Philip and his father went away in early June. There were, of course, many rumors about their plans, one being to the effect that the house on Windy Hill might not be reopened for several years, in spite of the fact that greenhouses and gardens were to be maintained as usual. One thing alone was certain, that they were to spend the summer either on board the yacht of a Mr. Challoner, John Angus's close business associate, or at his house at one of the resorts on the Maine coast.
Poppea had seen very little of Philip since his father's return, for his singing lessons had become more and more irregular, until they finally ceased. Stephen Latimer, when he frankly asked John Angus the reason, was met by the vague excuse that he had been so long away that he wished his son's society; there was much to be arranged. Also Philip was tiring of singing.
On the day before he was to leave, Poppea met Philip at the Feltons', whither he had gone to say good-by. When she entered, he was in the great, cool library, and the blinds being drawn to keep out the afternoon sun, all the light in the room seemed focussed on his face where he sat by the book-strewn table, his head resting on one hand. He was so intensely quiet and so pale Poppea's heart went out to him more than ever; that he was suffering pain not merely physical she was sure, and equally so that she must not ask its cause.
Nora came into the room at that minute to say, "Miss Felton and Mr. Esterbrook had gone to Bridgeton and would Miss Gilbert come upstairs? Miss Emmy was suffering from a bad headache, and so Mr. Philip must excuse her."
"Then I must tell you good-by and go home," Philip said to Poppea; "Harvey is waiting for me with the chair, for somehow I'm rather tired this week. Please come into the light and turn your face as I saw you in the garden from the parapet the day, long ago, when you picked up the little bird. There, that is it. I want to remember every line to take with me, for I shall be so lonely."
"And I too, Philip. Look up at me and remember, that whatever is worrying you worries me also, and let me halve it with you," and Poppea, stooping, lifted his face and kissed him gently on the forehead.
The young man bent his head as if in reverence for an instant, then raising it again to look Poppea in the eyes whispered, so far away his voice sounded, "I shall not be lonely any more, for it seems as though you must have called my mother's angel and she kissed me." And yet John Angus could not understand, and would not had he been there.
The summer residents of Quality Hill had returned in full force, increasing the work at the post-office so much that Poppea had but little time to herself. Yet she was satisfied so long as everything ran smoothly and no possible criticism could fall upon the postmaster; for it was not only the income and certain fixed position that mattered so much to Oliver Gilbert, but in and about the associations of his appointment were woven the very elements of his patriotism and the verbal contact with Lincoln that became more precious as time went on. Of course Gilbert knew that the day would come when he must resign what he called his trust, but that was not yet. In some respects he felt his seventy years less than he had the weight of a lonely fifty. That his conducting of the business might be unsatisfactory or the post-office might be taken away from him had never troubled his thoughts even remotely.
It was therefore a great surprise to both postmaster and mistress, when one day, about the middle of June, a duly accredited government inspector appeared one morning, and after going over the accounts and putting many abrupt and, to those in charge, meaningless questions, took a seat by the sorting shelf, opened a newspaper, and seemed prepared to spend the day. The visit being all the more strange from the fact that the usual but rather perfunctory official visit had been paid less than two months before.
When noontime came and the official made no move to leave, Gilbert, knowing that there was no suitable place of refreshment in town, with old-time hospitality asked the stranger to join them at their mid-day meal. The invitation was accepted, and the moment that the official left his post behind the beehive, his entire manner changed; he talked and laughed with Gilbert in a way that dismissed a growing apprehension, complimented Satira Potts, who was substituting for the day, upon her cooking, and kept his eyes fastened upon Poppea in a way that made her color hotly and then turn rigid with resentment, saying that he had heard Harley's Mills was a very quaint town, and that there was a pretty walk by the river toward the hills. Wouldn't she be his guide that afternoon?
Poppea, feeling that she must hold herself in check at any cost, replied that she could not leave the office, but that Oliver Gilbert would doubtless drive him about town with horse and chaise; then turning to the old man, she urged him to go, as he had been out so little of late.
Poor Gilbert, entirely oblivious of the undercurrent, protested that he could do all the office work required before night, saying in good-hearted indiscretion, "Go you out, Poppy; the young gentleman will enjoy the trip much better than with a half-deaf old codger like me."
For a moment Poppea struggled for words less abrupt than "I will not go," with which to extricate herself from the net. Then Satira Potts (who was Pegrim, and having once taught Poppea what she called her manners never forgot it), grasping the situation, rose so suddenly from the table that she scattered the crumbs that she had in her apron, and said, "Poppy couldn't go with you noway, nohow, Mister—I don't think you've mentioned your name. Our Newfield County girls don't take up with strangers, and besides, even if they did, Miss Gilbert, holding what might be called a public place, has got to draw the line even shorter!"
Gilbert, who had raised his hand deprecatingly toward his, as he considered, too officious sister, stopped short as he caught sight of Poppea's face, while into the other man's eyes there flashed a glare of rage which was far less offensive than the expression it replaced. Getting up slowly with an affected yawn of boredom, he bit the end from a cigar, lit it without asking leave, nodded curtly to the postmaster and, picking up his bag of papers and hat, which he put on before reaching the door, went on his way.
"Shoo! Scat!" said Satira Potts, who, following him closely, drove away a stray cat from the porch and scattered the remaining crumbs in her apron on the flagging for the birds.
For a minute Gilbert and Poppea sat looking at one another, then he said: "I wonder why that smart Aleck dropped in here just now and hung around so? Most likely missed connections in Bridgeton for somewhere else and thought he'd pass the time and get a dinner. He wasn't mannered like the regular inspector that's been here for three years past. It's too bad he riled you so, Poppy; it's likely he thought he was being polite and pleasuring of you."
It was well for his feeling of content that Gilbert did not look back, for when Satira Potts returned to the kitchen, Poppea, who had left the table for the window and was looking with eyes that did not see up through the orchard to the back garden, wheeled suddenly, and, throwing her arms about Satira's neck, began to sob with the broken-hearted abandon of a child.
"There, there, dearie, that skate has gone flying, so don't you care. I sensed right off the way he was squinting at you, and if only you hadn't been born a lady baby, and so mustn't, I could have wished you'd slapped his face."
All that afternoon and for many days, whenever Poppea paused in her work in the office or in the bank garden, where the flowers seeded from the garden above ran riot and needed much restraining, the thought, "I wonder, oh, I wonder, who sent that man here?" came to her.
One day, as the insistence of the query was beginning to pass, Miss Emmy sent for Poppea to come up to luncheon and hear the plans for the afternoon and evening entertainment that the Felton ladies were in the habit of giving each year, either at rose time or at midsummer. This year, the season being late and also the roses, the twenty-first of June, the summer equinox, was chosen; for, as time went on, the ladies felt less like entertaining and keeping open house in the humid July weather, though they did not yet acknowledge it even to one another. But at sixty and sixty-two, why should not even those to whom that form of tyranny known as duty to society is a law relax, and prepare to spend the afternoon of life a little more naturally?
As for Mr. Esterbrook, at threescore and ten, relaxation of any kind would be impossible. For the last dozen years, having practically ceased to take manly exercise, he was propped by his rigid surroundings, courteous formalities of the old school, and clothes to such a degree, that had he sought to escape from them, collapse would have resulted, and it would have been as impossible to collect him as water that suddenly rebelled against the confines of its pail.
