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.