Poppea of the Post-Office
by Mabel Osgood Wright · English · Gutenberg #41440 · 532,022 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Poppea of the Post-Office
Author: Mabel Osgood Wright
Illustrator: Margaret West Kinney
Troy Kinney
Release date: November 22, 2012 [eBook #41440]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POPPEA OF THE POST-OFFICE ***
POPPEA OF THE POST-OFFICE
BY MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT
(BARBARA)
AUTHOR OF "THE GARDEN OF A COMMUTER'S WIFE," "PEOPLE OF THE
WHIRLPOOL," "THE OPEN WINDOW," ETC.
WITH FRONTISPIECE
BY THE KINNEYS
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1909
_All rights reserved_
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
COPYRIGHT, 1909,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1909. Reprinted
July, 1909.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
To
E. C. S.
IN REMEMBRANCE
[Illustration: _Poppea glanced wistfully across the room and then
slipped out through one of the long windows_]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE TENTH OF MARCH 1
II. THE WRONG AT HIS DOOR 19
III. THE NEXT DAY 32
IV. THE FELTONS 50
V. THE NAMING 68
VI. AS IT WAS WRITTEN 83
VII. INTO THE DARK 101
VIII. SANCTUARY 116
IX. THE MYSTERY OF THE NAME 134
X. PHILIP 154
XI. INCOGNITA 172
XII. FRIENDSHIP? 192
XIII. THE TURNING 213
XIV. A PROPOSAL 231
XV. NIGHT AND MORNING 251
XVI. OUT OF THE ASHES 267
XVII. DADDY! 284
XVIII. THE SCAR ON THE HAND 305
XIX. JOHN ANGUS 318
XX. ON THE WINGS OF THE MORNING 337
POPPEA OF THE POST-OFFICE
CHAPTER I
THE TENTH OF MARCH
The six-thirty New York mail was late. So late that when the tall clock
that faced the line of letter-boxes boomed eight, the usual hour for
closing, Oliver Gilbert, the postmaster, ceased his halting tramp up and
down the narrow length of the office, head and ears thrown forward in
the attitude of a listening hunting-dog. Going to the door, he pulled it
back with a nervous jerk and peered into the night.
As he did so, he was followed by a dozen men of various ages and social
conditions, who, in waiting for the evening mail, the final social event
of their day, had been standing about the stove, or, this choice space
being limited, overflowed into the open room at the back of the
post-office, with its work bench, chairs, and battered desk, topped by
book shelves; for, in addition to his official position, the postmaster
was a maker and mender of clocks and the Scribe for all those in the
village of Harley's Mills who could not safely navigate the whirlpools
of spelling.
In fact, a smattering of law, coupled with the taste for random browsing
in every old book on which he could lay his hands, had given Gilbert
the ability to draw up a will, a promissory note, or round an ardent yet
decorous love-letter, with equal success.
It was nothing unusual that the men saw as they looked into the bleak
March night, and yet they huddled together, listening spellbound and
expectant. A week before there had been a breath of spring in the air.
In a single day the heavy ice left the Moosatuck with a rush, to be lost
in the bay; a flock of migrant robins rested and plumed themselves in
the parsonage hedge; ploughing was possible in the fields that lay to
the southwest, and the wiseacres, one and all, predicted an early
spring. But in a single night this vision had vanished and winter
returned in driving snow that, turning to rain, coated everything
heavily with ice. Roadway, fences, and the sedate white colonial houses
that flanked the elm-bordered main street absolutely glittered in such
light as an occasional lantern on porch or fence post afforded. It
seemed almost mocking to the men in the door of the post-office; in
every way it had been a cruel season, this first winter of the War of
the Rebellion. It was not yet a year since the entire North had been
brought to its feet by the loss of Fort Sumter, and had sent forth an
army of seventy-five thousand volunteers as its reply.
The gloom of repeated defeat settled heavy as a cloud of cannon smoke
over New England, whose invincibility had given birth to the union of
states that it now sought to preserve, the only recent glimmer of light
having been Grant's capture of Fort Donelson in February.
This was discounted on the east coast by the terrifying career of the
_Merrimac_, beforetimes a United States cruiser, but now in Confederate
hands, that, by closely sheathing the wooden vessel with metal plates,
had converted her into a deadly ram which no wooden ship could
withstand, and already having ran amuck through the waters of Hampton
Roads, showed the possibility of putting every Union port in peril.
Then had come the news this very Monday morning, vague in detail and
almost unbelievable, that the _Monitor_, the mysterious invention of
Ericsson, a craft that to the casual observer looked as harmless as any
harbor buoy, going from New York under tow, had, on Sunday morning, met
and vanquished the great fire-spitting dragon that guarded the entrance
to the James.
It was for confirmation or details of this news that the men of Harley's
Mills were waiting and listening for the mail-train that did not come,
in their unfeigned anxiety interpreting its unusual delay as a bad omen.
Presently, a faint whistle struggled up against the fierce gusts of east
wind; a locomotive headlight, gaining in power after every
disappearance, flashed across the rolling fields that lay toward
Westboro. The train was coming at last.
"Here, take these lanterns, boys," cried Gilbert, "and do some of you go
down to meet her and come back with the mail-bag. It's a tough walk for
Binks's boy to bring it up alone in this storm."
"'Lisha Potts, do you unhook that red light from the horse-post yonder,
and if the news is good (Binks will likely have it from the train crew
or some passenger), wave the light above your head as you come back."
This to a broad-shouldered, up-country giant, with a grim, square jaw,
and hair the color and consistency of rye stubble.
"Good God! I can't stand this waiting and not knowing!" Gilbert almost
shouted as he closed the door behind the crowd and found himself alone
in the now dimly lighted post-office, except for old Selectman Morse,
white-haired and fragile, who, not being able to go out into the storm
with the others, was groping his way towards the stove.
"If I had two sound legs," Gilbert continued, "my fifty years shouldn't
stand between me and seeing and helping do what must be done down there
south of Washington; the bitter part of it is staying here. Next month
when the Felton ladies come back, I guess we'll have a telegraph
operator right at the station, at least that's what Wheeler their
foreman told me yesterday. You see, both Mr. Esterbrook and John Angus
are directors in the Railroad Company, and what with one's wanting to
hear the good news and the other the bad, we're likely to get it. Come
back into the workroom, neighbor Morse. After your long wait you'll find
a chair easier sitting than the coal-box lid."
"There's more than you that has to fight it out at home to give those
that's gone free minds," replied the old man, shivering as he settled
back in a carpet-covered rocker of strange construction. "Dan had turned
forty when he went, and now little Dan has run off to follow him and
he's scarce sixteen, so my fight must be fit out to keep son's wife and
girl children in food meantime; but I hope the Lord'll understand and
count it all for the same cause."
Gilbert, who had seated himself at his desk and was fumbling among some
papers in an absent-minded way, wheeled toward the old man quickly.
"Of course He will, for that's what Lincoln wrote me, and he and the
Lord have got to be of one mind in this business if it's going through
as it must."
"Wrote _you_? Lincoln wrote you? When? How? Why didn't you tell the
boys? They'd burst with pride to know a letter from Lincoln was in the
town, much less right here in the post-office that's public property, so
to speak!" cried Morse, leaving his chair and stiff limbs together, and
coming toward the desk almost with a bound.
Gilbert started as he realized what secret had slipped past his lips,
hesitated a moment, and then pulling a stool from under the desk,
motioned his companion to sit beside him.
On the wall directly in front hung a very good engraving of Washington,
in a home-made frame of charred wood; under it was suspended an old
flint-lock, worm-eaten in stock and rusty at trigger. Below it, at one
side of the desk so that it came face to face with the owner, a large
colored lithograph of Lincoln was tacked to the wall, framed only by a
wreath of shrivelled ground-pine and wax-berries.
Taking a key from his vest-pocket where it lay in company with bits of
sugared flag-root, Gilbert wiped it carefully and unlocking a drawer in
the desk that, to the casual glance, seemed merely an ornamental panel,
took out two letters and a double daguerreotype case that held the
pictures of a young woman and a little girl a year old. Placing these
things before him, Gilbert leaned back, grasping the arms of his chair
as if bracing himself for an effort.
"Last year when Curtis died and it was thought well to have the
post-office come up here in the centre of the town, the boys did all
they could to push me for the place in spite of John Angus's opposition,
and Mr. Esterbrook drew up a nicely worded account of who I was and why
I should have the office, to go to Postmaster Blair by our Senator. Of
course it was done the right way I suppose, with this and that claim for
consideration, but I'd never known it was me it spoke of, and somehow it
didn't seem quite square, for I'm nobody. So I thought I'd just send a
few words to the President, explaining things, if word of such small
offices ever reached him; anyway it would ease my mind. I made it short
as I could: just told him that it wasn't all money need made me want the
office, for I'd a trade, but I was lonesome with only the dead-and-gone
people in books for company, and I wanted something to do that would
keep me near to my fellow-men, without which age is souring.
"Well, Morse, in due time my appointment came and in with it, this--"
carefully opening and spreading out one of the letters:--
"'WASHINGTON, April 2, 1861.
"'MR. OLIVER G. GILBERT:
"'MY DEAR SIR:--
"'Your letter is in my hands. I have been lonely and have lived in
books. I was once a postmaster and I understand.
"'Faithfully yours,
"'A. LINCOLN.'
"When a couple of weeks ago, in the midst of all this turmoil, his son
Willie died, I waked up in the night from dreaming of Mary and little
Marygold, and thought that Mary wanted me to write something. So I says
I guess I'll write Lincoln that I'm sorry, and that I understand his
trouble because of Mary's leaving me ten years ago, and Marygold the
next year, and how the Lord, through my crooked leg, won't let me join
them quick by way of battle. I put it down right then and there and sent
it the next morning, never thinking of a reply.
"Saturday, this came," and Gilbert unfolded the second letter:--
"'WASHINGTON, March 3, 1862.
"'OLIVER G. GILBERT:
"'MY FRIEND:--
"'It seems that we understand each other. I thank you for your
letter. If the Lord's Will has stayed your joining in this
conflict, be sure that He will find some other wrong for you to
right, by your own door.
"'Gratefully,
"'A. LINCOLN.'
"Now, Morse, you can see why I haven't spoken of these letters and why I
shouldn't brag of them, for they are not from the President, but from
man to man.
"My grandfather, whose musket hangs up there, fought through the
Revolution. That picture of Washington is framed in a piece of oak wood
from this house that was set on fire by Arnold's men. Grandsir' revered
Washington next to God, and later, when he saw him as President, he
wrote a long letter, that cost eight shillings to deliver, to my
grandmother, telling her of his visit to Mt. Vernon. One part I've
always remembered, I've heard it read so often; it ran thus: 'His whole
demeanor was so full of dignity that he assuredly is great enough to
hold his own with kings, and be one in their company; yet though I
desired to have speech with him, as others did, I dared not take upon
myself to begin it. As he did not, I presently came away, much
disappointed.'
"Don't shake your head, neighbor Morse, I'm drawing no comparisons, for
there's no man fit to pair with either of them; but, mind you, if
Washington was fit to match with kings, Abraham Lincoln is humble enough
to be a man, a brother of the Man of Sorrows, who well knew loneliness
in the midst of a multitude, saying, 'Foxes have holes and the birds of
the air have nests, but the Son of Man has not where to lay his head.'"
A shout came down the street. Hastily pushing his treasures into their
drawer, the postmaster locked it with fingers that trembled, and reached
the door with his old friend, in time to see the little procession
crossing the road, the red lantern, held by a rake, swinging gayly
above 'Lisha Potts's head.
"It's a true victory!" he called; "we've got the paper. Shouldn't wonder
if next month saw the war end. Hey, Gilbert, now's the chance to run
your big flag up with the little one atop, unless the halyard's frozen
fast."
"Now, boys, bunch the lamps," said Gilbert, presently, as he cleared a
place on his work table, adjusted his spectacles, and spread out the
coveted sheet. The newspaper being fully three feet in length, the print
very small, and the large captions of to-day lacking, it took Gilbert
some time to locate the desired news. Meanwhile the boys pressed closer
and closer until, as he stopped for the second time to adjust his
glasses, 'Lisha Potts, peering over his shoulder, read at the top of his
voice: "Naval Engagement in Hampton Roads--Loss of the Frigates
_Cumberland_ and _Congress_--Great Success of the Ericsson Battery!"
"That'll do, 'Lisha," said Gilbert, with some asperity. "I believe that
I'm reading this paper--
"_First Edition_--Fortress Monroe, March 9.--The _Monitor_ arrived at 10
P.M. yesterday and went immediately to the protection of the _Minnesota_
lying aground just below Newport News. At 7 A.M. to-day the _Merrimac_,
accompanied by two wooden steamers, the _Yorktown_ and _Jamestown_, and
several tugs, stood out toward the _Minnesota_ and opened fire. The
_Monitor_ met them at once and opened fire, when the enemies' vessels
returned, except the _Merrimac_. The two ironclads fought part of the
time touching each other, from 8 A.M. until noon, when the _Merrimac_
retreated--"
"Never mind the whole story now, get the finish first," chorused the
audience.
"Here on the next page," cried 'Lisha.
"_Second Edition_," read Gilbert, deliberately. "The side of the
_Merrimac_ pierced by the _Monitor_! The Ericsson battery finally
succeeded in forcing a long hole in the port side of the _Merrimac_ and
she retired with the whole rebel fleet to Norfolk about one o'clock!"
Cheers drowned Gilbert's voice, and the paper passed from hand to hand,
each man reading some particular phrase that pleased him, while Seth
Moore, one of the retired sea-captains of which every coast town at this
period had its quota, banging on the floor with his cane, cried: "It
isn't only a blow to the rebels but to wooden ships as well; I didn't
think so much scrap-iron could keep afloat. Mark my words, first thing
we know even the passenger liners will all want their iron trim, and the
Lord knows but what even the coastwise service'll come to it some day!"
It was after ten o'clock before, discussion ended, the men went their
various ways. The storm had ceased, and the intense blue black of the
sky set with stars seemed only a degree less cold and burnished than the
ice-coated earth over which the "boys" went home, slipping and sliding;
the younger making a frolic of the matter, the older clinging to the
fence rails.
"It's going to be a mean walk for me to-night, three miles straight up
hill and against the wind," said 'Lisha Potts to Gilbert, as he helped
him fix the inside bars on the shutters, preparatory to closing the
office.
"Then why not stop with me?" questioned the postmaster. "I couldn't
think of sleeping for a couple of hours yet, and somehow, the idea of
reading don't come natural to-night, though I've been mighty interested
getting into the workings of the wars of the ancients, all about the way
Xenophon managed to get those ten thousand Greeks to retreat across
country, without really skedaddling. Ever heard about it? Mebbe you'd
like I should read it to you."
'Lisha, a man of the remoter farming country and timber land, used to
the big open spaces of life that some call loneliness, shook his head in
an emphatic denial that almost amounted to alarm, and began to button
his heavy frieze top-coat.
"Well, well, I won't, so don't get scared," laughed Gilbert,
indulgently. "If folks don't thirst for knowledge, there's small use
choking it down their throats. Not that the best of learning comes out
of books, for you learned your trade of reading the ground and the
weather 'n' hunting and tracking all out o' doors."
"I tell you what we'll do, go over back into the house, light all the
lamps I've got, and set them in the windows for a victory illumination.
Then we'll cook up a nice little supper for our two selves and have a
smoke by the fire. I don't often do it these days, haven't felt peart
enough; but to-night, somehow, I feel skittish, like I did forty years
ago when a pair of yearling steers I'd trained got first premium at the
Old Haven Fair. To-night a pipe between my teeth's not a bad habit as
the parsons preach, 'Lisha, but a necessity, yes, a bare, vital
necessity."
This proposition being in the direct path of 'Lisha's own desires, he
gave a cheerful whistle of consent and followed Gilbert through the
partly roofed grape arbor that made a passageway between the post-office
and the sloped roofed house of Gilbert's forefathers, that stood well
back in the garden with its porch facing the hill road.
"Nobody'll see the lights this time of night," criticised 'Lisha, as
Gilbert, mustering an array of six sperm-oil lamps and three sturdy
pewter candlesticks, proceeded to distribute them between the various
rooms, not forgetting the icy "spare chamber" upstairs, or the
"foreroom" at the right of the front door with its scriptural
engravings, bright three-ply carpet, and melodeon.
"That's as may be," Gilbert answered, while he regulated a wick, stiff
from lack of use, "but they'll be there all the same, and we'll know it
anyhow. What'll you have? There's beans and brown bread been in the oven
all afternoon, besides apple pie, crullers, biscuits, and spice snaps in
the pantry. I think this time o' night when we're wakeful anyway, we
might as well have hot coffee to mix and blend the vittles and put some
ginger in us. Mebbe you'd prefer hard cider, but since I found the stuff
was tangling the feet of some good neighbors, I haven't kept any about.
Yes, get a pail of fresh water while I grind the coffee; you can never
get the flavor, Mary always said, without fresh-drawn water come to its
first boil."
To have seen the neatness of the kitchen, pantry, and long, low bedroom
that ran across the back of both, no one would have supposed that the
house had been without the touch of a woman's hand for nine years. To be
sure, at the critical periods of spring and fall cleaning the
postmaster's sister, Satira Pegrim, a bustling widow of forty, came down
from her little hill farm to officiate. Why she did not stay on and keep
house for her brother had been a subject of much speculation during the
year after the baby Marygold had followed her young mother. But though
Gilbert said nothing, they came to understand that without the child to
care for there was not sufficient work to keep in check Mrs. Pegrim's
nervous energy, which found vent in a species of incessant reminiscent
sympathy that poor Gilbert could not bear.
When the only love of a silent man's life comes upon him when he is
nearly forty, fairly sweeping him from his feet, and in less than three
years wife and the child just forming her first words are snatched away,
leaving him deaf at heart, work is the only consoler that can gain even
his ear. So Gilbert had baked and swept and garnished, kept the
geraniums and the calla lilies and pink flowering "Gypsey" in the
windows, and a white spread upon the bed, and the hooded mahogany
cradle-cover of pink and white basket-pattern patchwork, as it had been
during those years.
As Gilbert added an armful of wood to the fire in the cooking stove that
was set in the wide chimney place, and opened the iron door of the
brick oven at the side, the bright light threw against the opposite wall
his somewhat remarkable silhouette. He was fully six feet tall with
close-cut, iron-gray hair, bushy eyebrows, and long, gray beard that
reached his waist, and so frequently got in his way that he twisted it
up and fastened it under his chin with an elastic band, or hairpin, as
upon the present occasion. Gilbert had craved education, but lacked the
strength to force the opportunity, though his reading had nourished a
gentle sentiment in him, and better speech than is often found in New
Englanders of his surroundings.
When 'Lisha had filled the kettle, the two men lighted their pipes, and
slipping off their clumsy shoes, in unison, spread feet covered by blue
yarn socks before the open front of the stove and, puffing comfortably,
drifted into desultory talk.
"It's mighty queer that John Angus, leading man in this town and his
folks Yankee all through after they stopped being Scotch, should stand
for slavery," mused 'Lisha. "Do you suppose he's got any reason other
than his usual one of taking the off side of things?"
"He has big cotton interests for one thing," said Gilbert; "otherwise,
who can tell why he does this or that? Why does he hate me? Because he
can't drive me off the earth, I take it. We played together as boys, but
I've never presumed on that. His father left him fully two hundred acres
of land, mine left me three; but it stood something like a nose on the
face of his holding, coming in the south front of it. He seemed to
think all he had to do was offer me money for my home; he thought I had
no right to love the place where I was born, but that he had. Once or
twice I've been on the point of yielding, but never since it became the
home of my wife and child."
"That's why, then, he did all he could to keep you from getting the
post-office?"
"I reckon so, and now I've got it, he has all his mail sent to Westboro
to keep down the receipts."
"Whew--!" whistled 'Lisha. "I didn't think he'd spite himself that far."
"Well," replied Gilbert, "I don't know but at bottom I'm sorry for him.
He's got a grand place here, a city home, and money; he's been senator,
and, they say, could have been governor; but he's all alone up there
without love or kin."
"He had a dreadful pretty wife, and pleasant spoken. I remember selling
her quail and partridge every fall of the year."
"Yes; when she first came home, she was not over twenty, and most as
pretty as my Mary. He met her when he was travelling in Europe, the Miss
Feltons said. She was there learning to sing or something. I heard her
sing once up where the end of their garden stops short and the ground
drops to my bit. It was just like the voice of the last wood robin that
keeps singing till after dark, and then quits sudden as if he was
lonesome. After living up there for ten years, she, that at first had a
laughing face and skin like a peach, grew thin and white as marble, and
then all of a sudden, she left him and died away in England, they say,
about a year ago. Some claim he was always reproaching her because she
was childless; others, that once when he was away, she went to the
midsummer ball up at Felton Manor against his wish and danced with a
nephew of Mr. Esterbrook's so beautifully that folks spoke of it until
it got round to him. He'd never let her dance before, so nobody knew she
could. Then next Sabbath the young man walked from church with her.
