward, and, as she did so, her eyes fell upon a small marble shaft surmounted by an urn that stood not a dozen feet from where she had been sitting.
There were several like it in the hill graveyard at home, but this could not be a graveyard with only a single stone. Going near she looked for a name or date, but found only these words,Erected to an Amiable Child.
Who was it? Was this another mystery of a name. Had the child none?
Waving her hand good-by to the great river, she retraced her steps toward the Bloomingdale Road, and at that moment she heard in her ear, with bell-like clearness, the voice of Gilbert, calling to her as he often did when she stayed out late in the bank garden below the orchard: "Come home, Poppy, it's lonesome for you out there by yourself; besides, Daddy needs you!" Yes, Daddy needed her; that must be the answer to everything that troubled her.
The next day it was Poppea who asked if she might go home, and Miss Emmy said yes.
When Poppea was nineteen, she became the assistant postmaster at Harley's Mills, with all the legal formality that the name implied, Mr. Oldys having "gone on her bond" as the local saying ran. Not that Gilbert's mental faculties were in any way impaired, but at seventy he was naturally less alert physically, and the long hours told on him. At least Poppea said so, and urged him to spend more time in the garden during pleasant weather in company with his pipe and one of his well-worn books. These, however, had palled upon him, or, as he once told Stephen Latimer, "It seems as if since Poppy grew up and into things, Mr. Plutarch is rather far back, and I don't any more care if Alcibiades returned or not, or much about the siege of Troy, though that's livelier. I want something with more up-to-date flesh and blood in it that'll help me to understand things that come up."
Latimer had suggested Shakespeare as a remedy, at the same time offering to lend Gilbert an edition that had clear print, and yet could be kept in the pocket. So from the day that Latimer brought the books, Gilbert had been under a new spell, while at the same period Miss Emmy had given Poppea the Waverley Novels, which still further changed his emotional horizon, and made him the more willing to leave the office in the warm June days and go to the bench under the widest spreading tree in the old orchard, with clover all about and the brilliant hues and perfumes of what Poppea called her parapet garden showing between the trees.
Satira Pegrim and 'Lisha Potts had finally joined names and farms, though the bustling woman had left her post of vantage at the village with many regrets. When Mrs. Shandy, Philip Angus's erstwhile nurse, had been obliged to leave him at fifteen altogether in the hands of a tutor, she had gladly, for the sake of being near the boy whom she almost worshipped, slipped into Satira's shoes as general caretaker at the post-office house, for Poppea's earnings, with her voice and as Gilbert's assistant, made such a helper possible.
No one in the village ever thought it strange that Poppea should fill a position hitherto occupied by a man. Once Harley's Mills, in the person of its elderly females, would have raised its hands in horror at the thought of a young girl engaging in public business; but the Civil War had changed all that by becoming the origin of the general necessity in North and South alike for the woman's stepping into the man's empty shoes, so that the labor horizon for all time widened for all women.
From John Angus had come the only objection to the innovation. He said openly on several occasions that the charge of the United States mail should not be left in hands that were only fit to tie ribbons or tell a fortune with cards. This superficial criticism was attributed to his old grudge against Gilbert and his evident disgust at not having the chance to dislodge him that a change of postmasters might have rendered easier. As he took no steps toward doing anything in the matter by the usual method of presenting a petition, it was supposed that he had forgotten it, especially as immediately after, Angus went to Europe to be gone six months, on business, his lawyer announced, the truth being that the inscrutable man, jarred and rent by many disappointments and his own unyielding temperament, had received several warnings that he held life by a rather uncertain thread. Too secretive to confess that he was not well by calling in local physicians, he had gone abroad to seek advice under the plea of business.
The last disappointment that he had forced himself to bear with an immovable exterior was concerning Philip. Never from the day that he knew that his only child had the inexorable disease covered by so short a name, had he allowed any one to sympathize with him upon the subject, nor had he admitted by any word or sign that the boy was suffering from any physical limitation. Philip's life was arranged upon the same plan as that of normal children, and nothing by way of affectionate regard or added companionship was allowed to fill the place of all that he must refrain from doing.
