Poppea of the Post-Office

by Mabel Osgood Wright

"From the first she seems to have had a hard time of it. An emotional child with an artistic temperament, thrown not only among strange people and customs, but married to a man who always commanded and never explained, and who considered that implicit affection, if it might be so called, was her legal duty, a sort of commercial article that he had bought, and nothing to be either won or kept by consideration or tenderness. She, chilled and lonely, evidently did not make the marked social success he desired, and his constant reproach was that she bore him no children, for John Angus seems to have had an exaggerated idea of the political importance of founding a family, so often held by those of no especial ancestry.

"Ten years wore away, and Helen Angus, still under thirty, had faded to the timorous, trembling shadow that we knew, when one summer, the love of youth and life taking a final flicker, in John Angus's absence she came out of her seclusion and took part in some of the Feltons' entertainments, and renewed her habit of going to church, which had dropped away. At this time it chanced that Mr. Esterbrook's nephew, a young army officer, met her, danced with her, and showed her some courtesies, but no more than any woman might receive. Nevertheless, on his return, Angus upbraided her for going out, and upon her maintaining her own defence for the first time in many years, he struck her furiously and left the house, not returning for more than a week.

"During this period of outraged feeling and humiliation, she discovered that at last a child was to be born to her, and resolving that John Angus should not have it in his power to torture another human being as he had herself, she determined to go away, leaving a letter saying that the price of her silence concerning his treatment culminating in the blow was that he should not try to find her. Public censure on his private conduct was not what was desired by Angus in his prayer-meeting and political purity pose, so he seems to have heeded her request.

"Helen Angus went directly to the little village in Hampshire on the Isle of Wight where she had spent her childhood and sought out Betty Randal, a woman of fifty, who had also been her nurse and managed their little household prior to her father's going abroad. With Betty she arranged not only to care for her during the coming crisis, but if a daughter should be born, to keep her as long as her little sum of money lasted and to teach her to earn her living and thus make it possible for her to be free from her father if she so desired on learning her mother's story.

"A girl was born and duly baptized Helen Dudleigh, by the rector of St. Boniface's near Bonchurch, and the mother, worn out by contending emotions more than disease, lived to see her daughter three months old, and then was laid away, according to a death notice in a Hampshire paper. This notice was in an envelope lettered by an illiterate hand and is dated two weeks after the last record in Helen Angus's diary. That she knew that she could not live is certain, for all the written evidence was carefully prepared and the writing is decipherable in spite of time and the blur of moisture.

"One package contains Helen Angus's marriage certificate and the certificate of Poppea's birth and baptism; another her diaries and some letters marked, 'Not to be read by my daughter until she is either eighteen or forced to return to her father.' And then a single thick letter (the one that had attracted 'Lisha Potts), sealed and addressed to John Angus, and underneath in brackets the words, 'To be delivered in case he should dispute my daughter's paternity.'"

As Latimer paused to wipe away the drops of sweat that stood upon his forehead, he laid the letter on the table beside his wife and both looked at the yellow paper and blurred writing with a feeling of awe at the living evidence of the poor little roseleaf, wife who, beneath their very eyes, had suffered so much in silence and then as silently gone away to die. Hot tears trickled between the fingers that Jeanne held before her face, but after the relief they brought, questions again formed themselves.

"But how did the child come here so soon and why was she left at Oliver Gilbert's instead of the Angus house?" asked Jeanne, "and how could the little trunk have been hidden away so long?"

"The last question might be easily answered," said Stephen. "It was left in the height of the excited war times when the checking of baggage was not as rigid as it is now. In fact, merely the name of the village may have been on the box, which was put aside until called for and presently forgotten."

"As to how Poppea came here, was separated from her possessions, and left at the wrong door, there we have another and unsolved mystery that must be learned from the man who left her, the man with the scar on his hand."