"I well remember the day she went, it's less than two years since. There
was no running about it; she came down the hill in her carriage as if
she was only going on a short journey. As she passed the shop, she
plucked the coachman by the coat to stop him and came in to ask me to
fit a key to her watch. I remember the watch too, small and thin, with a
flower on the back in diamonds. Oh, yes, Angus was generous enough, and
kept her well in clothes and jewels.
"All of a sudden she said, 'Mr. Gilbert, I'm going away and never coming
back, and there's nobody to miss me or be sorry.'
"I was struck all of a heap, for I'd always liked her and spoke my mind,
which added to his dislike of me, but I knew by her face she meant what
she said. She looked like a crumpled roseleaf, so young and frail, that
before I knew it, I had taken her cold little hands in mine and was
telling her that _I_ should miss her, and that I never should forget the
soft white slip made with her own hands she sent for Marygold to go to
sleep in, or how she came to comfort me in face of John Angus's
dislike. 'If ever I can do you a good turn, it's all I'd ask,' I said to
her.
"With that, she put her poor thin arms about my shoulders, looked me
straight in the face, and said, 'Yes, I believe you would,' and pulling
my head down, kissed me on the forehead as if I'd been her father.
Before I got my wits again, she was in her carriage and away, and now
she's dead and gone. They say that the Miss Feltons have heard that John
Angus is to be married again this spring to a woman as rich as he is,
the daughter of somebody high up in New York life. So I suppose he'll
raise a grand family now, and poor little roseleaf is forgotten."
"Hi there! the water's biled over," cried 'Lisha, and soon the subtle
aroma of good coffee filled the kitchen, and the men drew the table
toward the stove before sitting down to their supper, for in spite of
the rousing fire, the room was draughty.
Three clocks that hung in a row between dresser and chimney, which were
undergoing the delicate process of being regulated, struck twelve with
different emphases and in three different keys before Gilbert had made a
bed for his guest upon the wide lounge by the chimney-corner, and the
two men went about the house to put out the lamps.
"What's that?" said Gilbert, pausing as they came down the creaking back
stairs.
"Just a log of wood rolling off the heap on the stoop, I reckon,"
answered 'Lisha.
"There isn't any wood there; I fetched it all in," said Gilbert, giving
a decided start, as the noise was repeated and this time resolved itself
into a rhythmic knocking on the outer door.
'Lisha strode through the kitchen, picking up the poker on his way, and
threw open the door. At first he saw nothing, the change from light to
darkness was so sudden; then something white in the shadow beside the
door caught his attention.
"It's only a dog," he thought; yet as training had made him cautious, he
called, "Bring the lantern," to Gilbert, who had stopped to pull on his
coat.
CHAPTER II
THE WRONG AT HIS DOOR
As the lantern held by Gilbert flashed upon the furry object, 'Lisha,
who was bending over it, jumped back as though he had been shot, crying,
"Good God, Gilbert, it isn't a dog; I reckon it's a child!"
At the same time he gathered up the bundle, and, almost trampling
Gilbert in his haste, strode into the kitchen, where he laid it on the
table.
The outer wrapping was a well-worn buffalo-robe, and from between its
folds a small, white-mittened hand was visible.
For a moment the two men stood side by side, speechless with
astonishment; then Gilbert began to unfold the robe with fingers that
trembled so he could scarcely direct them. Inside the skin was an afghan
of soft wool tied crosswise, while in the depths of this nest lay a
child, wrapped from foot to head in coat and cap of white coney, even
the face being hidden by a knitted Shetland veil. The little form was so
still that Gilbert dreaded to touch it, but 'Lisha, having pulled
himself together, lifted the veil, disclosing softly rounded, pink
cheeks and red lips slightly parted in regular, if rather heavy,
breathing. This action disturbed the sleeper without waking her, for
she relaxed the arm that had been pressed close against her breast, and
from under it a tiny puppy sprawled out, dragging with it a large
handkerchief in which it had been wrapped, as if to make a doll of it.
He was not an aristocrat of the dog world, but one of those waifs that,
decorated with a bit of ribbon, are sold on city street corners for a
dollar, the appeal of their youth, added to the speculative element in
all of us, finding ready purchasers for them.
The puppy, tawny and roughish as to coat, having one ear that stuck up
while the other lopped, and the keenest of eyes, after licking the face
and the long-lashed lids of the child without getting a response,
tumbled to the edge of the table and began wagging his ridiculous rat
tail and making friendly advances to the men. Seeing that even the
puppy's rough caresses did not waken the baby, Gilbert raised one of the
eyelids gently, and then after holding his face close, whispered to
'Lisha: "Just as I thought, she's drugged with paregoric; we'll have to
rouse her even if she is scared of us and makes a time. I well remember
how it was with Marygold when sister Pegrim, not having her glasses,
gave her a large instead of a small spoon of cough syrup by mistake.
I'll wash her face and see if I can't liven her up. Just pull that
rocker over here, 'Lisha, and give me the tin basin of water."
As he talked, Gilbert was undoing the coat and cap from which came the
head of a child of about a year, covered with a mass of hair that lay in
close golden rings, with here and there a tinge of copper, in strange
contrast to the dark lashes and eyebrows.
From the moment his eyes had rested on her, Gilbert had unconsciously
said _she_, for every curve and line was feminine. Yet even with closed
eyes, there was nothing doll-like about her, while there was almost a
suggestion of resolution about the mouth corners.
"Now, precious, wake up and look at the pretty light," crooned Gilbert,
holding her with awkward hands, against his shoulder, so that her head
came above it, yet in a way that no man would have done who had not held
his own child.
Presently, the heavy eyelids drew upward, and then after the
consciousness of light became complete, she looked about the room, gave
a little cry of delight, and held out her hands when she saw the puppy,
rounding her lips into a sound like wow-wow; but as her eyes rested upon
big, ugly 'Lisha, her chin quivered, her cooing voice trailed off into a
heart-broken wail, and she hid her face in Gilbert's neck.
What the confiding touch meant to the lonely man, only he and his Maker
knew. It thrilled him to his finger-tips, awakened life springs that he
believed forever dry, and tears, unknown to him these nine years, became
a possibility, but not while 'Lisha stood there gaping at him with
hanging jaw. In a few moments the wailing stopped, and she began to look
about once more.
"Fetch me a cup of water, 'Lisha; mebbe she's thirsty."
As he turned to carry out Gilbert's directions, the young lady began to
smack her lips and show by her bodily motions that she knew what the
word "thirsty" and a cup in sight promised.
As Gilbert helped to guide it to her mouth with one hand, the corners of
her lips, assisted by a little quiver of the nose, expressed
unmistakable disgust at finding only water.
"Guess she's looking for milk same as kittens do," suggested 'Lisha,
tiptoeing to the table and peering into an empty pitcher. "Great
snakes!" his favorite ejaculation, "I spilled the last drop into my
coffee. The pup wants some, too, I reckon," as the queer little beast,
nose in air and tail wagging furiously, seemed bound to climb up his
trousers leg.
"Of course she does, the lamb!" said Gilbert, holding her from him upon
his knee, the better to look over her. "But where is it to come from?
It's half an hour past midnight and I don't like to wake up the
neighbors," he mused.
"Got a small open kettle?" asked 'Lisha, rummaging in the pantry. "I've
found it; now do you fix up a place for her to sleep while I fetch her
supper," he continued, with the air of one to whom the care of strange
lady babies was an everyday occurrence, when, truth be told, he had
never before come in contact with any young thing more delicate than a
calf or a long-legged colt.
"Don't go to the Bakers'," pleaded Gilbert; "I know they're the nearest,
but Mrs. Baker'll come back with you for sure, and I want time to turn
around before any women folks bear down on me."
"Nope, I'm not going to confide in any female, least it's Brooks's red
cow. I milked for them when the old man broke his leg last fall, 'n' the
cow knows me. It's only a quarter of a mile up the road; cow barn has no
windows on house side; key's kept under a mustard box on the
window-sill. Baker took his gun to Bridgeton Saturday to get her
cleaned. Not a bit of danger, and I'll explain to 'em to-morrow. Back in
no time."
So, jerking out his words with gestures as mysterious as if he were
going to commit a desperate crime, 'Lisha went out through the back
hallway, lest opening the front door should let in too much air.
He had no sooner gone than Gilbert's whole attitude changed. Settling
the little girl comfortably on his knees, he began to scrutinize her
clothing carefully, babbling a string of baby talk that would have been
almost unintelligible to the uninitiated, but that seemed very soothing
and reassuring to the child, who, after wriggling for a few minutes, as
though determined to get to her feet, suddenly discovered Gilbert's
beard, which he had knotted up to get it out of the way of the cooking.
It was fastened with a large shell hairpin that he had probably picked
up in the post-office. Fascinated by this unusual object, she clutched
at it with both hands, gave a crow of delight, and began jerking up and
down on his knee as if riding on a hobby-horse, treating Gilbert's beard
as its mane. Next spying the puppy on the floor, she stiffened herself
and prepared to slide down to him.
"All right," crooned Gilbert. "Let's see if the little lammy can stand?
Yes, but not so very well," he added, as, after taking a single step,
she doubled up and almost sat on the pup.
"Now we'll sit her on the lounge to play with doggy, while daddy gets
her bed fixed."
The word "daddy" slipped from his lips unconsciously, as he pulled the
high-backed sofa out from the wall and propped the child up with some
husk pillows and a comforter. Then he stole across to the bedroom where,
after choosing a key from the chain that was fastened to his pocket, he
unlocked a high chest of drawers still keeping his eye on the lounge and
its occupants.
"She's somewhere about a year, I reckon," he said, talking to himself,
after the fashion of those who are much alone. "She's bigger than
Marygold was at fourteen months, but not so clever on her feet. As for
talking, they're something alike; Marygold only said 'Daddy' and 'Puss,'
and I guess I can piece out some words from what _she_ says when I get
the time. Wow-wow means dog plain enough. I must get her undressed
before 'Lisha comes back; he's all right, but too rough in his ways for
handling a lady baby, and that's what the little one is."
Having taken some clothes from the drawers,--a pair of knitted socks, a
little night-dress of yellow shaker flannel, and a quilted wrapper in
gay-flowered print, all smelling of camphor and their long, pent-up
years in the chest,--he spread them on a chair by the stove to air and
warm.
Meanwhile, the child had nestled back among the pillows and was half
dozing, the puppy clasped tight in her arms. Going once more to the
bedroom, Gilbert stood a moment before the quaint hooded cradle, made up
ready for occupancy from spread to pilch, the cradle from out of which
he himself had gazed alternately at the leaves on the wall paper and the
leaves against the sky, dreaming in knowledge after the manner of
babies. Then lifting the cradle, he carried it into the kitchen,
negotiating the doorway with difficulty, for his burden was heavy and
the rockers wide of angle to prevent the overthrow of the occupant.
Pushing his hand between the sheets and finding them clammy to the
touch, he pulled them off and brought others from the inexhaustible
chest.
Then came the undressing of the lady baby herself, which was done as
dexterously as a woman might, for Gilbert's fingers, used to the
handling of mere specks of machinery, did not fumble with strings,
buttons, or the intricacies of shield pins. Moreover, memory crept into
his finger-tips and guided the almost-forgotten task, even as feet that
once have trodden a daily path, returning to it in the dark, after the
lapse of a lifetime, follow each rise and fall.
Piling the clothes she had worn upon the table, he held the little feet
in his big, rough palm, warming them, rocking gently the while. With a
sleepy friendliness, the child nestled to him; then, twisting as though
something pressed uncomfortably on her flesh, pushing her hand into the
neck of the knitted shirt that Gilbert had left on for extra warmth, she
began tugging at something, looking into his face and patting his hand
as if to ask his help.
"What is it, lammy? A tight string that chokes? Let daddy feel."
Drawing up a chain of intricate links, his fingers closed upon a thin
locket or watch, he could not tell which, as it would not open. He
unfastened the chain and put it with the heap of clothes, as the door
opened and 'Lisha, fairly blue with the cold, some of which rushed in
with him, returned with the milk. The trip from the Brooks farm had
cooled it sufficiently to make it palatable and this time the child took
a long drink, sighing with satisfaction when she paused for breath, with
her four tiny teeth clenched on the thick china cup to prevent its being
taken away.
Then with unmistakable gestures, she asked that the puppy might also
have some. She sat blinking and keeping her eyes open with difficulty
watching until his little elastic stomach began to grow heavy, and
rummaging a bit of carpet into a sort of nest, he settled for the night,
half under the stove. This did not suit the lady baby; she wished to
hold the puppy and began to show a decided bit of temper, until Gilbert,
lifting her from the lounge, carried her on his shoulder to the bedroom,
saying, "Hold crying a minute, lammy, 'til daddy sees what he can find
in the drawer. Yes, I thought it was here;" and the child, hugging a rag
doll flat faced and faded, allowed herself to be tucked into the cradle
without a murmur, and fell into natural sleep, the deep hood of the
cradle completely shutting off the light.
'Lisha gave a sigh of relief that was almost tragic. "She's safe off to
sleep and we ain't dropped her, nor broke her, thank the Lord! Well,
Gilbert, what do you think?" and the giant, spreading his hands behind
him, backed toward the stove.
"Think? Why, I reckon, after Marygold, she's the sweetest little one I
ever set eyes on, and in some ways she's remarkably like her, 'specially
the way she sets her chin,--"
"Great snakes! I don't mean that," snorted 'Lisha. "How do you think she
come here? Who brought her and why? Don't it strike you as anything
unusual that a child of her age, all togged out fine, should be left on
a porch in the middle of a perishing cold night?"
"Of course, of course, 'Lisha, it's unusual, and I reckon that's half
the reason that I've been in a daze ever since; that, and feeling
something warm and small on my knee. Now she's safe and asleep, it's our
duty to investigate and let her people know her whereabouts soon as I've
made up the morning mail. Draw up to the table and we'll find if there's
any marks on her clothes.
"To my thinking, it's a case of kidnapping," Gilbert continued, "either
for money, or perhaps spite. Even parents do queer things to outface
each other sometimes. Oh, you needn't shake your head, I _know_; there's
a chance to see a deal of life in a post-office.
"Whoever was making away with the lady baby likely got scared, or was
sorry for the job, so left her here in a public place where she'd be
soon found."
"Where'd they come from _last_?" persisted 'Lisha, but received no
answer, as Gilbert was examining each garment, fingering them carefully,
inch by inch, and though 'Lisha did likewise, no marks of any sort, not
even an embroidered initial, could they discover.
The large locket of heavily chased gold, the pattern much worn on the
sides, after many efforts at prying, at last flew open, purely by
accident when its secret spring was touched. Within, the picture of a
young woman seemed to look so directly in their faces, that both men
exclaimed. The face was that of a girl of eighteen or nineteen. Dark
brows and lashes guarded large hazel eyes, the nose was a trifle
tip-tilted, and this, together with the parted lips, gave the impression
that she was about to speak, while a very firm chin lent decision to the
youthful roundness of the face. Exquisitely shaded hair, in tints of
gold, copper, and ash, curved back from the broad forehead, and was
loosely braided and coiled about the small head, while resting lightly,
half sidewise on the braids, was a wreath of poppies, not the flaming
oriental flowers that suggest sensuous drowsiness, but delicate,
rosy-flushed blossoms with petals frail as the wings of a night moth.
The two men did not analyze the face that looked frankly into theirs,
they only knew that it was beautiful. Presently, the light caught upon
the inside of the cover of the locket showing, imperfectly, letters
engraved thereon.
"Get me my watch-glass from the work bench," said Gilbert, his hands
trembling with expectation. But this revealed only a single word and
date,--"Poppea--1850."
"Poppea! what's that, a place?" asked 'Lisha, turning the locket this
way and that in the hope of finding more.
"It's a woman's name if I remember rightly, and I think I've met it in
Mr. Plutarch's book or some history. The wife of one of the Cæsars or
some one of importance. I'll look it up to-morrow. Anyway, the picture
is done on ivory like the one of Miss Felton's mother that she wears in
a brooch. Some said it was only made of tea-cup china, so one day, when
she was waiting for me to weigh a package, I made bold to ask, and she
said, 'No, Mr. Gilbert, it is painted on ivory and is a work of art.' So
I judged only the well-to-do can lay claim to this sort, which carries
out what I say, as I did before, the lady baby has been kidnapped. Now
lets us turn in. You go in my room and I'll take the shake-down on the
lounge and keep a watch on the lady baby."
'Lisha, pulling himself stiffly to his feet to obey, stumbled over the
corner of the buffalo-robe that had been pushed under the table and
remained unnoticed.
"I wonder if this thing has anything to tell on the subject," he said,
spreading it wrong side up on the floor and scrutinizing the patched and
faded lining slowly.
"Look here, Gilbert! Just look at that patch there in the northeast
corner, that piece of felt with moon and star figgers on it! 'Long about
Christmas, Dr. Morewood was up at the farm in a sleigh from the stable
at Westboro, his own being in the shop for new irons. He'd throwd the
robe over his horse, and it slipping off, it got trampled, so he asked
mother to take a stitch in it. But the hole being big, she threw in a
hasty patch made from the end of an old table cover that had been in our
setting room since I was knee high to a toad. What you're looking at is
that patch."
"You'd reckon the party that brought the child had a team from Beers's
stable then," said Gilbert, now all eagerness. "If so, why didn't we
hear the rumble of it on the ice, and how would they account for the
robe when they got back?"
"As for the team, it might have been a sleigh with hushed bells; we
fellows up our way often fix them like that when we want to take the
girls out riding on the sly and the old folks asleep. As for their going
back, yer running on too fast; that's to be found to-morrow. That we've
got a clew right here's enough for you now. One o'clock! Great snakes!
it's to-morrow right now, and me due up home to milk at six and you to
pack up the first mail down. Say, Gilbert, don't you want me to stop at
Mis' Pegrim's as I go up and hustle her down for the day until this
child business is settled up? You'll have your hands overflowin', what
with her and it and all the people that'll be in ponderin' and
advisin'."
"Well," replied Gilbert, his hands working nervously, as he twisted and
untwisted the long beard from which the lady baby had pulled the pin,
"under the circumstances, I guess it'll be best, and I'd be obliged if
you'd hook up and fetch her yourself. 'Tisn't necessary for her to stop
and talk to every fence post on the way, either. As to the locket,
that's most likely _her_ mother's picture; we'll keep quiet about it,
lest, being valuable, it's wrongly claimed."
Soon comfortable snores sounded from the inner room. Gilbert, wrapping a
quilt about him, lay down upon the lounge without undressing. Sleep
would not come; instead, scenes and people of long ago flitted through
the room as across a stage; the wind from chimney, keyholes, and
window-sash supplying speech. Presently the light of the old moon, that
would loiter in the west until after sunrise, crept in the window
through the geraniums and reaching out long fingers toward the cradle,
seemed to Gilbert's burning eyes to draw it from him. Getting up, he
looked at the child, rosy with sleep, still clasping Marygold's faded
doll, turned the cradle once more into the shadow, and kneeling by it
with his arms clasped over the hood, half thought, half whispered, "I
can't tell how or why, only that a child is here, but if to make up for
my home-staying, as he wrote, this is that other wrong for me to right
at my own door,--I thank Thee, Lord!" Then quickening the dying fire,
Gilbert finished his vigil before it in Mary's rocking-chair.
CHAPTER III
THE NEXT DAY
Mrs. Jason Pegrim needed no urging in the matter of making haste to go
to her brother's assistance. During the nine years that she had lived in
her farm-house on the hill, her one desire had been to get back to the
village, and ever since her brother had been appointed postmaster she
had spent many sleepless nights in fruitless schemes for bringing it to
pass. For if the clock-maker's little shop had been a place of social
opportunities to the alert widow, how much wider a field could she find
in the post-office?
Now the opportunity had almost dropped out of a dream, as she told
'Lisha Potts, when she hurried to admit him in the early dawn, her
toilet being so far from complete that hairpins bristled from her mouth
and rendered still more incoherent her announcement. "There now, and
folks say there's nothing in dreams! To be sure, the man in my dream
last night that came to price the heifer was dark and you're sandy, and
while I went to lead her out, he stole my best spoons out of the
clock-case, and slipped out of the back door, which, of course, no Potts
would do, even in a dream. But where it comes out true is that a man
did come, which is a matter for thankfulness, the first that's opened
that gate in a week."
As 'Lisha explained his errand, his native shrewdness making him tell as
little as possible, brief as the time was, Mrs. Pegrim finished the
securing of the doorknob coil of hair at the back and freed her tongue
for better action.
"Brother Oliver has his hands full and wants me to come down and help
him out for a week? You're sure he doesn't feel sick and doesn't want to
allow it? Or mebbe he's minded to get the spring cleaning done early; if
so, he's too forehanded, for March cleaning won't hold over till fall,
not but what I'm glad to go down and get three miles nearer to the
news."
While her tongue flew, her hands and feet were not idle, for, shoving
'Lisha before her into the kitchen, Mrs. Pegrim quickly assembled a
pick-up breakfast, of which she motioned him to eat in expressive
pantomime, while continuing her questions.
"Do you reckon he'll want me for more than a week? If I thought he
would, I'd put in my Sunday pelerine, but if not, I'd hate to muss it.
