When Caleb had brought in and lighted the kettle lamp and put another lump of the unctuous Liverpool coal upon the fire, Poppea seated herself on the tiger rug by Miss Emmy's chair and fed bits of Sally Lunn cake to the cat while she waited for the elder woman to speak of the something that lay behind her eager, restless expression.
"Tell me about your day," said Miss Emmy, abruptly.
Poppea began with her call at Mrs. Hewlett's, that the songs for her afternoon musical of the next week might be chosen. In addition to the list of old English ballads, Mrs. Hewlett had asked if she knew any darky songs, and finding that she did, suggested that she make a separate specialty of these as novelty was a must be in social entertaining. Then Gloria Hooper had taken her home to luncheon almost forcibly, and there Bradish Winslow had drifted in and walked with her over to Chickering Hall. Tostelli's comments and the hopes that were aroused in her rounded out the narrative, while she waited, hands clasped about her knees and her eyes gazing into Miss Emmy's, for her judgment upon the matter.
"You are beginning, Poppea. Every one is very nice to you, as they should be, and New York seems to you the promised land; so it seemed to me thirty-five years ago. This singing, half socially, half professionally, is very pleasant while it lasts; but if, when the winter is over, you've made up your mind that you are going to let music hold the first place, then you must go on,—go abroad and study with the concert stage, if not opera, for the goal."
"Oh, Aunty, Aunty, you fly too fast!" Poppea cried. "Daddy is first, though music fills up all the gaps and fits in between times and people, and is letting me earn enough to save and help Daddy when he shall need it. I am not even dreaming of opera, and 'abroad' is such a far-away place. Why can't I stay where I am for at least a half a dozen years?"
"Why? because they won't let you;" then as if she feared by the look of pained wonder on Poppea's face that she had gone too far in the rather bitter mood that was upon her, she laughed lightly.
"There, there, you mustn't mind my nonsense, but I'm in a state of rebellion myself to-day, and so wish every one else to be likewise. I've just told sister Elizabeth that I will go on no more of the wild-goose-chase performances known as 'making formal calls,' and that after the dinners and other entertainments that are already afoot between now and March are over, I shall withdraw from what is known as 'society'; not from my real friends, mind you, but merely from the tyranny of the thing that should be called the 'Institution for Amusement at the expense of one's own and one's neighbors' Comfort.' If Elizabeth wishes to continue, she must, to use a card phrase, 'go it alone.'
"I am going abroad in the early spring, and when I return, I mean to spend most of my time at Westboro, and see if Jeanne and Stephen Latimer between them cannot find some work for my hands and brain that will keep my heart from either freezing or turning wholly to stone," and Miss Emmy broke off and held up Diva before her face in a vain effort to suppress a dry sob that made her voice tremble.
"Why, Miss Emmy, I have always thought that you loved New York and all the people with whom you have lived so many years,—the art galleries, theatres, music, shops, and all the rest. Don't you remember what you said to me about it last autumn when you urged me to come down and try my luck? That no American has lived or is fit to judge how or where they will spend their lives until they have seen and known New York," and Poppea arose to her knees in front of her admonisher, an expression of incredulity on her upturned face, and her hands clasped in a half-beseeching, half-defensive attitude.
"Yes, I believe I did say that among other things, and it is true none the less because, after having tried it for the best of my life, I have decided to leave it before it leaves me. The New York that I knew is passing in more senses than one. When I first came to it, making the journey from Boston by boat, Washington Square was the north side of the residential city limit, the present corners of Fourteenth Street and Fifth Avenue cow pastures. There were many charming country houses all through the northern part of the Island and more especially near the Hudson, Bradish Winslow's grandfather, on the maternal side, living in one of them. We ourselves went to visit at the Waddell mansion set on the edge of a farm with its wheat fields near what is now the corner of Fifth Avenue and Thirty-seventh Street, the site of a church, a crowded city in itself and this was less than forty years ago. Young as you are, you can see the changes that seven or eight years have made, Poppea."