The ladies themselves could hardly have told when the thinning iron-gray hair had been first subtly concealed, and then replaced by a wig of its own exact shade; nor did they know that he had abandoned billiards at the club in favor of whist or piquet, because following the course of the red or white balls over the vivid green cloth with eyes slow to focus had twice given him a fit of vertigo. As for riding, Oliver Gilbert, hip-crippled as he was, could still throw himself across the old white horse and follow the cow to its hill pasture, while the very thought of riding made William Esterbrook dizzy; so wide apart is the life natural from the life artificial.
The afternoon reception, Poppea found, was to be general, the Bridgeton band supplying outdoor music; the evening function, an affair in costume combined of music, dancing, and a half-dozen tableaux of the seasons. To the latter the residents of the hill and their guests, together with the Feltons' more intimate neighborhood acquaintances, were bidden.
Before leaving home, Poppea had resolved to decline Miss Emmy's invitation to the evening party. Hugh being away and also Jeanne Latimer, she was not in the mood for going among strangers, as they would largely be. Then, too, a sense of depression had hung over her of late, as she realized for the first time that the comparative luxury and special privileges that her contact with the Feltons had surrounded her, were not only not hers by right, but that at any time she must become, at least in part, the financial protector of the man who had for twenty years protected her.
Virtually she was living under false pretences when she went to the Feltons and mingled with their guests. As a child it had been different; now it must stop, and the sooner the better. She did not find it easy to carry out her resolutions at once when she found that Miss Emmy took it for granted that she would sing half a dozen of the songs that Stephen Latimer said few others could sing so well, either from point of phrasing or simple pathos. Besides, Miss Emmy argued, New York friends would be there who might help her to turn her music to account, and as for the costume, anything dainty and summerish would do. There was a chest full of old muslins and flowered organdies in the attic from which Poppea could surely select something, and Nora should help her fashion it if she herself lacked time.
Under such circumstances how could Poppea refuse those who had made music possible, as well as given all her education, even to the final lessons in French pronunciation that made the Creole songs fall from her lips in such perfection. So saying to herself, "only this once," she had gone to the attic chest in question, and selected from it a soft green muslin with embroidered fern fronds scattered over it, a relic of the days when skirts were six yards full and further amplified by three flounces; then declining Nora's help, she took it home to brood over.
As she went slowly down the stairs, the muslin gathered into a hasty bundle, Miss Emmy called to her from her morning room where she was sealing some invitations, the social secretary not, as yet, having become an institution. As she waited for the notes, Poppea, glancing idly about the room, caught sight of a colored print of Gainsborough's Mrs. Robinson as Perdita, in her pretty furbelows. This gave her an idea that once at home she quickly put into form with scissors, thread, and needle.
To the muslin bodice, made a trifle low, frills falling from the half sleeves, she added an open-fronted over-skirt, which, being caught back below the waist, gave somewhat the appearance of the print. Then, other matters calling her, she put the dress away until the day came for the party. By this time she had forgotten how Perdita had arranged her hair, and she had also discovered that the even green of the muslin looked monotonous by lamplight. Ah me, what could she do? Mrs. Shandy, being appealed to, with true bucolic British taste could suggest nothing but "red ribbons, and plenty of them, to liven of yourself up, Miss."
Walking about the room at a loss how to proceed, Poppea picked up the miniature of her "little mother" as she called her to herself, that other Poppea with the wreath of fragile summer poppies in her hair. It had become almost a habit, this looking at the picture in moments of perplexity either serious or trivial, as though the laughing eyes and parted lips could in some way respond. In this instance, the reply, though indirect, was instantaneous.
"The poppies twisted in the hair and bunched at the neck; could anything be better!" cried Poppea, "and the garden is full of the fall sown ones, open and in bud. Frail as they are, if I pick buds this morning and put them in water in the bright sun, they will be open by afternoon and keep open if I do not let them see the dark. The leaves are the color of the muslin, only of a lighter shade. Thank you, little mother!"
As Poppea dressed that evening, taking the flowers that she had transferred from sun to lamplight to put in her hair when she arrived, she again turned to the miniature, talking to it as if it were a person.
"You've stayed here by yourself too long," she said; "to-night you shall go out and whisper to the people who will hear me sing and ask them to be kind." Slipping the chain over her head, she let the locket hang half veiled among the folds of drapery that crossed her bosom.
There was no one but Nora in the dressing-room at the Feltons' when Poppea looked shyly in, and, seizing the chance, dropped music and light shawl upon a chair to arrange the flowers. They adjusted themselves easily to her coiled hair. In a half wreath with a great bunch at the waist, so intangible did they seem in their cloud colors of rose, pink, salmon, and flame fading back to white, that it was impossible to believe that they would not flutter away from their perch like butterflies.
"Look at that now! there isn't a dress here to-night'll touch yours, dearie," said Nora, hands raised in honest admiration. "But I mistrust them posies not to last long, gi'n you dance too hard."
"That's precisely it, Nora," said Poppea, a mischievous smile banishing the little pathetic droop that her lips sometimes wore, and the opal colors flashing from the black-lashed eyes. "I must not dance, but sing my songs and disappear, else my finery will drop away as Cinderella's did when the clock struck."
Downstairs among the maze of faces, she saw that of Stephen Latimer, and motioning to him that she was there when needed, Poppea glanced wistfully across the room, slipped through one of the long windows, then drew into the shadows where she could see and not be seen, except as the light fell now and then upon her eager face as she leaned forward to watch the tableaux, dreading the time when she must step before so fashionable and critical an audience.
Evidently, she had not been as wholly unobserved as she thought, for Miss Emmy, who had reached the veranda through another window in company with a youngish man, came toward her, saying:—
"Ah, here she is, Bradish, keeping quiet until her own time comes. Julia dear" (Miss Emmy often used this name in formal society), "this is Mr. Winslow, the son of my dearest Boston friend, who wishes to meet you. It is the first time that we have been able to lure him into the country, and we wish him to like it. Where is your shawl, child? It is quite breezy here, and you mustn't risk your voice. Upstairs? No, don't go; I will tell Nora to fetch it," and as Miss Emmy flitted away, her shimmering silver costume, with a crescent and gold stars in her fluffy light hair still guiltless of gray, caught and held the combined lights of moon and lamp, helping to perfect the part of "Evening" for which she was costumed.
For a moment after she had recognized Mr. Winslow's bow, Poppea continued looking into the room. She wished that Miss Emmy had not introduced her to this stranger; she did not care to talk, but to remain quiet and alone. Then making an effort, she turned toward him to put the orthodox query as to what character he represented, when before the sentence was half framed, she realized that he wore conventional evening dress, and her air of embarrassment turned to a smile when she saw the half quizzical, half satirical expression of his cleanly shaven face.
"Confess that you not only did not look at me, but that you are rather vexed at either being obliged to do so now or be rude," he said, placing a chair with a dexterous turn of the wrist in the exact spot where she could continue to look at the tableaux and yet be seated.
