Poppea's chief wonder on her return home was in finding everything precisely as she had left it. A single winter does not witness a very great change in place or people, but to Poppea, so much having been crowded into those few months, it seemed as though the children of the village should have become men and women in her absence.
By the first of May, Miss Emmy had returned to Quality Hill. Miss Felton had decided to remain with Mr. Esterbrook in the Madison Square house for the present, the outlook being pleasant, though the nearness of the doctor was her first thought. As for Mr. Esterbrook himself, he had rallied sufficiently to be put in a wheel-chair. His right side was paralyzed and his speech as yet well-nigh unintelligible, so that his wants were filled mainly by the intuition of Miss Elizabeth and Caleb.
In spite of his absence of the previous summer and a report that it was to be repeated, John Angus had returned to Harley's Mills rather earlier than usual, and Stephen Latimer, the only one of the people who had received more than a casual greeting, said that he was looking ill, and that he had virtually confessed to Latimer that the winter had been a hard one to him, this being the first time that he had ever mentioned his health.
The new venture at the Mills was beginning to see daylight, for Hugh Oldys's inexperience was offset by the loyalty of the men who surrounded him. There was much also in connection with the growing plant that interested Hugh in an altruistic way, and already, in cooperation with Stephen Latimer, he was establishing relations with his employees and their families entirely different from those obtaining in the near-by New England factory towns.
It was Poppea who felt herself the odd number. Within the limits of a certain suppression of force, she had always seemed content, and her quiet, well-directed energy had been the reverse of the restlessness that now possessed her. She worked at everything with a feverish intensity wholly new and very disturbing to Oliver Gilbert, whose daily life had been unconsciously regulated by her impulse. Poppea not only took charge of the making-up and sorting of the two heaviest mails of the day, but had undertaken a new and gratuitous task,—the writing of letters to the old country for those who either could not write at all or could only pen their names and had no way of pouring out their feelings to those they had left behind. In addition, she had announced her intention of doing all the housework herself when Satira Potts should leave, for although Mrs. Shandy had returned in April from her visit home, Hugh Oldys's need of a housekeeper had taken her from the field.
Jeanne Latimer, who had been appealed to both by Satira Potts and Miss Emmy as the one most likely to convince Poppea of the foolishness of such a course, ended by indorsing the girl's resolution, for she felt the growing tension that the others did not notice, and knew well, from her own temperament, that only what sometimes would appear to be foolish activity keeps the nerves elastic and from snapping.
One day, in talking to Hugh Oldys about the life in the city, when he had expressed, as far as he ever allowed himself to, the feeling of being out of the midst of things after having once broken his way in, he turned the matter quickly by saying to Poppea:—
"And you, how did you like the New York life? I do not mean the outside things, the theatre, music, galleries, and shops, but the inner life that you led of yourself?"
As he spoke they were walking down the road from Quality Hill toward the village and the afternoon sun was sifting through the hilltops that gradually increased in height as Moosatuck disappeared among them,—a slender, silvery thread unravelling toward its source.
For a moment the girl stood looking afar off to where one hill, called the mountain by the local youths who climbed it, arose above all the others; presently she said, speaking as of a state of existence where in passing through she had lost something of herself:—
"The life, the real life there in the city? Oh, Hugh! at first it seemed like being on the mountain where everything is spread before one. You are very lonely, to be sure, but still, somebody, and then suddenly you find that you are nothing at all but the wind among the grass that falls away as night comes!"
And reading from what she did not say rather than from what she did, Hugh sighed and then quickened their pace, wondering what would be the end of it all for both of them.
That night, or rather morning, the fire signal was given by one of the factories on the Westboro road, to be repeated the next moment by the whistle of the Owl Express due to pass at three, and which halted presently, tolling its bell dismally. Instantly the male portion of the village was in its boots and trousers and running toward the red light at the north horizon. This was soon found to come from the railroad station at Harley's Mills. 'Lisha Potts, who had arrived at the post-office house with his team the previous evening to take his wife home the next day, was among the first to reach the building which had been set on fire at one end of the roof, presumably by a passing train.
Breaking into the ticket-office to haul out a small safe, and such express packages as had not been delivered, was the work of a few moments, while some energetic villagers, with more vigor than discretion, rushed into the attic and threw from the dormers a lot of old lanterns, boxes, broken bits of furniture, and like rubbish already partly on fire, that had been accumulating there ever since the station was built and antedating the checking system. The lanterns, of course, were shivered to atoms in transit, while the other smouldering stuff was promptly seized by the crowd below and dumped into the little brook that ran along the north side of the track.
After these efforts, no attempt was made to save the building, for there was no water-supply, or fire company other than a bucket-brigade, which was ineffectual against the keen spring wind that was scattering the brands over the thirsty old shingles. The burning station furnished an hour's spectacle both for the villagers and the passengers on the Owl Express which, being on the near track, had to wait; then shrivelled into a cellar full of ashes crossed by a few charred beams, the fire of which was soon changed to harmless smoke by the efforts of the bucket-brigade. The express ceased its tooting, gave one long and two short whistles, and proceeded on its way; while after the safe and miscellaneous contents of the express office had been transferred to the freight-house, the throng turned homeward to snatch a little sleep in the couple of hours that remained before the working day began.
'Lisha Potts was so thoroughly awake that it did not seem to him worth while to go to bed again, especially as he wished to make an early start for home. Satira, having also been to the fire, was in a bustling mood, so she prepared some of her famous coffee, and the pair sat down to a four o'clock pick-up breakfast in the kitchen of the post-office house, with many cautions of silence interspersed with little jokes and much chuckling that belonged to a young couple on the verge of eloping rather than to people of sedate years who were about to take up housekeeping once more after a winter of partial separation.
Presently 'Lisha stood in the doorway facing the east, watching the sky redden until the climax was reached in the coming up of the sun over Moosatuck, while the swifts wheeling in and out of the stone chimney behind him were making mimic thunder. He was undecided whether to begin at once the grooming of his horses or take a stroll along the lane that indirectly joined the two main roads and get a sniff of the mist-laden morning air so necessary to those whose life has been of the open.
Choosing the latter, he had gone but a dozen rods when he met the station-master, who had come across lots with the direct intention of hunting him out. It seemed that the mass of smouldering débris cast from the attic into the brook had bunched together and formed an impromptu dam, to the extent that the little stream, unusually lusty from the spring rains, had been diverted from its course to the switch track, where it was now busily washing the ballast from between the ties. The station-master's errand was to see if 'Lisha would hook up and cart the stuff about half a mile farther down the road to where a bottomless bog-hole conveniently consumed the refuse of the community.
Armed with a potato-digger by way of a weapon, 'Lisha was soon loading the sodden stuff into his long wagon, which he chanced to be driving the night before, when he had come direct from the lumber camp to the post-office house.
"Do you reckon there's any of this old stuff that's any good to dry out?" he asked the station-master, who was standing on the switch track on the lookout for the milk train.
