OWLET’S ADVENTURES
It was late in the morning when Hanson awoke—awoke to find the child
still worse than on the preceding night. Her whole face was scarlet, her
eyes now flared open, wild and bloodshot, her lips parched, her pulse
beating almost too fast to be counted.
Hanson was at last very much alarmed.
Without stopping to slip on his coat, he rang the bell violently, and
soon brought a porter hurrying to his door to see what was the matter.
“My child is very ill. Ask at once the clerk in the office to send for
the nearest physician.”
And when the man had gone Hanson dressed himself in great haste and
returned to the bedside of his stolen charge.
Dr. Paulet, whose office was on the ground floor front of the next house
on the right, soon came—a fair, slight, refined-looking man of middle
age.
Hanson met him anxiously and took him to the bedside of his ward.
The doctor made his examination and asked some questions.
Hanson answered them all in the way that he had planned to do, and
furthermore gave the same account of his possession of the child that he
had given to young Larkins.
The doctor made no comment on the story. He was very reticent. He said,
however, that the child was extremely ill and her recovery doubtful, and
that with Mr. Hanson’s consent he would send a trained nurse to take
care of her.
Hanson expressed himself as more than grateful for the suggestion.
Within an hour after the doctor’s departure, a rosy-cheeked,
cheerful-looking woman of about forty years of age, presented herself
with a note from Dr. Paulet.
Not until the nurse was installed by the bedside of the patient did
Hanson leave the room to go down and get his matutinal cup of coffee.
For the first time in his life, perhaps, he was beginning to feel that
there were such things as remorse and fear.
For Owlet a dangerous illness followed. Fever and delirium ran high. She
raved incessantly—of all her short, past life, of her pretty mamma, of
the pantomime, of the ballet, of Santa Claus’ Christmas procession, of
“Lady,” of “Ducky Darling,” of the chickens, the garden, the woods—and
she warned divers persons—notably Hanson and the doctor—that they were
not possessed of common sense; but she recognized no one, or mistook
them for some one else, and, strangely enough, she never spoke of her
abduction. The events immediately preceding her illness seemed to be
effaced from her memory.
The doctor was very much interested in the child. He had heard from
Hanson that she was an orphan heiress, who had been left to his
guardianship; that he should have placed her in the care of his mother
and sister, had not those ladies left the country, for a summer tour in
Europe; that now, if the child should happily recover, he should engage
a nurse and a governess for her—discreet, middle-aged women, and have
her under his own immediate care until the return of his mother and
sister from abroad.
The doctor warmly commended the prudence of the youthful guardian, and
afterward spoke with enthusiasm of “that young Hanson” as one of the
most excellent young men it had ever been his good fortune to meet.
It was about this time that Hanson wrote his cautious letter to Roma
Fronde, telling her that the child was ill unto death, breaking her
heart for her “Lady,” and that she would certainly die unless she could
be restored to her benefactress; but that she could only be carried home
by him—Hanson—and only on condition that he—Hanson—should be received
with her.
Hanson waited impatiently, from day to day, for an answer to this
letter; but when five days had passed, and none had come, he wrote
again, in stronger terms, but with no better success.
Then he became convinced that she never intended to notice his letters,
no matter how often he might write.
And now he resolved to do, what he had never before this thought of
doing, though Roma had suspected him of that very baseness. He resolved
to send a private detective down to the neighborhood of Goeberlin to
watch Miss Fronde and find out all about her—her state, her habits, and
her intentions, and report to him.
He was able and willing to spend a great deal of money on this venture.
He decided to send his man down in the character of a peddler, who,
while traveling about the country offering his goods to families and
their servants, should make observations and ask questions. He spared no
expense in this evil enterprise. He purchased a large quantity of
miscellaneous goods, and agreed to give them and all their profits to
his agent; to pay his peddler’s license, his traveling expenses, his
hotel bills, and for the cart and horse the man would have to buy or
hire.
For all this he only stipulated that the spy should keep
him—Hanson—informed, by daily letters, of all Miss Fronde’s daily life.
This enterprise was not, however, more successful than preceding
ventures had been.
The first news that Hanson received from his spy was not encouraging to
his hopes. Miss Fronde was not breaking her heart for the loss of her
pet, or for any other cause. That fine young woman was perfectly well,
and actively employed.
In partnership with her clergyman and her solicitor, she was drawing
plans and making contracts for the building of a free school for colored
people on her plantation, and also for a sanatorium for destitute
children and invalids on her seaside estate, the Isle of Storms.