"I'm afraid that you are right, and yet I will not allow that I was even almost rude to one of the Aunties' friends. It is this way; I am to sing to-night before all these men and women from the city who know what music means; I have only sung before here in the church for Mr. Latimer or at some little musicals at Bridgeton. If I had to go into the room now and be shut in among them all, I should simply run away. So I came out here to find myself, and when Miss Emmy spoke your name, I was so far away that I do not think I heard it. Pray forgive me." Something about the direct simplicity of her excuse touched a new chord in Winslow's perfectly controlled nature. This was not the simpering, self-satisfied young woman of the small towns who usually, when taking part in amateur social functions, keeps well in the limelight.
He drew up a second chair, saying quietly: "I understand so well that I will either go away or stay and play watch-dog; which do you prefer? I see two callow youths in there who are looking toward this window as their only loophole of escape, but they will not come until I go."
"Then please stay," said Poppea, with a shimmer of a laugh, soothed into perfect tranquillity by the self-possession of her companion,—a condition that caused her much wonder when she afterward analyzed it.
Much clapping of hands announced the completion of the first group of pictures, and the stringed quartet struck up a Strauss waltz, to the compelling measure of which Poppea's fingers, hanging over the back of the chair, tapped time.
"Are you fond of dancing?"
"Yes and no; there are times when it seems as if I must dance, but I do not believe that I could ever dance to order."
"I have seen you somewhere before, but very long ago," he said abruptly.
"Yes, I remember your face. I have been thinking and thinking when and where. Ah! now I have it!" Poppea exclaimed, flushing deeply, so that even in the moonlight it rivalled the color of the flowers in her hair.
"Do you remember once calling upon the Felton ladies in New York one afternoon and finding a half-wild girl dancing before the parlor mirror?"
"By Jove! that's it, and you were the little girl! I can see it all perfectly. I should judge that it was one of the times that you danced because you must, was it not?"
"Oh, yes, the windows were so heavy that they would not open, and the carpets so thick they held my feet, and I began to feel as though I were in prison and should never get out, and so I danced to be sure that I was alive."
"Do you know what I said to myself as you slid away behind the heavy stair guards?"
"Probably that you wondered why the Feltons harbored such a barbarian."
"No, that I wished that I might meet you again six or seven years hence; and you see I have my wish."
Noticing that Poppea seemed once more inclined to withdraw into herself, Winslow dropped the personal tone that he had been forcing into the conversation and sought more neutral ground in his next venture.
"If, as I understand, you have lived about here all your life, you can give me some help in a little matter of business, that, combined with pleasure, brought me here. I suppose, of course, that you know every resident in the town?"
"Most surely, as well as almost every one who comes to or goes through it;" Poppea was going to add, "because all news comes to the post-office," but a sudden influence caused her to suppress the last sentence.
"Very good, now I will explain my errand, if you have the patience to listen, and I have confidence in asking that what I say will go no further, because the matter concerns others rather than myself."
Poppea, nodding her head in assent, leaned forward, her lips slightly parted in an attitude of undivided attention.
"A cousin of mine, a young New Yorker, who is working his way into politicsviabeing secretary to the postmaster-general, was intrusted to look up a matter in this vicinity during a week of vacation. Meeting me at the club a couple of days ago and finding I was coming here, he asked me to help him out by doing the investigating and letting him spend his time in town.
"It seems that Postmaster Gilbert, here at Harley's Mills, is getting rather old and doddering, and has for his assistant a young woman, a foundling or something, that he has brought up. Complaints have been coming in for the past year of the conduct of the office from a man who is not only a prominent resident here, but one who has strong political influence both in New York and Washington."
Poppea straightened herself, opened her lips to speak, but no sound came; meanwhile Winslow, intent upon reciting the story word for word as he had had it from his cousin, paid no heed.
"Under ordinary circumstances a change would possibly have been made on the matter of age, but as the complainant is known to be a man of violent prejudices and the appointment was one of the few now existing made by Lincoln himself, extra trouble was taken in the matter. Examinations showed the accounts to be all straight, and there the affair halted on both sides.
"A month ago new complaints came from the same source in a different key; the young woman, called by the fantastic name of Poppea, it seems, was causing trouble among the youths of the town, and the complainant did not hesitate to call her a dangerous adventuress. A special sent to cast his eye over the ground brought back an unsatisfactory and garbled account. Now my point is, can you from an outside and perhaps kinder point of view set me straight upon this matter?"
It seemed to the woman sitting opposite that she had lived a lifetime while Winslow was speaking; shame and courage, despair and pride, were all struggling for the mastery, and courage, with the chance for justification, won.
"Yes, I know them both, the postmaster and his daughter, as well as John Angus, the man who has complained."
"Then his dislike is public property?"
"Most assuredly; he has harried Oliver Gilbert for years because he would not sell him his homestead to round out his own land."
"Very good, a motive proven; that settles one point," said Winslow, with legal brevity. "Now how about the girl?"
"That is—not, cannot be told in so few words," said Poppea, nerving herself with a visible effort. "It is true that she was a foundling left in a storm upon Oliver Gilbert's porch. He took her in for the sake of his dead wife and baby Marygold. Then he grew to love her until he quite forgot she was not his own, and she thought all the world of 'Daddy,' as she had learned to call him. By and by as he grew older she naturally helped him in the office until, as the business grew and she became of age, she was appointed his assistant.
"She tried, oh, so hard, to work steadily and not forget her place, but she could not help the fact that John Angus's son, a couple of years younger and a cripple, who had no one to be kind to him, liked to talk to her. She couldn't help being glad to find some one to help make up for the sisters and brothers she had never known, for all the real kin she had was an ivory miniature of a young woman with a wreath of poppies in her hair, that hung about her neck on a gold chain the night she came to Gilbert's. There was one word engraved upon the locket, 'Poppea' and a date, '1850.' So they two practised singing together with Mr. Latimer down at St. Luke's, Philip and she, and he made a bust of her, for he is studying to be a sculptor. But John Angus did not understand, and though no one but himself knows what he thought, it is bringing evil to Poppea, for the last man they sent from Washington dared to insult her. Yet all she asks is to be let work for her Daddy until his quarter century is out and he resigns; for it would kill him if he thought that any one could say anything against him or his that could take away the trust that Lincoln gave him."
Poppea stopped, her hands twisting at a flower that had fallen to her lap, and then looked quietly at Winslow as though waiting for his answer. As for him, he was completely taken out of himself and his acquired stoicism in regard to all things feminine. The spectacle of the beautiful young woman pleading the cause with such unconscious dignity swept him from his feet and made him feel until he tingled.
"Well?" she queried at last.
"You have made it as plain as if I had seen the whole business myself, and I'm no end grateful for the trouble you've taken. This meeting seems to have been quite providential for the post-office family; all I need do is to take a look at them to-morrow and leave. Let me think quickly; there is so much more I wanted to say to you. I see the musical dominie coming our way, and they are drawing the curtains on the last tableau."
"Yes, itwasprovidential your coming, but there is one thing more to be said, and I must say it before you go to the office to-morrow. Look at this," and bending toward him, she held out the locket on its chain that had lain concealed in the folds of her waist, pressing the spring that opened it as she did so.
Winslow looked and then grew bewildered.
"Read," she said. "'Poppea, 1850.'"
"Then you are—Impossible!"
"Poppea of the post-office, whom you have heard accused, and have tried, and, I hope, acquitted for her Daddy's sake." But the eyes that she turned so bravely to meet his reassuring ones were full of tears that could not be recalled.