Thus the greatest craving that the child had was for the warmth and protection of affection; he saw the fathers of other boys whom he sometimes visited put their arms about the lads' shoulders, draw them to their knees, or make room for them in the great easy-chair, where confidences about the work and play of the day were exchanged. Not so with Philip; the little real love that made him hunger for more had come from the servants and Mrs. Shandy, when they felt that they were out of eye- and ear-shot of the master.
Even this was stopped when Philip was fifteen by Mrs. Shandy's dismissal because John Angus deemed that she was retarding his son's development and keeping him childish. Henceforward a tutor and various teachers of languages were the boy's associates, for Philip must needs go to college and become, if not a lawyer, a man of affairs and politics like his father.
Now Philip loved learning, but on its æsthetic rather than positive side; beauty of form, color, sound, all appealed to him intensely, and the thought of the beauty shone from his great gray eyes and beautified every feature of his exquisitely modelled face, as though in this Nature had outdone herself.
From the time he was a mere baby he had watched every butterfly and bird and tried to copy them in what Mrs. Shandy called his mud pies; which taste, as he grew, developed itself into a wonderful ability to comprehend both the anatomy of things and their spiritual expression. From time to time, during his winter city life, he had bought small copies of the great statues, for at least he was never at a lack for spending money, and gazed and gazed at them until he knew every curve and line by heart. In short, as boy and youth, Philip's one desire was to be a sculptor; but though John Angus never interfered with his modelling as a recreation, to his appeals to be allowed to enter a studio and study seriously he never made the slightest reply, and the preparations for college were forced on.
One day Philip's brain strength had flagged, suddenly, and, as his father thought, unaccountably. Once again physicians gathered, and this time the word came to John Angus, "If you wish your boy to live, his life must be of the open, and his work, if any, something that he craves and loves."
Then again did John Angus shut himself up for a day and night, to emerge as before and accept the inevitable with a denial of any need of sympathy. In a week he announced that Philip was to study modelling, therefore an outdoor studio was to be built in the garden, and he was to be under the guidance of Clay Howell, a famous sculptor, who not only had studios in Rome and New York, but also a summer home at Westboro. The latest tutor was retained as a companion, and Angus, more ill than he would confess even to himself, set sail at Christmas nominally for a six months' absence.
Philip had as a child a beautiful soprano voice which, by the time he was seventeen, had developed a tenor quality without losing any of its impersonal boyish sweetness. Stephen Latimer had taken great pains in its training, and in his friendship the boy had found the one soul who seemed to understand without spoken words. It was through this companionship that he found that other that seemed to him in his dark hours of self abasement and disappointment, the one light that kept hope alive,—this was Poppea.
As a child he had longed to play with her, and used to watch her by the hour through the port-holes of the parapet, while she was working in the garden that extended from the treasure-trove bank little by little until it finally reached the apple trees. That they might not be playmates Mrs. Shandy made plain to him, though never the reason why. Later on they had met at children's parties at the Feltons' and at the choir practice at St. Luke's, and Poppea had always so sweet and gentle a way with him, that when he used to dream of angels or try to think what his mother must have looked like, Poppea's face was always blended in his visions, for he neverfeltthe stately portrait by Huntington in the library to be his mother.
When at last it was decided that he was not to go to college and life held out an olive branch to Philip, Poppea seemed to be the dove that brought it; Poppea, for whom Stephen Latimer asked Philip to play accompaniments when she went of an afternoon to the Rectory for a singing lesson "between mails," and Jeanne Latimer could not be of the party.
To Latimer, Philip seemed a mere child; it never occurred to him that he might be reckoned with emotionally and sentimentally as a man, and it rejoiced his gentle heart to see the boy so happy.
Any boy is spiritualized and made better by the sympathetic companionship of an older woman if she be of the right mettle, and Latimer believed that this companionship would give Philip the very thing, the conception of the essence of woman's sympathy, that he had lacked all his sad life and that must be realized if he was to grapple successfully with his art. Consequently, he was quite unprepared and almost angry, when after coming into the room one day while they were practising, Jeanne had said:—
"Have a care, Stephen dear, that you do not develop a tragedy in, as you say, cultivating Philip's artistic perceptions. Will it be well, think you, that he falls entirely in love with Poppea?"
Even then Latimer would not understand. "There are many kinds of love that are far removed from tragedy," he answered.
