Poppea of the Post-Office

by Mabel Osgood Wright

Poppea did not analyze her feelings, she was too young and too miserable for any logical reasoning; it was only that impressions crowded her brain with the rapid confusion of a nightmare, and at this moment the germs of two distinct natures began to develop rapidly: one sensitive and emotional; the other stern, proud, and unflinching to the verge of stubbornness.

For a few moments she stood thus, overlooking the village, the upland, and marsh meadows that stretched to salt water, until it seemed that the winking eyes of the lights, one red and one yellow, that guarded the entrance of the shallow bay, were beckoning her to come to them. As she waited, a curtain dropped about her from the clouds, and fine, crisp snowflakes melted upon her upturned face.

Then she began to walk rapidly through the pasture, but whichever way she turned thickets of bay or huckleberry bushes caused her to go back, until, tired with groping, her feet found a worn track, one of the many cow-paths that wound about the lot. Keeping to it, no longer trying to think but walking blindly, she slipped and lost the narrow hollow worn smooth in the thick old turf; then picking it up again, stumbled on.

After she had gone many miles, as she thought, the path came to some bars; two of these were down, left so probably since the cows had made their last homeward trip in November. On the other side of the bars, the path that had previously zigzagged down a steep hillside continued on a level, and the whistle of a locomotive sounded very near.

In a few minutes more a great hayrick stopped her short, and feeling a way around it, she could see two cows, who were pulling their supper from one side of the stack that had been hollowed into a sort of shelter by many such meals. Then a lantern shone a few steps ahead, and a voice, that she recognized as belonging to an old neighbor of their own, called the cows into the shelter of the barnyard.

Poppea, finding that she had travelled only a mile and was within a few feet of the village street, and thinking that the farmer had awakened and come to protect his cattle from the storm, was tempted to crawl into the hay for warmth and rest; her feet were almost without feeling, her hood and muffler were frayed in many places; she shivered so that she had bitten her tongue until it bled, and faintness was creeping over her.

As she groped to find a place where the hay was loose enough to make a place for her body, the clock in the tower of St. Luke's struck melodiously, not counting out ten or eleven strokes as Poppea expected, but stopping short at six.

It was the joy of Stephen Latimer that both clock and bells sent forth a cheerful message of love and hope for what good time might bring forth rather than a warning of passing hours. 'Lisha Potts had once voiced this interpretation with his characteristic direct emphasis, saying one day to Miss Emmy, who had given the bells and was asking his opinion of them:—

"Yes, marm, they're real coaxin', persuasive, and comfortable; the First Church bell allers calls jerky like, 'Re-pent, re-pent, re-pent,' and the Hill Meeting House's says, 'H E L L! Hell! Hell!' plain as words, so's I don't feel called to go, though they do say bein' set against a rock has a powerful lot to do with the expression."

Be this as it may, the chimes had hardly ceased when Poppea left the haystack and found her way to the main road through another pair of bars, familiar to all the village children as the daily short cut to the Academy. Perhaps the church door might be unlocked, it often was; surely no one would look for her there.