"What a brute I have been," he said, standing with bent head.
Then Stephen Latimer came to lead her in.
"You will dance with me or at least speak to me afterward?" Winslow managed to ask, instinctively expecting refusal after the ordeal she had gone through.
"This is one of the nights I could not dance; in fact, I doubt if I ever shall again."
Winslow sought out the darkest corner of the porch, where he was yet within sound of her voice. Lighting a cigar, he gave himself over to an uninterrupted train of musing, while those within who missed him thought him merely escaping them after the manner of a man of the world, who, having been courted for a decade by maids, wives, and widows, prefers his own society.
After the final applause, which was unusually long and loud for such an audience, had ceased, Winslow threaded his way rapidly through the rooms in search ofIncognita, as he called her to himself, but she was nowhere to be found.
"The excitement of her success was too much for the dear child," said Miss Emmy, taking his arm and switching him in the direction where he cared least to go.
"I've sent Nora home with her in the coupé, for she looked really overdone. Don't be so disappointed; you can go and inquire for her to-morrow."
When Winslow broke away from his hostess at last, he wondered what had happened to him. He had intended leaving in the morning if he had completed his inquiry. Well, he would sleep on it; some impressions lose their color the next day. But in the morning he resolved to telegraph his cousin and put off going at least until another to-morrow.
When the next morning came, Poppea kept her bed for the first time since the childhood days of whooping-cough and measles. From sunrise waves of intense heat swept the village and outlying country, intensified rather than veiled by the low-hanging mists. Yet this alone could not account for the flushed cheeks and restless sparkle of her eyes, or the weariness of limb that almost refused to let her move. The fact was that she had not slept, but each hour of the summer night had brought a new phantom with which she had struggled. In so far as it was possible, she had ceased to dwell upon the theme ofThe Mystery of the Name, now it had returned with new force to haunt her, and with it the persecution of John Angus. This in itself was hard enough to bear, but it meant also complete separation from Philip, who had come to be such a part of her inner life that no one else seemed fully to comprehend that even the idea of readjustment was impossible.
The unintentional abruptness of Bradish Winslow in stating the pith of Angus's complaints against the post-office, by its very shock had brought her face to face with the fact that she had tried to conceal even from herself. Oliver Gilbert was swiftly coming to a time when, if he did not resign, his age and slowness of motion might surely be cast up against him for some trivial oversight that would, in a younger man, pass unnoticed.
For a time the danger of dismissal was probably averted; that is, if Winslow's attitude of apparent sympathy was sincere. Was he to be trusted? Standing face to face with him the night before, it had not occurred to her to doubt him. Away from him, a certain sustaining magnetism coming from his entire confidence in himself, blended with an agreeable personality, was lacking, and Poppea wondered if he had read her aright, or taken her justification as a clever bit of acting. And why not, if John Angus could so misjudge her!
Other women of her age and naturally emotional temperament might take peeps into the promised land of love and romance even before the gate opened and they were bidden to enter. The knowledge of her own name was the only key to the gate for her; she had long since resolved this, that evening at the opera when the Knight of the Grail, to her a real personality, had disappeared. But since then the doubt had come to her, suppose that the knowing proved to her also a final barrier instead of the key?
Oliver Gilbert was appalled at Poppea's indisposition, which he viewed in the light of a positive disaster. Leaving his six o'clock cup of coffee untasted, he went about putting up the early mail with shaking hands and a lack of precision that might well have called down criticism, had it been observed. Neither did he draw comfort from Mrs. Shandy's common-sense assurance that "Miss Poppy is only a bit done up with the strong heat coming all of a sudden, and having to sing before such a gathering of the quality for the first time. When she's rested a bit and had a nice cup of breakfast tea and some toast, she'll be quite another thing."
The doctor must be had! Nothing else would satisfy Gilbert. So, about eleven o'clock, when Miss Emmy drove down in the barouche to tell Poppea the pleasant gossip about the party, together with the comments upon her singing, encountering Bradish Winslow in spotless white clothes sauntering in the same direction, Dr. Morewood's chaise came up the Westboro road and halted at the gate of the post-office house a little ahead of them.
Miss Emmy, on hearing that he had called to see Poppea, followed him into the house, while Winslow went into the office and, over the buying of a newspaper, drew Gilbert into conversation.
Whether it was the tea and toast that had the predicted effect, or the fact that Poppea had finally acquired the mastery of herself and remembered that Winslow had promised to look at the post-office and its master through his own eyes and judgment, at the moment that Miss Emmy was ushered into the parlor she heard, through the open window, Dr. Morewood's voice talking to Poppea in the room above.
"Something is worrying you, child; get away from here for a week and look at things from a different place," he said. "If it's too lively for you at Felton Manor, go over to the Mills. Dear little Mrs. Oldys is nearly down ill through homesickness for Hugh, and the next best thing to seeing him will be to see some one who knows him to whom she can read his letters. It'll do you good to go up there, with that view over the Moosatuck to the hills that every sunrise is like a glimpse of the promised land, and it will be a perfect godsend to her. Do you know, sometimes I think that plucky little woman is simply clinging to life by the love she has for her husband and son. I've been so impressed with the idea this spring that about a month ago I wrote Hugh asking him if he couldn't shorten his trip and come home early in August, so as to give some leeway before he goes to his new work in September.
"I am going up to the Oldyses' now; may I tell Madam that you're coming, say this afternoon?"
Poppea was looking out the window to where the grim outline of the chimneys and roof of John Angus's house could be seen above the vines that covered the parapet. Yes, she realized that she must go somewhere if only for a couple of days, to be out of sight of that dominant house and all that it implied, until she could pull herself together once more, so she nodded in assent and followed the doctor downstairs.
"Not sick, but playing lazy and caught at it," was her reply to Miss Emmy's outstretched hands, and eyes full of sympathy.
"You see that putting on fine feathers and spending an evening with the quality has quite turned my head," she continued, forcing her sprightliest manner that Miss Emmy might be led from questioning her too closely.
"Then your head will have to stay turned, for every one who heard you sing last night wishes to hear you again," and the loquacious little lady ran over a long list of names that represented not only many of the bricks and beams of New York society, but much of the decorative superstructure as well.
"You always said that you wanted to step out and really do something against the time when Daddy would be too old to keep the post-office, and now here is the chance. You are to come to us in New York and be properly introduced at our first musical of the winter, and then you will have all the engagements you can fill at fifty dollars each for the rest of the season. Two or three a week will be a plenty and leave you time for lessons with Tostelli or some one equally good. Then, by and by, when you have acquired manner, and you are well known, you might consent to sing at a few public concerts, given of course under the patronage of our best people. But we mustn't whisper of that yet; sister Elizabeth would not hear of such a thing. You will naturally spend the winter with us, for the post-office work is very light in the off season, I've heard you say.
"I will tell you a secret," and Miss Emmy drew Poppea toward her with a dramatic air of extreme caution. "I've come to the time at which I used to think I should adopt a young girl. I can no longer wear pink and pale blue with impunity! I'm growing sallow! I must, therefore, think out pretty costumes for some one else—for you. For the first winter, simple dresses with flower trimmings will be very telling; violet tulle and wistaria, corn-colored gauze and cowslips," and Miss Emmy's hands, flexible and nervous, described the lines and folds of flower-wreathed draperies, as she spoke.