Didn't specify any length of time, only said fetch her down? That's like
a man. Anyhow, I'll tell neighbor Selleck to feed my fowls and the cow
and heifer until he hears contrary, besides which, you'll have to get
him to milk for you this morning if you're going to drive me down.
Oliver must be in some sort of strait if you can't even wait to milk and
do your chores first."
Having packed a capacious carpet-bag, drawn down the gayly painted paper
window-shades, emptied and dried the tea-kettle, and made sure that not
an ash was at large on the hearth, for she still cooked in the open
chimney over a bed of wood embers by the aid of pot hook, crane, and
trammel, Satira joined 'Lisha at the table and poured herself a cup of
coffee. She had barely raised it to her lips when she set it down so
suddenly that the coffee splashed upon her cherry-colored bonnet
strings.
"'Lisha Potts," she adjured solemnly, "I know what it is! Oliver is
going to take a second and he wants me to put things in shape! And why
shouldn't he if he wishes? He's got a tidy sum laid by and a trade and a
position under government. Of course I'll go and help him, not but what
a widow must feel, losing her only brother twice, so to speak, but if I
suspicioned who she is, I could ride down easier, and resign my spirits
better if I knew it wasn't widow Baker."
"It isn't marrying anybody, so you're way off the track. It's just
unexpected company that Oliver ain't got time to entertain suitable, and
the quicker we get down there, the sooner you'll know all about it,"
said 'Lisha, indulging in what for him was a wild flight of fancy.
After the Sellecks had received instructions as to her live stock,
Satira Pegrim relapsed into a silence that lasted for almost a mile.
"How much company is there?" asked Satira, launching the question
suddenly in the hope of taking 'Lisha unawares.
"Two!" he replied, a gleam of amusement flitting across his grim visage.
"Males or females?"
"One of each."
"Married couple?"
"Nope."
"Brother and sister?"
"I reckon not."
"Just friends, then?"
"I guess you've hit it now, pretty near, though I should call them two
down to Gilbert's more sort of travelling companions that was on the way
to growin' real friendly." More than this, Satira Pegrim could not
extract, and she contented herself by weaving romance about the unknown
couple, paying no attention to the beauty of the morning, wherein every
ice-covered twig glistened in the sun.
'Lisha pulled up at the post-office-house door, and after steering Mrs.
Pegrim carefully along the slippery path to the side porch, having
suddenly made up his mind to stay down at the village for another day,
he led the horse and bobbing two-wheeled chaise to Gilbert's barn that
stood at the end of the lot against the high bank that made John Angus's
boundary.
The side door being open, Mrs. Pegrim went in without knocking, found no
one in either kitchen, bedroom, or pantry, though the general confusion
told its own story; as she almost fell over the cradle, its bedding
tumbled about as if to air, the last straw was added to the mystery.
With a gasp, combined of suppressed speech and astonishment, she seized
her bag and going up to the room over the kitchen that she had
previously occupied, donned a gown of stout indigo print, and throwing
over head and shoulders a wonderful shawl of her own knitting, a
marvellous blend of gray and purple stripes, resolutely crossed the
passage between house and post-office, and entering by the workshop
door, peered through into the office in an effort to see without being
seen.
An unusual number of men for the time of the morning when chores are
most pressing stood about the stove, while two women, one being the
objectionable widow Baker, were actually holding an animated
conversation with Gilbert through the delivery window of the beehive,
standing a-tiptoe in their endeavors to see some object within the
sacred precinct. At the same time Mrs. Baker exclaimed--"The darling!"
in a wheezy tone that was meant to be confidential.
To the searching eye of his sister, Gilbert looked completely unnerved.
His hair, usually so sleek and divided low over the left ear, stood on
end; his beard was buttoned under his collarless blue flannel shirt,
giving his face a curiously chopped-off appearance, while his hands
shook as he fumbled with the letters, and he continually cast furtive
glances behind him.
Finally, Satira Pegrim made a dive through the group of men, and,
without appearing to see the women, slipped through the door at the back
of the sorting bench, only to trip over a soft something on the floor,
and suddenly find herself kneeling and very much jarred upon the edge of
a bright patchwork quilt, in the centre of which sat the lady baby,
alternately feeding herself and the puppy with a thick slice of bread
which she held butter side down. In the dull morning light, the child
looked more pathetic than pretty, for she had an unmistakable snuffly
cold, and a pair of tears that had been quivering on her long lashes
rolled down her cheeks as she looked up at Mrs. Pegrim.
The puppy gave a shrill bark and began to play tug-of-war with a corner
of the cherished shawl. At the sound Gilbert turned, a look of infinite
relief spreading over his face when he saw his sister.
"Thank the Lord you've come," he jerked out over his shoulder as he
handed widow Baker ten three-cent stamps that she had bought merely to
prolong the interview. "Take 'em right back to the house and I'll come
over soon as I can. She's got a cold and is wheezy; if you can't fix her
up, I calculate 'Lisha'd better go for the doctor."
"Yes, I will, Oliver; the minute I set eyes on her it flashed through
me, lard and nutmeg, on the chest, that's what she needs. But who _be_
they, 'nd how'd they come here without parents is what I'd like to know;
that is, the child, I mean, for lots of puppies don't have any."
"That's what we don't know and have got to find out. Didn't 'Lisha
explain?"
"Not a word, only rigmarolled about company."
"'Lisha," called Gilbert to the backwoodsman, who had now come in, "will
you go over home with sister Pegrim? She wants to talk to you 'bout last
night."
"I reckon if it isn't against the law, I'd ruther step in there and dish
out the rest of them letters," said 'Lisha; so brother and sister, the
lady baby muffled in the quilt, and wow-wow nipping at the heels of
Gilbert's carpet slippers, went together.
The door had no sooner closed behind them than the men began questioning
'Lisha all together, propounding their theories of the event before
which the war news had temporarily paled; for never, even in the memory
of Selectman Morse, the oldest of them, had a baby been abandoned in the
township,--much less a well-grown child of a year.
Mr. Morse, in view of his position, appointed two of the men present to
take up the clew; for in these good old days of New England, the First
Selectman was virtually mayor of the township and was so chosen.
'Lisha, by reason of his being the first to discover the child, was
deputed to go to the stable at Westboro with the buffalo-robe, after
which the course of the search would depend upon what the stableman
could tell.
"Gilbert, are you willing that the child should stay here while we
investigate?" the Selectman asked when the postmaster returned and
'Lisha had driven off to Westboro; "or would you rather she were handed
over to proper authorities right now?"
"Who might those be?" asked Gilbert, by way of reply.
"Well, now, that raises a question of some moment," said the Selectman,
fitting the tips of his fingers together precisely and making a flywheel
of his thumbs, at the same time adjusting his upper teeth in place with
a clicking sound. That it was the wandering disposition of these teeth
that had prevented their owner from becoming an orator in the cause of
patriotism, he firmly believed.
"If the child's an orphan foundling, she goes to the county asylum; if
merely abandoned by worthless parents, she goes to the poor-house free;
while if she can be attributed to a living male parent, he must pay her
board either to the town or her mother."
"It appears to me," said Gilbert, moistening his lips nervously, and
dangerous gleams shooting from his keen gray eyes, "that as you don't
know where to send her, and you've no authority to take her, she will
stay right where she was left! And now, boys, while I'm obliged to ye
all for your interest, this matter isn't federal business, nor connected
with this post-office, so if there's anything to say, come 'round to the
house later on and have it out. Under anything that may come out, the
child is innocent, and it might come pretty hard a score of years from
now if she knew she was made light of by you fellows." Gilbert's voice
broke at this juncture, and the boys were looking at each other
sheepishly when a team rattled up to the door and 'Lisha and Beers, the
Westboro liveryman, came in together, having met at the lower end of
town.
"They hired a sleigh from Beers's all right and hushed the bells," cried
'Lisha, triumphantly.
"Who?" chorused the boys.
"The man and woman who brought the child here, of course."
"I didn't say it was a man _and_ a woman," put in Beers, cutting off a
generous quid of tobacco and passing the remainder around, as though
preparing for a social occasion that would be a strain on the juices of
speech.
"This here was the way of it," he said, settling himself within easy
range of the box of sawdust by the stove, while Gilbert came from the
hive to lean over the case where a collection of stationery,
knickknacks, cigars, and packages of lozenges was kept.
"You know how late the mail-train was last night, and how it stormed?
Well, the last train was late by that much too; after waiting 'round a
spell I came home and I made up my mind I wouldn't send a team over to
the depot again but trust to any folks that wanted one coming over, for
it was near midnight. I suppose I must have dozed off by the stove in
the office, because the first thing I knew, a man stood there by the
fire stamping his feet to warm them, the spring bell on the door having
waked me. 'I've got off at the wrong station, intending to go on to
Harley's Mills,' says he in a voice like he'd an awful cold; 'can I get
a team to drive my wife over? She's at the depot.'
"'A team you can have,' says I, 'but I've not a driver I could send out
to-night. What part are you going to?'
"'To the post-office,' says he. 'Maybe you'd let me put up the team
there and bring it back in the morning. I'll pay you ten dollars down
for security,' says he, coughing and acting tired like.
"Thinks I, this isn't any night for horse thieves and if I give him
Spunky Pete, it'll be a safe risk, for he won't go but just such a ways
from the stable when he balks and bolts back.
"'All right,' says I, 'what kind of a team do you want, chaise or
sleigh?' He thought a minute and says, 'A sleigh'll jar less a night
like this, and if you've got any old rag of a robe, just pile her in.'
Well, he started off all right toward the depot, the bells jingling
nice, and pretty soon I see the sleigh come back with somebody else
within and go up the turnpike this way, and so I went upstairs and
turned into bed. It was after I'd got into a good first sleep when
something seemed to be pounding me in a dream and I started up with wife
pulling my sleeve and calling, 'There's somebody pounding away on the
front stoop and yelling like mad. Do you suppose one of the mules could
have broke loose?'
"'One of the mules? That's Spunky Pete and no other,' says I, tumbling
into my clothes and grabbing a lantern. He always pounds and screeches
that way if I don't give him his feed first of the bunch. Yes, sure
enough, there was Pete pounding away on the porch. At first I thought
he'd served them some trick and upset them, but when my eyes fell on the
lines, I knew different; they were tied to the dash rail with a bit of
string!
"That made me suspicious and I looked Pete over as I led him to the
stable. For a cold night he had surely sweat more than the short run
warranted. Then I noticed the bells didn't jingle--the string on the
girth was gone (I found it after under the seat) and the two big ones on
the shafts were hushed by being wrapped in paper. 'I wonder what's up,'
says I, 'the horse has come back safe, but there's something amiss
somewhere. A man doesn't give up ten dollars to ride three miles on any
straight errand.' So this morning I started up to find if any company
had come up to Mr. Gilbert's, and I met 'Lisha here with the buffalo,
which, I declare, I hadn't missed, and he told me the rest."
"Did you keep the bits of newspaper?" asked Gilbert.
"Yes, they're down home; they're torn from _The Boston Traveller_ of
last Friday."
"I wonder if any one took the milk freight down last night; it carries a
passenger car," ventured the Justice of the Peace. "Nobody, so far as
Mr. Binks the agent saw; he loaded on some milk, but the ticket-office
isn't open for that train," said 'Lisha.
"Can you describe the man?" asked the Justice of the Peace, poising his
pencil.
"That's just what I've been trying to do for myself," said the
liveryman. "Not suspecting anything, I wasn't particular, and he had a
dark cloth cap with a chin piece that pretty well covered his mouth. He
was short and thick-set, 'n' I think his eyebrows were light, but that's
about all, except that he had a long scar between the two first fingers
of his right hand. I noticed that when he slapped the ten-dollar note
down on the table."
"He asked you how far it was to Harley's Mills Post-office?" said
Gilbert. "Then wherever they came from and whoever they are, they
_meant_ to leave the child here, it wasn't mere chance. Do you hear
that, all?"
"Yes," answered the Justice of the Peace; "but as you've said that you
have no kin that she could come from, mightn't she be of some distant
kin Down East of old Curtis's, who didn't know he was dead? He'd had the
office about ever since there was one and was reputed rich, you know."
Gilbert winced as though some one had rudely touched a vital spot, and
then, turning to the First Selectman, said quietly: "I don't know
whether it's law or not, but I think a notice should be put in the best
county paper. I reckon those from whom the child was stolen should have
as much chance to know of it as if one of us had found a good horse tied
at his gate. Then in a month's time, if there is no clew, other plans
can be made. Meantime, as it seems she was left here with intention,
sister Pegrim and I will look after her."
"That's well said--liberal too, for a man of your years--with prices
what they are--" were some of the comments.
"That'll do for the present," said the First Selectman, gathering his
gray long-shawl about him and steadying himself with his cane; "but we
have a mystery among us for the first time, boys, and we must not treat
it lightly. If Mr. Allan Pinkerton was not at this time needed by Mr.
Lincoln, I should vote that we put the case before him."
Then, led by 'Lisha Potts, who announced that he was going to finish the
day by asking a few questions at the Bridgeton station, the group,
having already shortened their working day by a couple of hours, drifted
away.
Oliver Gilbert watched them go, and mechanically took his seat before
the sorting table. He was dizzy from lack of sleep and the rush of many
emotions that he had almost forgotten he had ever felt before, blended
with others wholly new. His life had been slow in blossoming, the
crippled hip from his very childhood had kept him aloof and apart. Then
he had lived in the full for three years and twilight again fell around
him; for a while he had struggled against it, and then, as the neighbors
said, "become resigned." Now, everything was upheaved; work, his
consoler, lay on the bench untouched; the sun melted the ice from the
halyards, and yet he did not go to raise the flag of victory where it
must be seen from John Angus's windows. The hour struck and then the
next before noon; he did not even remember that he had not eaten
breakfast. Presently the outer door opened and a pair of small, heavily
shod feet clumped across to the delivery-window, through which their
owner could not look, even on tiptoes, and after waiting for a few
moments, the piping voice of a boy of six or so called, "It's me, Mr.
Gilbert. I've come over to see your little girl, please."
Gilbert started from his revery and came toward the voice. "Oh, it's
you, is it, Hughey, and who told you about her, pray?"
"Nobody told me 'xactly, but I heard Mr. Morse telling father and
mother, and I asked her if I might come right down, and she said yes.
You see, there wasn't any school this morning because it was too
slippery, but now it's all wet. Broken for spring, father says. See my
new rubber-boots, Mr. Gilbert; all red inside," and he held up one
sturdy leg.
"As it's so close on to noon I guess I'll shut up, and we'll go in
together and see little missy. Isn't this about the time of day for a
barley stick, sonny?" said the postmaster, taking one from the glass
case as he passed.
The kitchen was in its usual order; a boiled dinner was under way on the
stove, beneath which the puppy slept, while Mrs. Pegrim sat mending some
socks with the rocker drawn up close to the lounge upon which the lady
baby was enthroned and playing gayly with a string of spools. When she
saw Gilbert, she dropped them and tried to roll off the sofa to her
feet.
"No, no!" said Mrs. Pegrim, pleasantly but decidedly, "it's too cold
down there for little girls." Her face flushed, puckered up to cry;
then, for some reason, she changed her mind and held out her arms.
"So she knows daddy already, does she?" crooned Gilbert, "and here's a
little boy come to see her, the very first caller. Satira, this is Hugh
Oldys from the Mills--Richard Oldys's boy, you know."
Richard Oldys was one of the representative men of this section of New
England. He had rebuilt the original Harley's Mills near the mouth of
the Moosatuck, for which the town had been named, and made them a great
distributing centre of flour and all grains. The land had come down to
his wife, whose mother had been a Harley and was, therefore, kin of the
Misses Felton, who also had Harley blood in the female line. While a man
of less wealth than John Angus, Oldys was so much more liberal with it,
so much broader in his sympathies and culture, that nothing of
importance was undertaken in the community without his advice and
sanction. As for his wife,--in that clannish and conservative little
town, almost old-world-like in its simplicity and loyalty to
tradition,--it was a belief that a real Harley could do no wrong.
Coupled with this, Pamela Oldys was a rare woman, almost too highly
keyed to the needs and wishes of others for her own peace, and wrapped
up in this boy Hugh, the only child that her frail health had allowed
her.
Hugh surveyed the lady baby in silence for a moment, and then gravely
shook her hand, saying, "How do you do?" A crow came from the prettily
curved lips by way of answer, and she began a sort of game of
peek-a-boo, covering her face with her hands and then peeping out.
Evidently she had lived among responsive people.
"I suppose God sent her the same as usual," remarked Hugh, in the most
matter-of-fact way. "She's nice and big though, being so new; they're
mostly blinky and queer at first, like kittens. We've never had a baby
at our house; they often have them next door, but not as nice as this
one."
At this moment the puppy spied Hugh's rubber-boots that had been left at
the door, and made a dash for them, for if there is anything a young dog
loves, it is either shoe leather or shoe rubber.
"Hi! there's a puppy. Is it yours, Mr. Gilbert? I had a puppy once and
it died, and father's going to buy me one of a better kind next
Christmas. I'll be seven then. There's so many cats around the mill
that I hope they won't scratch its eyes out."
"That pup belongs to the lady baby," answered Gilbert, who was now
brushing his tousled hair in front of the mirror over the sink.
"Did it come with her?" asked Hugh, eagerly.
"It surely did; she had it right in her little arms," answered Gilbert,
busy with a collar button and not thinking ahead.
"Oh, I'm so glad!" cried Hugh, clapping his hands, "for now I know that
if dogs come from heaven, they must go back there too, and I was afraid
that my puppy would be dreadful lonely if he couldn't go where there
were little boys and girls, for he just loved them."
Satira Pegrim looked at her brother with a horrified expression. Her
lips opened to speak, but something that she saw in his face made her
close them again. Whatever her feelings as a hard-shell Baptist upon the
future state of dogs might be, she did not propose to shorten her visit
to her brother by expressing them.
"Have they got names yet?" asked Hugh, his attention now embarrassingly
divided between the lady baby and the pup.
"No, sonny; that is, I'm not plumb sure, so I'm going to take time, say
until along about the first of the month, to think out a name for the
lady baby. As for the pup, suppose you help me out with that. Think up
all the names that's short and slick, and then we'll have a choosing
bee."
"Dinner is ready," called Mrs. Pegrim from the pantry, where she was
slicing bread. "Won't you set up to the table, Hugh, and eat with us?"
"I think I'd better go home now, mother didn't say anything about
dinner. Next time I come, I'm going to bring you something, lady baby,"
Hugh said, gently kissing the dimpled hand she thrust into his face,
"and byme by, when you can walk, I'll bring you up to my house to see my
mother and lend you part of her, 'cause you've only got a daddy."
"That's just it, at best there'll only be a daddy," murmured Gilbert,
drawing his chair to the table and eating as in a dream, in which the
wording of the notice for the papers was the chief theme, until he was
roused by a spoon pounding his hand vigorously, and found that the child
was seated close beside him in Marygold's high-chair, her eyes fastened
on his face.
"Look a-here now, Oliver," said Satira Pegrim, resting her arms on her
elbows, with knife and fork raised in midair; "I've been thinking,
suppose'n the Oldys took a fancy to adopt her. Wouldn't that square up
everything for everybody just right? For it's plain to see that Hugh's
just achin' for a sister."
Again the forbidding expression settled on Gilbert's face, but Satira
did not see it until too late.
"Mrs. Pegrim, I don't know just how long you may be called to visit
here, but longer or shorter, recollect one thing, you'll have no call to
_think_ about my business nor to _talk_ about it to me, but just to keep
quiet."
"Don't you want me to visit or have speech with the neighbors?" pleaded
Satira, her cheery voice dropping to a ludicrous whimper, as the vision
of social cups of tea flavored by neighborhood gossip began to fade.
"I don't ask anybody to do what they manifestly according to nature
can't; I said _me_!" retorted Gilbert, about whose long forefinger the
lady baby had gripped her hand as a bird clings to its perch.
CHAPTER IV
THE FELTONS
A month crept by with warm rains at the end of it, and the spring called
the blood back to the pale tree-tops with a bound.
Though the people of Harley's Mills did not by any means hibernate in
woodchuck fashion during winter, they did conserve their forces after
the habits of their thrifty forebears and did not light or heat any more
of their usually ample houses than was absolutely necessary. A strong
tie of kinship threaded the whole community. The stately residents of
Quality Hill and Westboro Road were often second and third cousins of
the owners of the lonely hill farms, of the blacksmith at the
cross-roads, or the joiner and carpenter, whose correct eye and a
self-taught course of mechanical drawing enabled him to supply plans
when required. Nor did this carpenter think it necessary to call himself
an architect and builder, as he would to-day, in order to back his
claims to consideration.
No one was jealous because the Misses Felton, year after year, went to
New York after Thanksgiving, and returned via the South late in May.
Rather were their doings a sort of general stimulant and tonic,
administered in regular doses through the letters that Miss Emmy Felton
wrote weekly to pretty little Mrs. Latimer, the Episcopal minister's
wife, who had a love of life beyond the radius of eight hundred a year,
while Miss Felton herself was in constant communication with her
steward, Wheeler, as to every detail of the management of the place, so
that all Harley's Mills knew exactly what to expect before it happened.