"Yes, but to a sensitive dreamer for a woman like Poppea there is but one love," she had replied almost vehemently.
"You are mistaken, Jeanne, in this. I am with them, and I stand between their thoughts as they pass, and my soul reads them. The safety lies in that Poppea is what she is."
"Time will prove," said Jeanne, half sadly. By the very insistence of certain word combinations this commonplace saying of his wife refused to leave Latimer's memory, and even though it failed in any way to impress him, it left an irritation like the prick of an invisible thorn.
Meanwhile, Poppea and Philip drew nearer together each day.
Howell was finishing a large and important piece of work at his Westboro studio, and for this reason remained there during the summer, and there it was that Philip went every day. The master, to test his creative quality, told him to set about the bit of work he felt he would most like to do, and that he would help him with the technique. Philip's response had been to bring a rough crayon sketch that he had made of Poppea's head and shoulders the last summer when he, looking over the parapet, had seen her pick up a little bird that had fallen from the nest and, after holding it in her hand a moment to still its flutterings, put it back with its brothers. Under the drawing was writtenAmor Consolatrix.
"Who is it?" the sculptor had asked abruptly. "She will make a good model. I will send for her to come up here if she lives in the neighborhood, as I suppose she does."
"Oh! I couldn't ask her; she isn't a model, but I can remember her face as well as if she were here. Is it not perfect?"
"Head is well set on; forehead, eyes, and chin good; nose a bit too much tipped up for classic proportions." Then, as he saw Philip's face flush and quiver, he added "After all, noses are a matter of taste nowadays when we are getting a long way on the road from Greek placidity, that in the female face expressed little but form, toward the expression of temperament. She'll do, my lad, she'll do; if for no other reason than that you think so.
"Who is she, that is neither a model nor askable?" he inquired a half hour later, as he looked over from his work to where Philip was wrestling mentally and physically with the lump of clay of the size for a bust that the attendant had set upon its block.
"Poppea Gilbert; she lives at the post-office in our town, and there is nobody quite like her," Philip answered, his shyness suddenly rent by the man's offhand air of comradeship, as well as in response to his own need of some one to whom he might speak without restraint.
Howell seldom took pupils, and the price that John Angus had offered him for his services would not alone have tempted him, but the boy had interested him from the first. Now, as he stood there watching the eager face, the light in his eyes, the energy with which he was attacking a well-nigh impossible task, he sighed and said to himself: "So long as he believes there is no one likeher, whoever she may be, so long will he be able to work. Her strength will make up for his lack—but if his belief ends—" Here Howell had made an unconscious downward gesture that in its expression of complete destruction knocked the index finger from the outstretched hand of the figure upon which he was impressing the final details.
For Poppea the last year had been rather lonely, so that the post-office work was welcomed as a distraction as much as a necessity. A break had come in the one companionship of her life, for after graduation from college and the law school, Hugh Oldys, to carry out the carefully laid plans of his father, was spending a year in foreign travel before settling in New York, where a niche was waiting for the young man of whose ability and qualities of determination no one who had come in contact with him during his college life had any doubt.
During all this period Hugh had come home at the week ends, so that there had been no absolute break; but when he had finally gone, Poppea felt herself surrounded by a sort of open space wherein the air blew chilly and nothing offered a satisfactory shelter. She did not fully connect cause with effect in all its subtlety, but confessed to herself a loneliness that came simply from the cutting off of her glimpse of the outside world that Hugh had given her. His letters came at regular intervals, but they were largely of things, not people, and least of all himself, so that it was only when she went to see his mother and heard her homely talk that she felt any of the vitality that belonged to the real Hugh.
As for Mrs. Oldys, her eagerness to have Poppea with her was almost pathetic. Locked in her heart, where no one suspected its existence, was the simple mother-vision that so few cherish in its unselfish perfection: in this lay the future of her boy, spent away from her if it was best, and her place supplied by a younger woman to whom the knowledge she had held of his innermost thoughts must be transferred. But in this plan of hers for these many years it had been Poppea who was to be that other woman. Poppea, whom she had watched and brooded over almost as though she had been her own, and to whom now she revealed day by day the devotion with which she had surrounded this only child without in any way letting it hamper his freedom or his manhood.