"Nope; there's no company property amongst it, only a lot of odds and ends that's been up there since old Binks's day, and his widder didn't see value in to move. That little cow-skin trunk I've never seen before; it must have lain away in the dark pit behind the chimney; it might have been a sort of a curiosity if it hadn't been scorched and bulged, but as it is, better dump the whole lot and done with it."
Not until 'Lisha was unloading the steaming and ill-smelling mass did the box in question excite his curiosity; then dropping it to the grass, he finished his task and swept out his wagon before waiting to examine the trunk.
The lock had been broken and rusted away, the strap also had disintegrated, so that all that held it together was a loop of wire. Jerking the top up disclosed a mass of smoking rags and a few bundles of scorched papers. The smell of the burned hide with which it was still partly covered nearly choked 'Lisha as he stooped to finger the contents. He was about to gather the things together and give the trunk a mighty toss into the swamp, when a bundle of yellow papers, swelled by the dampness and heat, squirmed and fell apart, leaving a long envelope, in fairly good condition, lying face upward. It was merely the sudden movement of the papers that drew the man's eye toward them, but he quickly went nearer for a second look, then seized upon the letter with hands that shook so that the characters danced about like will-o'-the-wisps before him. Yes, the address was plain enough, a well-known name, written in a delicate, pointed hand; the sight of it made his heart beat like a nervous woman's. Turning the letter, he saw that the large seal on it had never been broken.
Carefully wiping it on his coat, 'Lisha put it in his pocket and began to stir the other papers, but very carefully, for the heat and moisture made it very easy for a careless motion to turn the bundles into pulp. "To whomsoever's hands these papers may fall," was written across the wrapper of the most considerable package, while even as 'Lisha read it moisture altered the writing so that its identity vanished in a blurred streak. Quickly realizing that unless the papers were carefully dried and separated their purport would be lost, he tipped the water from the trunk and closed the lid, saying apparently to Toby the near horse, after the fashion of a woodsman who talks to his animals:—
"There's suthin queer about this trunk, but as I be the hands the papers have fallen into, I reckon I'll look into them."
Then, as an impetus akin to an electric spark touched the mists of conjecture that were gathering in his roomy if not systematically ordered brain, he jumped fairly off the ground, shouting:—
"Great snakes! suppos'n' these here have something to do with the lady baby! Maybe the box was meant to come along with her; those rags there look as if they was once baby clothes. But how did them villains that left her get her switched off from her goods, and why ain't the letter 'dressed to Oliver Gilbert instead of to—My Lord! but this here's a dilemma with three horns, not the two-horned, ornery kind.
"If I take 'em to Satiry, she'll be so fussed up she'll worry 'em to bits before read; if Oliver Gilbert or Poppy gets 'em and I'm on the wrong track, as I've nothing yet but instinct to prove that I ain't, it'll pull her heart out with disappointment or maybe give him a stroke, for strokes comes frequent to folks turned of seventy. If a thing's so red-hot you can't handle it, there's folks that by nature's meant to do it for you, and them's the doctor, the lawyer, and the parson. I reckon in this case the parson's the best, 'cause if the Lord has let down a bit of his wisdom, discretion, and loving-kindness in a sheet by four corners in this neighborhood, it's fell on Stephen Latimer.
"I'll just clip over there by the back way and leave the box and home again before a soul's awake to spy and whisper; hey, Toby 'n Bill?"
And the horses, accustomed to respond to his cheerful address and being keen for breakfast, replied by a doubly shrill whinny.
It was past six o'clock when 'Lisha drove into the yard of the Rectory. Latimer had but then returned from the cottage colony at the Mills, where he had given courage to a young mother on the road of shadows that seemed doubly lonely in that she would leave her new-born son behind.
Latimer wore the look of having himself walked in the beyond at day dawn, and rough 'Lisha, no less than Jeanne, was struck by the illumination of his face.
At 'Lisha's whispered surmises concerning the contents of the trunk, he showed no surprise, but the rapt intensity that surrounded him increased.
"Take it to my study," was all he said; and when Jeanne came in a few minutes later, attracted by the sound of voices, 'Lisha had gone, and her husband sat looking at the object on the floor, his hands clasped as though he prayed.
He read the question in her face, all the more beautiful to him that the love and care of others had left their life-lines on the cheeks that were once as round and dimpled as a baby's. Telling the bare facts, he added: "Something was struggling to make known that this was coming, for all last night the face of the new-born babe I christened was Poppea's and the other face that of her mother. The day will come, Jeanne, when there will no longer be anything unnatural about the happenings that we call visions and miracles, because the knowledge will have come to us to understand them."
Then after breakfasting together in the sweet spring morning, in quiet confidence, only separated in degree from the other couple who ate at the post-office house before the dawn, Stephen Latimer lay down to take some open-eyed rest before examining the trunk. When he began the work, he cautioned Jeanne to refuse him absolutely to all callers. Then, provided with blotters, a thin paper-knife, and warm irons, he spread a sheet upon the study floor and raised the water-soaked lid.
All through the morning he worked, separating and drying. At noon, when Jeanne opened the door, he did not turn his head, and setting the tray of luncheon where he could see it, she closed the door again without speaking. When supper-time came and she again entered, the papers were arranged upon his desk in tidy piles, and he was reading. He stretched his hand out for the cup of tea she held and still kept at his task.
It was after eight o'clock when he called her, and white and exhausted as he looked, she saw at once that he had reached some definite conclusion. Begging him to take at least a bowl of soup, he assented, and then drew her to him on the seat before the open window. Holding her hand as if the tender grasp of it would focus and harmonize his thoughts, he sat a moment silent, as though he had lost the gift of words.
"Was Poppea's secret hid among those papers?" Jeanne finally asked, unable to restrain her curiosity any longer. "And if it was, do tell me quickly and simply who she is, and then the why of it after. You don't realize, Stevie, what the strain of this long day has been upon a woman."
"It can be told quickly, but for the rest it's not a simple matter," replied Stephen, trying with his tired brain to sort his ideas and put them in sequence. "The papers in this trunk are various family letters, the certificate of Poppea's birth and baptism and some of her mother's diaries—"
"Yes, yes! butwhowas her mother?" cried Jeanne, the uncontrollable impetuosity of youth returning to her, so that she rose to a kneeling position on the window-seat and almost shook her husband, so vigorously did she grasp his shoulder.
"Helen Dudleigh, John Angus's first wife; she whom Gilbert calls 'the little roseleaf.'"
"Helen Dudleigh!" Jeanne repeated in an indrawn voice. "Then Poppea can have no legal father, because John Angus's first wife merely left him and there was never a divorce. Perhaps this was the reason for her going, you know none was ever given; but no one ever dreamed that any fault lay with her."
"Yes, it was the reason of her going, yet no one need ever dream of legal wrong, for John Angus himself is Poppea's father."
Jeanne fell back, and then, after searching her husband's face and reading there that he was speaking the unmetaphorical truth, she drew a low chair to where she might continue to look at him and whispered:—
"Go on!"
"There is much detail among those papers that belongs to Poppea alone, but this is the brief story that I have drawn from them.
