Читать книгу Poppea of the Post-Office - Mabel Osgood Wright - Страница 13

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The Feltons, in common with their neighbors of Quality Hill, dined at one o'clock and had tea or supper, according to the heartiness of the meal, at six or half past, the village and farm folk having their mid-day meal at noon. While a number of these families kept the same hours in their winter city life, during the past four or five seasons there had been a move toward afternoon dinner at five. Dinner parties were given at even a later hour, oftentime not beginning until six, the Feltons being among those who adopted the extreme custom. So far, however, no one had brought the innovation to upset the almost historic domestic regulations of Harley's Mills.

Promptly at half-past two on this April afternoon, the carriage came around to take Miss Felton to the meeting of the Hospital Aid Society, where she was preparing to inaugurate a better system of work, the material for which was tied in a great bundle in the porch,—cotton cloth, soft unbleached muslin for bandages, and rolls of the gray blue flannel of the hue that for years after was known as army blue.

"Are you coming, Emeline? Or are you too tired after your long drive yesterday?" asked Miss Felton, as she stood before her bureau fastening a wide lace collar with the brooch to which Gilbert had referred, and then catching the folds of her India shawl with an inconspicuous pin of Scotch pebbles that blended with the fabric. Her bonnet was of finely braided straw of soft brown, the chaise-top front being filled in with geraniums of crimson velvet; the broad strings of brown watered ribbon were of the exact shade of her gown. Though the Misses Felton were but two years apart, Elizabeth, by far the handsomer of the two, dressed as a doting mother, who considers that all the daintily pretty things of life belong by right to her daughter.

Miss Emmy, who was searching for something in the many small drawers of her dressing-table, did not answer immediately, and her sister repeated the question.

"I'm not in the least tired, but I'm not going with you because I've promised dear quaint Oliver Gilbert that I will go to the christening of the mysterious lady baby this afternoon."

"Do you think under the circumstances it is necessary? Is it not a rather public expression of our approval of what the conservative townspeople consider a very unwise action of Gilbert's?"

"It certainly is approval,—my approval, that is,—for really, Elizabeth, the only objection that I have to Gilbert's taking the lady baby is that it prevents me from adopting her myself. No, this isn't one of my little pleasantries, as you call them. I asked Gilbert for her and he refused. From your standpoint it may seem strange, and I have no wish to compromise you. I've come to think now that as we are both past forty and likely to remain the Misses Felton and live in one house to the end of our days, it is time that, at least, we allow ourselves to hold different opinions. It will make variety and keep us fresher, you know. See, I'm going to take the lady baby these coral beads that I wore at her age. She has precisely the colored hair and eyes to wear coral; when she looks up from under her long lashes, she might be a mer-baby, or whatever a mermaid's child should be called."

Miss Emmy chatted gayly along, nonchalantly and without the slightest air of being put out, yet Miss Felton knew that some great change had come over her volatile sister, but instead of accepting the warning in silence, she still felt called upon to chide.

"Do you think under the circumstances it is a wise thing to give ornaments to a foundling of whose antecedents we know nothing? Isn't it putting possible temptation in her way?"

"The knowing nothing is precisely what makes it right, my dear emotionless sister. As we know nothing about her, we can take it for granted that she is everything we could wish for. There, don't be vexed; you are so compounded of judgment and righteousness that you can't possibly understand people that want to do things simply because they feel that they must. Don't wait for me, but send the carriage back, please; I'm taking down some flowers."

Miss Emmy went on with her toilet, Nora lending a helping hand now and then to adjust the net of silk and beads that to-day held her curls, but so rapid and nervous were the fragile lady's movements that she had the air of a paradise bird pluming itself, and while the color her exertions spread upon her cheeks lasted, no one would have guessed her due in years by ten or fifteen.

The front yard at the post-office house was decked as for summer when Miss Emmy arrived. She had refused Nora's aid, preferring to carry her own bundles, and had a little single-handed tussle with the gate that allowed her to see in detail the row of pink conch shells, alternating with round stones freshly whitewashed, that outlined the path. While two settees, also spotless white, of the form once used in schools, set off the bit of lawn, one resting under a tall lilac bush, the other standing aimlessly in the open, as though it lacked the decision of character necessary for a choice of background, between a crab tree, the grape arbor, or the bank that rolled up to John Angus's garden. The little-used front door was open, and a pair of gigantic overshoes beside the mat told that one guest had arrived from a region where the roads were still "unsettled."

Satira Pegrim was at the door before Miss Emmy had reached the top step, and rushing out, laid hold of the boxes of flowers with one hand, while she half led, half shoved her visitor in with the other.

"Do mind your step, Miss Emmy; Oliver hasn't got the storm door off'n yet, he's been so eat up with worry this last month. Neither have I had the pluck to attack that hall tread and turn it. It's now dark figgers on light, but bein' three ply, if turned it would be light on dark and a sight fresher; so if you kin just play to see it that way, you'll ease my feelin's. Won't you step up into the best room and lay off your bunnit?