"What do you think? Don't you like the idea, child? I'm going to carry you off to the Manor for luncheon, and afterward to call on some of the hill people before their guests, who came for last night, disperse. There is nothing like striking while the iron is hot, but especially with people of thebeau monde; if you let them cool off, there's the heating process all to be done over again, whereas this time it was simply a case of spontaneous combustion with you as the spark."
In spite of her vivacity and high spirits, Miss Emmy coughed wrackingly when she stopped, and even a casual observer could see the ominous falling away at the temples and behind the ears, as well as the wrinkling of the throat under its bertha of embroidered mull.
"I like the idea of singing as an employment," said Poppea, when Miss Emmy paused long enough to let her be heard; "but as to all the rest—well, that would have to be on a business basis also. From the moment I begin to earn money, I must pay money. You see, dear Aunty, up to now it's been all for love and love in return, and now—it must be different."
"Don't be obstinate, Poppy, for if you are and put on that determined look, I shall have to call you Julia, even in private."
"No, I'm not obstinate, neither can I change; it is simply this, I cannot allow myself to be an object of charity any longer. Ask Mr. Latimer. I have talked of it with him, and he understands. Ah, Aunty, Aunty, I cannot go on standing in false positions. If they like my singing and it is worthy, I will sing, but I do not want it to come by social favor only."
"Think it over, child, and don't try to fly with ideas for wings that may do very well here at Harley's Mills, but not in New York," Miss Emmy replied, rather tartly for her. "I don't think that in your present state of mind you will improve your prospects by calling on those who heard you last night; they would best keep you in mind as the dreamy looking girl with downcast eyes and poppies in her hair." Miss Emmy walked out to the carriage without more ado, while Poppea wondered if it was going to be her fate to be misunderstood.
Going to the post-office, she encountered Winslow, who was occupying a chair inside the beehive and alternately chatting with and scrutinizing Gilbert over the edge of aNew York Heraldin which he was ostensibly studying the stock market.
By the furtive glance that Gilbert gave her, Poppea knew he had been talking of her, therefore her color heightened, and no one less keen than Winslow in taking every detail of a woman's appearance in a casual glance would have noticed that the shadows under her eyes were not those of her lashes. She was dressed in a straight white gown akin to that of a trained nurse in its simplicity, without a single touch of color other than her hair; yet the effect in the bare surroundings of the shop was to envelop her with a virginal freshness that appealed to Winslow even more than the more poetic costume of the previous evening.
"Having made the acquaintance of Cinderella, who vanished, I've now come to call upon the Postmistress, hoping that she will not also disappear," he said, taking her hand with a caressing touch that was personal enough to be remembered, but not of a quality to be resented.
"Sit down here, child, and just cast your eye over this money-order to be sure if it is right, for Stephen Latimer may come for it any time. Mr. Winslow will excuse you a minute, I reckon," said Gilbert, as Poppea hesitated a moment in embarrassed silence, not knowing whether she should ask Winslow to the porch or garden, or merely take the call in her official capacity. The request decided the matter, and as Gilbert went over to his work bench to become instantly absorbed, she slipped into his revolving chair, glanced rapidly over the figures, separated note from stub, and returned the book to the drawer. When she again faced Winslow, her hands were clasped rather nervously in her lap.
"I came over this morning for two reasons," he said, as though in answer to a question in her eyes. "I was afraid that last night's excitement was altogether too much of a strain, and I wanted to reassure myself by a peep at you. Then I wished to tell you in plain, open daylight how deeply I feel about my unknowing brutality concerning this post-office business, and to ask you, if you can help it, not to let it tinge or prejudice your feelings about me, but to judge me only by the outcome. As it is, no one else need ever know the details except our two selves."
The look of intense relief that lighted Poppea's face and raised the drooping lip corners was perfectly apparent to Winslow, and also told him that doubt as to this outcome had probably broken her rest.
"I do not think of it as brutality even though it hurt, and though I shall not tell Daddy, because he would grieve himself sick, Imusttell Mr. Latimer, because he has always known of everything concerning me, and helps me understand my troubles by holding them, as he says, in trust. For the rest, I can only thank you for taking the trouble to consider a passing stranger."
"I do not feel that you are a stranger; I did not when I first saw you dancing before the mirror, or yet again on the porch last night. You are to me Youth and all the good that belongs with it. We have met twice by accident, the third time by intent; does not that make us friends?"
As far as his emotions were concerned, Bradish Winslow at six and thirty might be said to have his second wind. The things that appealed to him with any permanence in these days knocked first at the door of his judgment where his æsthetic taste was doorkeeper. It was by this route that Poppea stole swiftly along until his heart was reached, and responded before he even remembered that he had one. Then, too, she was as refreshing as the first sun-ripened strawberries of June after the complicated winter confections of the club.
Winslow found himself leaning toward Poppea, holding her eyes and speaking with a vibrating eagerness that would have surprised any one of his half-hundred city intimates, both male and female. Of a distinguished family, rich in moderation, and with no one to please but himself, Winslow, though an indispensable social factor, was, as far as women were concerned, a devoted cynic, always at the beck and call of some modish woman, usually either married or a widow, but whenever the chains of his own forging seemed likely to fetter, he had always eluded them, to seek safety in numbers once more.
He had no further reason for sitting in the stuffy little post-office than to see Poppea; he had no other reason for having stayed the second day at the hill, and yet, with all of his resources, quick wit, and elastic principles, he could devise no way of prolonging the interview or bringing Poppea into less conventional relations than her expressions of gratitude implied.
His hesitation surprised him, for on a still briefer acquaintance he had brought a very difficult and much-sought widow to ask him to luncheon, after which she had taken him to a round of "teas" in her carriage.
Winslow realized this as they sat there, presently talking of inane and safe topics, such as the heat, the city people visiting on the hill, and the tennis match to be held there next day, and it was almost a relief when Stephen Latimer, coming for his money-order, told Poppea that the Oldyses' rockaway was stopping at the Rectory and would be down for her in a quarter of an hour. As Latimer showed no signs of leaving immediately, there was nothing left for Winslow to do but bow himself out, more awkwardly than Stephen Latimer, who had known him of old, would have believed possible.
Once in the roadway, where he could throw back his shoulders and strike out, the web that he had sought to spin as a spider, but which had held him like a captive fly, parted, and he admonished himself in no measured terms.
"I wouldn't have thought it of you, Brad, my boy; there you sat as dumb as a fish, and she, when she got through being politely grateful, looked absolutely bored. It must be because you feel out of your running in a real cow-country place like this. Is it possible that you're falling in—? No, it's nonsense! But you'd give a pile to make her look in your face with something other than gratitude in her eyes. Well, maybe she'll go to the city some day, who knows. Meanwhile, we'll not let out of sight be out of mind."
This resolution was the foundation of a series of subtly chosen gifts sent at regular intervals that, coming in the mail, Poppea could not fail to see. As, however, after the first, from which fell a pressed poppy, they contained no sign, she could neither acknowledge nor return them, for their source was a matter of inference only. Neither did she know that Winslow, summering here, there, and everywhere, from Newport to the North Cape, had left an order with his agent for the sending of the remembrances; consequently, in spite of herself, he was kept in mind, and she was somewhat touched, according to his plan.
