When one has spent the early morning hours of a journey, in which no steps may be retraced, in following a fairly straight and level path through a familiar wood, hindered only by a few briers, with sheltering trees above, pleasant vistas on every side, and in friendly company, hope rises high and straightway trusts the path ahead. But when an abrupt turn shows there is a steep to climb, the pathway itself becomes confused, indefinite, treacherous, and the guiding voices have scattered, some going one way and some another, what must one do? Hesitate? sit down to think it out? or still walk on foot-length by foot-length, trusting to circumstance for keeping the course that one may not divine?

It was at the turn of such a road as this that Poppea found herself; she could not go back if she would, and friendly voices called in opposite directions from her own instinct. Of one thing only she was quite sure, she must go on without a pause lest in it she lose courage; she must climb on her hands and knees even, if necessary. The only mistake she made was in thinking, as we all have done at times since the days of the self-gratulatory St. Paul enumerating his trials, that she had reached the turning alone.

If she had but realized it, Oliver Gilbert, near the end of his journey and travelling in the opposite direction, was confronted by the same sharp turn and the same barrier, that to each this bore the same name—The Future!

If Poppea had been pondering how she could help her Daddy and lead him naturally toward the resigning of his office, Gilbert was conscious of a like necessity, but this was nothing compared to the appalling realization of Poppea's womanhood that had suddenly confronted him.

In Gilbert's simple mind, when a girl crossed the boundary of the twentieth year, the mating time was at hand, and each year after that she remained unbespoken if not married, reflected in some way either upon her good looks, disposition, or opportunities. As in all rural districts, there were many long courtships in Newfield County lasting from half a dozen to even a dozen years, but after the serious intentions of the man were recognized, and the woman was spoken of as "his intended," then the couple passed from the interest of the match-makers into a sort of intermediate state, wherein they were both supposed to be working for a common end and the duration of which was considered purely their own business.

As Oliver Gilbert looked about at the eligible male population of the country-side, his perplexity increased; many were prosperous after their own standards, and some were even ambitious, but which one of them was fit to mate with Poppea? Moreover, such an idea had never seemed to occur to any of them. The only youths, who, dressed in their best, had come of a Saturday evening to lean on the little shelf before the window of the beehive and cast boldly admiring glances and random and irrelevant remarks at the postmistress, were of the verdant and irrepressible sort that Gilbert would not have tolerated for a moment, and that Poppea had effectually withered by giving absolutely no more heed to their pleasantries than to the wind muttering about the windows.

The matter that had brought Gilbert face to face with the rock behind which lay the pathway to futurity, was a call from a prosperous manufacturer of Bridgeton, a clean, well-built man of five and thirty, self-made and commercially intelligent, if lacking the culture that marks the man of real education. He had met Poppea at the church, where she had sung for several months the previous winter, and was sincere and outspoken in his admiration of her.

In a straightforward way he had come to the point and, with old-fashioned courtesy, asked Gilbert for permission to court his daughter, stipulating that he wished no influence brought to bear upon her, only leave to make his own way if he might.

The whole thing was so sudden, and came from a sky so wholly cloudless, that Gilbert had difficulty at first in keeping down a choking resentment at the man's presumption, while, at the same time, these feelings were checked by the realization that as the world measures, the man who owned a well-equipped factory, and had half a hundred men on his pay-roll, was the one who was condescending. These mixed feelings caused Gilbert to hesitate, begin a sentence only to break it off, and finally, flushed and perspiring, say, "I'm afraid that you don't understand; it isn't all just what I've got to say about it nor Poppy, either, sir."

Then very quietly and with a good deal of dignity, this man had drawn near to Gilbert, and, lowering his voice, said: "That's what I do understand; I know that she isn't your own born, for I was a lad driving for the Westboro stables the time that she came here. Fifteen years before that, I was left the same way at Deacon Tilley's in North Bridgeton, so there's no need of explanations between Miss Gilbert and myself; neither will have aught to hold against the other in family matters."

A groan had escaped Gilbert, before he could control himself sufficiently to say briefly that Poppea, being of age, was her own mistress. But after the man had gone, he paced up and down the shop, his hands working nervously, until at last big tears rolled down his cheeks, and, sitting at his desk, head on his arms, he said aloud: "The lady baby as good as asked in marriage by a boy left on old Tilley's steps, and then driving teams for Beers, and nothing for either to throw at the other! Well, why not old Gilbert's steps as well as old Tilley's? What can I say? I feel the difference, but that isn't proving it!

