Poppea of the Post-Office

by Mabel Osgood Wright

By the first of May, Miss Emmy had returned to Quality Hill. Miss Felton had decided to remain with Mr. Esterbrook in the Madison Square house for the present, the outlook being pleasant, though the nearness of the doctor was her first thought. As for Mr. Esterbrook himself, he had rallied sufficiently to be put in a wheel-chair. His right side was paralyzed and his speech as yet well-nigh unintelligible, so that his wants were filled mainly by the intuition of Miss Elizabeth and Caleb.

In spite of his absence of the previous summer and a report that it was to be repeated, John Angus had returned to Harley's Mills rather earlier than usual, and Stephen Latimer, the only one of the people who had received more than a casual greeting, said that he was looking ill, and that he had virtually confessed to Latimer that the winter had been a hard one to him, this being the first time that he had ever mentioned his health.

The new venture at the Mills was beginning to see daylight, for Hugh Oldys's inexperience was offset by the loyalty of the men who surrounded him. There was much also in connection with the growing plant that interested Hugh in an altruistic way, and already, in cooperation with Stephen Latimer, he was establishing relations with his employees and their families entirely different from those obtaining in the near-by New England factory towns.

It was Poppea who felt herself the odd number. Within the limits of a certain suppression of force, she had always seemed content, and her quiet, well-directed energy had been the reverse of the restlessness that now possessed her. She worked at everything with a feverish intensity wholly new and very disturbing to Oliver Gilbert, whose daily life had been unconsciously regulated by her impulse. Poppea not only took charge of the making-up and sorting of the two heaviest mails of the day, but had undertaken a new and gratuitous task,—the writing of letters to the old country for those who either could not write at all or could only pen their names and had no way of pouring out their feelings to those they had left behind. In addition, she had announced her intention of doing all the housework herself when Satira Potts should leave, for although Mrs. Shandy had returned in April from her visit home, Hugh Oldys's need of a housekeeper had taken her from the field.

Jeanne Latimer, who had been appealed to both by Satira Potts and Miss Emmy as the one most likely to convince Poppea of the foolishness of such a course, ended by indorsing the girl's resolution, for she felt the growing tension that the others did not notice, and knew well, from her own temperament, that only what sometimes would appear to be foolish activity keeps the nerves elastic and from snapping.

One day, in talking to Hugh Oldys about the life in the city, when he had expressed, as far as he ever allowed himself to, the feeling of being out of the midst of things after having once broken his way in, he turned the matter quickly by saying to Poppea:—

"And you, how did you like the New York life? I do not mean the outside things, the theatre, music, galleries, and shops, but the inner life that you led of yourself?"

As he spoke they were walking down the road from Quality Hill toward the village and the afternoon sun was sifting through the hilltops that gradually increased in height as Moosatuck disappeared among them,—a slender, silvery thread unravelling toward its source.

For a moment the girl stood looking afar off to where one hill, called the mountain by the local youths who climbed it, arose above all the others; presently she said, speaking as of a state of existence where in passing through she had lost something of herself:—

"The life, the real life there in the city? Oh, Hugh! at first it seemed like being on the mountain where everything is spread before one. You are very lonely, to be sure, but still, somebody, and then suddenly you find that you are nothing at all but the wind among the grass that falls away as night comes!"