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Ebook has 1385 lines and 110971 words, and 28 pages

POPPEA OF THE POST-OFFICE

THE TENTH OF MARCH

The six-thirty New York mail was late. So late that when the tall clock that faced the line of letter-boxes boomed eight, the usual hour for closing, Oliver Gilbert, the postmaster, ceased his halting tramp up and down the narrow length of the office, head and ears thrown forward in the attitude of a listening hunting-dog. Going to the door, he pulled it back with a nervous jerk and peered into the night.

As he did so, he was followed by a dozen men of various ages and social conditions, who, in waiting for the evening mail, the final social event of their day, had been standing about the stove, or, this choice space being limited, overflowed into the open room at the back of the post-office, with its work bench, chairs, and battered desk, topped by book shelves; for, in addition to his official position, the postmaster was a maker and mender of clocks and the Scribe for all those in the village of Harley's Mills who could not safely navigate the whirlpools of spelling.

In fact, a smattering of law, coupled with the taste for random browsing in every old book on which he could lay his hands, had given Gilbert the ability to draw up a will, a promissory note, or round an ardent yet decorous love-letter, with equal success.

It was nothing unusual that the men saw as they looked into the bleak March night, and yet they huddled together, listening spellbound and expectant. A week before there had been a breath of spring in the air. In a single day the heavy ice left the Moosatuck with a rush, to be lost in the bay; a flock of migrant robins rested and plumed themselves in the parsonage hedge; ploughing was possible in the fields that lay to the southwest, and the wiseacres, one and all, predicted an early spring. But in a single night this vision had vanished and winter returned in driving snow that, turning to rain, coated everything heavily with ice. Roadway, fences, and the sedate white colonial houses that flanked the elm-bordered main street absolutely glittered in such light as an occasional lantern on porch or fence post afforded. It seemed almost mocking to the men in the door of the post-office; in every way it had been a cruel season, this first winter of the War of the Rebellion. It was not yet a year since the entire North had been brought to its feet by the loss of Fort Sumter, and had sent forth an army of seventy-five thousand volunteers as its reply.

The gloom of repeated defeat settled heavy as a cloud of cannon smoke over New England, whose invincibility had given birth to the union of states that it now sought to preserve, the only recent glimmer of light having been Grant's capture of Fort Donelson in February.

It was for confirmation or details of this news that the men of Harley's Mills were waiting and listening for the mail-train that did not come, in their unfeigned anxiety interpreting its unusual delay as a bad omen.

Presently, a faint whistle struggled up against the fierce gusts of east wind; a locomotive headlight, gaining in power after every disappearance, flashed across the rolling fields that lay toward Westboro. The train was coming at last.

"Here, take these lanterns, boys," cried Gilbert, "and do some of you go down to meet her and come back with the mail-bag. It's a tough walk for Binks's boy to bring it up alone in this storm."

"'Lisha Potts, do you unhook that red light from the horse-post yonder, and if the news is good , wave the light above your head as you come back." This to a broad-shouldered, up-country giant, with a grim, square jaw, and hair the color and consistency of rye stubble.

"Good God! I can't stand this waiting and not knowing!" Gilbert almost shouted as he closed the door behind the crowd and found himself alone in the now dimly lighted post-office, except for old Selectman Morse, white-haired and fragile, who, not being able to go out into the storm with the others, was groping his way towards the stove.

"If I had two sound legs," Gilbert continued, "my fifty years shouldn't stand between me and seeing and helping do what must be done down there south of Washington; the bitter part of it is staying here. Next month when the Felton ladies come back, I guess we'll have a telegraph operator right at the station, at least that's what Wheeler their foreman told me yesterday. You see, both Mr. Esterbrook and John Angus are directors in the Railroad Company, and what with one's wanting to hear the good news and the other the bad, we're likely to get it. Come back into the workroom, neighbor Morse. After your long wait you'll find a chair easier sitting than the coal-box lid."