"Over thirty years ago, John Angus was travelling on the continent when, at the same hotel where he was stopping, he met an English artist, Walter Dudleigh, who was staying there, both on account of his health, and because his young daughter Helen was studying singing.
"Dudleigh was a widower of good birth but of frail health and uncertain means. That Angus was at once struck by the girl's delicate beauty—she was then only eighteen—some of these letters prove, and after hearing her sing at a fête of flowers given by the conservatory, in which she took the part of a poppy, he proposed to her, or rather to her father for her. The artist, knowing that he had only a short life before him and no one with whom to leave his child, urged on the match, and as a wedding gift to his son-in-law, painted a miniature of Helen as she had appeared at the fête with the poppies in her hair, having the fanciful name of Poppea engraved in the locket with the date.
"This is, of course, the miniature that hung about Poppea's neck when she was found.
"Dudleigh died of hemorrhage of the lungs almost before the honeymoon was over, leaving the girl an unexpected two thousand pounds that came from her mother, and Angus soon after returned to this country with his girl wife.
"From the first she seems to have had a hard time of it. An emotional child with an artistic temperament, thrown not only among strange people and customs, but married to a man who always commanded and never explained, and who considered that implicit affection, if it might be so called, was her legal duty, a sort of commercial article that he had bought, and nothing to be either won or kept by consideration or tenderness. She, chilled and lonely, evidently did not make the marked social success he desired, and his constant reproach was that she bore him no children, for John Angus seems to have had an exaggerated idea of the political importance of founding a family, so often held by those of no especial ancestry.
"Ten years wore away, and Helen Angus, still under thirty, had faded to the timorous, trembling shadow that we knew, when one summer, the love of youth and life taking a final flicker, in John Angus's absence she came out of her seclusion and took part in some of the Feltons' entertainments, and renewed her habit of going to church, which had dropped away. At this time it chanced that Mr. Esterbrook's nephew, a young army officer, met her, danced with her, and showed her some courtesies, but no more than any woman might receive. Nevertheless, on his return, Angus upbraided her for going out, and upon her maintaining her own defence for the first time in many years, he struck her furiously and left the house, not returning for more than a week.
"During this period of outraged feeling and humiliation, she discovered that at last a child was to be born to her, and resolving that John Angus should not have it in his power to torture another human being as he had herself, she determined to go away, leaving a letter saying that the price of her silence concerning his treatment culminating in the blow was that he should not try to find her. Public censure on his private conduct was not what was desired by Angus in his prayer-meeting and political purity pose, so he seems to have heeded her request.
"Helen Angus went directly to the little village in Hampshire on the Isle of Wight where she had spent her childhood and sought out Betty Randal, a woman of fifty, who had also been her nurse and managed their little household prior to her father's going abroad. With Betty she arranged not only to care for her during the coming crisis, but if a daughter should be born, to keep her as long as her little sum of money lasted and to teach her to earn her living and thus make it possible for her to be free from her father if she so desired on learning her mother's story.
"A girl was born and duly baptized Helen Dudleigh, by the rector of St. Boniface's near Bonchurch, and the mother, worn out by contending emotions more than disease, lived to see her daughter three months old, and then was laid away, according to a death notice in a Hampshire paper. This notice was in an envelope lettered by an illiterate hand and is dated two weeks after the last record in Helen Angus's diary. That she knew that she could not live is certain, for all the written evidence was carefully prepared and the writing is decipherable in spite of time and the blur of moisture.
"One package contains Helen Angus's marriage certificate and the certificate of Poppea's birth and baptism; another her diaries and some letters marked, 'Not to be read by my daughter until she is either eighteen or forced to return to her father.' And then a single thick letter (the one that had attracted 'Lisha Potts), sealed and addressed to John Angus, and underneath in brackets the words, 'To be delivered in case he should dispute my daughter's paternity.'"
As Latimer paused to wipe away the drops of sweat that stood upon his forehead, he laid the letter on the table beside his wife and both looked at the yellow paper and blurred writing with a feeling of awe at the living evidence of the poor little roseleaf, wife who, beneath their very eyes, had suffered so much in silence and then as silently gone away to die. Hot tears trickled between the fingers that Jeanne held before her face, but after the relief they brought, questions again formed themselves.
"But how did the child come here so soon and why was she left at Oliver Gilbert's instead of the Angus house?" asked Jeanne, "and how could the little trunk have been hidden away so long?"
"The last question might be easily answered," said Stephen. "It was left in the height of the excited war times when the checking of baggage was not as rigid as it is now. In fact, merely the name of the village may have been on the box, which was put aside until called for and presently forgotten."
"As to how Poppea came here, was separated from her possessions, and left at the wrong door, there we have another and unsolved mystery that must be learned from the man who left her, the man with the scar on his hand."
"Was it the wrong door after all, Stephen? Has she not been protected and loved as her mother would have wished until she knows what love is, even if she has suffered in a lesser way?"
"Yes, Jeanne, in one way; but do you realize, at the same time, in what a light she has learned to regard her father, and that a knowledge of his unrelenting spite is almost a part of her being? In all this is her mother justified, but how inextricably it complicates the future and its relations to every one concerned."
"How and when shall you tell her, Stephen? To-night?"
"No, I am much too worn. I will write her a brief note at once, saying that papers have come to me concerning the identity of her parents, and asking her to come here at once. She will get the note in the morning mail and be able to accustom herself to the contents without the effort of speech."
"Why do you not go to her?"
"Because Poppea will need to be alone with her mother's papers for a space. It would be too trying if she should hear it first amid the confusion at the office or in the company of any one, even of Oliver Gilbert."
"Is it not strange, Stephen, that 'Lisha Potts, who was the first to open the door that night, should have been the one to bring this all about?"
"Yes, Jeanne, more than strange; we seem to be floating in mystery. No, I cannot sleep yet; I must let the organ speak to me. Come into the church for a little while, dearest, and sit beside me while I play."
Early in the afternoon of the day after the fire, as Stephen Latimer sat writing in his study, a shadow that did not shift fell across his paper. Glancing up, he saw Poppea, who, coming in the door behind, stood looking at him as intently as though she would force him to yield up his thoughts without the medium of words. Latimer, who knew that it would be a trying interview, sought vainly to gauge her mood by the expression of her face. When he thought, by the wistful lines of the mouth, that tenderness was uppermost, the calm and searching look from her eyes revealed indomitable pride, the trait of her later development.
"Will you stay here?" he said, trying to gain time and turning Jeanne's special low chair with its back to the bright light, "or would you rather go down into the sitting room?"
"Here, if you please," she replied, yet making no move toward the chair. Then, as he sat fumbling with the papers, she took two or three steps forward so that she could steady herself by resting her hands on the table.
"Please do not try to be ceremoniously polite, nor look away from me. I know that you have something to tell me that you think I shall not like to hear, perhaps cannot bear. Be it so, but remember you are making it less hard by telling me yourself. Now you must speak at once, for I think if this uncertainty lasts another hour, my heart will stop through dread."
Latimer stood up and faced her, moistening his lips the while, as if trying to grip his words.