Poppea was shocked when she reached the Mill House to find how much Madam Oldys had changed in a few weeks, and she reproached herself for not having seen her oftener. But the house had seemed so strange and still without Hugh that she had avoided bringing herself face to face with its emptiness.
Yes, as the doctor said, the chord that held her soul in her body was Madam Oldys's love for husband and son. This Poppea saw as she knelt on the mat beside the straw lounging chair on the deeply shaded porch and watched the rapid pulsing at the thin temples as the time drew near for Mr. Oldys to come home to tea. He was very busy these days in remodelling the Mills and fitting them for a new manufacturing enterprise that should not only retrieve the heavy loss of the last years in the waning of the old business, but give work to the men who had built their homes and houses about him and the surging outlet of Moosatuck.
This night he was unaccountably late, and Poppea had already run the gamut of plausible excuses before Charlotte came out to inquire, after the comfortable manner of the old colored servant, if Missy Oldys wouldn't better have her tea before she went all gone from waiting. But a negative shake of the head was her answer.
"I think, my dear, that I will walk down to the gate to-night as usual, where I can see beyond the turn," she said to Poppea, at the same time trying to rise without aid and finding it impossible.
"He is coming!" cried Poppea. "Mr. Oldys has this moment turned into the road from the little gate in the south meadow. Ah, he has a man with him, a stranger; some one about the new machinery, probably, which accounts for his being late. There, he is waving his handkerchief, so everything is right," and Poppea waved hers in return, thus keeping up the significant little signal that had passed between this sweet old couple every summer evening, time out of mind.
"A stranger," the wifely anxiety instantly merging into the hospitable interest in a guest. "Then please ask Charlotte to add coffee and one of what Hugh called 'her hasty hot dishes' to supper; the ham omelet will be best. He may have come by train and had merely a sandwich at noon."
Poppea gave the order, and on her return looked again at the pair who had almost reached the gate. She had never before realized that Mr. Oldys either stooped or was short of stature; in fact, he was taller than the average, but his companion, broad-shouldered, dark, and trimly bearded, towered over him by half a head. At the gate they paused, and Mr. Oldys, putting his hand on the other's shoulder, leaned affectionately on it, while the stranger lifted and waved the wide-brimmed soft felt hat.
It was Hugh! the forehead line told the tale to Poppea that the beard had concealed.
With a swift gesture that warned the pair to come slowly, dreading the shock to Madam Oldys that might come from the unexpected, Poppea knelt again by the chair, and putting one hand each side of the face, still beautiful with all its delicacy, turned it toward her and whispered:—
"Close your eyes and think of some one you would like to see coming across the field, then make a wish, for the fairies are about to-night."
The lids quivered and closed, then opened, and the eyes that read Poppea's were full of new life.
"It is Hugh! it is my boy! All day I have felt him come nearer, closer, but I thought it was only in spirit. Give me your hand; he must not find me idling. See, I am stronger already;" and Madam Oldys not only stood up, but walked toward the steps, barely leaning on the arm that Poppea stretched out to steady her, to be grasped the next moment by a strong pair of arms in an embrace that stifled her cry halfway and lifted her from her feet, while as Poppea tried to slip back, she found her hand held in the same grasp and a kiss fell squarely upon her lips.
She did not blush then or separate the greeting in any way from the good-by of ten months before. But later, as they gathered about the supper table where Madam Oldys sat behind the tray, handling the chubby tea-caddy for the first time in months, and Poppea looked at Hugh as he attacked the "hasty hot dish" with a traveller's relish, she knew that he was and yet was not the same. The span of the months and distance had added immeasurably to the man, but the boy, the chum, the comrade, that he had been even throughout his college days, had vanished, and a hot color flushed her face up to her hair roots until she became so conscious of it that she put her hand up as though to shade her eyes from the light.
Before, Hugh Oldys had been clean shaven and slender for his height; now he was filled out without fleshiness, and a closely trimmed beard and crisp, clearly pencilled mustache gave a new masculinity to his face without in any way concealing the determined yet flexible lips or the nostril curve that told of nerves high strung but perfectly under the control of will.
Naturally it was Hugh who talked the most, his father putting brief questions and gazing in deep contentment at his wife, who, without expressing a shadow of the loneliness she must have felt or even asking Hugh why he had shortened his year by nearly three months, was reviving and expanding; a miracle under their very eyes, like the refreshment of a plant that, withered and famished, takes hold of life anew even at the breath of the wind that brings rain.
A year before, Poppea would have stayed on as a matter of course, one of the family group, but now she felt that on this precious evening the three should be alone together, and when Hugh went upstairs to change to a coat more suitable to the sultry night, she whispered a few words in Madam Oldys's ear about feeling quite rested and not being needed now for company; then with a nod to Mr. Oldys, finger on lips, slipped through the side hall where hung her hat and scarf, and thence through the garden gate into the depths of the June evening, where every bush held a flower in bud and every tree a sleeping bird.
The Oldyses saw nothing strange in her going, for she had always come and gone at will. Rather it was another proof of her thought of them, this silent understanding that three was company that night; besides, a half-mile walk alone on a street where each house kept watch over its neighbor, was a mere nothing to a village girl.
"Where is Poppea?" was Hugh's question on reëntering, his hands full of the trinkets of travel that he had pulled hastily from his grip. "Gone home? alone in the dark? why, Mother!" and dropping his burden in her lap, he went out the low French window and sprang over the piazza rail without turning the corner for the steps.
Mother and father, sitting side by side, exchanged glances and a hand pressure that revealed that they two recognized a change in Hugh, but that they were well content in the knowledge.
Poppea walked down the side road to the main street that passed the base of Quality Hill before she heard the rapid footsteps behind her that halted presently by her side. No word was spoken, but her hand was drawn through a muscular arm and held there fast. A year ago this might have happened without comment, but the arm was not the same, neither the hand that rested on it.
"What made you run away, Poppea? You never did before; that is, never but once."
As soon as he had completed the heedless sentence, Hugh was sorry, while to Poppea it was as though some one had spread the last seven years of her life before her guised in a knitted fabric, and slipping the thread, bade her ravel it stitch by stitch to its beginning.
"I thought you would wish to be alone with the home people," she said, searching for her words as if they were packed away for lack of use.
"And what are you if you are not one of the home people? what else have you ever been to me since the day that I first saw you and for a moment wasn't quite sure whether I wanted you or the puppy the most?"
Poppea could not answer at once; the ground seemed unsteady. The months of parting had broken the old shuttle and snapped the thread; what pattern would the new loom weave that the meeting had set in motion?
At this moment they were passing the church, and the lamp in Stephen Latimer's study cast a path of light across the turf almost to their feet, against which the outline of his face was silhouetted.
"Aren't you going in to see the Latimers?" she said, forgetting that Hugh's last question was unanswered.
"No, not to-night; to-morrow. This hour is mine and yours, Poppea. Why do you shiver so and draw away; you've always taken my arm?"
"I didn't know that I was doing either, but somehow everything seems different to-night, strange and new. Perhaps it is because I've not been feeling quite myself for a few days. Only this morning the doctor sent me up to the Mill House for a change." Then, in her turn, Poppea regretted the final words.
