PHILIP
When Poppea was nineteen, she became the assistant postmaster at
Harley's Mills, with all the legal formality that the name implied, Mr.
Oldys having "gone on her bond" as the local saying ran. Not that
Gilbert's mental faculties were in any way impaired, but at seventy he
was naturally less alert physically, and the long hours told on him. At
least Poppea said so, and urged him to spend more time in the garden
during pleasant weather in company with his pipe and one of his
well-worn books. These, however, had palled upon him, or, as he once
told Stephen Latimer, "It seems as if since Poppy grew up and into
things, Mr. Plutarch is rather far back, and I don't any more care if
Alcibiades returned or not, or much about the siege of Troy, though
that's livelier. I want something with more up-to-date flesh and blood
in it that'll help me to understand things that come up."
Latimer had suggested Shakespeare as a remedy, at the same time offering
to lend Gilbert an edition that had clear print, and yet could be kept
in the pocket. So from the day that Latimer brought the books, Gilbert
had been under a new spell, while at the same period Miss Emmy had given
Poppea the Waverley Novels, which still further changed his emotional
horizon, and made him the more willing to leave the office in the warm
June days and go to the bench under the widest spreading tree in the old
orchard, with clover all about and the brilliant hues and perfumes of
what Poppea called her parapet garden showing between the trees.
Satira Pegrim and 'Lisha Potts had finally joined names and farms,
though the bustling woman had left her post of vantage at the village
with many regrets. When Mrs. Shandy, Philip Angus's erstwhile nurse, had
been obliged to leave him at fifteen altogether in the hands of a tutor,
she had gladly, for the sake of being near the boy whom she almost
worshipped, slipped into Satira's shoes as general caretaker at the
post-office house, for Poppea's earnings, with her voice and as
Gilbert's assistant, made such a helper possible.
No one in the village ever thought it strange that Poppea should fill a
position hitherto occupied by a man. Once Harley's Mills, in the person
of its elderly females, would have raised its hands in horror at the
thought of a young girl engaging in public business; but the Civil War
had changed all that by becoming the origin of the general necessity in
North and South alike for the woman's stepping into the man's empty
shoes, so that the labor horizon for all time widened for all women.
From John Angus had come the only objection to the innovation. He said
openly on several occasions that the charge of the United States mail
should not be left in hands that were only fit to tie ribbons or tell a
fortune with cards. This superficial criticism was attributed to his
old grudge against Gilbert and his evident disgust at not having the
chance to dislodge him that a change of postmasters might have rendered
easier. As he took no steps toward doing anything in the matter by the
usual method of presenting a petition, it was supposed that he had
forgotten it, especially as immediately after, Angus went to Europe to
be gone six months, on business, his lawyer announced, the truth being
that the inscrutable man, jarred and rent by many disappointments and
his own unyielding temperament, had received several warnings that he
held life by a rather uncertain thread. Too secretive to confess that he
was not well by calling in local physicians, he had gone abroad to seek
advice under the plea of business.
The last disappointment that he had forced himself to bear with an
immovable exterior was concerning Philip. Never from the day that he
knew that his only child had the inexorable disease covered by so short
a name, had he allowed any one to sympathize with him upon the subject,
nor had he admitted by any word or sign that the boy was suffering from
any physical limitation. Philip's life was arranged upon the same plan
as that of normal children, and nothing by way of affectionate regard or
added companionship was allowed to fill the place of all that he must
refrain from doing.
Thus the greatest craving that the child had was for the warmth and
protection of affection; he saw the fathers of other boys whom he
sometimes visited put their arms about the lads' shoulders, draw them to
their knees, or make room for them in the great easy-chair, where
confidences about the work and play of the day were exchanged. Not so
with Philip; the little real love that made him hunger for more had come
from the servants and Mrs. Shandy, when they felt that they were out of
eye- and ear-shot of the master.
Even this was stopped when Philip was fifteen by Mrs. Shandy's dismissal
because John Angus deemed that she was retarding his son's development
and keeping him childish. Henceforward a tutor and various teachers of
languages were the boy's associates, for Philip must needs go to college
and become, if not a lawyer, a man of affairs and politics like his
father.