"It is mainly good news, not bad, dear child," he said at last. "It is the uncertainty of how best to begin coupled with fatigue of nerves that makes me hesitate. Perhaps you would better read the papers first"—pointing to the packages on the table.
"Where did you get them?"
Latimer told her as briefly as might be.
"No, I cannot read them until Iknow; the printed words would prolong that,—my brain is already on fire, I think. If I question, will you answer, Mr. Latimer?"
"Yes," and he pointed once more to the chair, feeling that he himself had not strength to stand.
Poppea, always alert to the needs of others, realized this and seated herself, grasping the arms of the chair with a tension that made the blood settle about her finger nails.
"You know who my parents are?"
"Yes."
"Were they married?"
"Yes."
"Are they living?"
"Your mother is not."
"I think that I knew that;shewould not have left me on a doorstep. Is the miniature in the locket my mother's portrait?"
"Your mother at nineteen."
"Ah, then, at least, I need not give up that idea! I have been telling her so many things these last years that I could not let her cast me off, and I could not leave her," Poppea murmured, looking over Latimer's head out through the open door.
"Would you not better read these papers now?" Latimer almost pleaded. He had been at many death-beds, and had once walked beside a murderer to the gallows without flinching, exalted by his calling, and able to impart his confidence to others; now not only were his sympathies worked to their highest pitch, but there was a complicated moral aspect about the case that might at any moment be turned at him in a way to render him speechless.
"Only one more question before I touch the papers," and Poppea crossed the room and again stood by the table facing the clergyman.
"Whowas my mother?"
Now that the moment had come, Latimer's perturbation vanished, and rising and resting his hands also upon the table, he faced her, holding her eyes by the firmness of his own.
"Your mother was Helen Dudleigh, the first wife of John Angus."
For a moment Poppea did not speak; she was communing with memory; when she did, the voice was but an echo of her own.
"Helen Angus, the roseleaf wife that Daddy has often told me about, who went away alone and died far off; who stopped to speak to him at the shop and have her watch fixed when she was leaving. I wonder if Daddy has not dreamed of this, for he has told me of her over and over again."
Then Poppea's wistful expression changed to one of new uncertainty. "But how can that be, Mr. Latimer? The roseleaf wife never was divorced from John Angus, Daddy says, and so she could not have been married to my father. Was he mistaken, or are you?"
"Neither of us, my child; do you not understand?"
Putting one hand to her forehead, she thought with knitted brows, then gave a sharp cry and started back.
"You don't mean—you can't mean me to think that John Angus is my father! No, God couldn't be so cruel to Daddy and to me. Anything, any one but that man! I would rather have never known at all or have had my mother alone and closed my eyes to all the rest."
"Think what you say, Poppea!"
"It is because I am thinking that I say it; I would rather for myself alone have been born outside of what is called wedlock; it would have been more natural and less horrible!"
"But it is not for yourself alone, remember that. If the end lay with ourselves and we could bear all the penalty, there would be many a law that every one of us in our time would push aside or shatter. But we are of the race on whom the charge is laid,Thou shalt not!and when we throw it off, the next in line, who has not felt the pressure of our motive, bears the penalty."
"I am the next and the end, and if I had to suffer, it would be alone."
"Read, little one; read the papers and think awhile in quiet. Then sleep on it; to-morrow you may feel differently."
"To-morrow? There is no to-morrow to hate. You yourself told me years ago that love is the only thing that owns to-morrow."
For a moment Latimer winced, but only for a moment.
"Yes, and love will make the to-morrow yours, the love of your brother Philip!"
"Philip—he? Philip, my brother! Oh, God, have mercy and forgive me. I had not thought of him," and Poppea crouched by the table, burying her face in her hands.
Quietly and firmly Stephen Latimer raised her. Leading her to his chair, he pointed again to the papers; then, saying, "Jeanne and I will be in the room below; if you wish either of us, knock on the floor," he left the room, closing the door behind him.
At intervals during the afternoon there was a sound of rapid footsteps overhead, as though Poppea was pacing the floor, but all else was silent. It was almost supper-time when they heard steps upon the stairs, and Poppea came slowly into the sitting room, the papers gathered into a bundle in her arms.
Jeanne went to her, clasped her arms about her neck and kissed her; she then slipped out, saying she would hurry tea and that Poppea must stay to take the meal with them.
When Poppea, having wrapped her bundle in the light shawl she had brought, came toward him, Latimer was again surprised at the change in her whole bearing. Passion and tension had alike disappeared from her face, and though she was pale and her eyelids showed traces of tears, the eyes were clear and calm. When she spoke, there was no uncertainty or vacillation in her tone, but a quiet resolve that seemed as though it should have come through the experience and self-control of years instead of a single afternoon.
"Jeanne is very good, but I think I would best go home now; there are several things that I must do to-night."
"What are they, Poppea? I should think that you would need to rest first of all. Stay with us now, and after supper we will walk home with you."
"If you will do that, I will wait, for then you will stop and tell it all to Daddy while I do—the other thing. Oh nothing, nothing you could do would help more than telling Daddy, Mr. Latimer, for I think it will be easier for him as it was for me to hear it from you. I only wish this had not happened while he is here, now hemustknow; yet after all, what hethinkswill be the only difference it can make."
"What is the other thing, my child, that you must do to-night?" Latimer persisted.
"Go up to see John Angus and show him these," and from her loose blouse she pulled three papers, the certificate of her birth, baptism, and the sealed letter.
"But, Poppea, you must not do this yourself; suppose he will not listen, does not believe, or, possibly, in his bewilderment, should say something hard for you to bear and impossible for you to forget."
"He has already done that more than once."
"Be reasonable, my child; this is a matter for a lawyer, who will take the case from its legal aspect only and see to it that your claims are publicly maintained."
"My mother did not have a lawyer when she went away; she made no public claims, neither shall I."
"Then let me go to Angus as your friend, or else Hugh Oldys, who would be both friend and lawyer; you cannot possibly realize the position in which you may place yourself or, for that matter, place us all, through your suffering."
"I do not mean to be wilful, but this that I must do to-night and what I have to ask concerns only we three,—my mother, Philip, and myself,—so I must go alone; a half hour will be more than enough, and there will be no trouble. Will you not also tell Miss Emmy and Hugh? He has tried so hard in every way to find out what this fire has made known, purely for my sake, because he knew how much it meant to me, not that he cared. I want him to know before any one else but Daddy, and I hope—I pray that he will beveryglad," and a look crossed Poppea's face that she did not know was there, but Latimer saw it, and his heart sank as he replied:—
"In these dark days Hugh Oldys keeps both joy (of which he has little) and sorrow to himself, as if the sharing of either might divert him from his fixed purpose concerning his mother."
Then Stephen Latimer ceased urging and they went to the supper table, all three creating talk merely to avoid the strain of silence.
It was a little past eight o'clock, the hour for closing, when Poppea and Stephen Latimer reached the post-office; the only light other than from the street lantern came from Oliver Gilbert's workshop. Going softly to the farther window, Poppea looked in, beckoning Latimer to follow her.