"I wonder what you'd have done, if you'd been cornered this way," he continued, looking up at the portrait of Lincoln, that hung in the same place as on the night of Poppea's coming. But now, a well-grown ivy plant was wreathed about it, growing from a pot that stood on the window ledge in a spot that the sun visited daily throughout the year, showing that a woman's affection had been added to that of the old man's hero-worship.

"Would you have stopped still just long enough to tell a story to make folks laugh, and then gone straight on and walked over or out of the trouble? Could you have done that if you'd had a more than daughter that was too good for any man and yet a nameless man asked for her on equal terms just because she wasn't your daughter?"

As the incoherence of his speech dawned upon him, he threw back his head and laughed aloud, then stopped short, calmed and steady of hand, as if there had been something almost prophetic in the sound.

This had happened on the day of Poppea's visit to the Mill House and Hugh Oldys's return. A week afterward, Poppea, very quietly and with some hesitation, broached the subject of singing in New York and of its possibilities, together with her intention of taking lessons of a famous teacher, who had been an opera singer, was a friend of the Feltons, and feeling the need of rest, was to spend the month of August with them on the hill.

Instead of the opposition that she had expected, both on the ground of Gilbert's seeing neither the necessity of self-support nor of her partial separation from him, he not only gave a cheerful assent, but a look as of a weight having been lifted from him crossed his face, and he broke into what was for him voluble conversation about the virtue of having something to do and doing it "up brown"; for this move of Poppea's told the old man what he most wished to know, that either the Bridgeton admirer had altered his intentions or been repulsed.

Then drawing from his pocket a letter that had come by the milkman and not the post, Gilbert said: "Come to speaking of winter, Poppy, there's something that I've had it on my mind to tell you, but I couldn't see my way clear of it until to-day, and I didn't want to hamper you ahead. Mrs. Shandy has set her mind on going back to the old country next fall, as there's less and less likelihood of her seeing Philip, and she says the living so near is only an aggravation. Now to-day comes a letter from sister Satira Potts. She writes that 'Lisha has a chance to get the contract for cutting all the grown chestnut timber from the Stryker Hollow tract that lies along Moosatuck, to the west side, about twenty miles to the north of Bridgeton. If he takes it, and it will advantage them greatly if he does, he will have to stay in the camp all week and only come home for Sundays, Satiry thereby being left lonesome. So the pith of her letter is, that she's sort of feeling 'round to see if there is any chance of her being wanted down here for the winter, as it is handier for 'Lisha to come here from Bridgeton than to take the drive round about home. I reckon it'll seem good to me to have sister Satiry Potts back here. Mrs. Shandy's strong in British ways of toast and tea, boiling green peas and mint together, and having a forceful way of looking me into a clean collar at meal times when I've chanced to lay mine by for comfort. But for coffee and pancakes, brown bread and beans that's cooked until they're swelled to burst, but daresn't, being checked at just the moment, give me Satiry, who also speaks right out about my collar and such, without ado.

"So you see, child, that old Daddy'll be well cared for, and you'll have a ready listener to tell all about the city doings to when you come back; for if they fancy you down there, there'll be a great to do; most likely you'll have flowers thrown at you; I've read about its being done for opery singers in the paper, and if they, why not you? Though likely, if you're singing in folks' houses, they'll hand the posies to you, instead of throwin', as being more polite and safer for the mantel ornaments and mottoes on the wall.

"Oh, child, child," he continued, as, leaning over his chair in her old-time way, Poppea had laid her soft cheek against his grizzled beard, and at the contact the mental vision of each grew clearer, "a couple of weeks ago, all at once, things fell into a sort of heaviness, and as late as yesterday I couldn't seem to see the way ahead. But now I think the corner's sort of swinging to the turning, and pretty soon we may come to another good stretch of road, and if the Lord hasn't other plans, mebbe he'll let me walk beside you on it for a little piece yet, until younger company comes up that's spryer, Poppy. And when they do, remember one thing, honey-clover, don't let old Daddy hold you backward; step right off brisk. Daddy'll be content to stop behind, so long as he sees you on before."

"Don't, Daddy, don't," she whispered, putting her hand over his mouth to stop him. "Nobody else is going to walk beside me; it's either you or loneliness, so never speak of falling back." She did not repeat the reason that she had given Hugh Oldys, but Gilbert quickly divined it from the tension of her arm, and the momentary joy that he had felt was stifled in a sigh as though self merged in super-self.