Now Philip loved learning, but on its æsthetic rather than positive
side; beauty of form, color, sound, all appealed to him intensely, and
the thought of the beauty shone from his great gray eyes and beautified
every feature of his exquisitely modelled face, as though in this Nature
had outdone herself.
From the time he was a mere baby he had watched every butterfly and bird
and tried to copy them in what Mrs. Shandy called his mud pies; which
taste, as he grew, developed itself into a wonderful ability to
comprehend both the anatomy of things and their spiritual expression.
From time to time, during his winter city life, he had bought small
copies of the great statues, for at least he was never at a lack for
spending money, and gazed and gazed at them until he knew every curve
and line by heart. In short, as boy and youth, Philip's one desire was
to be a sculptor; but though John Angus never interfered with his
modelling as a recreation, to his appeals to be allowed to enter a
studio and study seriously he never made the slightest reply, and the
preparations for college were forced on.
One day Philip's brain strength had flagged, suddenly, and, as his
father thought, unaccountably. Once again physicians gathered, and this
time the word came to John Angus, "If you wish your boy to live, his
life must be of the open, and his work, if any, something that he craves
and loves."
Then again did John Angus shut himself up for a day and night, to emerge
as before and accept the inevitable with a denial of any need of
sympathy. In a week he announced that Philip was to study modelling,
therefore an outdoor studio was to be built in the garden, and he was to
be under the guidance of Clay Howell, a famous sculptor, who not only
had studios in Rome and New York, but also a summer home at Westboro.
The latest tutor was retained as a companion, and Angus, more ill than
he would confess even to himself, set sail at Christmas nominally for a
six months' absence.
Philip had as a child a beautiful soprano voice which, by the time he
was seventeen, had developed a tenor quality without losing any of its
impersonal boyish sweetness. Stephen Latimer had taken great pains in
its training, and in his friendship the boy had found the one soul who
seemed to understand without spoken words. It was through this
companionship that he found that other that seemed to him in his dark
hours of self abasement and disappointment, the one light that kept hope
alive,--this was Poppea.
As a child he had longed to play with her, and used to watch her by the
hour through the port-holes of the parapet, while she was working in the
garden that extended from the treasure-trove bank little by little until
it finally reached the apple trees. That they might not be playmates
Mrs. Shandy made plain to him, though never the reason why. Later on
they had met at children's parties at the Feltons' and at the choir
practice at St. Luke's, and Poppea had always so sweet and gentle a way
with him, that when he used to dream of angels or try to think what his
mother must have looked like, Poppea's face was always blended in his
visions, for he never _felt_ the stately portrait by Huntington in the
library to be his mother.
When at last it was decided that he was not to go to college and life
held out an olive branch to Philip, Poppea seemed to be the dove that
brought it; Poppea, for whom Stephen Latimer asked Philip to play
accompaniments when she went of an afternoon to the Rectory for a
singing lesson "between mails," and Jeanne Latimer could not be of the
party.
To Latimer, Philip seemed a mere child; it never occurred to him that he
might be reckoned with emotionally and sentimentally as a man, and it
rejoiced his gentle heart to see the boy so happy.
Any boy is spiritualized and made better by the sympathetic
companionship of an older woman if she be of the right mettle, and
Latimer believed that this companionship would give Philip the very
thing, the conception of the essence of woman's sympathy, that he had
lacked all his sad life and that must be realized if he was to grapple
successfully with his art. Consequently, he was quite unprepared and
almost angry, when after coming into the room one day while they were
practising, Jeanne had said:--
"Have a care, Stephen dear, that you do not develop a tragedy in, as you
say, cultivating Philip's artistic perceptions. Will it be well, think
you, that he falls entirely in love with Poppea?"
Even then Latimer would not understand. "There are many kinds of love
that are far removed from tragedy," he answered.
"Yes, but to a sensitive dreamer for a woman like Poppea there is but
one love," she had replied almost vehemently.
"You are mistaken, Jeanne, in this. I am with them, and I stand between
their thoughts as they pass, and my soul reads them. The safety lies in
that Poppea is what she is."
"Time will prove," said Jeanne, half sadly. By the very insistence of
certain word combinations this commonplace saying of his wife refused to
leave Latimer's memory, and even though it failed in any way to impress
him, it left an irritation like the prick of an invisible thorn.