Gilbert sat at his desk, with all his little relics spread before him, the daguerreotype of Mary, a little black paper profile of Marygold, the shoes Poppea had first worn, and various photographs of her, from one taken at the county fair in company with Hugh Oldys, to the rather dramatic picture by Sarony in her first concert gown. Then putting these back into their drawer, he drew out the old ledger, read his Lincoln letters through, touching them lovingly. After putting these also away, he crossed the room to the work bench, lighted both lamps, and, in spite of the sultriness of the evening, began to work, now and then glancing first at the clock and then at the door, with a sigh.
"I wonder of what he is thinking," said Poppea. "Please go in, Mr. Latimer, and tell him that I am coming very soon. If I should go to him now, even for a minute, I should stay and these papers would be burned," and Poppea pressed her hand to her bosom as if to brace herself by the knowledge of what she carried.
"No, do not come with me, it is only a step up the hill and the moon is rising." So saying, Poppea turned the corner of the post-office and went up the hill road.
When she reached the massive gate, she paused before she laid her hand upon the latch, which, in all these years of proximity, she had never before touched. It yielded easily, and she found herself walking toward the house, guided on her way by the long beds of heavily scented hyacinth and narcissus that outlined the path.
A bronze lamp hung in the porch, the front door stood partly open, and Poppea could see lights in the long hall beyond. She was surprised at her own calmness. When she pulled the bell that jangled sharply through the great rooms, she felt no less at ease than if she had rung at the Feltons' door.
The butler, who answered the summons, was the one to evince surprise, or perhaps dismay is the apter term, for the feud as it was regarded between the great house and the post-office was well known below stairs, and of course mightily exaggerated in its details.
Poppea said very quietly, "Please ask if Mr. John Angus can see Miss Gilbert on business."
The butler, however, wishing to take no risks, motioned Poppea to follow him, and throwing open the door of one of the rooms on the left of the long hall, announced in ringing tones, "Miss Gilbert to see Mr. Angus on business!" then promptly disappeared down the corridor only to slip back into the adjoining room where he could be a party to what was, to his mind, an occasion where anything including murder might happen.
As Poppea advanced into the room which was John Angus's library, he arose slowly from one of the deep chairs in which he had been half dozing, half reading. For a minute she thought that he had not heard her name.
John Angus, whatever his feelings might be, always kept up at least the external traditions of courtesy in the ceremonious rooms of his own house. Coming forward, but without asking her to be seated, in coldly civil tones he asked her what he could do for her, at the same time trying to gain an advantage by guessing her errand. Had she, possibly, laid to him the scheme of consolidating the two post-offices under a new name? Was she come to either beg or offer quarter in the shape of the original bit of land he coveted? Or, the feeling of apprehension that had come over him the night that he had seen her personate Sylvaine returned with redoubled force, but he pushed it aside as being too improbable.
Seeing that she was looking at him fixedly and did not reply, he repeated the question, motioning carelessly to a chair as he did so.
Poppea remained standing, and drawing two of the papers from her dress, she held them towards him, saying, "Read those."
There was no insolence in her words or manner, but there was that quality in her that precluded any idea of refusal. Without even feeling surprised, he took the papers and carrying them to his reading lamp, unfolded them deliberately.
The minutes passed slowly; when perhaps five had elapsed, he turned an ashy face toward Poppea, and asked curtly:—
"Where did you obtain these papers, and how long have you had them?"
Poppea answered with equal brevity, then there was another pause.
"Have you any other proof of this claim that you are making?" Angus asked, his hand shaking so that he laid the papers on the table with difficulty.
"I am making no claim for myself; I am merely acting for my mother," she replied, never taking her eyes from his face. "As to further proof, I have this letter that my mother left for you, should you raise the question."
Angus took the letter in his hand, saw the address in the characteristic writing of his first wife, and the words below in the corner. Crushing the envelope in an effort not to drop it, he said quickly:—
"I did not say that I disputed your claim to be the daughter of Helen Dudleigh, for you resemble her very closely, now that I see you for the first time face to face."
"Ah! you see it then; was that why you left the room so suddenly the night that I sang in the dress of the miniature?"
"Yes, it was," replied Angus, amazed at his direct answer, yet unable to hold it back.
"If it is not that but the other part that is in dispute, then youmustread the letter!"
John Angus looked at her, then at the envelope, an angry flash in his eyes, the color surging back to his face until it was suffused with a deep, veiny red.
"And if I do not choose to read it? if I prefer to set a match to it, instead of troubling myself with what might be the clever scheme of an—" here Angus paused as though he were conscious of being swept farther than he cared or dared to go.
"Adventuress," said Poppea, "the same name that you gave me a year ago in your complaint to the government about the post-office." Angus's eyes dropped before the unexpected accusation, and Poppea continued:—
"You are perfectly at liberty to burn the letter, but you will not until you have read it, because you are more anxious to know its contents than to justify my mother or me."
It is always the unexpected that subdues a man of John Angus's fibre, who lives by carefully made and guarded plans and prides himself on the fact of never changing his mind, and Poppea's quiet persistence, void of either impertinence, threat, or beseeching, was the last thing he had ever dreamed of encountering. Slowly he broke open the seal and envelope, having some difficulty in unfolding the single sheet that it contained, as the moistened ink had become sticky and in drying had left an offset that made the letter difficult to decipher. As he read he turned toward the light and Poppea could not see his face, but after he had refolded the paper and put it in his pocket, he continued sitting in the same position until, the silence becoming more than she could bear, she closed her eyes and tried to call up the picture of Daddy poring over his little relics at his desk in the shop, to give her relief.
When a slight noise caused her to open them, Angus was standing before her, his breath coming spasmodically, the drawn look having again driven the color from his face.
"What do you wish?" he asked abruptly. Poppea knew then that a more complete verbal explanation was unnecessary. In that brief sentence and its intonation lay the acknowledgment that she sought, while, at the same time, her comprehension of his moods, in spite of her dislike of the man, proved the bond of fundamental relationship.
"What do you wish?" he repeated.
"That you shall tell Philip what Iamas decidedly as you once told him—what I wasnot."
If it had been possible for Angus to be abashed, one might have said that he was so now. In the suddenness of it all this phase had not occurred to him, but his dominant will soon overcame what he put down to the momentary physical weakness that had overcome him many times during the past year, and he said, with his old air of conferring a favor:—
"I will explain to my son to-morrow. I mean when do you wish to come—" (he was about to say home, and then the hollowness of the term even to his comprehension changed the words) "up here to live?"
Ignoring the second part of the sentence wholly, Poppea repeated:—
"Philip must know now, to-night. Suppose for one of the three to-morrow should not come? I hear him on the stairs. Will you not call him in?"
There was something in Poppea's suppressed passion that froze John Angus and caused his faculties to work more slowly than their wont. As he hesitated, trying to frame some moderate and dignified phrase, Poppea, unable to stand the strain of being alone with him any longer, finding her self-control vanishing and rash words pressing at her very lips, called:—
"Philip, Philip, come here to the library—It is I—Poppea!"