With the other wealthy landowner of the town the conditions were wholly
different. When John Angus left his house for travel or the city, the
gates were closed as far as knowledge of him was concerned. Ever since
he had come home to take the property at his father's death, twelve
years before, he had been a builder of barriers, not only between
himself and those he thought beneath him, but he hedged himself with
ceremony in his own household, his own inflexible will being his
universal measure, and every act being in accord with a fixed plan. If,
in his dislikes, he was deliberate and inexorable, those who knew him
said that it was the same with his passions; in nothing had he the
saving grace of spontaneity. Small wonder that his roseleaf wife
withered by his side until some final shock, too strong for her
endurance, swept her away to die in oblivion.
Thus the news came to Harley's Mills not only that the Feltons would
return the middle of April because the disturbed state of the South had
made their usual journey impossible, but that John Angus, who had been
running up at odd times all the month, was going to remodel his place
for the reception of his bride in June; while following on the heels of
this report, house-painters, paperers, masons, and a landscape-gardener
came to confirm it. So it fell out that, for a time, the lady baby, who
remained unclaimed at Oliver Gilbert's, became a thing of secondary
interest to every one but the postmaster and Satira Pegrim, until the
full month having gone, the village was again excited, this time by the
news that Gilbert had taken the final steps toward adopting the child.
Immediately several impromptu debating societies of villagers took up
the merits of the case for and against the adoption. The women of the
Hospital Aid Society vowing, as they rolled bandages and scraped lint,
that a man of Gilbert's age was no fit guardian for a female child,
especially as Satira Pegrim might be relied on to take her second at any
time he should come to hand, which might easily happen in a post-office,
and leave her brother in the lurch.
The men did their talking in the blacksmith's shop, a place where
Gilbert was not likely to appear suddenly, their objections being
impersonal and based chiefly on the fact that it wasn't a good plan to
encourage the leaving of stray children on people's stoops, also that
the presence of the mysterious child might be prejudicial to his
official position; next the three ministers of the town, Episcopal,
Congregational, and Methodist, had all made friendly calls at the
post-office house and asked, according to their different methods,
whether Gilbert recognized the responsibility he was contemplating.
Meanwhile, in the thick of the discussion, the Misses Felton and Mr.
Esterbrook arrived. Not all together, it is true, for Miss Emmy, being a
trifle delicate and disliking the mixed air, crowds, and jolting of the
cars, always drove from New York in the family carriage, a spacious
landau, lined with rose satin and swung high upon C springs, the journey
of fifty odd miles being broken for luncheon and a change of horses, the
sedate family grays having been sent on to this point the day previous.
Mr. Esterbrook accompanied Miss Emmy on this excursion; Nora, maid and
general factotum, making the third.
As for Miss Felton, this means of progress was too slow. She took the
train with the other maids and Caleb, the colored man-servant; but even
this method of progression was far from rapid, as the cars were pulled
singly by horses from the station in East Twenty-sixth Street, a little
above the Feltons' house on Madison Square, through Fourth Avenue until,
the press of traffic left behind, the cars were united and an engine
attached. Still, journey as they might, the family group that parted
after breakfast in the great high-ceiled house facing the square would
meet at a flower-decked supper table in a new and healthier atmosphere,
without hurry or disarrangement, so harmonious was Miss Felton's
housekeeping in the subduing of annoying details.
Not to understand the component parts of the household that lived, or,
one might almost say, reigned, at Felton Manor would be to have little
understanding of the conditions of the life and surroundings into which
the lady baby bid fair to be adopted. The Felton ladies were Bostonians
by birth and education, their father having been a prominent judge.
Failing of sons, he had, after being some years a widower, virtually
adopted and educated a cousin's son to be his confidential secretary,
and afterward appointed him in his will as a sort of guardian and
adviser to his daughters, who were left at the respective ages of
eighteen and twenty with a large property for those days. This man was
William Esterbrook, ten years the senior of Elizabeth Felton.
When Squire Felton died, the combination household continued as before,
except that the Boston house was given up for one in New York, as the
east winds were bad for Miss Emmy's throat. Miss Felton, however, took
her Aunt Lucretia's place at the helm. Strangers sometimes remarked upon
the peculiarity of the household arrangements, where William Esterbrook,
in a house not his own, filled the old-world position of guardian over
attractive and marriageable wards. The family friends, however, saw
nothing more than a brotherly and sisterly arrangement, and this was the
view that the trio thought they held themselves. The real fact was that
the kinship, so remote as to be merely a shadow, had kept them all three
from leading the normal life that was their due.
Twenty years had passed, years full of event and social intercourse with
the best that either came to or lived in the land, and still it was the
Misses Felton that bought a picture from a rising but struggling artist;
gave the young poet or musician a chance to be heard; entertained the
sedate at dinner or the opera, and, though they no longer joined in it,
gave the young a chance to dance in their great rooms, or sit out the
dances on stairs or in the trim conservatory. For, motherless and young
as they had been at the time of their father's death, they realized the
true social and moral responsibility of their wealth. Miss Felton was
independent, I had almost said masculine, of action; without being
brusque, she was direct and to the point, comprehended financial
questions, and had an accurate judgment in real estate. Tall and of
elegant proportions, she wore dark rich silks of simple lines, a plain
linen collar and brooch, while her splendid hair, without a thread of
gray, was drawn loosely over the ears and braided close to her head. She
did not seem to make any exertion to follow the fashions, and yet was
always distinguished.
Miss Emmy, having been the younger, and the pet of her father in
addition, was of the spontaneous, romantic, and feminine type that,
while it seems very yielding, has quite fixed ideas. She was but a
trifle above medium height, with large gray eyes and light brown hair,
that at forty was either heaped high in puffs, gathered in a netted
"waterfall" at the back of her head, or let loose in a shower of
ringlets as the whim of the moment required. She loved everything
dainty, in people as well as in clothes; her skirts rippled with ribbons
and lace as she trailed slowly along, her sunshades were of the
daintiest, and her flowery hats bits of art that almost defied nature.
Lyric music was her passion, and in spite of her years she still had a
pretty voice, quite the size for ballads. Small wonder that between
these two opposites William Esterbrook, who, though of somewhat
superfine tastes combined with an undeveloped sense of responsibility,
was still a man, stood undecided.
Twenty years before, his interests had centred upon Miss Felton, and
together they had regarded pretty, kittenish Emmy as a child, a
plaything. This aspect soon ceased, when Emmy, coming into the social
world, had taken the sedate man of thirty-two for her cavalier quite as
a matter of course, and alternately bullied him and turned to him in
every strait. Once only he had come face to face with his manhood and
resolved to make the plunge and propose to Emmy, but an over-estimate of
the effect it might have upon Elizabeth held him back, and so the three
had drifted through the best years of life, loyal to each other, yet too
supremely and evenly comfortable to ever know the highest happiness.
If the trio had been separated even by a season of travel, they might
have discovered their real selves, for absence is often quite necessary
to give the perspective for rightly judging the feelings and relations
with one another.
Six months before, the fire of war had entered Esterbrook's veins, and
he, the veteran of a militia regiment, had almost broken away to join a
company of his old comrades as a minor officer; but even here he was
rebuffed and turned back by something wrong with his heart action that
his physician discovered at the last moment. Consequently, at fifty odd,
William Esterbrook, whom Miss Emmy called Willy, and Miss Felton,
cousin Esterbrook, though a very well-preserved man, who had no need as
yet to use either hair tonic or other toilet accessories, was possessed
by a sort of self-consciousness and a certain agitated courtesy of
manner.
A married man of this age usually has relaxed his tension through
natural processes; a confirmed bachelor, living in his own apartments,
takes his ease because there is nothing to goad him to do otherwise; but
for Esterbrook, he was still living in the play that had absorbed his
youth without realizing that it was a play, and sometimes he was
horribly bored.
In personal appearance he had a style quite his own. At a time of beards
and many whiskers, low collar, and loose tie, he kept a clean-shaven
face and still affected a modified stock. His coat--except in the
evening, a Prince Albert--had a decided waist line; he wore spats that
broke the plainness of the customary high boots of the time, and his
taste in waistcoats was as refined as it was fanciful. After all, it was
the hat that was the most distinguishing characteristic of his apparel.
This was of the softest beaver, brushed until it shone like silk; the
crown of moderate height was belled out at the top and the brim curled
well at the sides. In the crown of this he invariably carried his
right-hand glove, the left being always in place and neatly buttoned.
This habit came of the old-time courtesy of either removing the glove
when shaking hands with ladies or apologizing for its presence. Once
Esterbrook had removed the glove with graceful ceremony before extending
his well-shaped hand. Now?--well, he was a bit weary of manners and
customs, so that the offending glove lived in his hat.
About ten o'clock on the morning after the Feltons' arrival Miss Emmy
and Mr. Esterbrook were seen walking on the road that ran from Quality
Hill down to Westboro. Many heads looked out of windows and nodded, and
not a few hands were extended over gates by way of greeting, together
with bits of local news, either offered at random or for exchange.
"Had the ladies heard of the lady baby left at old Oliver Gilbert's, and
his preposterous idea of keeping her?" asked the farrier's wife, who had
been one of the many helpers who had married from Felton Manor.
"Had they seen Miss Marcia Duane, John Angus's intended, and was she as
handsome and rich as folks said? Able to wind him, who had never before
bent head or knees, around her little finger? And if so, why did she
take a man old enough to be her father?"
"Why?" said Mr. Esterbrook, with his jauntiest air. "John Angus and
myself are nearly of an age, and I'm not yet out of the running."
"Oh! Mr. Esterbrook, present company is always suspected, and then I'm
sure no one ever thinks how old _you_ are; you've always been just the
same," said the farrier's wife.
Yes, always the same, a house cat by the fire; the bitter thought
flashed through his brain, yet the next moment he was stooping
courteously to disentangle Miss Emmy's parasol from the fringe of her
silk mantilla. Then they proceeded along the street, Miss Emmy's full
skirt of gray chiné silk, with its bordered flounces of pink roses,
rustling as it swung about her, buoyed out by many petticoats, for this
dainty lady followed the fashion without the use of what she considered
the unnecessary vulgarity of a harsh and unmanageable hoop-skirt.
Little Mrs. Latimer ran out to remind her friend that the Hospital Aid
Society would meet at the Rectory that afternoon, and did she suppose
that dear Miss Felton would come and say something to the ladies about
the necessity of rolling the bandages straight, as Dr. Morewood had said
that to expect an army surgeon in a hurry to use a long bandage rolled
loosely on the bias, was simply to invite a lesson in profanity.
Finally the post-office was reached. Oliver Gilbert, who was at his work
bench in the back shop, put down a cuckoo clock that he was tinkering
with and came forward quite spryly to meet his visitors, the limp,
caused in boyhood by the ill setting of a broken hip, being less
noticeable than usual.
"We've come to see you first, and then to take a peep at this wonderful
lady baby about whom the village is agog. That is, _I_ have; Mr.
Esterbrook would probably rather stay here and talk with you about the
new soldier, Grant, who has come out of nowhere and is doing such great
things.
"By the way, my watch has been losing time, though sister Elizabeth
declares that I wind it in the dark and turn the hands backward; at any
rate, it will be the better for a visit with you." Then turning to Mr.
Esterbrook, who was trying to decide which of the three morning paper
she should read first, "Willy, my watch, please; you have it in your
pocket."
As Miss Emmy passed through the arbor to the house, she was surprised to
hear the halting tap of Gilbert's footsteps behind her. "I do not need
to take you from the office," she said, "for you must not forget that
Mrs. Pegrim is an old friend of mine."
"'Tisn't that, but I want to know what you think of _her_."
"Hasn't she any name? I mean, haven't you decided what to call her?"
"I've pretty much made up my mind; I had to, for she's to be baptized
this afternoon."
At this moment, Mrs. Pegrim, who had been chafing with impatience ever
since she saw Miss Emmy go into the post-office, opened the door. By her
side, standing straight and true, even though one hand clung to the
woman's apron, was the lady baby.
Very scant was the greeting that Miss Emmy gave Satira Pegrim, for
suddenly she picked up the child and, carrying her across the room,
stood her upon the table so that their faces were upon a level, all
oblivious of the fact that her mantilla had slipped from her shoulders
and that the lace sunshade she had dropped had been seized by the pup,
who bore it to his usual câche under the stove.
"The darling! how could any one have the heart to desert such an
exquisite little creature? Positively, Mr. Gilbert, you must let us
have her; I've always thought that I should adopt a young girl some day,
twenty years hence, to buy pretty clothes for, after I grow too wrinkled
and gray to wear pink and corn color, but I never before realized what a
dear a lady baby could be. After all, it will be much nicer to watch her
grow up; how surprised sister Elizabeth will be, and as for Mr.
Esterbrook, I wonder what he would do if I asked him to carry her home
for me."
As she leaned toward the child, who was clutching at her long pearl
earrings, shaped like bunches of grapes, seeming to regard her as a new
and improved species of doll, Gilbert's hand closed on Miss Emmy's arm
with a grip that was by no means gentle.
"Hush!" he said almost roughly in her ear, "we don't speak about her
being deserted and talk of that sort any more. None can tell when she
will begin to understand. As for her being adopted by you or any one
else, that's not to be. She was not left on Quality Hill; no lights were
there that stormy night; there were no folks awake! She was as good as
born to me. There's just three of us in this, God and her and me, and
we've got to work it out between us, stand or fall."
"I could do so much more for her," Miss Emmy murmured apologetically;
then stopped, checked by the expression of his face, though she did not
understand it.
"Yes, ma'am, you could and would as far as boughten things would carry,
but I've held Marygold in my arms, her little fingers clasped around my
neck, so I _know_, and time out of mind it's come to me that with women
folks and children the _knowing_ and _feeling sure_ is more than the
_having_."
"Miss Emmy, what is a parrotpet?" Satira Pegrim had been on pins and
needles during this interview, and in seeking to cut it short, jerked
out a sentence quite as irrelevant as those two that have become
famous,--"There's milestones on the Dover road," and "Barneses goose was
stole by tinkers."
"A paroquet is a bird, a small parrot. Don't you remember that I kept a
pair until one died and the other one grew moody and bit Willy--I mean
Mr. Esterbrook?" said Miss Emmy, also glad of the break in a strained
situation.
"No, it isn't a bird, it's something to do with bricks. They've been
carting them from sloops in Westboro Harbor up to John Angus's place
this week past, and this morning, when I was raking up the leaves in the
garden down beyond the apple trees, making ready to sow early radishes
and lettuce, I climbed up the bank to Angus's boundary to take a look,
and if the old fence wasn't gone! Half a dozen men were filling out the
bank even with dirt from what was the old flower garden; the old shrubs
was uptore and lying roots in air, and right at the end of what was the
long path was a mountain of bricks.
"Peter Nichols, the overseer, was there, so I called out and asked him
what became of the fence and said I wished I could have had some of the
piney roots and garden stuff that was just tossed out for filling. He
says, 'There's going to be a fine brick parrotpet instead of the fence,
'cause this here's to be a rose garden, and as for the posy roots and
things, I daresn't give 'em, but later on I reckon that some of 'em'll
root and sprout on the filled bank your side of the parrotpet."
"Oh, it's a parapet you mean!" exclaimed Miss Emmy; "a wall something
like a fort. That proves the reports that John Angus is anxious to
please his bride and let her carry out her tastes, for she has a
charming rose garden at their estate on the Hudson that ends in a stone
parapet overlooking the river."
"Only this one overlooks the post-office and me, though I believe they
_can_ see over the trees to salt water," said Gilbert, dryly; and then
his frown changed to a smile, as the lady baby, tiring of her fingering
inspection of Miss Emmy's ribbons, crawled to his knee with the
sidewheel motion she used when she wished to hurry, and holding her head
on one side like an inquisitive bird, stretched out her arms and called
"Daddy!" with unmistakable clearness.
"Mr. Gilbert, did I understand you to say that the child is to be
baptized this afternoon?" asked Miss Emmy, presently, not a trace of
annoyance at his rebuff remaining in her manner or voice. "Who is going
to do it, and will it be here or at one of the churches? I should like
to send the lady baby some of our roses; I know she will love flowers by
the way her eyes follow my hat."
"Mr. Latimer is going to do it; he's coming here, Miss Emmy, and we'd be
grateful for a few posies to trick out the foreroom. I reckoned to get a
new paper on it before this, but it doesn't seem any season to spend
for ornaments."
"Mr. Latimer, an Episcopalian? Why, I thought that you were a
Congregationalist, and your wife was certainly the daughter of Mr.
Moore, who used to be Methodist preacher in Bridgeton."
"That's all so, Miss Emmy; but what I'm striving at in regards to the
bringing up of lady baby is to be fair and unbiassed in all things where
I can. Now, Mary belonging to one of the sects in town and me to
another, it seems fair to divide 'round and give this child whatever
benefit there is in the third. Then, too, they've got an organ down to
the 'Piscopal Church and we've only got a tuning-fork, 'cause whenever
an organ is brought up, John Angus votes it down as sinful."
"Aye, aye! he still holds to Kirk o' Scotland; he's vairy serious and
canty," interposed Miss Emmy, with a well-feigned accent, "for his
housekeeper told that last winter, when the cook asked higher wages, he
couldn't give an answer until he'd pondered it on communion sabbath,
which put off the evil day four weeks."
"The child likes music," continued Gilbert, "for only yesterday, when a
fiddler with a dancing bear came past and I had him in to play, she'd a
crept off after him in a twinkling while Satira's back was turned, if
the pup there hadn't barked and tugged her by the skirt.
"Well, I asked Mr. Latimer and explained to him, and he said, 'Why not
bring her to the church after service Sunday morning,' but when I told
him Marygold was named in the foreroom, then he said he'd come up. I'm
not asking a company,--Satira couldn't see her way to manage,--so
there'll only be jest two or three, but I'd be pleased to see you, Miss
Emmy, if you're interested that far to take the trouble."
"What is the news?" asked Miss Emmy, as she joined Mr. Esterbrook, who
was walking to and fro under the maples that lined the walk opposite the
post-office, a goodly quantity of their scarlet catkins decorating the
wide brim of his hat.
"News? There isn't any, except that McClellan is still on his way to
Richmond and there are some war bonds, 5-20's and 6-20's, going on the
market that I think we should all subscribe to as far as we are able. I
must speak to Elizabeth about them to-night."
Then as he raised the parasol in which there were several holes not in
the original pattern and held it between her and the now really hot sun,
he glanced at her face and saw, not only that it was flushed, but that
it wore a wholly new expression, while the strings of her bonnet, that
had been tied with a graceful precision, hung loose and bore the
unmistakable print of moist fingers. Her face held Esterbrook's eyes
until, unconsciously drawn, she looked up and in her turn was amazed at
the sudden intensity of his usually placid countenance and the flash of
his eyes as he shifted them.
"What is it? What has happened?" he said. "Has the child been temperish
and vexed you, or did she pull your ribbons awry in play?"
"No, she was lovely, far too lovable;" then she paused to look over the
neat picket-fence into one of the many gardens that filled the spaces
between street and white-pillared porches, where tufts of golden
daffodils shone like prisoned sunbeams on the lawn and single white
violets, short stemmed and fragrant, huddled timidly about the roots of
leafless rose-bushes in the long borders. "What has happened is that in
this last hour I've been away, Willy," she said, as she made a
wide-sweeping gesture, "so far away from you and Elizabeth that I almost
forgot how you looked. So far that I saw quite back to things that might
have been."
Emeline Felton had always been, within fixed boundaries, of a romantic
and emotional disposition, but with that gesture, suggestive of the
breaking of bonds, Esterbrook felt that she swept these boundaries
aside.
"Was I other than I am now in those far-away days? Have I not always
been the same to you? Do I not always study your interests?" Esterbrook
said, again meeting her eyes that did not turn away.
"Yes, but you were different once, though not for long; since then, as
you say, you've been always the same, and that's part of the matter."
"I wish that in those other days I'd had the courage to go away far
enough to see if you would miss me and then haunt you until I'd made you
marry me, Emeline."
"And I--I wish you had!"
Esterbrook caught his breath: "Is it too late? Am I too old to change
the might have been?"
"Ah, yes; if I married, after to-day, it must be a younger man than you.
Besides you could not stand the shock of telling Elizabeth, and if I
told her, she might send me to bed without my supper!
"Then at our age we must consider our obligations to society; as
Elizabeth puts it, how disappointed it would be if the institution known
as the _Misses Felton and Mr. Esterbrook_ should disintegrate! How we
should be missed, we nice _safe_ people! Ah, no, Willy, don't look so
serious; it's only some left-over mad March Hare that has bewitched me,"
and Miss Emmy laughed with the same ripple in her voice as that of the
bluebird on the roof of its box in the garden.
"We must not forget to be patriotic; we must hurry home to consult
Elizabeth about those 6-20's you spoke of, and please, Willy, ask
Wheeler to make me a nice little bouquet of roses with lace paper around
it by three o'clock to-day, and tie up a box of loose flowers also. I'm
going to the christening of Oliver Gilbert's lady baby."