No word or hint was ever dropped by her, and yet her belief in the outcome was as firmly fixed as if it had been a vital point of religion. Would her faith be shattered? Who could tell or count the pulse beats of a man and a maid, that, being good friends, have temperament and the world before them? Hugh was now trying one with the other. Might it not happen, far away as it seemed, that the change might also lie before Poppea?
It was now May; in August Hugh would return. As for the other traveller from Harley's Mills, John Angus, he was due at almost any moment, and the chill that was settling over his household at the prospect was a tribute to the awe in which he was held that, had he been asked, he doubtless would have preferred to any demonstration of affection.
Philip alone seemed to look forward with pleasure to seeing his father. He was in love with his work; Howell, seeing genius even in his crude efforts, had not only written John Angus, but had told the boy himself all that he dared, knowing that his temperament lay too much on the side of self-abasement to take undue harm from praise. Moreover, Philip had, with his master's help in technique, the expression being all his own, finished the bust of Poppea and had placed it at the window of his garden studio, where the beauty of its modelling was brought out by a background of living green. Surely John Angus must be pleased; must see at last that his son had not so much found his calling as that it had found him.
All about the studio were a score of other attempts of Philip's, very crude, and yet none lacking in a truthful force, and in half of these, what might be called the Poppea motive was visible. This he did not realize, nor would he have thought it strange if he had. Why should he not worship her?
His feeling had been the motive of all art in all ages. So had many a dreaming monk of old in a cloistered garden wrought his thought into a missal's page, his inspiration coming not from his walled-in self, but from the light upon it, shed, it might be, from the ideal of the real Virgin behind her image in the dim-lit shrine.
It chanced that upon the afternoon of John Angus's unheralded return, Poppea and Philip had been bidden to the church to practise a duet which they were to sing on Whitsunday at St. Luke's. This time Stephen Latimer accompanied them on the organ, and the pair standing side by side in the front choir stall facing the empty church, Poppea leaning forward slightly that she might see the music Philip held, with a tender, protective air, made a picture that would have appealed to any painter.
Going to his home to find it empty, Angus felt a quickening of the blood, a desire to see his son for his own sake, perhaps for the first time. Howell's words had pleased him in spite of himself; the crude, early American idea of material progress was now rapidly making way for the realm of literature and art. His life abroad had opened his eyes. To be the father of a famous sculptor had its mitigations, and then too, narrow though he was, he could not but realize the underlying compensation that art deals with the spirit of things and makes as naught any physical defect in its medium. Philip should also travel; he himself would take him.
So on the whole, John Angus was in what might almost be called a genial mood when, on hearing that his son was down at the church with Stephen Latimer, he ordered the carriage (he had walked up from the station) and went to seek him. He also looked in much better physical condition than when he went abroad, and only those who are expert in such matters would have detected the tension at the corners of the nostrils that came from the continual apprehension of the heart condition that had been his for years.
"They are in the church," Jeanne Latimer said, as he greeted her with the polished manner for which he was famous on the doorstep of the Rectory. Then she had fled indoors with the swift sense of foreboding and desire to reach cover that a bird feels when, on a summer day, the wind suddenly changes and the murmur rises of a thunder cloud that as yet but edges the horizon.
Angus, hearing music, opened the door and stepped into the shelter of the very pew that had shielded Poppea that winter night more than six years before. Why he did it he could not have said, but when one is watchful and suspicious by nature, the habit often becomes the dictator. Having turned aside, he waited until the song ended, waited in a condition of mixed rage and pain that amazed him, feelings stirred in him which he believed buried; he seemed in some distant place; he could not account for himself to himself. Even then he did not move at once; the blending of the voices to any other ear had been uplifting. As Philip stepped from the stall to the lower level of the chancel steps and Poppea laid her hand lightly on his shoulder to steady him, John Angus caught the expression of his face, and suspicion, as ever, being his interpreter, he gnashed his teeth.
In another minute he was walking up the aisle masked in the perfect self-control he wore to all outside his household.
"Philip, I have come for you," he said in clearly modulated tones, not realizing that a warmer greeting might be expected after five months of absence.