The slow steps quickened at the unexpected cry, and pushing the door open so vigorously that it crashed back against a piece of furniture, Philip came in—glanced at Poppea and his father both standing—remembered the latter's fury on the day that he had broken the plaster bust. Straightway going to Poppea, he threw one arm about her, and then turning, said:—
"What are you saying to her, Father? Why did she call me as if she were afraid?"
With the air of one to whom Philip's coming was at precisely the desired moment, Angus replied, "She called you that I might tell you that she is your half-sister, Philip; the daughter of my first wife."
All at once Poppea was kneeling beside Philip, her arms tight about him, whispering, "I called you because I need you, shall always need you to help me to bear this."
Looking down into her upturned face, an almost holy light came into Philip's eyes as he repeated softly, "Sister? You are my sister? Then that is what it means that I have been feeling for you all these years. Oh, sister!Ineedyou; I have always needed you to help me bear tolive." In that young face with all its artistic capacity for intense joy as well as suffering there was stamped already the knowledge that in such affection alone could he find place, that the barrier of his infirmity stood forever between him and the other love of woman.
As they spoke thus together John Angus waited for a moment, considering them critically. Noticing the little blemish on Poppea's ear, he involuntarily raised his hand to his own ear bearing the same mark.
Poppea had all the first fresh beauty of his wife Helen, that after the days of courtship he had thought to possess forever by mere force of will and legal right; but in Poppea he saw much of the strength of his own resolution with this, to him, incomprehensible cross,—Poppea knew what love meant, but Angus understood only the power of ambition and authority. There she was, his daughter, yet only the unwilling kin of flesh, always to be a stranger in spirit. Then as he saw that the two had forgotten his presence, he left the room to seek his own chamber and pace up and down in a half-physical attempt to readjust himself to the circumstances that had overtaken him.
After all, he argued, thanks to the Feltons, his daughter was an accomplished woman with many friends. At last he would have some one to make his house a social centre, and probably she would after a time make a brilliant marriage. He had heard that Bradish Winslow had admired her—there would now be no reason on his part why he might not follow the game to a suitable finish. Toward Oliver Gilbert, however, his old-time resentment, instead of diminishing, was increased. How was it that this humble man always managed to come between? How utterly abominable to be obliged to assume an attitude of obligation!
Had his wife Helen directed in the case of her death that the child be left with Gilbert as a sort of spite to himself? Or was it a mistake and the intention been to leave her at his house on Windy Hill?
In either case he held Gilbert to blame, for he, in his comparative poverty, had supported the child and naturally (from Angus's standpoint) would expect recompense, while the very act had deprived Angus of rearing his own child. In this way he worked himself into a commendable fit of righteous indignation, entirely forgetting that had Poppea been left at his door, without the subsequent evidence, he would have been the first, on principle, to have sent her to the town farm.
As Poppea made her way up the hill, Stephen Latimer opened the door of Oliver Gilbert's workshop. Gilbert put down the bit of work at which he had been tinkering, and leaning back, hands behind head, prepared to enjoy a comfortable dish of talk with the dominie, who could always move satisfactorily from books and the political outlook to farming and local news, without either exertion to himself or condescension toward the listener, and then, first and last, he was always ready to speak of Poppea.
After delivering the girl's message that she would soon return, the consolidation of the two towns under the name of West Harbor, now practically an accomplished fact, was discussed, then the burning of the railway station naturally followed.
"Has 'Lisha Potts been in to-day?" Latimer inquired.
"No, but he'll be down to-morrow; Satiry insists that she's coming to bake us up once a week or so. Poppy don't want it, but I must look to it she don't overdo her strength; you see she isn't in body one of our hard-working race, Mr. Latimer. I sort of think her mother was a rather delicate woman."
With this for the entering wedge, Mr. Latimer saw his way to going farther.
"Then you have some idea about her mother? I have thought this for some time. I have an idea also, more than an idea; suppose we compare them," and he told briefly of the trunk of papers and 'Lisha finding them.
Instantly Gilbert's bent shoulders straightened, new life came to his eyes; leaning forward he sat in an attitude of such expectant certainty of what he was to hear that Latimer could not help smiling as he said, "Poppea's mother was—"
"Helen Angus, little Roseleaf, wife of that man who drove her to do what she did!" broke in Gilbert, unable to hold his conviction any longer. "No one who knew her could blame her,—I, who know what Angus is and was, least of all. Young Esterbrook was a dashing, taking blade, like many an army man, not steady like his uncle. I kept track of him for years one way or another; he never married, and was killed in Indian warfare near Cheyenne, so he would never have turned up; and yet, of course before the world this will be a blight upon Poppea. I wish 'Lisha Potts had dropped the papers in the bog; I wish to God he had, Mr. Latimer! Could you find it right in your conscience to burn the papers and let the past be buried? Needsheknow?"
"She knows already, Gilbert."
The old man groaned and struck his clenched hand on the table. "Ah, well," he said, "that takes it from my hands and the temptation with it, but it's hard, right hard, to feel, link by link, that my power to protect her from trouble is going. But," as an idea made him brighten again, "she can keep my name, can't she, dominie? It's hers, isn't it, by law?"
"Yes, Gilbert, it is hers for good unless she chooses to renounce it," Latimer replied fervently. "But stop a minute, old friend, think—suppose that young Esterbrook wasnotPoppea's father, and that the only wrong (though it was a virtue, not a fault) that Helen Angus did was in preferring to have her child born away from the atmosphere of tyranny that was crushing out her own life. Could you be glad? Not for yourself, not for ourselves, but for the law's full measure?"
For a while Gilbert sat so absolutely motionless that Latimer began to fear that he was suffering some sort of shock, while it was merely the slowness of his comprehension of what had never before occurred to him ever so remotely. A moment later, he started up with blazing eyes and all the fury of a madman.
"That! that! Oh, my God! Then he can take her from me in my old age, from me who have reared her. He can take her, but he cannot love her as I have nor make her love him! I withheld the bit of land, my birthright, that he coveted, and this is my punishment!
"Pray and pray quickly, dominie; it isn't the dying of the body that must soon come that I fear; no, nor even the craziness that is reaching out after me. I'm losing my hold on believing! It's all slipping and slipping until I'm going down out of sight of Mary and little Marygold. Help me! Stephen Latimer, help me keep my faith! Not in the everyday prayers from books or Bible; I want something nearer, something said by some one that has lived and suffered in the times that I have!
"There on that card that hangs under his picture—He knew,—he suffered. I've pieced his words together for my need, and said them every day and night these many years. Now all is a blank, I can't remember them," and Gilbert fell upon his knees, his head covered by his arms, strangled with sobs.
Following where Gilbert pointed, Latimer saw an old calendar card hanging below Lincoln's portrait. Seizing it, he found on the reverse side Gilbert's crooked writing, and straightway kneeling beside him, one arm about his shoulders, he read this prayer:—
"'Keep us free from giving offence, O Lord; neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us do our duty as we understand it to the end.'
"'Both of us read the same Bible and pray to the same God. Each invokes His aid against the other. The prayers of both cannot be answered—Thine it is to choose between us.