The bonnet strings were tied as usual and the flush on her cheek had
faded to its normal tint when Esterbrook next glanced at his companion,
but in those few minutes he too had looked back and travelled afar, and
his face changed as though he had been a ghost of himself.
CHAPTER V
THE NAMING
The Feltons, in common with their neighbors of Quality Hill, dined at
one o'clock and had tea or supper, according to the heartiness of the
meal, at six or half past, the village and farm folk having their
mid-day meal at noon. While a number of these families kept the same
hours in their winter city life, during the past four or five seasons
there had been a move toward afternoon dinner at five. Dinner parties
were given at even a later hour, oftentime not beginning until six, the
Feltons being among those who adopted the extreme custom. So far,
however, no one had brought the innovation to upset the almost historic
domestic regulations of Harley's Mills.
Promptly at half-past two on this April afternoon, the carriage came
around to take Miss Felton to the meeting of the Hospital Aid Society,
where she was preparing to inaugurate a better system of work, the
material for which was tied in a great bundle in the porch,--cotton
cloth, soft unbleached muslin for bandages, and rolls of the gray blue
flannel of the hue that for years after was known as army blue.
"Are you coming, Emeline? Or are you too tired after your long drive
yesterday?" asked Miss Felton, as she stood before her bureau fastening
a wide lace collar with the brooch to which Gilbert had referred, and
then catching the folds of her India shawl with an inconspicuous pin of
Scotch pebbles that blended with the fabric. Her bonnet was of finely
braided straw of soft brown, the chaise-top front being filled in with
geraniums of crimson velvet; the broad strings of brown watered ribbon
were of the exact shade of her gown. Though the Misses Felton were but
two years apart, Elizabeth, by far the handsomer of the two, dressed as
a doting mother, who considers that all the daintily pretty things of
life belong by right to her daughter.
Miss Emmy, who was searching for something in the many small drawers of
her dressing-table, did not answer immediately, and her sister repeated
the question.
"I'm not in the least tired, but I'm not going with you because I've
promised dear quaint Oliver Gilbert that I will go to the christening of
the mysterious lady baby this afternoon."
"Do you think under the circumstances it is necessary? Is it not a
rather public expression of our approval of what the conservative
townspeople consider a very unwise action of Gilbert's?"
"It certainly is approval,--_my_ approval, that is,--for really,
Elizabeth, the only objection that I have to Gilbert's taking the lady
baby is that it prevents me from adopting her myself. No, this isn't one
of my little pleasantries, as you call them. I asked Gilbert for her
and he refused. From your standpoint it may seem strange, and I have no
wish to compromise you. I've come to think now that as we are both past
forty and likely to remain the Misses Felton and live in one house to
the end of our days, it is time that, at least, we allow ourselves to
hold different opinions. It will make variety and keep us fresher, you
know. See, I'm going to take the lady baby these coral beads that I wore
at her age. She has precisely the colored hair and eyes to wear coral;
when she looks up from under her long lashes, she might be a mer-baby,
or whatever a mermaid's child should be called."
Miss Emmy chatted gayly along, nonchalantly and without the slightest
air of being put out, yet Miss Felton knew that some great change had
come over her volatile sister, but instead of accepting the warning in
silence, she still felt called upon to chide.
"Do you think under the circumstances it is a wise thing to give
ornaments to a foundling of whose antecedents we know nothing? Isn't it
putting possible temptation in her way?"
"The knowing nothing is precisely what makes it right, my dear
emotionless sister. As we know nothing about her, we can take it for
granted that she is everything we could wish for. There, don't be vexed;
you are so compounded of judgment and righteousness that you can't
possibly understand people that want to do things simply because they
feel that they must. Don't wait for me, but send the carriage back,
please; I'm taking down some flowers."
Miss Emmy went on with her toilet, Nora lending a helping hand now and
then to adjust the net of silk and beads that to-day held her curls, but
so rapid and nervous were the fragile lady's movements that she had the
air of a paradise bird pluming itself, and while the color her exertions
spread upon her cheeks lasted, no one would have guessed her due in
years by ten or fifteen.
The front yard at the post-office house was decked as for summer when
Miss Emmy arrived. She had refused Nora's aid, preferring to carry her
own bundles, and had a little single-handed tussle with the gate that
allowed her to see in detail the row of pink conch shells, alternating
with round stones freshly whitewashed, that outlined the path. While two
settees, also spotless white, of the form once used in schools, set off
the bit of lawn, one resting under a tall lilac bush, the other standing
aimlessly in the open, as though it lacked the decision of character
necessary for a choice of background, between a crab tree, the grape
arbor, or the bank that rolled up to John Angus's garden. The
little-used front door was open, and a pair of gigantic overshoes beside
the mat told that one guest had arrived from a region where the roads
were still "unsettled."
Satira Pegrim was at the door before Miss Emmy had reached the top step,
and rushing out, laid hold of the boxes of flowers with one hand, while
she half led, half shoved her visitor in with the other.
"Do mind your step, Miss Emmy; Oliver hasn't got the storm door off'n
yet, he's been so eat up with worry this last month. Neither have I had
the pluck to attack that hall tread and turn it. It's now dark figgers
on light, but bein' three ply, if turned it would be light on dark and a
sight fresher; so if you kin just play to see it that way, you'll ease
my feelin's. Won't you step up into the best room and lay off your
bunnit?
"Going to leave it on? Well, it's real handsome, and I've heard say that
folks in New York keep their hats on to most all kinds of day parties,
which I lay to folks not bein' as well acquainted as they are this way.
Besides, there being such a heap o' ornery thievin' ones, the bunnits
might get mixed or done away with if laid off'n. Still, bein' as it's
right here in town, I do wish you'd loosen yours; it would seem more
friendly like, and as if you was one of the family, of which the good
Lord knows there's a lack, 'specially on an occasion like this."
Miss Emmy laughingly expressed her willingness to take off her
head-gear, and after arranging the roses in two yellow and brown lustre
pitchers on the mantel-shelf, and laying the little bouquet beside the
deep bowl of Russian cut glass that was to do duty for the christening,
she followed Mrs. Pegrim upstairs.
"Why, where is the lady baby?" she asked in surprise.
"I'm letting her sleep until the last moment, and Oliver, who's dressing
and fussing between his room and the kitchen's, got an eye to her.
'Lisha Potts's in there talking to him. Oliver would have 'Lisha to the
naming 'cause of his being the one to open the door _that_ night, you
know." (This was as near as Satira ever allowed herself to approach the
forbidden subject.) "He balked considerable, not being used to society
down here at the centre, and settin' in there now he does look uncommon
like a coon they had in a cage last county fair, 'n' we-all didn't tell
him one of the Miss Feltons was coming, for fear he'd streak it, so
you'd best stand just behind the door 'ntil he gets in.
"I'm turrible glad to see your bunnit off'n, and how you do your hair.
Only a few of the daring hereabout has fixed theirs in what's called a
waterfall, and those as has looks like they'd put spice bags on the back
of their necks for a crick' n' they'd stuck fast. Yourn is just elegant,
trickles down and hangs as easy as if there wasn't no net to gather it.
"Who all is coming to the naming? Only First Selectman Morse, little
Hughey Oldys, me and you and 'Lisha and Gilbert, besides Mr. Latimer
that does it. Gilbert he wanted more, but, says I, not having cleaned
house I'm not ready for a charge o' the whole town 'at would come if we
loosed the line, so we'd best draw it close as we can without choking
ourselves, and that's how.
"No, brother hasn't told me the name yet, but I suspicion it's something
choice and bookish, for though Gilbert never made out to get further'n
three terms at the old Academy (that little building 'nexed behind the
new one), he's always thought a sight of books. In fact, he got
something of the taste from pa, who was a carpenter and the
forehandedest man about naming his family in all Newfield County; he'd
names for us all before he'd picked out his wife, pa had.
"You ain't never heard? Well, it come about this way: Thomas, Henry, and
Gideon had been the male names among the Gilberts ever since they set
foot in this land o' promise near two hundred years ago, and as they
slumped down in one spot and didn't journey to speak of, with first,
second, and third cousins all clinging to those names, things got mixed
pretty well.
"Father, he that was to be, was jobbing around down at the Harley house,
which is now Mis' Oldys's, fixin' more shelves in grandsir' Harley's
liberary. My, but isn't there a sight of books there! They do claim that
grandsir' Harley had every one that was made from Adam up to the time of
his death, and the Oldys folks has been buyin' ever since.
"Well, they knowin' and trustin' father, he put in his dinner hour there
in the liberary instead o' coming clear home, and he got real interested
in the printing outside the books, and he came to find there was quite a
few double names he'd never heard of. So he says to himself, says he,
'I'll put a few down; they'll come handy some day mebbe, and freshen up
the family,' and so he did, and after ma died we found his pocket-book
all full of figgerin' on work and the names writ in the end. There was
more than he ever used, there bein' only ten of us, six boys and four
girls. Some o' the names he'd passed over, I reckon, 'cause he wasn't
quite sure of their sect.
"The first of us was a girl and she was named Jane Grey, but didn't live
out her second year; then come Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlow, and
Clarissy Harlow, Robinson Crusoe, Charlotte Temple, Daniel Defoe,
Oliver Goldsmith, Cotton Mather, and lastly me, with Oliver, all that's
living. I was called for grandma on ma's side on account of her silver
spoons, two candlesticks, and snufflers, which I didn't get, marryin'
against her wishes before she died.
"Some of the names were a mouthful, but they did look real choice on
headstones, and liven up the West Hill graveyard a lot. The marble man
that came from Boston to set up John Angus's father's moniment allowed
he'd never seen such a litery crop o' stones outside east
Massachusetts."
A knock at the door sent Mrs. Pegrim scurrying away, Miss Emmy following
more slowly, as the front stairs were so steep and high that a misstep
was all that lay between the top and bottom. In the foreroom Mr. Latimer
was alone, standing hands behind him looking out the south window, the
waking voice of the lady baby having called away Mrs. Pegrim.
Miss Emmy had entered softly and waited a moment before she spoke. There
was something about Stephen Latimer that always seemed as though it
belonged to another world and appealed physically to her spiritual
sense. Though of American birth and ancestry, he was a type of the
old-world vicar, well born and cultured, yet who, through his intense
introspection, spends his life in a small church of a remote parish,
seeing each morning's sun through the dimly colored glass of the chancel
windows, as a light sent especially from heaven to him, and basking in
mystic joy as, between times, his fingers draw from the organ the
simple linked notes that hold the village children to their hymns.
In figure Latimer was rather above the medium height, spare without
thinness; a smoothly shaven face was saved by distinct mouth lines and a
firm chin from the perfect symmetry that seems to lack sympathy.
Iron-gray hair belied his age, which was barely forty years. In New
England towns at this time people looked askance at men of this type.
Patriotism rushed to any form of dissent in which to cloak itself rather
than lean toward anything that might be preëstablished and, therefore,
un-American,--the middle classes knowing no distinction between
catholicity and Romanism.
Such feelings had Stephen Latimer met with in coming to Harley's Mills
six years before, yet he stayed on and soon came to be reckoned with as
an influence, holding his own and more, by seeing over what he might not
see through. The Misses Felton, though not of his fold, had given St.
Luke's an organ, such as was not known in Newfield County, and through
it, Latimer's influence went out even more than by the pulpit. For
though his young wife played at service, on Wednesday afternoons, rain
or shine, he sat before the keys and let his fingers speak the words
that all might hear who would.
Sometimes the little church was filled by the Quality Hill folk and
their guests, sometimes a tired woman with a fretful, half-sick child,
or a pauper laborer creeping in to rest from his work on the roads,
would be the only audience--it made no difference in the music.
Presently Latimer turned,--"Ah, so you are here! I thought I recognized
your roses. Is it not a brave deed of Gilbert's, this going again into
the fray after time had healed his wounds and let him at least build a
shelter around his sorrow? Talk of the bravery of those who go to
battle, I believe his courage in this matter in facing the unknown is
the real heroism."
"I think you are right, though I had not looked at it in this way
before; I only thought of the amusement of the child's companionship,
not the responsibility. Ah, here is little Hugh Oldys."
Presently, Satira Pegrim came in, carrying the lady baby, who would have
much preferred to walk, for having acquired this accomplishment all of a
sudden, she was loath to relinquish it. Gilbert and 'Lisha Potts
followed. It was not until Potts had come quite into the room, crossing
to between the centre-table and Mary's melodeon that stood between the
windows, that he saw Miss Emmy. All retreat being cut off, he gave a
sort of gasp and tried in vain to sink into the depths of his
stiff-collared, deep-cuffed Sunday shirt as a turtle disappears into its
shell.
The sight of Miss Emmy produced a different effect upon the child, who
crowed and stretched her hands toward her new friend, quietly allowed
her to fasten the corals upon the plump, bare neck, and afterward tried
to look at them with real satisfaction, moving them up and down with her
dimpled chin.
For a moment general conversation reigned, then--
"What is she to be named? I cannot wait another moment," cried Miss
Emmy.
"It's writ in this book," said Gilbert, taking a small morocco Bible
from the table and showing the fly leaf, upon which, in characters
painfully round and precise, was "Julia Poppea Gilbert, from her loving
Daddy on her first birthday, April 20, 1862."
For a moment no one stirred, for all realized the final way in which the
quiet man had settled the matter of birth and name, giving her an
anchorage so far as might be.
Then Stephen Latimer spoke.
"Julia Poppea! Where did you find that name, Gilbert?"
"Julia was my mother's name; seems as if there should be family in it
somehow. And the other--I've read it somewhere, and it's got my fancy."
(Not a word of the locket.)
"If I remember," said Mr. Latimer, hesitatingly, "it was the name of one
of Nero's wives; would not something nearer home be more suitable,
neighbor Gilbert? Mary, or a flower name, if you like fanciful things,
such as Violet or Rose?"
"No, I've settled to Poppea. I've known of some one called by it that
wasn't kin of any Neroes or spoken of in Mr. Plutarch's books. Poppea
comes near to being a posy too,--poppies, nice cheerful flowers that,
come to recollect, have long lashes to their eyes, just like the lady
baby."
When Stephen Latimer explained the need of sponsors according to his
ritual, and their duties, Gilbert knit his brows at the unforeseen
complication.
"It is customary to have some others than the parents of the child to
stand, as it were, in their place of responsibility in case of need;
under these circumstances, surely no one can be more suitable than Mrs.
Pegrim and yourself, neighbor Gilbert."
"I couldn't stand for any such strange customs or their results," said
Satira, closing her jaws quickly; she had been reading the sentences of
promise in the prayer-book that Mr. Latimer had marked. "I couldn't go
further than to agree to keep her in clothes, her body clean and well
fed, and to say, 'Now I lay me.'"
"As I am in the eye of the law her father, the choice must be outside of
me, parson," Gilbert said slowly. "Who is usually asked?"
"Near kin, or friends upon whom one can rely to take a true interest in
the child."
"Then I ask you, Miss Emmy, and you, 'Lisha Potts."
"I'm Baptist born, but no church-member," said Potts, his words forced
out as by some explosive.
"And I am a Channing Unitarian and therefore an arch dissenter," said
Miss Emmy; yet at the same time, through the yearning of her eyes, she
already had the lady baby in her arms.
Stephen Latimer looked from one to the other, an expression of
satisfaction stealing over his features as if he saw some special
significance in this strange combination, then whispered to Miss Emmy
that upon her devolved the duty of holding the child, who began to fret
strangely and pucker her face for tears.
Latimer said something to little Hugh, his music pupil, and going to
the melodeon, covered and silent these many years, threw back the lid,
coaxed the fitful breath and reluctant keys to speak again, so gently
that there was no discord, only a far-away voice as of memory. Then the
two, the childish treble and the baritone, sang,
"Saviour, Who Thy flock art feeding
With the shepherd's tenderest care,
All the feeble gently leading,
While the lambs Thy bosom share."
* * * * *
"That was her tune, Mary's, the last she sang to Marygold. How did you
know?" asked Gilbert when the hymn ended, his voice sinking
unconsciously to an awed whisper.
"_I_ did not, but God does not forget."
Slowly and clearly Latimer read the brief service of private baptism,
ending with the sentence, "If thou art not already baptized, Julia
Poppea, I baptize thee in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost--Amen."
"Is that in the book?" asked Gilbert; "then if it is, there are enough
other children named that 'tisn't known about where or when, so that she
isn't the only one."
"No, we are none of us the _only ones_ either for sorrow or joy; in that
lies the love of God, which is brotherhood;" and seeing the light of the
smile upon Stephen Latimer's face, the child laughed and crowed, and
succeeded in wriggling from Miss Emmy's arms down to the floor, where
the pup was wagging furiously, as though trying to shake hands with
everybody at once, having slipped in as Mrs. Pegrim hurried out for the
christening cake.
"It is not as light as it should be," she said, bustling back, "but I
made it sponge, so's the children could have it (I've fruit cake coming
for we-all). It was the last of the limed eggs I used, and though fresh
to taste, they do act sort of discouraged when it gets spring o' the
year and the responsibility o' hefting sponge cake is laid on them.
"Would you mind, Miss Emmy, seeing as you stepped so far into the
family, as to cut it, I mean break it, as a knife spiles sponge cake,
while I pour the coffee?"
"Hasn't the pup got any name yet?" asked Hughey, joining the pair on the
floor. "Mr. Gilbert, you promised he should have a name and that I might
help choose."
"The boys in the office of nights call him Mack, after that little
General McClellan, 'cause he's always busy barking and running about,
planning great things he never does, so I reckon that'll stick to him."
"Oh, I forgot! I've brought _her_ a present," and Hughey tugged at a
small parcel that was bulging from the pocket of his overcoat. "It's tin
soldiers and a little cannon; father brought me them from Bridgeton.
Aren't they fine? I'll show her how to stand them up."
"I've a whimsey name for you," said Miss Emmy, as she set down her
coffee cup, a relic of grandma Gilbert's old Lowestoft with the little
half Chinese flower on front and in bottom, and stooping over the child,
kissed the rim of her ear that had an odd break in its curve like the
blemish on the petal of a flower that has folded too tight in the bud,
"a name that won't mix you up with any Mrs. Nero. You aren't to be
called lady baby any more, but Poppea of the post-office!"
Poppea, however, gave no heed; she was absorbed in the ecstatic task of
tasting tin soldier.
CHAPTER VI
AS IT WAS WRITTEN
The twilight had been long for April, as though the vivid sunset colors
had fairly dazzled night, but now it was fading. Oliver Gilbert sat
before his desk in the workshop. He was not looking at what was before
him, but out of the window across road and fields to where a pearly
mist, in which floated the crescent of the new moon, hung above
Moosatuck. The rush of the river over the last dam that checked it above
the mills was occasionally punctuated by the cry of a little screech-owl
or the call of a robin shifting its perch, while the rhythmic chorus of
peeping frogs insisted upon "sleep-sleep-sleep."
That Gilbert was tired was apparent in the deepened lines of his face
and droop of his shoulders, but it was wholly fatigue of mind. The
adoption which had for a month filled his waking and sleeping thoughts
was a thing accomplished. A week before, when the matter hung in the
balance, possession of the child had seemed the finality. To-night it
appeared as merely an open gate through which stretched a vista beyond
ken; across this many figures passed to and fro, but with faces in
shadow or averted. A question asked by Satira Pegrim at supper had given
birth to the entire throng.
"Don't you calkerlate, Gilbert, it'll be best to lead her up to calling
us aunty and uncle? Then byme-by, when she comes to know, as know she
must, there won't be such a mess o' unravellin' to do."
Gilbert had answered hotly, chided her unreasonably, ending by saying
that the child called him Daddy already, and that it could do no harm as
she grew up for the two white stones on the hillside to stand for Mother
and little sister. Perhaps, God helping, she might not learn the truth
until she was a woman and married. Then it need not hurt so much. Thus
Gilbert drugged himself reckless with hope, after the manner of us all.
Darkness fell about him as he sat, his head fallen between his hands,
the side rays of the post-office lamp only seeming to draw the shadows
closer. Presently he pulled himself together, lighted the other lamps in
office and workshop, talking to himself in an argumentative strain as he
walked about. One man came in for a paper of tobacco and another for
some stamps, but seeing that the postmaster was preoccupied, they did
not linger.
"That's just what I'll do," he said, as though after arguing with some
one he had suddenly achieved a conclusion. Again seating himself before
the desk and selecting a particular key from the chain he continued the
conversation with the opponent who, being speechless, could not
contradict. "When I was a boy, I always was scheming to write a book
some day that should be printed out like them in Squire Oldys's study.
The printing won't be compassed, but I can write out all that happens
from _that night_ on concerning the child, and the village doings, so's
it'll be there plain and no hearsay when she comes to read it and I'm
not here perhaps. Yes, and I must not forget discretion in the doing of
it. Mr. Esterbrook lent me some books of Mr. Pepys's, his remarks on his
own and neighborhood doings. They were fine and edifying in parts, but
lacked the discreetness and holding back I always find in Mr. Plutarch.
I wonder anyhow, if in the beginning books weren't written just for the
sake of talking to some one."