Meanwhile, Poppea and Philip drew nearer together each day.
Howell was finishing a large and important piece of work at his Westboro
studio, and for this reason remained there during the summer, and there
it was that Philip went every day. The master, to test his creative
quality, told him to set about the bit of work he felt he would most
like to do, and that he would help him with the technique. Philip's
response had been to bring a rough crayon sketch that he had made of
Poppea's head and shoulders the last summer when he, looking over the
parapet, had seen her pick up a little bird that had fallen from the
nest and, after holding it in her hand a moment to still its
flutterings, put it back with its brothers. Under the drawing was
written _Amor Consolatrix_.
"Who is it?" the sculptor had asked abruptly. "She will make a good
model. I will send for her to come up here if she lives in the
neighborhood, as I suppose she does."
"Oh! I couldn't ask her; she isn't a model, but I can remember her face
as well as if she were here. Is it not perfect?"
"Head is well set on; forehead, eyes, and chin good; nose a bit too much
tipped up for classic proportions." Then, as he saw Philip's face flush
and quiver, he added "After all, noses are a matter of taste nowadays
when we are getting a long way on the road from Greek placidity, that in
the female face expressed little but form, toward the expression of
temperament. She'll do, my lad, she'll do; if for no other reason than
that you think so.
"Who is she, that is neither a model nor askable?" he inquired a half
hour later, as he looked over from his work to where Philip was
wrestling mentally and physically with the lump of clay of the size for
a bust that the attendant had set upon its block.
"Poppea Gilbert; she lives at the post-office in our town, and there is
nobody quite like her," Philip answered, his shyness suddenly rent by
the man's offhand air of comradeship, as well as in response to his own
need of some one to whom he might speak without restraint.
Howell seldom took pupils, and the price that John Angus had offered him
for his services would not alone have tempted him, but the boy had
interested him from the first. Now, as he stood there watching the eager
face, the light in his eyes, the energy with which he was attacking a
well-nigh impossible task, he sighed and said to himself: "So long as he
believes there is no one like _her_, whoever she may be, so long will he
be able to work. Her strength will make up for his lack--but if his
belief ends--" Here Howell had made an unconscious downward gesture that
in its expression of complete destruction knocked the index finger from
the outstretched hand of the figure upon which he was impressing the
final details.
For Poppea the last year had been rather lonely, so that the post-office
work was welcomed as a distraction as much as a necessity. A break had
come in the one companionship of her life, for after graduation from
college and the law school, Hugh Oldys, to carry out the carefully laid
plans of his father, was spending a year in foreign travel before
settling in New York, where a niche was waiting for the young man of
whose ability and qualities of determination no one who had come in
contact with him during his college life had any doubt.
During all this period Hugh had come home at the week ends, so that
there had been no absolute break; but when he had finally gone, Poppea
felt herself surrounded by a sort of open space wherein the air blew
chilly and nothing offered a satisfactory shelter. She did not fully
connect cause with effect in all its subtlety, but confessed to herself
a loneliness that came simply from the cutting off of her glimpse of the
outside world that Hugh had given her. His letters came at regular
intervals, but they were largely of things, not people, and least of all
himself, so that it was only when she went to see his mother and heard
her homely talk that she felt any of the vitality that belonged to the
real Hugh.
As for Mrs. Oldys, her eagerness to have Poppea with her was almost
pathetic. Locked in her heart, where no one suspected its existence, was
the simple mother-vision that so few cherish in its unselfish
perfection: in this lay the future of her boy, spent away from her if it
was best, and her place supplied by a younger woman to whom the
knowledge she had held of his innermost thoughts must be transferred.
But in this plan of hers for these many years it had been Poppea who was
to be that other woman. Poppea, whom she had watched and brooded over
almost as though she had been her own, and to whom now she revealed day
by day the devotion with which she had surrounded this only child
without in any way letting it hamper his freedom or his manhood.
No word or hint was ever dropped by her, and yet her belief in the
outcome was as firmly fixed as if it had been a vital point of
religion. Would her faith be shattered? Who could tell or count the
pulse beats of a man and a maid, that, being good friends, have
temperament and the world before them? Hugh was now trying one with the
other. Might it not happen, far away as it seemed, that the change might
also lie before Poppea?