"And my homecoming has sent you away when you were tired, and that is why you falter. This is a bitter thought."
"It is not exactly that; I don't know what it is, but that I seem to bring distress upon all those I care for," and from a rush of half-coherent words he heard of her friendship with Philip and its results to him, and in a partial way the danger to Oliver Gilbert. As she talked, they had reached the post-office house gate.
The house itself was dark, but a light shone from Gilbert's workroom. On the side porch the ample figure of Mrs. Shandy rocked to and fro, fanning vigorously.
As Poppea turned toward the steps, almost stumbling in her fatigue, Hugh guided her along the path to a bench by the orchard edge, an old schoolhouse bench with a platform under foot that he had made once, years ago, when Gilbert had chided Poppea for letting the dew spoil her new Sunday shoes.
"Sit here," he said; "take off your hat and let the air blow through your hair, while I get you some water."
How good it seemed to have some one say with authority, "do this," or "do that," the unspoken motive being "because it is for your good." Then she began to realize that during the last few months she and Daddy had rather been shifting places in point of responsibility.
She drank the water slowly and gratefully, knowing through the clear starlight that his eyes were on her face, and as she drank she breathed the perfume of the half-double damask roses that had long ago crept from the garden above the parapet to make a thicket on either side the bank.
"A little while ago you said that everything seemed different and strange. Then both of us feel this. I had not landed on the other shore last autumn, hardly left this even, when the wrench of parting told me that everything was different, and would remain so. But I wanted you to have a chance to feel it for yourself if might be, and I kept it from my letters,—though I knew they were like wretched guide-books,—because I dared not let myself go.
"To-night, when I came back, hurried by Dr. Morewood's letter, and saw the woman who gave me life clinging to my little comrade, I knew the time had come when I must tell her that my love had changed."
"Then can we no longer be friends?" Poppea asked faintly. "Must I lose you, too, as I have lost Philip?"
"Always friends, Poppea; that is the beginning. Are not Stephen Latimer and Jeanne friends? and my father and mother also? But it must be more than friends, everything that a man and woman may be to each other. The change is that I love you as Latimer does Jeanne, that I want you for my wife.
"Is that strange to you, Poppea? or does it seem to you as it does to me, the fulfilment?" and Hugh leaned toward her, pale and anxious, in the starlight and holding out his arms.
Poppea turned quickly as though she would let him take her, then catching her breath, drew back, covering her face with her hands, while a half-forgotten harmony forced itself on her ears, and once more the Knight of the Grail waving farewell, with the mystic sadness on his face, passed before her mental vision.
"Oh, Hugh!" she moaned, "I've lost you, lost you! It isn't what I feel; it isn't what I wish! Don't you see that I can never be any man's wife, much less yours, who knows my whole life through, until I can give my own name with my love?"
"That is for me to say, and I say yes!" cried Hugh, holding her to him as though to prove her need of protection.
"No, it is for neither of us to say; it is something beyond ourselves. I cannot tell why, but I know it," Poppea answered, without the tremor of the previous moment, but with a pleading dignity that made Hugh drop his arms.
"Suppose that something should some day come to light, when it was too late, that made it wrong for me to love you, we might not be able to bear the harm of it only ourselves." Then springing up with all the intensity of nerve and lithe motion that marked her dancing, she stood before him, with hands clasped, beseeching.
"Oh, Hugh, Hugh, can't you help me; won't you help me find out who I am? for sometimes I think that Daddy knows and will not tell!"
"And if I can, is that all that stands between us, Poppea? Look into my face so that I can see your eyes when you answer me."
"Oh, Hugh, be patient with me, be merciful! How can I say until I know my name, for it may be—that I have no real right to any."
It was so long before Hugh spoke that Poppea found herself counting her heart-beats, so keenly was the silence borne in upon her.
Then she said timidly: "Meanwhile, Hugh, could you—could we go on being friends? Your mother and Daddy, what could I say to them if we didn't speak? What should I do without you?"
Once more he drew her toward him, this time gently, not passionately. "It isn't an easy road that is before us, little one, but it is hardest for you, because I must, in any event, go out to make my way. Though I do not agree with your resolution, I do not say it is wrong.
"I love you, man to woman; that is where I stand. You must not forget this for a moment, as I shall not. But you must not fear that I shall harry you. I shall not tell you this in words again until you say to me, 'I need you, Hugh.'"
"Not even if the mystery of the name is solved?"
"Not even then, for only under such conditions will you cease to be on your guard, and without frankness the name of friendship would be a farce."
"And your mother, if she asks you—I think now she has perhaps thought—"
"Yes, she loves you, Poppea, as my mother should love my wife. She is the only one who has a right to ask. I shall tell the truth, which is that we have come to a perfect understanding.
"One thing more, Poppea; rememberyouare not bound."
If he could only have known the aching loneliness that fell upon her at these words; again she seemed to feel herself cut adrift. With a sudden turn she clung to him, and he, lifting her face, kissed her on lips and eyes, whispering, "To-morrow or five years hence, you need only speak or write the four words."
When one has spent the early morning hours of a journey, in which no steps may be retraced, in following a fairly straight and level path through a familiar wood, hindered only by a few briers, with sheltering trees above, pleasant vistas on every side, and in friendly company, hope rises high and straightway trusts the path ahead. But when an abrupt turn shows there is a steep to climb, the pathway itself becomes confused, indefinite, treacherous, and the guiding voices have scattered, some going one way and some another, what must one do? Hesitate? sit down to think it out? or still walk on foot-length by foot-length, trusting to circumstance for keeping the course that one may not divine?
It was at the turn of such a road as this that Poppea found herself; she could not go back if she would, and friendly voices called in opposite directions from her own instinct. Of one thing only she was quite sure, she must go on without a pause lest in it she lose courage; she must climb on her hands and knees even, if necessary. The only mistake she made was in thinking, as we all have done at times since the days of the self-gratulatory St. Paul enumerating his trials, that she had reached the turning alone.
If she had but realized it, Oliver Gilbert, near the end of his journey and travelling in the opposite direction, was confronted by the same sharp turn and the same barrier, that to each this bore the same name—The Future!
If Poppea had been pondering how she could help her Daddy and lead him naturally toward the resigning of his office, Gilbert was conscious of a like necessity, but this was nothing compared to the appalling realization of Poppea's womanhood that had suddenly confronted him.
In Gilbert's simple mind, when a girl crossed the boundary of the twentieth year, the mating time was at hand, and each year after that she remained unbespoken if not married, reflected in some way either upon her good looks, disposition, or opportunities. As in all rural districts, there were many long courtships in Newfield County lasting from half a dozen to even a dozen years, but after the serious intentions of the man were recognized, and the woman was spoken of as "his intended," then the couple passed from the interest of the match-makers into a sort of intermediate state, wherein they were both supposed to be working for a common end and the duration of which was considered purely their own business.
As Oliver Gilbert looked about at the eligible male population of the country-side, his perplexity increased; many were prosperous after their own standards, and some were even ambitious, but which one of them was fit to mate with Poppea? Moreover, such an idea had never seemed to occur to any of them. The only youths, who, dressed in their best, had come of a Saturday evening to lean on the little shelf before the window of the beehive and cast boldly admiring glances and random and irrelevant remarks at the postmistress, were of the verdant and irrepressible sort that Gilbert would not have tolerated for a moment, and that Poppea had effectually withered by giving absolutely no more heed to their pleasantries than to the wind muttering about the windows.