After searching in a cupboard under the desk, Gilbert drew out a large
ledgerlike volume, bound in sheep. The cover was worn merely by lying
for years side by side with its shelf mates. The pages within were of
thick smooth paper, finely ruled. Gilbert tried several pens, quill and
steel, and finally brought a new one from the office; then slowly and
painfully he inscribed on the first page:--
_As it was written--by Oliver G. Gilbert for Julia Poppea, beginning
March 10, 1862._ Next he took his two precious Lincoln letters from
their drawer and fastened them between the first and second pages by
corner strips of gummed paper. Then began the diary.
Two hours passed ere he had finished the first week, but as time went
on, he would naturally grow more brief--the more action the fewer words.
* * * * *
By the first of May the reconstructed post-office household was accepted
as a matter of course, Satira Pegrim having leased her farm for a three
years' term to 'Lisha Potts, and stored her furnishings in the empty
half hayloft of the post-office barn. When urged by Potts to sell her
farm, she had answered: "No, Gilbert or I either one of us may feel
called to marry, then what's to do? 'Cause I wouldn't be number four to
Deacon Green with his white chin whiskers, and his 'it's all for the
best' and other heartless sayings when number one, two, and three was
took, or, I claim, clean froze to death, isn't to say I'm set against
the institution. To camp 'longside of an ice pond isn't marriage. I
never did like lizards, real or human, since brother Cotton Mather put
one down my neck in Sunday-school the day sister Clarissy Harlow
'sperienced religion and I screeched so folks thought I had it too."
On May Day itself, Poppea emerged from the hands of Satira Pegrim
clad in the first attempts for many a year of that good woman in
fashioning clothes for a child. The result was a sunbonnet of
brown-and-white-checked gingham, a sack-shaped slip of the same
material, reenforced by the species of extension-legged underwear called
pantalets, below which came a glimpse of sturdy ankles and feet shod in
stout ties. This being the universal garb of children of her age and
station all over Newfield County, the color of the gingham being
diversified.
Miss Emmy Felton had protested and begged to be allowed to keep the
child in dainty nainsook and dimities, ribbons, and flowery hats, but
Gilbert had stood firm that in clothing at least she must be like the
neighborhood children, as he expressed it. Thus Poppea began life at
Harley's Mills without pretence, having for guardian Mack, who was fast
developing into a brown-and-white hound of medium size, a trace of
setter blood showing in the grain of his hair, and having the
forethought and human intelligence that is more often found in dogs of
unknown parentage than in pampered thoroughbreds.
The parapet that made a barrier between the Angus garden and Gilbert's
home acres was finished. A series of massive stone urns, filled with
foliage plants that topped it, seemed in the half light of night and
morning like seneschals in plumed helmets, keeping watch over the doings
of those humbly encamped below, whom they suspected, but might not
displace. Yet what does Nature care for such distinctions and
boundaries? She does not even stop to snap her fingers at them, but
simply keeps on surrounding, overlapping, or undermining all barriers
that oppose her plans.
The wash of earth and water from Windy Hill was toward Gilbert's
orchard, with its trees of mossed-branch crannies and knot holes,
beloved of robins, bluebirds, and woodpeckers, where the ample red cow
flavored her cud with apple blossoms, meadow mint, or nips of the sweet
corn in the vegetable patch, according to season and the location and
length of her tether.
Down through the ground gaps in the parapet, a combination of
architectural design and necessity, came the spirit of that other garden
that the roseleaf wife had created, tended, and left to outlive her.
From the bank presently there sprang a bunch of tulips here, a crimson
peony there, a musk rose-bush in the débris put forth new branches
reaching toward the light, then came the matted green of violets, tufts
of velvet sweet william, a wand of madonna lilies. All through this
season and others some deep-sleeping seed or bulb put forth,
Johnny-jump-ups, prim quilled asters, and, with June, there swayed a
flock of butterfly-winged poppies that in still other seasons would
wander from their earth bank and alight among the plumes of orchard
grass to colonize all the sunny spaces. This was the child's playground,
where she first rolled among the daisies, while Mack, led by his nose,
made quest of ground-hog and cottontail; there she sucked clover honey,
was stung by jealous bees, solved the first mystery of the nest and
eggs, told time by puff-ball clocks, and by and by, through playing
make-believe, approached the real. Like the good fairy of a story who
always comes to the christening to mend with her gift any evil that
others have wrought, so at Poppea's naming, Nature the mother was the
invisible sponsor, who gave her three gifts: love of the beautiful
through eye and ear, love of the best through a warm heart, and the
precious gift of the tears that cleanse the spirit.
As soon as the wind-flowers starred the lowlands and the red bells of
the columbine swung from their many shrines in the rocky banks, Oliver
Gilbert once more resumed his Sunday habit of taking a posy to Mary and
Marygold in God's-acre on the hillside. When the afternoon was right,
Poppea went with him, riding in the old chaise safe in the grasp of
Daddy's left arm. It was on one of the first of these visits that
Gilbert began to train the five-fingered woodbine, that, creeping
through the half-wild grass, clung to the two white stones and would not
be denied. Heretofore he had always pulled it away ruthlessly, but now
he plucked a leaf here, a tendril there, coaxing it gently to make a
living frame about the names and date of day and month, but praying it
to overgrow the _year_ that filled a sunken oval near the base of both
the stones.
While he worked, he prattled unceasingly, as a child might, to the
little one crawling in the mossy grass to gather the light-hued,
short-stemmed violets and soft-pawed "pussy-toes." She neither paused
nor seemed to heed, yet two sounds heard week after week lingered in her
brain until her tongue should one day release them, and these words were
"Mother" and "Ma'gold."
There was no Fourth of July celebration at Harley's Mills that year,--no
picnics, no speeches. The depressing summer of McClellan's fruitless
meanderings, as well as lack of money, forbade crackers or fireworks, so
that the return of John Angus with his bride, the second week of the
month, was an event that helped to relieve the general tension.
Mr. Binks, who saw Mrs. Angus on her arrival as she crossed the platform
of the little station, reported:--
"She's good-lookin', middlin' young 'n' dark haired with pale skin.
She's a high stepper 'at knows which way she wants to go, 'n' mark my
words, if John Angus's goin' to foller like she 'spects him to, he'll
have to act freer and more quick'n he ever did for t'other one."
Next day the village had a shock almost as great as if Lee had suddenly
entered Washington. Mr. and Mrs. Angus appeared, walking in the village
street, he holding her sunshade to the best advantage, while she let her
flounced, fresh organdie gown brush the ground that she might clasp both
her hands over her husband's arm, the white roses on her wide chip hat
tickling his ear the while as she moved her head in talking.
In and out of the half dozen shops they went marketing (John Angus had
habitually marketed in Bridgeton), she chatting gayly. Presently, as
they reached the post-office, there was a pause. Then she was heard to
say, by a loiterer who sat upon the steps:--
"Don't be tiresome, Jack; you mustn't expect me to help keep afloat
senseless old grudges. Please open the door, it hurts my hand. Oh, what
a lovely child!" For though Angus did not actually enter with her, he
held the door back without further opposition.
"I will take box fifteen," she said to Gilbert with decision. "I see
that it is vacant. Is that your little grandchild? No, your daughter?
You must let your wife bring her up to see me some day. I'm devoted to
little children."
"I thought that he looked red and was getting mad," the witness said,
"but when she come out, she stuck a big yaller rose she was wearing in
her belt right under his chin, and says she, 'Jack, do you love butter?'
Oh, Lordy, I thought I'd die, her callin' John Angus Jack, and ticklin'
of his chin!"
Quality Hill called immediately, both those who had previously known
Mrs. Angus in New York as Miss Duane and those who had not. Meanwhile
the stern mansion on Windy Hill relaxed and bade fair to become a factor
in the town, drawing its social life westward.
There was much discussion among the village people as to Mrs. Angus's
age; at one of the Feltons' piazza days at home, Miss Emmy, by a process
of calculation all her own, said thirty-six, but Mr. Esterbrook
gallantly declared that as looks should be the only way of reckoning
such matters, the lady could be barely twenty-five.
When Mrs. Angus returned her calls, a trim footman in white tops seated
by the coachman on the box of the barouche, the first ever brought to
Harley's Mills, the good folks stared and raised their hands. When she
took a pew at St. Luke's church, her husband escorting her to the door
each Sunday, they lost their breaths completely. But when she invited
all to a garden party to see a new lawn game called _croquet_ that had
been sent her direct from London by a married sister, they found their
tongues again to wonder if the mastering of its fascinating mysteries
would in any way impeach their loyalty to the Declaration of
Independence; then straightway succumbed as to an epidemic, grace hoops,
battledore and shuttlecock, and even archery having to yield it place.
If Marcia Angus handled her husband somewhat dramatically, his
satisfaction seemed complete as it was deep. Only two in the place,
Gilbert and Miss Emmy, ever whispered even to themselves that she was
playing the sort of comedy that is only possible to a woman when some
motive of ambition rather than her affections has sway. So that it was a
relief to both when, on the Anguses' return from town late the next
spring, the touch of nature that makes all women kin colored the village
gossip, and it was known that at last there would be a child born in the
great house on Windy Hill. Satira Pegrim, who chatted often with the
gardener's wife, though her brother had never let her take Poppea for
the oft-requested visit to the hill, repeated wild tales of the fineness
of the cambric needlework and lace upon the little wardrobe; of the blue
silk draperies of the south room now fitted for a nursery; of the gilt
bassinet, with its pillow and spread of real lace, and bed, they said,
of swan's-down.
Finally a new rumor was whispered and then took visible shape. Harley's
Mills, with its staff of competent women, single and widowed, who were
ready and willing to "accommodate," was overlooked; an English head
nurse of the brand accustomed to rear an infant from its birth and
chosen by Mrs. Angus's sister, who had sent croquet, appeared in the
stalwart person of a Mrs. Shandy.
Then the village pursed its lips, folded its hands, and waited.
* * * * *
_Some random extracts from Oliver Gilbert's book, 1863, Jan. 1._--Three
million slaves were freed to-day according to the promise of September.
It had to be, but now I'm wondering what will become of them. Poppea may
see the working out of this, though I shall not. Having her, there's
somebody ahead to hand out hopes and fears to. Without somebody ahead to
keep up with, old feet must stumble and get tired on the march.
_July the 3._--Meade is in command and they're at it again hot and heavy
around Gettysburg. Morse's boy is there and his grandson, or they were
when it began. We've all been living around the station for the last
three days, just gasping for news like stranded fish for water, but half
the time the operator can't get the wire, and then it's only that
they're at it still, with Lee to the better last night.
My head is on fire and seem's as if my hands can't feel. What if they
should win--but they _can't while Lincoln's above ground_.
_July 4._--We've won Gettysburg; but now the fight's over, the fields
yonder are just seeded down with bodies, blue and gray together. The
Union's safe, and all the town boys, big and little, are firing cannons
and muskets, there not being a store that's charging for powder! There's
been hallelujahs in the meeting-house, bell-ringings and speeches on the
green. I've run up both the flags, one atop of t'other, and yet now it's
night and I've come in out of the crowd, it seems like I must put a bit
of black out somewhere for _those others_! The picture of them in the
glass looks darkly, but byme-by, when Poppea comes to read this, mebbe
it'll shine up clear and be seen face to face. Joy and sorrow, there's
always the two around; the matter is _which of us gets which_.
_July 5._--It's just come in by 'Lisha Potts that plucky Grant, who's
been meandering down-stream and in the marshes this long time, got safe
down the river past the fort and in back of Pemberton's men, and through
battering and starving, Vicksburg has given in! _Hallelujah for
victory!_ say I with the rest, yet I can't get the thought out of my
head of those famished women and children living in ground-holes and
caves to keep out of shot range. Maybe when Poppea is grown, there'll be
some way of keeping peace and right _without this murder_. Perhaps it
might come about even through women themselves! Who knows?
_July 7._--Joy and sorrow! Both amongst us in this village. John Angus's
wife has borne him his long-wished-for son, but she is dead!
Oh, God! what has he done to be so dealt with? He bent his will
considerable through love of her, or maybe it was pride. Must it be
altogether broke? Or is it because he withered little Roseleaf? I hauled
my victory flags down just so soon as Dr. Morewood told me. Then I run
the little one back, halfway up. I wouldn't want Angus to think that I
bear malice or was aught but sorry; though if I told him so, he'd likely
read it as a taunt. Mrs. Angus was pleasant spoken to the child and me;
mebbe some day Poppea can pass those kind words back _to the little
boy_.
_July 10._--To-day they buried her up in God's-acre on the hill. The
flowers and singing were beautiful,--'specially the little boys from
Mr. Latimer's church that he teaches music. Hughey Oldys sang one piece
all alone about flying away on the wings of a dove to find rest. It took
me straight up after it and set me down far away, wondering where little
Roseleaf lies and if any bedded her with flowers and singing.
The women folks brought home satisfaction from the funeral anyhow, for
there on a graven silver plate was the age out plain--"In her
thirty-seventh year."
* * * * *
_1864, July 13._--Early tried to get into Washington yesterday, but he
didn't. What a terrible year it's been so far, and only half over. Blood
it seems everywhere, in earth and sky and sea. Our boys dropping down at
more'n a thousand a day, week in and week out. Can we hold out? Yes, to
the end, with patience; for Lincoln says, "Victory will come, but it
comes slowly."
There's nobody else left to go soldiering from this town. 'Lisha Potts
was the last likely one and went yesterday. His mother has come down to
widow Baker's and they've sold most of their stock,--fodder and labor
both being so high. Three dollars a day for a man at haying. Tough bull
beef at thirty cents the pound; sack flour taken over from the Mills is
at the rate of seventeen dollars a barrel, and taxes up to eight mills
from five, they say, to help pay the war debt; things look pretty blue
in my purse. Did I do wrong in keeping the child from those who could do
better by her?
Sister Satira is all shook up by 'Lisha's going. I never suspicioned
before that they were courting. But she claims ever since he hired her
farm it sort of seems as if she belonged with it, and he claims ever
since she left and shut the door more'n half the place is missing.
Satira isn't in any hurry, even if 'Lisha hadn't enlisted, for she says
she had less than a month's courting before and poor quality at that, so
now she means to make it last.
I pray she does. What would become of us?
_Nov. 12._--_The Union is safe for Lincoln is reëlected!_
* * * * *
_1865, Feb. 10._--Lincoln wanted to pay the owners something for the
slaves set free, but the cabinet would not let _him_! Others wanted to
hang the chief Rebel leaders, but he would not let _them_. So it goes. I
want the child by and by to think of this every time she sees those
letters that he wrote her Daddy, so's she'll remember what times and
doings she came into to make her loyal to the land and the folks that
stand next her.
This month the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution was passed that
cuts out slavery from every State and Territory. So help us, God! that
every soul of us on this soil may be free forever more, black or white,
man, woman, or child. Keep us from bondage to ourselves, for slavery
isn't only the body being bought and sold.
_March 5._--Yesterday, Lincoln took oath again.
_March 12._--'Lisha Potts came home to-day, honorably discharged and
wounded some, but not past mending. He's been in three battles, and
looks old enough to count out those four years that he's younger than
Satira. Dave Morse came with him, but little Davy lies at Gettysburg.
It seems as if we ones behind can't keep our hands from touching and
feeling of the flesh of them that was there, or our eyes from searching
the eyes of them that have seen!
_April 5._--Yesterday, Lee surrendered and Richmond fell. This ends the
war. Yet woe is still upon the land. What martyrs' blood must be shed to
cleanse it?
_April 15._--_He is dead! Assassinated! None else would suffice!_
_April 24._--To-morrow we are going to see them take him home, the
child and I. The Fennimans have made me free of their front porch; they
have a house on Union Square, New York. He will pass that way. The
neighbors think I'm crazy to take a child of four or five. She may not
understand, but she will see, and byme-by, some day, it will come back
to her, and she'll be glad that Daddy took her with him.
_April 25._--We left at daybreak. As it was raw and threatening, the
child wore a little blue cloak and cap like a soldier's that Satira made
to please her last winter. It being eight years since I've seen the
city, I was forced to ask my way, but Mr. Esterbrook being at the
station to meet some friends, he counselled me. Carrying Poppea, for the
streets were thronged, I went out to Madison Square and so down to Fifth
Avenue. Black on every side, hanging from roof to street, black-banded
flags, black bands on people's arms, the great clock shrouded in black.
There were no public stages on the streets that I could see, so I walked
down Fifth Avenue to Seventeenth Street, then eastward to Union Square,
and so down to Fourteenth Street.
One large building in particular was covered with black from the dormers
down to the street, with all the windows hid by black-trimmed flags. I
asked a passer-by whose house it was, and he told me that it was the
home of a society called the Union League, formed by the best men of
this city for the upholding of the Union.
We got to the house at half after one o'clock. I don't know how long we
waited, bells tolling. A groan ran up and down the street, and then a
great silence. From where I stood out by the fence, the porch and
verandy being crowded, I could see the black-covered horses swinging
round the corner from Broadway, and after them the car. Down the street
it came, from the corner seemed an hour. I lifted Poppea to the iron
fence post by the walk. The groan rose once more, and then silence, with
all hats off. When the car passed, it seemed as though the world was
dead, and that after the minute guns would follow the last trump!
Gazing before her at the car, the child pulled her little soldier cap
off, then whispered to me, drawing my head down, "I don't see him,
Daddy. Is he going to heaven in that bed asleep?" "Yes, yes," I said.
"'N' when he wakes up, will he see muvver and Ma'gold and tell 'em we
was here?"
A band struck up a dirge, so I didn't have to answer. I can't but think
perhaps he'll find _her_ mother, and tell her that there's an old fellow
who couldn't fight, that just lives to right her wrongs.
After the car a stream of faces followed, men and more men of high-up
societies and committees. I was looking at them without seeing, until
one man passed and looked back as he went, at us I thought. It was John
Angus! My suz, but he's aged or something. His face was drawn as if by
pain or anger, I can't judge which.
Poppea saw him too, and as he passed she waved her hand, she's such an
eye for faces. Then she turned her mind to some cakes the ladies gave
her, with pink tops. It's wonderful how nature eases things for
children.
_May 10._--The Anguses are back, and folks say that Philip is not well,
does not keep his footing as a boy should who is turning three. Satira
saw him yesterday, sitting in his little coach behind the parapet, and
she says he looks old and tired across the eyes.
Some doctors are coming from New York to-night to see him. Morewood only
shakes his head when asked, as much as saying, _I know_, but he will not
believe _me_.
_May 12._--Mrs. Shandy came down to Satira last evening crying, and
blurted out that Philip has a twist or something in his
backbone,--Pott's disease they call it. He will be a hunchback. "An'
when he looks at me so lovin' with those big gray eyes of his, it seems
that I can't bear it," she sobbed right on Satira's shoulder.
"What did his father say?" asked she.
"Mr. Angus? Well he was hard struck and stayed above stairs all
yesterday. But this morning he came down and says to us help standing
by, 'Do all the doctors say, but never mention to my son or to me that
he is different from other boys. Who breaks my order--goes.' Ah! Mrs.
Pegrim, but he's got an awful pride and will; I have my _doubts if God
himself could break it_."
* * * * *
_1867, May._ Poppea is past six now and the Misses Felton think she
should have lessons. She knows her letters from her blocks, and Hughey
Oldys reads fairy books to her, but it's the hill-country speech that
worries me, and also the Felton ladies. When I talk, I talk like those I
live among, but when I put pen to paper, I do better, and write more
like those I've met in reading.
Miss Emmy wants to learn her every day so when she's eight she can go to
the Academy, and being a lady baby as she was, not shame her breeding.
For manners, she's catching them already, and Stephen Latimer says she
has a great ear for music, and can sing anything she hears Hugh sing in
Sunday-school; not out loud, of course, but soft and strange, like a
young bird that's trying.
CHAPTER VII
INTO THE DARK
During the week of the greenest Christmas that had been known at
Harley's Mills for years, sudden and bitter cold turned a heavy rain to
an ice-storm that locked village and country-side, laying low great
trees by the clinging weight of icicles, freezing outright more than one
veteran crow in the roost on Cedar Hill, and making prisoners of the
ruffed grouse and bob-whites in their shelter of hemlock and juniper in
the river woods.
In two nights Moosatuck became a vast mirror, in which the figures of
the skaters by daylight and torchlight were reflected, framed by
wonderful prismatic colors. Below the falls, however, the water,
tempered by the breath of the sea, bedded the wild fowl, repulsed by the
ice-pointed reed bayonets from their usual shelter.
From all the bordering towns the people gathered along the banks this
particular Wednesday afternoon in a spirit of holiday festivity, whether
they took the part of actors or spectators. Contrary to the custom of
years, the Feltons and Mr. Esterbrook had returned to Quality Hill for
the week, though quite against the wishes of Miss Elizabeth, who
insisted that for Miss Emmy, with her sensitive lungs, the tropic
atmosphere of a steam-heated New York house, with double windows to
prevent even a breath of fresh air from entering unduly, was the only
place. Miss Emmy, however, had rebelled, and seemed bent upon following
the advice of a young practitioner, who had for two years been
propounding the radical doctrine that fresh, cool air was the natural
cure. The absurdity of his theory was on every tongue, even though he
was backed by a few women of the progressive sort, who are always said
by others to fly in the face of Providence.