"There's more than you that has to fight it out at home to give those that's gone free minds," replied the old man, shivering as he settled back in a carpet-covered rocker of strange construction. "Dan had turned forty when he went, and now little Dan has run off to follow him and he's scarce sixteen, so my fight must be fit out to keep son's wife and girl children in food meantime; but I hope the Lord'll understand and count it all for the same cause."

Gilbert, who had seated himself at his desk and was fumbling among some papers in an absent-minded way, wheeled toward the old man quickly.

"Of course He will, for that's what Lincoln wrote me, and he and the Lord have got to be of one mind in this business if it's going through as it must."

Gilbert started as he realized what secret had slipped past his lips, hesitated a moment, and then pulling a stool from under the desk, motioned his companion to sit beside him.

On the wall directly in front hung a very good engraving of Washington, in a home-made frame of charred wood; under it was suspended an old flint-lock, worm-eaten in stock and rusty at trigger. Below it, at one side of the desk so that it came face to face with the owner, a large colored lithograph of Lincoln was tacked to the wall, framed only by a wreath of shrivelled ground-pine and wax-berries.

Taking a key from his vest-pocket where it lay in company with bits of sugared flag-root, Gilbert wiped it carefully and unlocking a drawer in the desk that, to the casual glance, seemed merely an ornamental panel, took out two letters and a double daguerreotype case that held the pictures of a young woman and a little girl a year old. Placing these things before him, Gilbert leaned back, grasping the arms of his chair as if bracing himself for an effort.

"Last year when Curtis died and it was thought well to have the post-office come up here in the centre of the town, the boys did all they could to push me for the place in spite of John Angus's opposition, and Mr. Esterbrook drew up a nicely worded account of who I was and why I should have the office, to go to Postmaster Blair by our Senator. Of course it was done the right way I suppose, with this and that claim for consideration, but I'd never known it was me it spoke of, and somehow it didn't seem quite square, for I'm nobody. So I thought I'd just send a few words to the President, explaining things, if word of such small offices ever reached him; anyway it would ease my mind. I made it short as I could: just told him that it wasn't all money need made me want the office, for I'd a trade, but I was lonesome with only the dead-and-gone people in books for company, and I wanted something to do that would keep me near to my fellow-men, without which age is souring.

"Well, Morse, in due time my appointment came and in with it, this--" carefully opening and spreading out one of the letters:--

"'WASHINGTON, April 2, 1861.

"'MR. OLIVER G. GILBERT:

"'MY DEAR SIR:--

"'Your letter is in my hands. I have been lonely and have lived in books. I was once a postmaster and I understand.

"'Faithfully yours,

"'A. LINCOLN.'

"When a couple of weeks ago, in the midst of all this turmoil, his son Willie died, I waked up in the night from dreaming of Mary and little Marygold, and thought that Mary wanted me to write something. So I says I guess I'll write Lincoln that I'm sorry, and that I understand his trouble because of Mary's leaving me ten years ago, and Marygold the next year, and how the Lord, through my crooked leg, won't let me join them quick by way of battle. I put it down right then and there and sent it the next morning, never thinking of a reply.

"Saturday, this came," and Gilbert unfolded the second letter:--

"'WASHINGTON, March 3, 1862.

"'OLIVER G. GILBERT:

"'MY FRIEND:--

"'It seems that we understand each other. I thank you for your letter. If the Lord's Will has stayed your joining in this conflict, be sure that He will find some other wrong for you to right, by your own door.

"'Gratefully,

"'A. LINCOLN.'

"Now, Morse, you can see why I haven't spoken of these letters and why I shouldn't brag of them, for they are not from the President, but from man to man.