It was now May; in August Hugh would return. As for the other traveller
from Harley's Mills, John Angus, he was due at almost any moment, and
the chill that was settling over his household at the prospect was a
tribute to the awe in which he was held that, had he been asked, he
doubtless would have preferred to any demonstration of affection.
Philip alone seemed to look forward with pleasure to seeing his father.
He was in love with his work; Howell, seeing genius even in his crude
efforts, had not only written John Angus, but had told the boy himself
all that he dared, knowing that his temperament lay too much on the side
of self-abasement to take undue harm from praise. Moreover, Philip had,
with his master's help in technique, the expression being all his own,
finished the bust of Poppea and had placed it at the window of his
garden studio, where the beauty of its modelling was brought out by a
background of living green. Surely John Angus must be pleased; must see
at last that his son had not so much found his calling as that it had
found him.
All about the studio were a score of other attempts of Philip's, very
crude, and yet none lacking in a truthful force, and in half of these,
what might be called the Poppea motive was visible. This he did not
realize, nor would he have thought it strange if he had. Why should he
not worship her?
His feeling had been the motive of all art in all ages. So had many a
dreaming monk of old in a cloistered garden wrought his thought into a
missal's page, his inspiration coming not from his walled-in self, but
from the light upon it, shed, it might be, from the ideal of the real
Virgin behind her image in the dim-lit shrine.
It chanced that upon the afternoon of John Angus's unheralded return,
Poppea and Philip had been bidden to the church to practise a duet which
they were to sing on Whitsunday at St. Luke's. This time Stephen Latimer
accompanied them on the organ, and the pair standing side by side in the
front choir stall facing the empty church, Poppea leaning forward
slightly that she might see the music Philip held, with a tender,
protective air, made a picture that would have appealed to any painter.
Going to his home to find it empty, Angus felt a quickening of the
blood, a desire to see his son for his own sake, perhaps for the first
time. Howell's words had pleased him in spite of himself; the crude,
early American idea of material progress was now rapidly making way for
the realm of literature and art. His life abroad had opened his eyes. To
be the father of a famous sculptor had its mitigations, and then too,
narrow though he was, he could not but realize the underlying
compensation that art deals with the spirit of things and makes as
naught any physical defect in its medium. Philip should also travel; he
himself would take him.
So on the whole, John Angus was in what might almost be called a genial
mood when, on hearing that his son was down at the church with Stephen
Latimer, he ordered the carriage (he had walked up from the station) and
went to seek him. He also looked in much better physical condition than
when he went abroad, and only those who are expert in such matters would
have detected the tension at the corners of the nostrils that came from
the continual apprehension of the heart condition that had been his for
years.
"They are in the church," Jeanne Latimer said, as he greeted her with
the polished manner for which he was famous on the doorstep of the
Rectory. Then she had fled indoors with the swift sense of foreboding
and desire to reach cover that a bird feels when, on a summer day, the
wind suddenly changes and the murmur rises of a thunder cloud that as
yet but edges the horizon.
Angus, hearing music, opened the door and stepped into the shelter of
the very pew that had shielded Poppea that winter night more than six
years before. Why he did it he could not have said, but when one is
watchful and suspicious by nature, the habit often becomes the dictator.
Having turned aside, he waited until the song ended, waited in a
condition of mixed rage and pain that amazed him, feelings stirred in
him which he believed buried; he seemed in some distant place; he could
not account for himself to himself. Even then he did not move at once;
the blending of the voices to any other ear had been uplifting. As
Philip stepped from the stall to the lower level of the chancel steps
and Poppea laid her hand lightly on his shoulder to steady him, John
Angus caught the expression of his face, and suspicion, as ever, being
his interpreter, he gnashed his teeth.
In another minute he was walking up the aisle masked in the perfect
self-control he wore to all outside his household.
"Philip, I have come for you," he said in clearly modulated tones, not
realizing that a warmer greeting might be expected after five months of
absence.
"Some other day, Mr. Latimer; I've only within an hour returned and wish
to see my son," without even a hand clasp, was his reply to the rector's
outstretched hand, words of greeting, and invitation to join Mrs.
Latimer in a cup of tea in the Rectory.