"'Thou hast Thine own purposes. Woe unto the world because of offences, for it must needs be that offences come, but woe unto that man by whom the offence cometh." Through Thine aid keep us with malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as it is given us to see the right; let us strive on to finish the work and to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with Thee, O God, for the sake of Him who suffered to teach us how to bear suffering.'"
After Latimer's voice ceased, there was again a long silence, as if each man prayed alone. Then Gilbert pulled himself slowly to his chair, and with hands clasped upon his knees to hide their trembling, he said clearly, as if reading his own death sentence over in order to become used to the sound of it:—
"I must not forget! She will go to her own home and father upon the hill—"
"Daddy!" came the cry from the open door. A rush across the room and Poppea was clinging to the old man, laughing and sobbing at the same time.
"Daddy! dear Daddy! Don't you know that this is my home, and that you are my father, just as God is, because we love each other?"
Then it was Stephen Latimer's turn to steal away and turn his footsteps to where Jeanne was waiting with anxious eyes, straining to see through the dark.
Stephen Latimer, as soon as might be, communicated with the few people that Poppea considered had a right to know of the solving of the mystery of the name, and these were the Felton ladies, Satira and 'Lisha Potts, and Hugh Oldys. He wrote the details to Miss Felton and 'Lisha, but called upon Miss Emmy and Hugh the same evening.
If there is aught in the saying that bad news spreads like fire in dry grass, while good news requires three kindlings, then the news concerning Poppea must have been considered very bad indeed. Owing probably to the eavesdropping of the butler, accounts more or less garbled appeared within two days, not only in the local and county papers, but in the New York journals as well. It was only in the latter, however, that anything was attempted like writing up the matter as a streak of good luck, upon which the heroine, as Poppea was called, was to be congratulated; one paper adding optimistically that she would, the coming season, open her father's house to those who had the past winter welcomed and entertained her solely on account of her incomparable charm coupled with her vocal ability.
The way in which those nearest to her took the change was the greatest possible proof of their single-hearted love for herself alone.
'Lisha received an unexpected rating from Satira, who told him he'd have better let Beaver Brook wash out the whole railroad company than have fished out that box of misery. Miss Emmy took a more conventional view of the matter, but ended by saying with a sigh, "As long as Poppea could not have grown up with the knowledge, it was better unknown."
Hugh Oldys alone remained absolutely silent; finally, Poppea, who was waiting with feverish eagerness for him to make some sign, received these few lines from him.
"I am glad for you if you are glad, little comrade. Yet oftentimes lately it has seemed to me that the positive knowledge of a thing is so much harder to bear than the vague lack of it, that I have ceased to ask, Why?"As ever your friend,"Hugh."
"I am glad for you if you are glad, little comrade. Yet oftentimes lately it has seemed to me that the positive knowledge of a thing is so much harder to bear than the vague lack of it, that I have ceased to ask, Why?
"As ever your friend,
"Hugh."
Over these few words Poppea pondered long and sadly, seated in the window of her little bedroom with the warm air of late May again bringing the fragrance of apple blossoms with it. It was not yet a year since they two had walked home together and she had hidden her heart that with the first lift of its wings was poised, ready to fly to Hugh, and at the same time she proffered him friendship. Her motives, surely, had been of the most unselfish, and, as she then thought, far-seeing, but now how insignificant they seemed compared to her loss that lay in Hugh's acceptance of them. If she could have felt one pulse of the old pressure in his hand-clasp when they met, or read the faintest inclination toward a need of her between the lines of the brief note, how quickly she would have revealed herself. Not only had she ceased to be a necessity, but rather it seemed were their meetings becoming a strain upon him, where even his cordial outward friendship was forced.
Ah, back, far back, her thoughts flew, no longer the strains of the motive of the Mystery of the Name sang to her brain; like Elsa, in the pursuit of the mystery, she had not gained but lost. Moreover, though she was happy in the fact that she might now see Philip without restraint or reproach, her joy must be pale compared to his, for to him she was all.
For a week or more John Angus had made no move other than to see that a proper statement of the facts of her birth was added to the village record, writing tersely to Poppea that he had communicated with his London solicitor to have all possible details traced out; then he waited.
The second week brought another note addressed to Miss Angus, asking her to fix the time of her coming home, as there were some necessary preparations to be made.
This note remained unanswered for several days, not because of anything contemptuous or insolent in Poppea's attitude, but for the reason that she did not know how to word her refusal in order to make it final without first consulting Stephen Latimer, and yet if she did so, she feared that he might, from his high impersonal standpoint, try to dissuade her; until, as she was about to write, the New York lawyer of John Angus called at the post-office house.
He was a polished man of the world as well as a legal light, but all the subtly drawn pictures of advantage presented with the intricacies of his calling were shattered upon the bare rock of her simple statement, "This is my home, and I shall not leave Daddy or drop this name that has sheltered me so long."
Utterly baffled, the lawyer's admiration for the girl's firmness did not prevent his returning to Angus and imparting something of the bitter and sarcastic mood that opposition develops in legal temperaments. So that while Angus ceased his attempts to bring Poppea to him, he brooded over the matter to such an extent that he really came to believe that he alone was wronged. If he had been physically able, he would have again closed the house and gone away, but he could no longer hide his increasing feebleness even from himself; consequently he had lost the first field in his effort to conceal his condition from others. Besides, Philip, once more established at his work, was now to be reckoned with,—Philip with a man's spiritual courage and his newly acquired strength of having kin, no longer bearing that brand of utter desolation,—the being the last of one's race.
All the other outlets being closed, John Angus fell back upon the law for solace, and with its advice constructed a will under which, outside of the cautionary sum of one hundred dollars, Poppea was to benefit in no way by his estate. This was so tied up that Philip also would lose his rights if he attempted in any way to share with his sister, and the document being duly signed, sealed, was stowed away in the little safe inserted in the wall by his bed head. He would not be within hearing of criticism when the paper went into effect, so Angus, wearing his usual air of inscrutability, took up his life much as before, save that he suddenly announced that, owing to Philip's love of the sea, he would build a midsummer home for him with a studio attached, on a strip of land that he owned on the west side of Quality Hill, where the Moosatuck joins the bay; and almost before the community had grasped the news the quaintly gabled house was under way.
With Poppea the matter was not to be allowed to rest so soon. Letters came to her from all quarters, congratulating her, giving invitations for visits, the sudden desire for her company all too evidently the result of her supposedly changed condition. Gloria Hooper wrote more than cordially, while Mrs. Hewlett, the well-meaning but very dense mother of the two susceptible sons, ended her letter with this dubious sentence, "I take great credit to myself, dear child, for always having believed that you were not what you seemed to be."
Others yet asked her plans and prospects in the most direct language, with all their social training missing the fine reticence in this matter that had marked the neighborhood people of Harley's Mills.
In early June Poppea went up to visit Miss Emmy for a few days. Brave as this little lady had been, the complete breaking up of the family arrangements of years, and the lack of Miss Felton's strong personality against which to lean, was telling upon her sadly. Her idea of a summer abroad, once abandoned, was now again under discussion. A summer of long periods of rest rather than hasty travel, with Nora for maid and Poppea for companion, was the doctor's advice, and at the same time he said that when the July heat came, it would be necessary for Miss Felton and her charge to leave the city, and where else could they be so comfortable as the great house on Quality Hill.
