Poppea of the Post-Office

by Mabel Osgood Wright

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."