Be this as it may, a quaint old push-sled that had belonged to Madam
Harley, and been many years in the loft at the Mills, presently appeared
on the ice, propelled by Patrick, somewhat indignant at his descent from
the thronelike box of the carriage. When above a mass of fur robes Miss
Emmy's eager face appeared, framed in a chinchilla hood tied with wide
rose-colored ribbons, she was quickly surrounded, even before she had
time to shrug her shoulders free and draw one hand from the depths of
her great muff, extending it toward a young girl who had come toward her
with the grace of a swallow skimming the air, bending to kiss her almost
before she had paused, saying in the same breath: "Oh, Miss Emmy, I'm so
glad that you've come out; I was afraid that we had missed you, and I
must be going soon, for I promised Daddy that I would be home by four.
No, it's not cold if you keep moving, but it will never do for you to
sit stock-still. Please let Hugh push and I will skate beside you, and
Patrick can wait in that old shed yonder, back of the bonfire the boys
have made.
"We've been pushing Philip Angus all the afternoon. His tutor is ill,
and the man that brought him out only stood about stamping his feet and
beating his hands. It must be hard enough not to be able to skate, for
there's nothing like flying down with the wind and fighting your way
back in spite of it, without having to be stuck in one spot like a snow
man. So we simply made Philip fly along, until he said that he really,
truly felt as if the runners were on his feet instead of on the sleigh,
and his cheeks grew red and his big gray eyes shone so. He is such a
dear little fellow, Miss Emmy, and so clever at making pictures and
images of anything he sees. Last summer he made Mack's head out of pond
clay and baked it in the sun, and it was ever so much like Mack when he
holds one ear up to listen, you know. Then he tried to do a head of Aunt
Satira, but it wasn't so good; the nose and bob of hair behind looked
too much alike. But then he coaxed Mack up through one of the parapet
holes into his garden, but he had to look over at aunty where she sits
to sew or shell peas under the first apple tree. You see, Philip and I
can't visit to and fro like other people, because his father is angry
with Daddy about something that isn't Daddy's fault, but we love each
other over the parapet just the same, so now I have two make-believe
brothers, little Philip and big Hugh."
Poppea had chattered on without a break in obedience to a signal from
Miss Emmy, who, putting her muff to her face, indicated that the young
girl must carry on the conversation, as she did not think it wise to
talk in the face of the wind. Then looking about for Hugh Oldys, Poppea
saw that he was evidently searching for her in the zigzag line of
skaters near the opposite bank, and as a wave of her scarlet muffler did
not attract his attention, she started in pursuit, still with the grace
of birdlike flight that makes of motion an embodied thought rather than
a muscular action.
As she glanced after the girl, Miss Emmy seemed to see as a panorama all
the years between the time that she had first found the lady baby in the
post-office house, with Hughey Oldys giving her his beloved tin soldier
and the present, nearly thirteen years. Poppea, now at the crisis of her
girlhood, Hugh in his first college year. Did she realize the lapse of
time? In some ways not at all. Mr. Esterbrook was as courteous and
precise as ever; if his morning walk was a little shorter and his
before-dinner nap a little longer, the change was imperceptible to any
outsider.
But it was through her interest in Poppea that Miss Emmy knew that time
was passing, and yet the same interest kept middle age from laying hold
upon her, either physically or mentally; Poppea, whom Miss Felton had
from the beginning called Julia as a matter of principle, the second
name having too theatrical a flavor to suit her. At first it had been
the little child of five, coming to take her lesson in needlework on
squares of dainty patchwork, one white, the alternate sprigged with blue
forget-me-nots. The tiny silver thimble and work-box as a reward when
the doll's bed-quilt was completed. With this came almost unconscious
teaching of pretty manners, rising when some one enters the room,
standing until all are seated.
Next came the discovery that Poppea was all music and rhythmic motion to
her toe tips. At one of the summer afternoon concerts for which Felton
Manor was famous, Louis Moreau Gottschalk had been the soloist, playing
some of his Cuban dances, when to the surprise of all, the child of
seven, who had been sitting on the porch steps listening intently, got
up and, creeping inside the window of the music room, began to dance,
suiting her steps to the music, now slow, now rapid, perfectly
unconscious that any one was present, until the great emotional pianist,
glancing up, finished abruptly, pausing to applaud, and Poppea, brought
suddenly to herself and covered with confusion, fled out into the
shrubbery, where, her face hidden in Mack's soft neck, she cried out her
excitement. Then followed the music lessons, Poppea's legs dangling from
the high piano-stool as Miss Emmy leaned over her, repeating the
ceaseless, "one-two-three (thumb under) four-five-six-seven-eight" of
the scale of C for the right hand.
Now, born of the last Christmas, a small upright piano stood in the
foreroom of the post-office house, the room being further transformed by
frilled draperies, flowery paper, and a few good prints, while in
another year, Poppea would, if Oliver Gilbert could bring his mind to
allow it, go away to school to have the necessary companionship of girls
of her own age; not that she had the slightest feeling of aloofness or
did not mingle with the village young people in the simplest way. It was
the village people themselves, not Poppea, who seemed to hold aloof, as
if they did not know how to place the girl, who, though belonging at the
post-office, had the freedom of the Felton home, calling the ladies
"aunt." Gilbert could not realize this, and a possible parting put him
in a state of panic, not only for himself, but for her. What questions
might be asked her? What doubts raised?
The Misses Felton and Mr. Esterbrook, on this topic being united, said,
"Farmington, of course!" Yet they had to confess that there were certain
difficulties in the way, and were oftentimes inclined to agree with Hugh
Oldys's mother, who said in her gentle way, "You may be right, cousins
Felton, but my feeling would be to keep the dear child here close
amongst us, Stephen Latimer helping, so that when the time comes when
she must realize her natural loneliness, she need never otherwise feel
alone."
Miss Emmy's momentary fit of retrospection was broken by the return of
Poppea and Hugh, skating "cross-hands," and in a moment Miss Emmy was
whirling over the ice until she began to feel, like Philip Angus, that
the runners were on her own feet.
After a mile of this exhilaration, Hugh pushed the sled into a little
cove, to the shelter of the high bank and a hemlock tree combined, that
he might ease his numb hands and give Poppea a chance to collect her
straggling hair.
"How do you like that, cousin Emmy?" he cried. "If it wasn't that
gripping that confounded handle bar paralyzes my hands, I could push
you clear up to Kirby; the mischief of it would be coming down again.
Face the wind, Poppy, then your hair will blow back so you can grab it."
Hugh, of man's strength and stature, was still a boy in the joy of life
that was stamped in every line of his frank, well-featured, dark face.
His hair, tousled by a fur cap, had a wave above the forehead; his
almost black eyes looked straight at you without boldness. The corners
of both nostrils and mouth had a firmness of curve that might either
develop to a keen expression of humor or the power of holding his
emotions in check.
As he looked at Poppea who, having taken off her red woollen hood, was
struggling to rebraid her long hair that had escaped from its ribbon,
his expression was of the affectionate regard of a boy for his sister,
who is also his chum, and so much a part of his normal life that it
never occurs to him to analyze their relations.
"Here's your ribbon," he said, tossing it to her at the moment she
reached the end of the strand. "It blew into my hands a quarter of a
mile back. You tie and I'll hold; I never could manage a bow."
"Put on your hood quick or you'll lose that too," laughed Miss Emmy,
revelling in the youth and freshness of the pair before her. So Poppea
tied tight the ample head-gear crocheted by Satira Pegrim's generous, if
not artistic hands, and in so doing, hid her thick, long mane of golden
brown, with the tints of copper and ash that painters love. Beautiful as
her hair was, the great charm of her face lay in her eyes. These, a
casual observer might say, were hazel, but at times they held slanting
glints of gold and green, like the poppy's heart, shaded by dark lashes,
and all the opal colors: yes, even the fire opal.
Sometimes as they looked out from under the straight, dark brows, their
expression would have been wistful, almost sad, had it not been for the
upward curve of the lips and tip tilt of the straight nose that
separated them, the sort of a nose that in a child is termed kissable.
"Once more up to the turn," said Hugh, "and then home. I'm afraid it
will snow to-night and spoil the skating."
"No, home now; that is, for me," answered Poppea, looking for a hump
where she could take off her skates. "Daddy hasn't been feeling quite
well for a few days and he likes me to look over the mail after he has
tied up the packages. You see, he mismarked one, day before yesterday.
Quarter of four already? Then I shall be late."
"Not if we take a short cut across the fields and go down the hill
through the cemetery. There's no snow to speak of, and it will be easier
walking that way than over the icy main roads. Yes, I'm going back with
you; I've got to, anyway, for father told me to go to the express office
and also buy a lot of stamps, and I forgot both this noon.
"Bah! How cold my hands are! I wonder if, by any chance, Mrs. Pegrim
would give a couple of tramps a cup of tea and a doughnut."
"Not tea, Hugh, chocolate with whipped cream on top, and I'll make it.
I've learned up at the Feltons'; the aunties have it every afternoon,
and it's delicious."
In this mood, the girl and man tramped over the brown-and-white meadows
with their tumbledown stone fences, until in the high pickets of the
graveyard fence they met the first real obstruction, which they avoided
by going around to the north gate that opened above Oliver Gilbert's
plot.
"I hope the ice hasn't broken the young dogwoods," said Poppea; "they
were growing so nicely. No, but they are bending. Stop one minute, Hugh,
and help me break off the biggest icicles that are weighing down these
branches until they will snap.
"Oh, look! the ice and wind have torn all the vines from Mother's stone
and Daddy will feel dreadfully; he's trained it so as to make a frame
and he would never let me touch even a leaf. I wonder if we can put it
back? No," and she stooped to lift the vine; "the ice is too heavy."
As Poppea bent over she suddenly slipped to her knees before the stone,
her eyes fixed upon it with an intensity amounting to terror. Hugh,
close behind her, followed her glance. For a second, neither moved or
spoke, then turning toward him, her hands outstretched and pleading, she
cried:--
"Look, Hugh! look quick, and tell me if the snow has blinded me, or are
those numbers 1851?"
He stooped and looked intently before he answered what he already knew,
had known, these half dozen years; then said, "It is 1851, Poppea."
"But it must be a mistake then of the stone-cutters, that we've never
noticed before because of the vines; it should be 18_6_1, the year that
I was born and Mother died, so that I never saw her.
"Don't you think that is the way of it, Hugh? Why don't you speak? What
ails you?"
Again she turned from the stone to look him in the face. Something she
saw there struck a chill into her more penetrating than the icy ground
on which she continued to kneel.
Poor Hugh Oldys! What avail was his athletic strength or moral courage?
If his playmate had been drowning, burning, or in any other form of
physical peril, he could have dashed through anything, or even killed
men to rescue her from harm, but now--He stood facing the intangible,
with bent head, helplessly groping for some way of escape, not so much
for himself as for Poppea. The truth lay bare before them, and he knew
that it could no longer be veiled. The protective instinct of manhood
told him to get her home quickly and under cover, that the blow need not
seem so brutal as in the open cold. While he was trying to collect
himself and form a plan, Poppea's intuition, keyed almost to second
sight, was reading his mind through his eyes.
"You do not think the date is a mistake, but you don't know what to
say!"
The words came out so slowly that her lips hardly seemed to form them;
then Poppea faced the stone once more, her hands pressed to the sides of
her face.
"If 1851 is right, then '_Mary, beloved wife of Oliver G. Gilbert_'
can't be my mother. Do you understand, Hugh? Not my mother. Why don't
you speak? Oh, do say something, Hugh; that is, if you understand!"
Stumbling to her feet, Poppea went to the little stone and, pulling away
the vine, exposed the other date, 1852!
"Then Marygold isn't my sister either! Who was my mother, Hugh? And
Daddy--isn't Daddy my father? Tell me, you must!"
Grasping Hugh by the shoulders, half to steady herself, half in frenzy,
she shook him as she swayed to and fro.
"Come home, Poppea, and ask Daddy himself; he is the one to tell you all
about it," the lump in Hugh's throat almost stopping his voice, as he
took her arm and tried, without force, to turn her homeward. But Poppea
was at bay. Still holding fast and looking in his face, she gasped:--
"What were my mother's and father's names? Tell me that _now_! Where did
Daddy get me? Tell me that!"
Unconsciously Hugh shook his head, at the same time his lips said, "This
also you must ask Daddy."
"That means that no one knows; that I'm not anybody, not anybody," she
repeated with a moan. "Did Miss Emmy and Mr. Esterbrook and 'Lisha and
Aunt Satira and everybody know but me? Does little Philip know? Take
your hand off my arm, Hugh. I'm not going home any more; how can I, when
I haven't a home or even a _dead_ mother or a Daddy, and every one has
deceived me?"
The poor young fellow, meanwhile, was trying to lead her toward the
highway gate in the hope that a team might pass so that they could beg a
ride, for heavy snow clouds were hastening the dark, and even he began
to feel the chill of it through his pea-jacket, while Poppea was
colorless and rigid as one of the icicles that hung from the trees.
Could this be the same being who, less than an hour before, joyous and
radiant, was skating up the river holding Miss Emmy by the hand? If she
had cried, ever so passionately, it would have reassured him.
"If you don't want to go back, you must go over to my mother or Miss
Emmy," he said, as she again halted outside the gate in sight of the
cross-roads. "Listen, I hear a wagon in the turnpike; wait a moment
while I stop it and beg a ride down; you are trembling all over, and if
you stay here any longer, you'll be very ill maybe."
Hugh ran down the side road to the turnpike in time to stop the team, a
wave of relief sweeping over him when he saw that it was 'Lisha Potts
taking his evening milk down to the centre. ('Lisha, who was still
courting Satira Pegrim.)
To 'Lisha no explanation was needed save the fact of the discovery of
the date and the need of getting Poppea home.
"Great snakes!" he ejaculated, closing his jaw with the snap of a steel
trap. "So it's come at last! At the very first I rather sided with
Gilbert's keeping the thing dark from her, but Satiry had the common
sense,--'It's got to come,' says she, 'so why not let her grow up with
an aunty and uncle and fetch up to it drop by drop instead of gettin'
the whole thing some day like a pail of cold water on the head that may
jar the brain.' Now it seems the cold water's come. Go back and fetch
her, Hughey man, I'll wait; but I can't turn this long wagon on a hill
noway, nohow."
Hugh hurried back, calling Poppea's name as he went, but when he reached
the gate, she was gone.
Rushing frantically to and fro, he looked back into the graveyard and
behind the long line of stone fence opposite that the night was fast
blending with its other shadows, but Poppea was nowhere to be seen.
"She would ha' passed this way if she'd gone down home," said 'Lisha,
now thoroughly startled at Hugh's drawn face and hurried words of what
had happened. "I can see almost all the way down the other road, and she
ain't on that. 'Tain't like she'd take to the hill-country this time o'
night. Anyway, it isn't no use trying to track her; the ground's froze
so hard it doesn't take a hoof print. Well, come to think of it, if that
isn't darned queer! It was froze jest like this the night she was left
at Gilbert's! Best come down to the centre and I'll drop this milk and
borrer a buggy and you and me'll do some tall searchin'. It does look
some as if the Lord had meant I was to be sort of trackin' of the little
gall from the beginnin'. But mebbe it's jest because I'm a good deal
round about and keep my eyes open.
"You'll best tell Gilbert, but make him stay to hum, and we'll do the
searchin'. It's no fit night for his lame leg; jest say 'Lisha Potts's
going on the trail and he'll trust me, and mention to Satiry that the
coffee-pot on the back of the stove'll make a nice picture for us when
we get back."
Meanwhile, the long-legged horses were making good time toward the
village, and presently, as Hugh entered the post-office, he could see
Oliver Gilbert's face looking anxiously up the road through the window
by the beehive, for the Binks boy had already come for the mail-bag.
"Where's Poppy? Has anything happened? Don't say she's fell through the
ice and drowned!" Gilbert said almost in a whisper.
"No, no, she's safe enough," and Hugh paused, realizing that even these
words might not be true.
"Sit down, Daddy" (Hugh had fallen into using Poppea's epithets). "I
must tell you something."
Hugh told all as it had happened, repeating Poppea's broken sentences
word for word with unconscious emphasis and pathos. Then, after giving
'Lisha's message, he stopped short and, still standing, looked at the
old man, who was sitting motionless.
Gilbert arose with difficulty, steadying himself by the table corner.
"Go, Hugh, and do you and 'Lisha do the best you can. She--she came to
me in the night, and in the darkness she has gone from me," and hiding
his face in his arm he left the office and, stumbling across the passage
to the house, passed through the kitchen and entered his bedroom, where
he closed and locked the door.
Hugh followed to say a few words to Satira, and remind her of the
deserted post-office. She, overcoming her desire to set forth the
fulfilment of her prediction in all its details, sat down suddenly in
the rocker, head between her hands, until the honest tears spattered
both on the floor and on the coat of old Mack, who, gray and rheumatic,
still kept the place, half under the stove, that he had first chosen
almost thirteen years before.
Oliver Gilbert meanwhile paced up and down the inner room, the irregular
tapping of his heels telling its own story to Satira Pegrim, though she
could not see the pitiful working of his face or the nervous clenching
of his long, thin hands. Presently he paused by the hooded cradle that
stood as of old between the bed and wall. Lighting a candle, he set it
upon the chest of drawers, where its rays fell upon the cradle. Upon the
white counterpane was a little bouquet of Prince's pine, wintergreen
berries, and holly ferns that Poppea had placed there on Christmas eve.
Stiffly Gilbert dropped to his knees, his arms clasped about the cradle
as on that first night.--"God keep her and lead her in somewhere out of
the cold and harm. Oh, Lord! I've been short-sighted and selfish. I
wanted her for my very own so bad that I've lived out a lie rather than
have the truth come between ever so little. Now she is suffering for it
when it should only be me. I was puffed up and said to myself in my
pride,--'A wrong has been laid at my door because the Lord knew that I
would right it,'--but instead I have added to it. Oh, Lord! have pity;
keep her away from the river and the railroad and Brook's pea-brush
swamp until she gets time to think."
CHAPTER VIII
SANCTUARY
When Hugh Oldys left Poppea by the graveyard gate, her first blind
impulse was to hide somewhere, anywhere from familiar faces, this being
an instinct common to all healthy young animals when either physically
hurt or in trouble. Knowing as she did all the by-ways, lanes, and pent
roads of the entire township, the very last thing she thought of was to
follow the highway or any of its cross-roads. So when Hugh was peering
among the shadows of the walls and bushes that hedged them on either
side, Poppea was crossing the graveyard toward the Northeast gate by
which they had entered, flitting swiftly behind the larger stones for
concealment.
She had no voice to answer Hugh's call even if she had wished to; her
throat was contracted and dry, and to her ears, still ringing with the
rush of blood brought by the first shock, his voice sounded miles away.
When finally she heard the rattle of the milk wagon going unmistakably
downhill, she stopped her efforts at concealment, and walking directly
to the round hill above the graveyard took such a view of the
surroundings as the dusk would allow. The bitter north wind sweeping
down from the hill-country turned her about when she faced in that
direction, putting an end to a wild idea she had of spending the night
in a rough camp the young people had made the previous summer in the
hemlock woods. The Moosatuck was already being outlined by many bonfires
and all the lanterns that the young folks could collect, for they meant
to make the most of what might prove the only snowless skating of the
winter.
The village lights began to twinkle below, and an up train, stopping at
Harley's Mills Station, drew out again, taking long breaths, and,
creeping through the fields like a great glow-worm, made its way toward
Bridgeton. There would be a down train in a quarter of an hour; could
she reach the station in time, she might gain the last car from the
brook side of the track without being seen.
Then she realized that she had no money, and the Felton ladies, her only
friends in what was to her the fathomless mystery of New York, were at
Quality Hill. Could she have gone to Mrs. Oldys, sure of finding her
alone, and begged to be hidden for a few days, that would have suited
her mood and necessities the best. As she closed her eyes for a moment,
she saw the peaceful picture of Mr. Oldys sitting with his evening paper
by the fire in the library of endless books in their white, varnished
cases, discussing the doings of the day with Hugh. Through the doorway
into the dining room was a glimpse of white-clothed table, a jar of
flowers, and the delicate outlines of Mrs. Oldys' sensitive face, as she
bent over the great silver tray, tea-caddy in hand, watching for the
first puff of steam from the kettle in order to complete the brewing of
her perfect tea, and summon the father and son to table.
To go there would be once more to give herself up to all the dearest
things of home that she had experienced through the kindness of friends,
but thought that she must forever more lack; but above all, she was held
back by a bitter feeling of resentment toward those who had been kind to
her, for had they not all banded to deceive her? she, who was nobody,
saved from charity possibly,--so quickly did her mind travel ahead of
what she knew,--from being a town charge! At this bitter moment, the
conventional expression came back to her as applied to a child who was
being brought up by the widow Baker, much being expected of her and
little done for the girl.