Miss Emmy had been talking over the journey with Poppea, who at last had consented to go with her, the final inducement being that she could visit Hampshire, and in learning any possible facts concerning her mother's life and death there, bring her nearer as a reality.
The third week in July was the time now set, and theNormanic, with its popular captain, the ship chosen, after much debate. That other time, in the sixties, when Miss Emmy had been on the verge of breaking away, theScotia, with its ponderous side-wheels, had been the only vessel to which women of sensibility felt that they could trust themselves.
Jeanne Latimer had come up for afternoon tea, and the two sat upon the broad piazza overlooking the rose garden, already showing the golden yellow of the scentless, old-fashioned, half-double brier roses contrasting with the vivid crimson and rich perfume of the Jacqueminots.
Each one of the three women was in a reflective mood, in which, strange to say, the thought focussed about each other rather than about themselves.
"Where is Mr. Latimer?" asked Poppea. "This morning, when I met him on the village road, he promised that he would surely come up this afternoon to help us plan the English end of our journey; besides that, he was to explain to me the best way for Daddy to write to Washington concerning the new post-office. He cannot, of course, resign from an office that will cease to exist the first of next January and he hopes to hold it to the end. But he wishes to write in such a way that it will be clearly seen that he does not desire the newWest Harborposition. Not that they would give it to so old a man, but it satisfies his pride not to allow himself to be merely dropped.
"Think of it, Aunt Emmy, very soon Poppea of the Post-Office must give up the name you gave her, not that she leaves it, but it will drop away from her."
"Why not take your mother's name, then?" said Jeanne Latimer. "Helen is more fitting to the woman than Poppea, though of course to us you will be Poppy for all time."
"That also is one of the things about which I wanted to speak to Mr. Latimer. Do you think that he is coming?"
"He started with me, but as we were waiting at the church to see the men who are doing something to the water-power that works the organ, Will Burt, one of the young doctors from the Bridgeton Hospital, came past on horseback, riding like mad. Stephen waved to him, for as a boy he had been one of his music pupils, and he stopped short. It seems that he was on his way to the Rectory on an errand that he had undertaken for its very strangeness.
"Late last night a short, thick-set man was brought into the hospital, a brakeman from one of the through freights, and apparently a new hand on the road, for he did not know of the low bridge at Moosatuck Junction, or understand the signal lights. He was swept off and crushed against the pier. Though hurt to death, he had remained conscious, and early this afternoon, when rallied to the utmost by drugs, asked to speak to one of the physicians alone. Burt, chancing through the ward, was appealed to. There was something about the man that struck him at once; past fifty, and bearing the signs of dissipation and recent neglect of his person, he did not come of the grade who keep to the road at his age. When he spoke, his words confirmed the impression.
"'What place am I in, Doctor?' he began.
"'Bridgeton, Connecticut,' Burt answered.
"The man repeated the name to himself several times, and then asked:—
"'Would that be near a little place called Harley's Mills?'
"'The next town to it.'
"'Is there a clergyman hereabout who would, think you, do an errand for a man that, being already dead in his legs, cannot do it for himself, a matter of—well, we'll saybusinessrather than religion?'
"Burt told him that there was a Roman Catholic priest always within call, besides ministers of other denominations that could be had; but the man sighed, hesitated, and finally said: 'I'm English born, though I've long ago sold out my birthright, yet there's that much left of it that makes me want to say what I must to the one that's the nearest like him that used to teach us our duty in the little church betwixt the wheat fields over there. I want the one that has the white robe, the book, and the law behind him; but maybe, sir, you do not understand?'
"Burt did understand, however, and remembering that the rector of St. John's in Bridgeton was ill, came galloping over for Stephen. Why he did it, or put Stephen to the trouble, he himself could not say, for maimed railway men and similar requests are not uncommon in a hospital. Stephen borrowed a horse from Hugh Oldys and fully expected to be back again by six; it is after five now. Shall I make the tea, Miss Emmy? He would be vexed to have you wait."
How many odd moments as well as times of painful suspense the tea-tray has bridged over. Many a time the period of waiting for the kettle to boil has given the necessary pause to think that has changed a whole life, and the need of balancing a cup and saucer in the hand has made an excuse for looking down when looking up would have betrayed the whole.
As Jeanne pottered and poured, Poppea's wandering eyes caught upon a mere speck in the distance on the lower Bridgeton road. As it reached the great span over Moosatuck it took the shape of horse and wheels. Before it reached the turn below the hill, she knew rather than saw that it was Hugh Oldys's outfit with Stephen Latimer driving, and that he was in great haste.
Though she neither spoke of it nor betrayed the slightest interest, yet her heart pounded so that the hand that held the cup pulsed in response, and she shifted it to the table, where she deliberately stirred the sugar. Then, feeling that she could no longer sit still, she said, looking toward the roses:—
"What a superb flower that is on the third bush. May I have it, Miss Emmy?" and she swung herself lightly over the rail at the end of the porch opposite the steps and arrived at the head of the walk with her rose at the same time that Latimer drove in the gate.
Seeing her, he threw the reins over the dashboard and jumped out; he had the same pallor, coupled with the tension of suppressed excitement, that he had worn the day after the fire. Coming directly toward Poppea, he said:—
"Can you go through one more ordeal, the last?"
"Yes," she answered quietly. "I knew that it was coming half an hour ago. Is he dead? the man with the scar on his hand?"
Latimer, startled in spite of himself at her words, merely nodded his head for yes.
"I felt that it was he when Jeanne told me you had been sent for. Won't you please come and tell us all together, Jeanne and Miss Emmy? I have not the courage I once had; I cannot seem to bear things alone."
While Latimer walked slowly up the steps, his wife had time to gauge, in a degree, the scene he had been through, before Poppea, who was in advance of him, said, in answer to the questioning look upon the face of both women:—
"The man whom he went to see was the one who brought me to Daddy; now we shall know how," and dropping to a stool by Miss Emmy's side, she rested her head upon the elder woman's knees, as she was used in the old days of confidence before things began to happen.
Latimer took the cup of tea that Jeanne brought to him, and then another, before he drew his chair closer to the group of women and began, trying to compress his narrative as much as possible for the sake of all concerned, while he spoke as to Poppea alone.
"The man brought to the Bridgeton Hospital was Peter Randal, the son of Betty Randal, your grandfather Dudleigh's housekeeper and your mother's nurse. When your mother returned to Hampshire and you were born, Peter was away at sea, but came back soon after her death and married an old sweetheart, a pretty barmaid of the town. Betty Randal, though to all appearances in the prime of life and best of health, died suddenly a few months after your mother, without having had time to carry out any of her directions or safeguard you in any way, so that Peter and his wife found themselves left with you on their hands and the temptation of a snug fortune before them, because your little sum of money had been at the time entirely in Betty Randal's control.