"Going to leave it on? Well, it's real handsome, and I've heard say that folks in New York keep their hats on to most all kinds of day parties, which I lay to folks not bein' as well acquainted as they are this way. Besides, there being such a heap o' ornery thievin' ones, the bunnits might get mixed or done away with if laid off'n. Still, bein' as it's right here in town, I do wish you'd loosen yours; it would seem more friendly like, and as if you was one of the family, of which the good Lord knows there's a lack, 'specially on an occasion like this."

Miss Emmy laughingly expressed her willingness to take off her head-gear, and after arranging the roses in two yellow and brown lustre pitchers on the mantel-shelf, and laying the little bouquet beside the deep bowl of Russian cut glass that was to do duty for the christening, she followed Mrs. Pegrim upstairs.

"Why, where is the lady baby?" she asked in surprise.

"I'm letting her sleep until the last moment, and Oliver, who's dressing and fussing between his room and the kitchen's, got an eye to her. 'Lisha Potts's in there talking to him. Oliver would have 'Lisha to the naming 'cause of his being the one to open the door that night, you know." (This was as near as Satira ever allowed herself to approach the forbidden subject.) "He balked considerable, not being used to society down here at the centre, and settin' in there now he does look uncommon like a coon they had in a cage last county fair, 'n' we-all didn't tell him one of the Miss Feltons was coming, for fear he'd streak it, so you'd best stand just behind the door 'ntil he gets in.

"I'm turrible glad to see your bunnit off'n, and how you do your hair. Only a few of the daring hereabout has fixed theirs in what's called a waterfall, and those as has looks like they'd put spice bags on the back of their necks for a crick' n' they'd stuck fast. Yourn is just elegant, trickles down and hangs as easy as if there wasn't no net to gather it.

"Who all is coming to the naming? Only First Selectman Morse, little Hughey Oldys, me and you and 'Lisha and Gilbert, besides Mr. Latimer that does it. Gilbert he wanted more, but, says I, not having cleaned house I'm not ready for a charge o' the whole town 'at would come if we loosed the line, so we'd best draw it close as we can without choking ourselves, and that's how.

"No, brother hasn't told me the name yet, but I suspicion it's something choice and bookish, for though Gilbert never made out to get further'n three terms at the old Academy (that little building 'nexed behind the new one), he's always thought a sight of books. In fact, he got something of the taste from pa, who was a carpenter and the forehandedest man about naming his family in all Newfield County; he'd names for us all before he'd picked out his wife, pa had.

"You ain't never heard? Well, it come about this way: Thomas, Henry, and Gideon had been the male names among the Gilberts ever since they set foot in this land o' promise near two hundred years ago, and as they slumped down in one spot and didn't journey to speak of, with first, second, and third cousins all clinging to those names, things got mixed pretty well.

"Father, he that was to be, was jobbing around down at the Harley house, which is now Mis' Oldys's, fixin' more shelves in grandsir' Harley's liberary. My, but isn't there a sight of books there! They do claim that grandsir' Harley had every one that was made from Adam up to the time of his death, and the Oldys folks has been buyin' ever since.

"Well, they knowin' and trustin' father, he put in his dinner hour there in the liberary instead o' coming clear home, and he got real interested in the printing outside the books, and he came to find there was quite a few double names he'd never heard of. So he says to himself, says he, 'I'll put a few down; they'll come handy some day mebbe, and freshen up the family,' and so he did, and after ma died we found his pocket-book all full of figgerin' on work and the names writ in the end. There was more than he ever used, there bein' only ten of us, six boys and four girls. Some o' the names he'd passed over, I reckon, 'cause he wasn't quite sure of their sect.

"The first of us was a girl and she was named Jane Grey, but didn't live out her second year; then come Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlow, and Clarissy Harlow, Robinson Crusoe, Charlotte Temple, Daniel Defoe, Oliver Goldsmith, Cotton Mather, and lastly me, with Oliver, all that's living. I was called for grandma on ma's side on account of her silver spoons, two candlesticks, and snufflers, which I didn't get, marryin' against her wishes before she died.

"Some of the names were a mouthful, but they did look real choice on headstones, and liven up the West Hill graveyard a lot. The marble man that came from Boston to set up John Angus's father's moniment allowed he'd never seen such a litery crop o' stones outside east Massachusetts."

A knock at the door sent Mrs. Pegrim scurrying away, Miss Emmy following more slowly, as the front stairs were so steep and high that a misstep was all that lay between the top and bottom. In the foreroom Mr. Latimer was alone, standing hands behind him looking out the south window, the waking voice of the lady baby having called away Mrs. Pegrim.

Miss Emmy had entered softly and waited a moment before she spoke. There was something about Stephen Latimer that always seemed as though it belonged to another world and appealed physically to her spiritual sense. Though of American birth and ancestry, he was a type of the old-world vicar, well born and cultured, yet who, through his intense introspection, spends his life in a small church of a remote parish, seeing each morning's sun through the dimly colored glass of the chancel windows, as a light sent especially from heaven to him, and basking in mystic joy as, between times, his fingers draw from the organ the simple linked notes that hold the village children to their hymns.