In early autumn, Hugh Oldys went to his work, and though he usually returned for Sunday, it was not always possible. To his mother the break seemed more complete and of a different quality than the separation either of his college life or his travels; these had been tentative, the last final. It was the first independent stepping out of the only one, upon the way that leads from home, not toward it, even by an indirect circuit.

Almost at the same time, Philip had returned, and had taken up his work anew at Howell's studio at Westboro. Physically, he looked much improved; his skin was sun-browned with sometimes a dash of color, he weighed more, and his face had gained in strength and resolution. But when he had been at work a month with the master, Howell saw that what he was gaining in accuracy and flexibility was more than discounted by a total lack of inspiration.

"Where is she? What has become of the young woman who is not a model or to be had for the asking? Why not try the head once more from memory?" Howell asked abruptly one day, after his pupil had worked for an entire morning with the listless accuracy that is almost infuriating to the real artist.

Taken off his guard, Philip cried out:—

"She is dead! My father murdered her and threw the pieces out of the window."

For a moment Howell was startled. Then, as he looked at the face turned toward him, proud yet quivering at a wound, he read therein a tragedy whose underlying principles were greater than mere murder.

"Come and tell me about it, or you will let it kill your work and you also," he said, fastening his eyes upon Philip in compelling sympathy, at the same time stretching out his hand with a gesture wholly compassionate, and motioning him to follow to an inner room beyond the studio, where strangers never entered.

It was quite an hour before the pair returned, the master's arm resting on Philip's shoulder.

"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.

"Your father has had a serious accident. Your mother unstrung. Bring up MacLane or Grahammond, to-night, if possible. Stephen Latimer."

Hugh dropped into a chair, and spreading the paper on the table, read it a second time, motioning Philip to do likewise.

"MacLane and Grahammond are both brain specialists, I think; it must be that the accident is to his head. I wonder where they live," he said, half to himself and half aloud. Then turning to Caleb, who stood at a respectful distance, the embodiment of discreet curiosity, he asked him if there was a city directory in the house.

"Not jest that big ornery volume what dey keeps in drug stores, Marsa Hugh, but Miss Emmy, she's got de little Blue Book on her desk, what records all de quality, sah, and guarantees 'em true, and I'll fotch it right away."

Hugh jotted the two addresses on a card, then rising, shook himself as though to be sure he was awake. At this moment the tones of a clear mezzo-soprano voice floated across the hall.

Poppea was singing Robin Adair. Hugh listened until the verse was ended, his face white and drawn with contending emotions. Then turning abruptly to Philip and reading both comprehension and sympathy in his glance, he said abruptly:—

"Tell her that I've been here, but was called away by bad news from home. No—not that, it might spoil her evening. Only say that I could not wait," and taking his hat and coat that Caleb was holding, he went out.

By the time Poppea had answered the last encore that her strength would allow, a Creole folk-song ending in the minor key, Philip had made his way through the throng that surrounded the girl, who was radiant with a success that must appeal to her artistic sense, if her natural woman's love of approbation was in the background. When she saw Philip, her whole expression changed and softened, while the lips that had been parted in laughing repartee drooped to wistfulness.

Bradish Winslow, who still kept his post, noticed the change at once, and, following her eyes for the cause, was surprised at his own feeling of relief upon discovering Philip.

Poppea came forward and, refraining from putting her hand upon his shoulder in the old way that marked his boyishness, greeted him as she would any other young fellow of nineteen, drawing him into a little group back of the long piano where he saw Miss Emmy and half a dozen of the Quality Hill colony. At the same time, he was conscious that her eyes were looking over his head in a rapid search for something or some one that she did not see, which reminded him of the message.

"Hugh Oldys has been here," he said, "and was very sorry that he could not wait to see you."

"Then he has gone? Why could he not wait?"

Philip, who read Poppea's moods with mercurial swiftness, was tempted to add some words of explanation, but Winslow, hearing Poppea's question, intervened, saying, to her ear alone:—

"Now you have earned a rest in cooler air where you can enjoy the reflection of the pleasure you have given. Miss Emmy has a surprise for you; Capoul, the most expressive emotional tenor of a decade, is coming in from the opera where he is singing Wilhelm Meister in Mignon. You have never heard it? Ah, there is so much music that I wish to hear again for the first time through watching you hear it."

The next morning Poppea slept late, owing to the fact that Nora had slipped in and closed the shutters fast. She had intended taking the early train for home, as three days would elapse before she was to sing at an afternoon concert given for the benefit of a fashionable charity.