"My grandfather, whose musket hangs up there, fought through the Revolution. That picture of Washington is framed in a piece of oak wood from this house that was set on fire by Arnold's men. Grandsir' revered Washington next to God, and later, when he saw him as President, he wrote a long letter, that cost eight shillings to deliver, to my grandmother, telling her of his visit to Mt. Vernon. One part I've always remembered, I've heard it read so often; it ran thus: 'His whole demeanor was so full of dignity that he assuredly is great enough to hold his own with kings, and be one in their company; yet though I desired to have speech with him, as others did, I dared not take upon myself to begin it. As he did not, I presently came away, much disappointed.'

"Don't shake your head, neighbor Morse, I'm drawing no comparisons, for there's no man fit to pair with either of them; but, mind you, if Washington was fit to match with kings, Abraham Lincoln is humble enough to be a man, a brother of the Man of Sorrows, who well knew loneliness in the midst of a multitude, saying, 'Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has not where to lay his head.'"

A shout came down the street. Hastily pushing his treasures into their drawer, the postmaster locked it with fingers that trembled, and reached the door with his old friend, in time to see the little procession crossing the road, the red lantern, held by a rake, swinging gayly above 'Lisha Potts's head.

"It's a true victory!" he called; "we've got the paper. Shouldn't wonder if next month saw the war end. Hey, Gilbert, now's the chance to run your big flag up with the little one atop, unless the halyard's frozen fast."

"That'll do, 'Lisha," said Gilbert, with some asperity. "I believe that I'm reading this paper--

"Never mind the whole story now, get the finish first," chorused the audience.

"Here on the next page," cried 'Lisha.

Cheers drowned Gilbert's voice, and the paper passed from hand to hand, each man reading some particular phrase that pleased him, while Seth Moore, one of the retired sea-captains of which every coast town at this period had its quota, banging on the floor with his cane, cried: "It isn't only a blow to the rebels but to wooden ships as well; I didn't think so much scrap-iron could keep afloat. Mark my words, first thing we know even the passenger liners will all want their iron trim, and the Lord knows but what even the coastwise service'll come to it some day!"

It was after ten o'clock before, discussion ended, the men went their various ways. The storm had ceased, and the intense blue black of the sky set with stars seemed only a degree less cold and burnished than the ice-coated earth over which the "boys" went home, slipping and sliding; the younger making a frolic of the matter, the older clinging to the fence rails.

"It's going to be a mean walk for me to-night, three miles straight up hill and against the wind," said 'Lisha Potts to Gilbert, as he helped him fix the inside bars on the shutters, preparatory to closing the office.

"Then why not stop with me?" questioned the postmaster. "I couldn't think of sleeping for a couple of hours yet, and somehow, the idea of reading don't come natural to-night, though I've been mighty interested getting into the workings of the wars of the ancients, all about the way Xenophon managed to get those ten thousand Greeks to retreat across country, without really skedaddling. Ever heard about it? Mebbe you'd like I should read it to you."

'Lisha, a man of the remoter farming country and timber land, used to the big open spaces of life that some call loneliness, shook his head in an emphatic denial that almost amounted to alarm, and began to button his heavy frieze top-coat.

"Well, well, I won't, so don't get scared," laughed Gilbert, indulgently. "If folks don't thirst for knowledge, there's small use choking it down their throats. Not that the best of learning comes out of books, for you learned your trade of reading the ground and the weather 'n' hunting and tracking all out o' doors."

"I tell you what we'll do, go over back into the house, light all the lamps I've got, and set them in the windows for a victory illumination. Then we'll cook up a nice little supper for our two selves and have a smoke by the fire. I don't often do it these days, haven't felt peart enough; but to-night, somehow, I feel skittish, like I did forty years ago when a pair of yearling steers I'd trained got first premium at the Old Haven Fair. To-night a pipe between my teeth's not a bad habit as the parsons preach, 'Lisha, but a necessity, yes, a bare, vital necessity."

This proposition being in the direct path of 'Lisha's own desires, he gave a cheerful whistle of consent and followed Gilbert through the partly roofed grape arbor that made a passageway between the post-office and the sloped roofed house of Gilbert's forefathers, that stood well back in the garden with its porch facing the hill road.

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