Poppea of the Post-Office

by Mabel Osgood Wright

"Now," he said, "we will make alive again, for that is the sculptor's trade. This is my studio, and what I tell my pupils to do, they obey if they are able, and it is the concern of no one outside. But this time make her joyous and not pensive, in love with life; make her look up; part her lips as though she were about to sing; twine poppies in her hair to carry out her name; a butterfly on her shoulder, the Greek emblem of immortality. Then she shall live here with us, and you can look at her when you see nothing but bone and muscles in the lump of clay you are working."

So Philip went to work once more, buoyed up in that some one understood and did not scoff, and that some one was the master, who knew. But he saw the real Poppea only once to speak to her, at Stephen Latimer's, before the time when the Felton ladies bore her with them to New York for her musical début, in that season of social introduction that is crowded between Thanksgiving and Christmastide. She was cordial and the very same when looked at from a distance, but when Philip stood before her, he was conscious of a subtle change, a certain veiling and holding back of self, where all had been spontaneous and freely given before, yet, as a woman, this added distinctly to her charm.

"Can she know about my father; is it turning her away from me?" was his constant thought, finally to be banished by the impossibility of such a thing being the case, for the studio walls had no ears, and violent as John Angus was in private, Philip well knew from his summer's experience that it was no part of his father's policy to hold up his dislikes or grievances for the public to peck at.

The next time that he saw Poppea it was through the doorway of a flower-trimmed room, where she had been singing. During the intermission a stringed quartet was playing Mendelssohn's Songs without Words from behind a screen of palms. In the circle that surrounded her, to which she was in course of being presented by Miss Emmy, the evening gowns of women were equally mingled with the black coats of the men, while the figure nearest to her, holding her bouquet of Maréchal Neil roses and ferns, was that of Bradish Winslow.

As Philip gazed hesitant about entering alone and yet wishing to, he stepped backward, and in so doing jostled some one who was looking over his shoulder. Turning, he saw that it was Hugh Oldys.

"Are you going to speak to her?" Philip asked eagerly after the first words of greeting.

"Yes, surely, I am only waiting for the crowd to thin a little; I think, Philip, that she will be glad to see some home faces among all these strangers."

As they waited, Caleb came through the wide hall with an envelope in his hand, peering anxiously into every masculine face. When he caught sight of Hugh, he drew close to him, standing on tiptoe the better to reach his ear.

"This here's a telegraph despatch fo' you, Marsa Hugh, and de boy what brings it says it's a 'mergency and wants to be opened spry. Doan yo' want to step in the little 'ception room and circumnavigate it private like? Dem 'mergency despatches is terrible unsettlin', sah!"

Hugh seized the envelope, opening it with a nervous twist as he crossed the hall to the room indicated by Caleb where there was a drop-light, Philip following close.