When Nora finally judged that it was proper for the household protÉgÉe, in whom she took no small pride, to awake, and brought her coffee and rolls to her room, after the Feltons' winter custom, Poppea found herself undergoing a sort of nervous reaction caused by the excitement of the night before and the lack of air in the shuttered room. Twelve o'clock was the next train possible, and entering the library to make positive her going, she found Stephen Latimer standing before the fire, while the ladies and Mr. Esterbrook sat opposite him in benumbed silence, Miss Emmy having her handkerchief pressed to her eyes.

Miss Felton motioned Poppea to the lounge beside her: "Mr. Latimer has brought us dreadful news! Please tell her, Stephen."

For a moment Poppea thought that she would suffocate; suppose that Daddy was dead and she away! Then she found herself listening as through rushing water to the story of how Mr. Oldys, when superintending the placing of a heavy piece of the new machinery, had been instantly killed by its fall.

The mill hands, becoming demoralized in their wild rush to get a physician, had broken the news abruptly to Madam Oldys, which at first she did not believe. But later, when they brought her husband home and Dr. Morewood was sitting by watching for a heart collapse, her mind, not her body, had suddenly given way—not weakly or plaintively, but violently, in a manner that no one who had witnessed her frailty would have deemed possible, so that restraint was imperative.

Hugh had been sent for the previous evening, and two specialists were even then on their way to Harley's Mills for consultation. Latimer himself had come down to inform Hugh's new employers, as well as to do some friendly acts of necessity.

"I am going home at noon," was Poppea's spoken answer to Latimer, but between the brief words he read much besides.

"I expected that you would, and told Oliver Gilbert so in passing," was his reply.

"How is Hugh?" was her first question, when after the bustle of transit they were seated in the train with no other passengers in their immediate vicinity.

"Perfectly quiet, but as one stunned; his sorrow for his father is deep enough, but his anguish at his mother's condition is heartrending."

"Is there—do you think that there is anything I could do if I should go there?" she faltered.

"Not now, my child; it is a time when no friend and not even a man's wife must come between him and his sorrow, his thoughts are only for the eye of God. Such help as Charlotte needs below stairs is being given by Jeanne and Satira Potts."

"And the funeral?"

"Will be from St. Luke's to-morrow."

The next day Poppea and Oliver Gilbert followed with the rest, the Feltons, Mr. Esterbrook, and half the summer colony. She only caught a glimpse of Hugh, who, tearless, looking neither to the right or left, seemed hewn from marble.

How could she go back to town, Poppea thought, and wreathe her hair and sing? If only she knew, if she could comfort Hugh in anyway; but he saw no one but Stephen Latimer. She had set her feet on the path of self-support and could not leave it now; there was nothing to do but wait.

Two weeks passed and public interest in Hugh Oldys's affairs had reached a high pitch. Were the Mills to be abandoned? What would become of the expectant men? Then it was whispered, though not maliciously, that Mr. Oldys's affairs were seriously involved, and that a strong, alert man with a keen business head would be required to save the property.

Poppea being at home one morning within the month of Mr. Oldys's death, Stephen Latimer came to the post-office house, and being as usual questioned as to whether there was any improvement in Mrs. Oldys's condition, said, almost as though he were giving a requested message.—

"No, there is none, nor ever likely to be; the specialists gave this as their decision yesterday and advised that she be sent at once to a trustworthy asylum, because the strain of her care, even if competent nurses came between, would be too much for any one person."

"Will Hugh let her be taken away?" asked Poppea, with dilating eyes and hands tightly clasped.

"No, never! He says that from now on he will, if necessary, withdraw from everything else to care for her and keep the home intact, in case that she comes to herself, and missing something, wonders.

"This is not all," Latimer continued. "In order to have the money to care for her, his father's funds being all placed in this new venture, he must leave his profession, assume immediate control of the Mills, and fight it out to a finish. But in this forced work lies his salvation. When I saw him to-day, I marvelled at the new nobility of his face. Resolution has always been its chief characteristic, now resignation is blended with it. God grant that hope, born of the two, may presently soften its set lines."

That Hugh had wholly put away his need of her was the meaning that Poppea took from Latimer's words. Then she, too, would lose herself in work, and the next day that she went to the city to sing, she let Miss Emmy persuade her that she owed it to her art to tarry between times and take the lessons that Tostelli was so eager to give her. When once hard at work, with the best music to be heard by way of relaxation, small wonder if the days were winged to Poppea, and at times disappointment and responsibility alike seemed the unreal things of life; she would have been less than a woman had it been otherwise.