In figure Latimer was rather above the medium height, spare without thinness; a smoothly shaven face was saved by distinct mouth lines and a firm chin from the perfect symmetry that seems to lack sympathy. Iron-gray hair belied his age, which was barely forty years. In New England towns at this time people looked askance at men of this type. Patriotism rushed to any form of dissent in which to cloak itself rather than lean toward anything that might be preëstablished and, therefore, un-American,—the middle classes knowing no distinction between catholicity and Romanism.

Such feelings had Stephen Latimer met with in coming to Harley's Mills six years before, yet he stayed on and soon came to be reckoned with as an influence, holding his own and more, by seeing over what he might not see through. The Misses Felton, though not of his fold, had given St. Luke's an organ, such as was not known in Newfield County, and through it, Latimer's influence went out even more than by the pulpit. For though his young wife played at service, on Wednesday afternoons, rain or shine, he sat before the keys and let his fingers speak the words that all might hear who would.

Sometimes the little church was filled by the Quality Hill folk and their guests, sometimes a tired woman with a fretful, half-sick child, or a pauper laborer creeping in to rest from his work on the roads, would be the only audience—it made no difference in the music.

Presently Latimer turned,—"Ah, so you are here! I thought I recognized your roses. Is it not a brave deed of Gilbert's, this going again into the fray after time had healed his wounds and let him at least build a shelter around his sorrow? Talk of the bravery of those who go to battle, I believe his courage in this matter in facing the unknown is the real heroism."

"I think you are right, though I had not looked at it in this way before; I only thought of the amusement of the child's companionship, not the responsibility. Ah, here is little Hugh Oldys."

Presently, Satira Pegrim came in, carrying the lady baby, who would have much preferred to walk, for having acquired this accomplishment all of a sudden, she was loath to relinquish it. Gilbert and 'Lisha Potts followed. It was not until Potts had come quite into the room, crossing to between the centre-table and Mary's melodeon that stood between the windows, that he saw Miss Emmy. All retreat being cut off, he gave a sort of gasp and tried in vain to sink into the depths of his stiff-collared, deep-cuffed Sunday shirt as a turtle disappears into its shell.

The sight of Miss Emmy produced a different effect upon the child, who crowed and stretched her hands toward her new friend, quietly allowed her to fasten the corals upon the plump, bare neck, and afterward tried to look at them with real satisfaction, moving them up and down with her dimpled chin.

For a moment general conversation reigned, then—

"What is she to be named? I cannot wait another moment," cried Miss Emmy.

"It's writ in this book," said Gilbert, taking a small morocco Bible from the table and showing the fly leaf, upon which, in characters painfully round and precise, was "Julia Poppea Gilbert, from her loving Daddy on her first birthday, April 20, 1862."

For a moment no one stirred, for all realized the final way in which the quiet man had settled the matter of birth and name, giving her an anchorage so far as might be.

Then Stephen Latimer spoke.

"Julia Poppea! Where did you find that name, Gilbert?"

"Julia was my mother's name; seems as if there should be family in it somehow. And the other—I've read it somewhere, and it's got my fancy." (Not a word of the locket.)

"If I remember," said Mr. Latimer, hesitatingly, "it was the name of one of Nero's wives; would not something nearer home be more suitable, neighbor Gilbert? Mary, or a flower name, if you like fanciful things, such as Violet or Rose?"

"No, I've settled to Poppea. I've known of some one called by it that wasn't kin of any Neroes or spoken of in Mr. Plutarch's books. Poppea comes near to being a posy too,—poppies, nice cheerful flowers that, come to recollect, have long lashes to their eyes, just like the lady baby."

When Stephen Latimer explained the need of sponsors according to his ritual, and their duties, Gilbert knit his brows at the unforeseen complication.

"It is customary to have some others than the parents of the child to stand, as it were, in their place of responsibility in case of need; under these circumstances, surely no one can be more suitable than Mrs. Pegrim and yourself, neighbor Gilbert."

"I couldn't stand for any such strange customs or their results," said Satira, closing her jaws quickly; she had been reading the sentences of promise in the prayer-book that Mr. Latimer had marked. "I couldn't go further than to agree to keep her in clothes, her body clean and well fed, and to say, 'Now I lay me.'"

"As I am in the eye of the law her father, the choice must be outside of me, parson," Gilbert said slowly. "Who is usually asked?"

"Near kin, or friends upon whom one can rely to take a true interest in the child."

"Then I ask you, Miss Emmy, and you, 'Lisha Potts."

"I'm Baptist born, but no church-member," said Potts, his words forced out as by some explosive.

"And I am a Channing Unitarian and therefore an arch dissenter," said Miss Emmy; yet at the same time, through the yearning of her eyes, she already had the lady baby in her arms.

Stephen Latimer looked from one to the other, an expression of satisfaction stealing over his features as if he saw some special significance in this strange combination, then whispered to Miss Emmy that upon her devolved the duty of holding the child, who began to fret strangely and pucker her face for tears.

Latimer said something to little Hugh, his music pupil, and going to the melodeon, covered and silent these many years, threw back the lid, coaxed the fitful breath and reluctant keys to speak again, so gently that there was no discord, only a far-away voice as of memory. Then the two, the childish treble and the baritone, sang,