Poppea did not analyze her feelings, she was too young and too miserable
for any logical reasoning; it was only that impressions crowded her
brain with the rapid confusion of a nightmare, and at this moment the
germs of two distinct natures began to develop rapidly: one sensitive
and emotional; the other stern, proud, and unflinching to the verge of
stubbornness.
For a few moments she stood thus, overlooking the village, the upland,
and marsh meadows that stretched to salt water, until it seemed that the
winking eyes of the lights, one red and one yellow, that guarded the
entrance of the shallow bay, were beckoning her to come to them. As she
waited, a curtain dropped about her from the clouds, and fine, crisp
snowflakes melted upon her upturned face.
Then she began to walk rapidly through the pasture, but whichever way
she turned thickets of bay or huckleberry bushes caused her to go back,
until, tired with groping, her feet found a worn track, one of the many
cow-paths that wound about the lot. Keeping to it, no longer trying to
think but walking blindly, she slipped and lost the narrow hollow worn
smooth in the thick old turf; then picking it up again, stumbled on.
After she had gone many miles, as she thought, the path came to some
bars; two of these were down, left so probably since the cows had made
their last homeward trip in November. On the other side of the bars, the
path that had previously zigzagged down a steep hillside continued on a
level, and the whistle of a locomotive sounded very near.
In a few minutes more a great hayrick stopped her short, and feeling a
way around it, she could see two cows, who were pulling their supper
from one side of the stack that had been hollowed into a sort of shelter
by many such meals. Then a lantern shone a few steps ahead, and a voice,
that she recognized as belonging to an old neighbor of their own, called
the cows into the shelter of the barnyard.
Poppea, finding that she had travelled only a mile and was within a few
feet of the village street, and thinking that the farmer had awakened
and come to protect his cattle from the storm, was tempted to crawl into
the hay for warmth and rest; her feet were almost without feeling, her
hood and muffler were frayed in many places; she shivered so that she
had bitten her tongue until it bled, and faintness was creeping over
her.
As she groped to find a place where the hay was loose enough to make a
place for her body, the clock in the tower of St. Luke's struck
melodiously, not counting out ten or eleven strokes as Poppea expected,
but stopping short at six.
It was the joy of Stephen Latimer that both clock and bells sent forth a
cheerful message of love and hope for what good time might bring forth
rather than a warning of passing hours. 'Lisha Potts had once voiced
this interpretation with his characteristic direct emphasis, saying one
day to Miss Emmy, who had given the bells and was asking his opinion of
them:--
"Yes, marm, they're real coaxin', persuasive, and comfortable; the First
Church bell allers calls jerky like, 'Re-pent, re-pent, re-pent,' and
the Hill Meeting House's says, 'H E L L! HELL! _Hell!_' plain as words,
so's I don't feel called to go, though they do say bein' set against a
rock has a powerful lot to do with the expression."
Be this as it may, the chimes had hardly ceased when Poppea left the
haystack and found her way to the main road through another pair of
bars, familiar to all the village children as the daily short cut to the
Academy. Perhaps the church door might be unlocked, it often was; surely
no one would look for her there.
The snow flurry was one of a series of squalls, that stopped long enough
for her to see her way across the road, also that a dim light came
through the chancel window. Then the snow began to fall again in large,
loose flakes that quickly filled her footprints.
Her scarf caught upon one of the shrubs that lined the bit of flagged
path from road to door, and when she had pulled herself free, she
noticed that the outer porch door stood open; then the notes of the
organ reached her.
What day was it? It took her a full minute to remember that it was
Wednesday, the afternoon upon which Stephen Latimer played the organ,
only it was much later than he usually stayed. Expecting that the people
might come out at any moment, Poppea tried to turn away, but she was
nearly spent. Pulling herself into the vestibule with great effort, she
looked through the diamond panes of the inner door into the church; it
was quite empty save for the figure of Latimer himself at the organ, a
single lamp above his head breaking the darkness. The truth being that
the skating carnival had drawn all the people toward the Moosatuck, and
finding himself alone, Latimer had this day let loose his very soul,
dreaming and playing on, oblivious of time or falling night.
Cautiously Poppea pushed open the felt-edged door and crept into the
church, watching intently for any move on the part of the player. Once
within she slipped into the first of the pair of pews, that were in the
deep shadow of the loft that once held the organ before the new
instrument had been placed beside the chancel. The backs and door ends
were high to keep out draughts; likewise these pews were seldom used
except for the infant class. Sinking upon the tufted seat, after trying
in vain to sit up, she gradually took a half-crouching position, her
head and shoulders supported by one of the little carpet footstools.
Oh! the unspeakable relief of it, after the hour out in the storm, this
being surrounded once more by friendly walls, the sudden cessation of
cold, the light, the subtle fragrance of the fir trees and pine of the
Christmas greens, and the sight of a human being who was, at the same
time, unconscious alike of her presence as of her misery.
Stephen Latimer, sitting upon the organ bench with the soft light of the
oil lamp outlining his face, looked little, if any, older than on the
day when he had baptized Poppea. It was his double vocation that kept
him young, for in reality he led two separate lives: in one he was the
tireless and sympathetic priest; in the other, romanticist, musician,
and dreamer. To-night he was leading this second life to the full. Once
he set the stops in order as though he had finished, then releasing a
few of the more delicate, he began to improvise, weaving together the
themes of the Christmas carols in which he had been drilling his little
choir throughout the Advent season. The very joy of the strains seemed
to mock the young girl listening back among the shadows, and she sat
upright with a gesture almost of impatience, so far away seemed the
singing and lighted tree of Christmas Eve.
Presently his mood dropped from exalted joy down into the depths of
stern reality, and the little church began to tremble with the opening
chords of the _Stabat Mater_ of Rossini.
Poppea knew nothing of the meaning of the music or the idea that it
interpreted, yet the emotion of it seized upon her, and she felt that
something inexplicable had found her in the dark hiding-place, and was
struggling with her body and soul. Her breath came quick and fast when
Latimer began the massive splendor of _Cujus Animam_, and when he let
the stop _Vox Humana_ sing the unpronounced words of _Sancta Mater_, it
seemed as though she must cry out, while the _Amen_ exalted her, but
painfully, and without final relief.
Evidently, it had somewhat the same effect upon the organist, for he
stopped abruptly, wiped his forehead, that was beaded by the masterly
exertion, and, passing his hand wearily across his eyes, shut off the
stops still quivering with passion, leaving only _Vox Humana_, and then,
after a moment's pause, played the hymn of childhood, as though
convinced that in its simplicity alone lay peace.
"Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,
Look upon a little child."
Poppea rose to her feet, grasping the back of the seat in front of her:
the hymn was the first that Gilbert had taught her while she still slept
in the hooded cradle. At last God was merciful: the tension broke; tears
rained from her strained eyes and began to quench the fire in her brain.
Burying her face in her hood to stifle the blessed sobs, she again
crouched in the pew corner.
At the same time, the door opened and Mrs. Latimer came into the church;
feeling her way, she steadied herself by the door of the pew where
Poppea lay until her eyes focussed to the surroundings. As Latimer
reluctantly closed the keyboard with the lingering of one parting from a
friend, she called, walking toward him as she spoke: "Stevie dear, what
have you been about? It is half-past seven and the popovers that I made
for tea have grown quite discouraged. I was expecting you hours ago, but
Hugh Oldys came rushing in looking so ghastly that he put everything
else out of my head. He was coming home with Poppy Gilbert from skating,
they took the short cut across the graveyard--" then, as Mrs. Latimer
reached her husband, she leaned over his shoulder and finished the
sentence, but the crouching girl knew its import perfectly.
In a moment, husband and wife were hurrying from the church. As Stephen
Latimer stooped to bolt the swinging inner door, Poppea heard Mrs.
Latimer say, "Elisha Potts and Hugh are hunting everywhere, but if they
do not find her by nine o'clock, don't you think we would better ring
the church bells to collect the skaters and have a general search?"
"Yes, if it must be; but I wish we could find some less public way of
reaching her, she is such a sensitive child, yet very proud beneath the
surface. Do you know, Jeanne, she very often reminds me of you yourself.
If you had fled before a cruel hurt, would you like to be brought home
by the ringing of bells?"
"No, Stevie, all I should need _now_ would be time to remember and know
that you were waiting for me with your arms outstretched."
Then the doors closed, and Poppea was a prisoner. Yet in those few
moments she had been given a glimpse of the perfection of one of the
great mysteries of life, and it made a lasting impression on the soul of
the girl who was pushed into womanhood in a single night. For the time
being she had what she most needed, rest and silence, with the single
lamp that had been forgotten, to prevent the oppression of darkness. She
was too physically numb to care what happened during the next hour or
realize the possible necessity of the ringing of the bells. Fixing
herself as comfortably as might be on the narrow seat, she fell into a
heavy sleep pillowed by the little carpet stool worn bare by the
restless feet of the infant class children.
* * * * *
Meanwhile 'Lisha Potts and Hugh Oldys had gone to all the places where
Poppea would have been likely to take refuge, and finally, a little
before nine o'clock, meeting with Stephen Latimer at the Feltons', where
they snatched a hasty supper, held an impromptu consultation.
"Do you think," sobbed Miss Emmy, "that she could have drowned herself?
It's all open water below the dam at Harley's Mills."
"No," almost shouted Latimer, "and do not let us give the ugly thought
shape even by suggestion. To a healthy-minded, responsible girl such as
Poppea, the idea would not even occur, for suicide is the final proof of
irresponsibility. That she may be wandering, dazed, in the bay marshes
is my greatest fear; still, before we make a general hue and cry, let us
go back to Gilbert's and ask him his exact wishes. Whoever may be her
father after the flesh, Gilbert is now according to the law."
"Yes," seconded 'Lisha, "we'd best go back and ask Daddy, and keep a
good lookout by the way. She may head for home after a while, but not
have push enough to get there."
For the third time during the twelve hours the mood of the weather had
changed. The wind had parted and banished the heavier snow clouds, and
the moon, edging its way persistently through those that remained, made
the lanterns that the three men carried almost unnecessary.
* * * * *
Oliver Gilbert had sorted and distributed the seven o'clock mail, closed
the post-office at the earliest legal moment, and was sitting by the
kitchen fire; that is, he sat there in the brief intervals when he was
not peering from the window toward the road or listening at the
different doors where the wind kept up a disconcerting tapping and
rattling.
For the third time Satira Pegrim spread supper before her brother, but
she had ceased urging him to eat. Mixing his coffee exactly to his
taste, she set it close to his elbow and then silently left the room. As
she closed the door at the bottom of the attic stairs and began a
creaking ascent, Gilbert called after her: "Satiry, will you fetch the
pair of little iron fire dogs from under the eaves when you come down?
They lie to the north side under where the seed corn is hung."
Noticing the food apparently for the first time, he ate a few morsels,
drank the coffee slowly, and then going to the side porch collected a
large armful of logwood topped with kindlings which he proceeded to
carry upstairs with no little difficulty, and coming in collision with
his sister on the landing at the top.
"Sakes alive, man, what are you doing!" she cried, almost dropping the
heavy andirons.
"I'm going to take out the chimney board in Poppy's room and start a
fire so's it will look real cheerful when she comes home--for--she'll be
tired and cold--most like. Mayhap the hearth'll need brushing," he
added; "the swallows' nests always fall down of a winter."
The spare bedroom that was now Poppea's had an empty look, in spite of
the bright-flowered wall paper and braided rugs. The straight white
drapery at the windows, and on the old high-posted bed in which several
generations had been ushered into the world, suggested ice and snow to
Gilbert rather than a soft fabric.
"Haven't you got a warm-looking comfortable to throw over that?" he said
to Mrs. Pegrim, who was standing in the doorway, jerking his thumb over
his shoulder toward the bed without looking at it. When, after a few
minutes of kneeling on the hearth and coaxing with the bellows, the
ruddy glow of the fire had penetrated all the ghostly nooks, Gilbert got
up and looked about with a sigh of satisfaction, letting his eyes rest
upon the white bed for the first time.
Asking Satira to watch the fire until the sparks from the kindlings had
subsided, he lit a lantern and made his way slowly to the little
workshop back of the post-office, and seating himself before his desk,
drew out the shabby ledger in which was written the record of the years
since Poppea's coming. Below the record of the previous day he drew a
heavy line. Then writing _December twenty-eighth_, across the entire
page, he traced under it, writing painfully and making three strokes to
every letter,--"This day has the Lord taken the pen from my hand to put
it into hers. In three days comes a New Year. Amen." From a panel
beneath the drawer, that flew open when he touched the spring, he drew
the miniature and its slender chain, wrapped in a piece of chamois
leather.
It was several years since he had looked at it; yes, he was almost sure
that the young woman must be of Poppea's blood, if not her mother, for
the likeness between the two was now more than mere fancy. Dropping it
into his pocket, he returned to Poppea's bedroom, where he fastened the
miniature against the frilled pincushion on top of the high chest of
drawers, and lighting the candles in the two straight glass holders that
had been Miss Emmy's Christmas gift, set one on either side of it, then
laid the precious book upon her work-table by the window, and crept back
to the kitchen, where Mack was whining uneasily as though he missed some
one, and scratching at the door to be let out.
* * * * *
Elisha Potts took the lead as the three men started on their slippery
walk from Quality Hill down through the main street of the village. As
they reached the Rectory, Mrs. Latimer flitted out to ask for news. When
they came abreast of the church, her husband, who had a veiled idea that
he had left the lamp burning, glanced up at the chancel window only to
be reassured that all was dark within.
Brief as the stop was, Hugh Oldys, who had half turned toward the
flagged pathway, saw something fluttering from one of the shrubs;
raising his lantern he recognized it as a fraying of Poppea's scarf.
"She has passed this way," he cried, "and since the snow has stopped,
for the worsted is quite dry, while the bush is crusted!" but lowering
the lantern to the pavement, the footprints there shown were confused
and told nothing, as Mrs. Latimer had gone in alone and come out with
her husband.
"Have you the keys, Mr. Latimer? We must look here, though of course she
may have merely stumbled into the bushes and gone on."
"I have them in my pocket, but I was in the church alone until half-past
seven and heard no one."
"Most likely not, if you was a-playin' the organ," said 'Lisha, "for you
kin make her beller powerful disconcertin', Parson. Lemme have them
keys."
* * * * *
How long Poppea slept, she did not know. When she awoke, the church was
in total darkness, the lamp having burned out, and the cold of the
floor was creeping up to where she lay. Sitting up, she touched
everything in reach, yet could not place herself. Was it one of the
mazes of a bad dream?
Then the pungence of the fir trees came to her, and the moon without
outlined the long window over the chancel.
Something shook the outer door, and then some one fumbled at the keyhole
of the inner. The door was cautiously pushed open, and Poppea heard Hugh
Oldys's voice saying, "Go quietly and don't stamp so, Potts; she may be
asleep," and then Stephen Latimer's lantern was turned so full upon her
face that she raised her arm to shield her dazzled eyes.
Hugh and Elisha drew back into the doorway, and it was Latimer who,
sitting beside her, said: "We have come to take you home, Poppea. How
long have you been here?" The answer came in a whisper.
"Ever since six o'clock."
"Then you were here while I was playing; it was you who were struggling
with yourself. It seemed to me suddenly as I played that some one was in
hard conflict, and that I must play to help them in some unseen way. I
did not dream that it was you, my child. Now I know from the soul that
struggled with me that you are ready to go home."
"Let me give her some supper and go up with her," begged Jeanne Latimer
in her husband's ear, as she, alarmed by their long stay in the church,
joined them when they were leaving. "Send Hugh home, and ask Potts to
let Oliver Gilbert know that she will soon be there. She needs a woman
of her own sort to be with her at this moment, not Satira Pegrim."
A pressure of the hand from Latimer told her that she was right, and
putting an arm about Poppea, she drew her into the Rectory and
ministered to her by the dim firelight, and presently the two were
driven to the post-office house by Potts, going together to Poppea's
room without meeting any one except old Mack.
For a moment Poppea paused, her hand on the doorknob. The crackling
sound of the fire within made her turn it quickly. Mrs. Latimer hastened
to undress her, for she was nervously exhausted, and a red spot glowed
in the middle of each white cheek.
As Poppea stood before the chest of drawers to braid her straggling
hair, her eyes fell on the miniature. Seizing it, she gazed at the face
intently, and then, with dilating eyes, turned to Mrs. Latimer.
"Who is it?" she whispered; "how did it come here?"
"You brought it with you about your neck the night you came. We do not
know, Daddy and I; we can't be sure, but we think it must have been your
mother."
Without speaking, Poppea looked at it once more, put her hand to her
face as though struggling intently with memory, pressed the picture to
her lips, and then slipped the chain about her neck.
Lying back between the white curtains with the flowery counterpane
across her breast, her loosely braided hair wreathing her head, the
resemblance to the miniature became almost startling, but Jeanne Latimer
put a restraint upon her tongue and all she wished to say. Stooping,
she quickly kissed Poppea good-night.
"Shall I never know anything more?" Poppea asked pleadingly; "isn't
there anything to tell except that I am not me--that I don't belong to
them?"
"Yes, a little more, but the telling of that belongs to Daddy." Then
even as Mrs. Latimer spoke, Poppea's expression changed, the mouth
hardened, and a rigid expression mantled the delicate features, that
remained after the long fringed lashes shut out the changeful fire of
her eyes.
Waiting a moment to see if they would open again, Mrs. Latimer tiptoed
out.
From forcing her eyes shut, Poppea really dozed, and only awakened as
the candles gave their final splutter before going out. Mack lay upon
the mat before the fire twitching and whining in his sleep. Starting up,
she felt, rather than saw, that there was some one in the room. Peering
around the curtain, she came face to face with Oliver Gilbert, who,
wrapped in his double gown, was sitting in the deep chintz chair by her
bedside.
Instantly a long, thin hand was laid upon hers that struggled under it
for a moment but could not pull itself away.
"Some things are real if others are hid from us for a little while,
Poppy. You see your home is here, yours to have and hold under love and
law, and you see you've still got a Daddy; perhaps if you'd _say_ the
word just once, we'd both feel better."
The prisoned hand stopped struggling; raising herself on one arm she
repeated slowly, "Yes, I've a Daddy." Then she hid her face upon his
shoulder, the miniature of the other Poppea dangling from her neck.
When she fell asleep, he did not go away, but sat there, replenishing
the fire lest she should wake in some new terror.
Thus Gilbert kept his second vigil until dawn. In putting a last stick
upon the embers he stumbled over Mack, who did not move; his faithful
old life had gone out peacefully in the night, and with it his
mistress's careless girlhood.
CHAPTER IX
THE MYSTERY OF THE NAME
It being Saturday and market-day, Satira Pegrim had gone to Bridgeton
with 'Lisha Potts to look at furniture, for liberal as to matters of
time though Potts was as a wooer, he had told Satira on Christmas Day
that when a man reached fifty it was time he did something more about
settling down than talk of it. Satira, on the whole, had enjoyed a very
pleasant courtship during the years of her reign at the post-office. It
is given to few women to attend the county fair for thirteen consecutive
years at the expense of the same man without incurring further
responsibility.
She was now divided between conscientious motives about leaving her
brother until Poppea was able to keep house, and the fear lest 'Lisha
become discouraged and transfer his affections to Judith, daughter of
the widow Baker. This veteran, having failed to secure a second spouse
for herself, was now trying to checkmate in turn every available man in
the county for the benefit of her daughter. The Bakers lived almost
opposite the Pegrim farm that 'Lisha leased, and well Satira knew that
nearness means a good deal, especially in winter, so she had consented
to look at furniture, saying demurely at the same time:--
"Of course, if you wish my housekeepin' 'xperience in trading, it'll
pleasure me to give it, but if you want a woman that can rush into
things helterskelter and unthinkin', why not try Judy Baker?"
"No old maids for me, Satiry," he flung back, slapping his knees to give
emphasis to his words. "When I get spliced, it'll hev to be either a
young woman or a widder, the last bespoke and preferred."
"Sakes alive! and what's Judy but a young woman? She's only turning
twenty-four."
"Age hasn't got a thing to do with it; there's old maids at twenty and
women folks turning forty that though unmarried ain't, and is young."
"Oliver Gilbert, he hit them differences plumb on the head once't some
years back, when he was havin' considerable trouble in making folks
understand that he wasn't calculatin' to take a second. Gilbert he's
read lots of unor'nary thoughts in books, and he says, says he: ''Lisha,
there's three kinds o' females when it comes to considerin' matrimony:
widders that understand us men through 'xperience; just plain nice women
folks that know what's necessary about us by intooition, as the Lord
meant they should; and old maids that thinks they're dead wise, but all
they know's by suspicion. Now don't you take one of those last, 'cause
they suspect so much more bad of us than we really are that their idee
is darned hard to live up tew!' Well, just at that time what I took to,
was not gettin' married, but to the woods, and went in for trapping and
lumbering for quite a spell.
"Judy Baker's terrible knowin' by suspicion. When she shakes hands,
she'll jerk hern away before a man's really caught his grip, like she
most _knew_ he was goin' to squeeze it, which he, bein' I, hadn't no
such idee. Then she looks mad, 'cause he, bein' I, didn't."
After this complete understanding, Satira Pegrim, who felt that i
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