The matter that had brought Gilbert face to face with the rock behind which lay the pathway to futurity, was a call from a prosperous manufacturer of Bridgeton, a clean, well-built man of five and thirty, self-made and commercially intelligent, if lacking the culture that marks the man of real education. He had met Poppea at the church, where she had sung for several months the previous winter, and was sincere and outspoken in his admiration of her.
In a straightforward way he had come to the point and, with old-fashioned courtesy, asked Gilbert for permission to court his daughter, stipulating that he wished no influence brought to bear upon her, only leave to make his own way if he might.
The whole thing was so sudden, and came from a sky so wholly cloudless, that Gilbert had difficulty at first in keeping down a choking resentment at the man's presumption, while, at the same time, these feelings were checked by the realization that as the world measures, the man who owned a well-equipped factory, and had half a hundred men on his pay-roll, was the one who was condescending. These mixed feelings caused Gilbert to hesitate, begin a sentence only to break it off, and finally, flushed and perspiring, say, "I'm afraid that you don't understand; it isn't all just what I've got to say about it nor Poppy, either, sir."
Then very quietly and with a good deal of dignity, this man had drawn near to Gilbert, and, lowering his voice, said: "That's what I do understand; I know that she isn't your own born, for I was a lad driving for the Westboro stables the time that she came here. Fifteen years before that, I was left the same way at Deacon Tilley's in North Bridgeton, so there's no need of explanations between Miss Gilbert and myself; neither will have aught to hold against the other in family matters."
A groan had escaped Gilbert, before he could control himself sufficiently to say briefly that Poppea, being of age, was her own mistress. But after the man had gone, he paced up and down the shop, his hands working nervously, until at last big tears rolled down his cheeks, and, sitting at his desk, head on his arms, he said aloud: "The lady baby as good as asked in marriage by a boy left on old Tilley's steps, and then driving teams for Beers, and nothing for either to throw at the other! Well, why not old Gilbert's steps as well as old Tilley's? What can I say? Ifeelthe difference, but that isn't proving it!
"I wonder what you'd have done, if you'd been cornered this way," he continued, looking up at the portrait of Lincoln, that hung in the same place as on the night of Poppea's coming. But now, a well-grown ivy plant was wreathed about it, growing from a pot that stood on the window ledge in a spot that the sun visited daily throughout the year, showing that a woman's affection had been added to that of the old man's hero-worship.
"Would you have stopped still just long enough to tell a story to make folks laugh, and then gone straight on and walked over or out of the trouble? Could you have done that if you'd had a more than daughter that was too good for any man and yet a nameless man asked for her on equal terms just because shewasn'tyour daughter?"
As the incoherence of his speech dawned upon him, he threw back his head and laughed aloud, then stopped short, calmed and steady of hand, as if there had been something almost prophetic in the sound.
This had happened on the day of Poppea's visit to the Mill House and Hugh Oldys's return. A week afterward, Poppea, very quietly and with some hesitation, broached the subject of singing in New York and of its possibilities, together with her intention of taking lessons of a famous teacher, who had been an opera singer, was a friend of the Feltons, and feeling the need of rest, was to spend the month of August with them on the hill.
Instead of the opposition that she had expected, both on the ground of Gilbert's seeing neither the necessity of self-support nor of her partial separation from him, he not only gave a cheerful assent, but a look as of a weight having been lifted from him crossed his face, and he broke into what was for him voluble conversation about the virtue of having something to do and doing it "up brown"; for this move of Poppea's told the old man what he most wished to know, that either the Bridgeton admirer had altered his intentions or been repulsed.
Then drawing from his pocket a letter that had come by the milkman and not the post, Gilbert said: "Come to speaking of winter, Poppy, there's something that I've had it on my mind to tell you, but I couldn't see my way clear of it until to-day, and I didn't want to hamper you ahead. Mrs. Shandy has set her mind on going back to the old country next fall, as there's less and less likelihood of her seeing Philip, and she says the living so near is only an aggravation. Now to-day comes a letter from sister Satira Potts. She writes that 'Lisha has a chance to get the contract for cutting all the grown chestnut timber from the Stryker Hollow tract that lies along Moosatuck, to the west side, about twenty miles to the north of Bridgeton. If he takes it, and it will advantage them greatly if he does, he will have to stay in the camp all week and only come home for Sundays, Satiry thereby being left lonesome. So the pith of her letter is, that she's sort of feeling 'round to see if there is any chance of her being wanted down here for the winter, as it is handier for 'Lisha to come here from Bridgeton than to take the drive round about home. I reckon it'll seem good to me to have sister Satiry Potts back here. Mrs. Shandy's strong in British ways of toast and tea, boiling green peas and mint together, and having a forceful way oflookingme into a clean collar at meal times when I've chanced to lay mine by for comfort. But for coffee and pancakes, brown bread and beans that's cooked until they're swelled to burst, but daresn't, being checked at just the moment, give me Satiry, who also speaks right out about my collar and such, without ado.
"So you see, child, that old Daddy'll be well cared for, and you'll have a ready listener to tell all about the city doings to when you come back; for if they fancy you down there, there'll be a great to do; most likely you'll have flowers thrown at you; I've read about its being done for opery singers in the paper, and if they, why not you? Though likely, if you're singing in folks' houses, they'll hand the posies to you, instead of throwin', as being more polite and safer for the mantel ornaments and mottoes on the wall.
"Oh, child, child," he continued, as, leaning over his chair in her old-time way, Poppea had laid her soft cheek against his grizzled beard, and at the contact the mental vision of each grew clearer, "a couple of weeks ago, all at once, things fell into a sort of heaviness, and as late as yesterday I couldn't seem to see the way ahead. But now I think the corner's sort of swinging to the turning, and pretty soon we may come to another good stretch of road, and if the Lord hasn't other plans, mebbe he'll let me walk beside you on it for a little piece yet, until younger company comes up that's spryer, Poppy. And when they do, remember one thing, honey-clover, don't let old Daddy hold you backward; step right off brisk. Daddy'll be content to stop behind, so long as he sees you on before."
"Don't, Daddy, don't," she whispered, putting her hand over his mouth to stop him. "Nobody else is going to walk beside me; it's either you or loneliness, so never speak of falling back." She did not repeat the reason that she had given Hugh Oldys, but Gilbert quickly divined it from the tension of her arm, and the momentary joy that he had felt was stifled in a sigh as though self merged in super-self.
In early autumn, Hugh Oldys went to his work, and though he usually returned for Sunday, it was not always possible. To his mother the break seemed more complete and of a different quality than the separation either of his college life or his travels; these had been tentative, the last final. It was the first independent stepping out of the only one, upon the way that leads from home, not toward it, even by an indirect circuit.
Almost at the same time, Philip had returned, and had taken up his work anew at Howell's studio at Westboro. Physically, he looked much improved; his skin was sun-browned with sometimes a dash of color, he weighed more, and his face had gained in strength and resolution. But when he had been at work a month with the master, Howell saw that what he was gaining in accuracy and flexibility was more than discounted by a total lack of inspiration.