"Some other day, Mr. Latimer; I've only within an hour returned and wish to see my son," without even a hand clasp, was his reply to the rector's outstretched hand, words of greeting, and invitation to join Mrs. Latimer in a cup of tea in the Rectory.
To Poppea he did not speak; looking toward her, he swept her with a deliberate stare in which dislike and absolute non-recognition were curiously blended. She at first had been impelled to look away, but feeling his glance, she turned and met it proudly, head erect, without either contempt or flinching, and even as she stood thus, John Angus, gathering up the boy's music and the cloak he always wore, hurried him from the church, without time for a word of explanation or good-by.
"Poor Philip," said Poppea, lowering her head, while tears filled the eyes she turned toward Latimer.
"Yes, poor Philip," he echoed; "yet not so poor in any way as John Angus."
Once in the carriage, the man's self-control seemed to dominate him once more. He said nothing about the happenings of the past few minutes, but turned the talk to Philip's work, even before the boy himself had recovered from the suddenness of the meeting with its incomprehensible discordance. The tutor, who had been in Bridgeton, whither he frequently went during Philip's practice afternoons, had returned, and in an agony of apprehension was superintending the arrangements of the tea things on the screened veranda overlooking the garden. He need not have trembled, for John Angus paid no heed to him after a formal greeting, but relaxed unusually in his effort to interest Philip and draw him out, and the boy, warming under his father's rare interest, spoke frankly of his hopes and fears.
"Now will you come to the studio and see it for yourself, father? Of course it's lumpy and out of line in many ways yet, but Howell says that I can do it over and over until it is right, and then, perhaps, you'd have it cut in marble, not because it's good, but because it's the first and I love it so."
Hand in hand father and son crossed the garden, the maids and men-servants peeping from their various windows in amazement until the pair disappeared within the studio door.
"There she is, father. Do you think it is like her?" Philip asked eagerly, pulling the wet cloth from the bust, for every day he saw the need of an added touch here and there.
John Angus had seated himself in a high-backed, carved chair and was gazing at the bust with fierce intensity; whenever he turned his eyes away, it was to see its lineaments in the crude attempts that filled every nook in the long room.
"Like? who is it?" he finally managed to say in well-feigned ignorance.
"Ah, then it can't be, if you do not know, for you saw her singing with me at the church half an hour ago. It is Poppea Gilbert from the post-office house. I suppose it was foolish of me to try to make her as lovely as she really is, though Howell sees the likeness, and yet you did not know."
"Lovely! Know!" John Angus half shouted, jumping to his feet and going toward Philip with an almost threatening gesture. "Doyouknow who this woman is, this adventuress? She was a waif left on Oliver Gilbert's doorstep; he took her in and bred her up, what for no one knows, unless to harry me; he who with his paltry four acres of ground and his damnable Yankee independence has been the only man who has dared to balk me with success. But now his time has come."
"I only wish she had been left onourdoorstep; how different everything might have been," said Philip, who in a moment seemed to have gained bodily height through the sudden development of spirit.
"Yes, so do I!" shrieked John Angus, "and, as you say, everything would have been different, for I should have sent her to the almhouse!
"What do you know of those she came from? Tell me that. What do you know?" continued the man, lashed to frenzy.
"What do I know of you or you of me, either; what we are or may be?" said Philip, in the accents not only of manhood, but of a champion, the words coming from lips that once and for all had ceased to tremble. "But I do know that Poppea is a good woman and that I love her."
With a word that rang in Philip's ears for many a day and night, John Angus turned upon him as if to strike him down, even as long ago he had struck his roseleaf wife the day before she left him. Then as an invisible something stayed his hand, he rushed across the studio, and picking up a chair, brought it down full upon the bust, crashing it outward through the window in many fragments.
For a moment Philip stood with one arm across his eyes as though to shut out what to him seemed murder. Then dropping it to his side, he faced his father, who, his wrath having reached a climax, had sunk back in his chair, clutching his side, while an awful expression of apprehension crossed his face.
"I cannot tell you to leave the room, for it is yours; but I must go," Philip said slowly and clearly, then crossed the studio and closed the door quietly behind him.
For two days no one but the tutor saw John Angus, who remained in his room, to write important letters, the tutor said. Then word went forth that the house would be closed for the summer, as father and son were going yachting for a change of air.