To Poppea he did not speak; looking toward her, he swept her with a
deliberate stare in which dislike and absolute non-recognition were
curiously blended. She at first had been impelled to look away, but
feeling his glance, she turned and met it proudly, head erect, without
either contempt or flinching, and even as she stood thus, John Angus,
gathering up the boy's music and the cloak he always wore, hurried him
from the church, without time for a word of explanation or good-by.
"Poor Philip," said Poppea, lowering her head, while tears filled the
eyes she turned toward Latimer.
"Yes, poor Philip," he echoed; "yet not so poor in any way as John
Angus."
* * * * *
Once in the carriage, the man's self-control seemed to dominate him once
more. He said nothing about the happenings of the past few minutes, but
turned the talk to Philip's work, even before the boy himself had
recovered from the suddenness of the meeting with its incomprehensible
discordance. The tutor, who had been in Bridgeton, whither he frequently
went during Philip's practice afternoons, had returned, and in an agony
of apprehension was superintending the arrangements of the tea things on
the screened veranda overlooking the garden. He need not have trembled,
for John Angus paid no heed to him after a formal greeting, but relaxed
unusually in his effort to interest Philip and draw him out, and the
boy, warming under his father's rare interest, spoke frankly of his
hopes and fears.
"Now will you come to the studio and see it for yourself, father? Of
course it's lumpy and out of line in many ways yet, but Howell says that
I can do it over and over until it is right, and then, perhaps, you'd
have it cut in marble, not because it's good, but because it's the first
and I love it so."
Hand in hand father and son crossed the garden, the maids and
men-servants peeping from their various windows in amazement until the
pair disappeared within the studio door.
"There she is, father. Do you think it is like her?" Philip asked
eagerly, pulling the wet cloth from the bust, for every day he saw the
need of an added touch here and there.
John Angus had seated himself in a high-backed, carved chair and was
gazing at the bust with fierce intensity; whenever he turned his eyes
away, it was to see its lineaments in the crude attempts that filled
every nook in the long room.
"Like? who is it?" he finally managed to say in well-feigned ignorance.
"Ah, then it can't be, if you do not know, for you saw her singing with
me at the church half an hour ago. It is Poppea Gilbert from the
post-office house. I suppose it was foolish of me to try to make her as
lovely as she really is, though Howell sees the likeness, and yet you
did not know."
"Lovely! Know!" John Angus half shouted, jumping to his feet and going
toward Philip with an almost threatening gesture. "Do _you_ know who
this woman is, this adventuress? She was a waif left on Oliver Gilbert's
doorstep; he took her in and bred her up, what for no one knows, unless
to harry me; he who with his paltry four acres of ground and his
damnable Yankee independence has been the only man who has dared to balk
me with success. But now his time has come."
"I only wish she had been left on _our_ doorstep; how different
everything might have been," said Philip, who in a moment seemed to have
gained bodily height through the sudden development of spirit.
"Yes, so do I!" shrieked John Angus, "and, as you say, everything would
have been different, for I should have sent her to the almhouse!
"What do you know of those she came from? Tell me that. What do you
know?" continued the man, lashed to frenzy.
"What do I know of you or you of me, either; what we are or may be?"
said Philip, in the accents not only of manhood, but of a champion, the
words coming from lips that once and for all had ceased to tremble. "But
I do know that Poppea is a good woman and that I love her."
With a word that rang in Philip's ears for many a day and night, John
Angus turned upon him as if to strike him down, even as long ago he had
struck his roseleaf wife the day before she left him. Then as an
invisible something stayed his hand, he rushed across the studio, and
picking up a chair, brought it down full upon the bust, crashing it
outward through the window in many fragments.
For a moment Philip stood with one arm across his eyes as though to shut
out what to him seemed murder. Then dropping it to his side, he faced
his father, who, his wrath having reached a climax, had sunk back in his
chair, clutching his side, while an awful expression of apprehension
crossed his face.
"I cannot tell you to leave the room, for it is yours; but I must go,"
Philip said slowly and clearly, then crossed the studio and closed the
door quietly behind him.
For two days no one but the tutor saw John Angus, who remained in his
room, to write important letters, the tutor said. Then word went forth
that the house would be closed for the summer, as father and son were
going yachting for a change of air.