“Squandering her fortune in that mad manner!” exclaimed Hanson, in
disgust, forgetting that he himself squandered ten times as much in
yachting, racing, gambling and more objectionable pursuits. “So much for
trusting women with wealth. She ought to have a trustee appointed by the
courts to take care of her estates. If I were her next of kin, I know
what I would do. I would soon stop her mad career.”
The next news he heard from his spy was to the effect that Miss Fronde
was going to Europe in August.
“She is, is she? Then I will go on the same ship and take the child with
me,” said Hanson to himself; and he wrote back to his man to remain in
the neighborhood until Miss Fronde should leave it for New York, and to
come on the same train with her and report to him. And if the peddler
wanted a new stock of goods to keep him going Hanson would send them.
“I shall see you on the ship, my lady. You can’t get away from me.”
Meanwhile Owlet had safely passed the crisis of her illness, and was
recovering slowly, very slowly. Her return to consciousness was very
gradual and intermittent.
Though she was gathering some strength of body, she remained strangely
feeble in intellect. She seemed to have forgotten the details of her
abduction, but not the existence of her dear “Lady.” She begged
piteously to be taken back to her “darling Lady.”
She was promised that she should go to her Lady as soon as she should be
well enough to travel, and so she was put off from time to time.
Hanson told the nurse and the doctor that the lady she talked so much
about had been her nursery governess, to whom she had been much
attached; advised her to humor the child, yet warned her to try to
divert Owlet’s attention from the subject.
But that was quite impossible. “Lady” was the one absorbing subject of
her thoughts by day, and of her dreams by night.
Owlet was a piteous little object as she sat propped up in a large,
white, dimly-covered resting-chair, with her knees and feet wrapped
around with a white coverlet. Her face was as pale and thin as a living
face could be, and her great, brown eyes, which looked larger than ever
in the little, pinched face, had taken on a pathetic, imploring
expression which it was very sorrowful to see.
Hanson seemed very good to her. He bought her toys, picture books,
trinkets, but she turned away her sick eyes from them all, and pleaded
to be taken home to Lady.
Later, when she was well enough to wear them, Hanson bought for her very
pretty dresses, hats and coral necklaces and armlets. But she looked at
them with weary, indifferent eyes, and prayed to be taken to Lady.
One beautiful, bright Saturday, when she was well enough to go out,
Hanson got an open carriage and took her, with the nurse, to Central
Park to hear the music.
To almost any child seeing it for the first time, especially on
Saturday, with the bands of music and the thousands of children, and the
variety of sports, the sunshine, the trees, the flowers, the lakes and
ponds, it must have seemed the Garden of Eden revived—a heaven on earth.
But for homesick and heartsick, pale and large-eyed little Owlet it had
no pleasures.
“Look how beautiful it is!” said Hanson. “Don’t you like it?”
“Not half as well as Lady’s garden! Oh, take me there!” pleaded the
child.
“You shall go as soon as you are well enough,” Hanson answered.
“Listen to the music, my dear. Isn’t it delightful?” suggested the
nurse, as the whole brass band struck up some jubilant martial air.
“I’d rather hear Lady sing ‘Come Sound His Praise Abroad,’ or Ducky
Darling turn the little broken music box, than the whole of this! Oh!
take me back to them!”
Again she was promised to have her will as soon as she should be able.
But Owlet was beginning to disbelieve in promises, and to lay out plans
for herself—idiotic little plans, indeed.
The child was like some poor, little, forsaken, puzzled pet dog, pining
for its absent mistress, not knowing how it had been separated from her,
longing to find her, but ignorant where to look for her in all the
wilderness of the world, in all the despairful immensity of space.
And like this poor, silly, helpless little quadruped, Owlet felt an
irresistible instinct to go away and look for her beloved all over the
great earth until she should find her.
With a cunning beyond her years—a cunning, however, which is often found
in connection with imbecility of mind, and even with idiocy—she
concealed her purpose and watched for her opportunity.
Owlet was never left alone except when her nurse would go down to
meals—fifteen minutes for breakfast, twenty for dinner—until sunset,
when Mrs. Gilbert would put the child to bed, arrange her comfortably
for the night, leave her safe in the little room, while generally Hanson
would be reading or writing in the larger room, and go downstairs to
join the other ladies’ maids and children’s nurses at their tea, and
where all those whose duties, like those of Mrs. Gilbert, were over for
the day, would remain gossiping together for an indefinite time.
This was the opportunity which the poor, forlorn, homesick child
resolved to seize, on the first occasion on which Hanson also should be
absent from the outer room.
The occasion came at length.
One afternoon in the early days of May, just as the sun was setting
clear behind the hills of New Jersey, Mrs. Gilbert undressed Owlet, put
her to bed, and then went down to her tea and her two hours’ gossip.
Soon after Hanson came in, dressed for a party, and kissed Owlet good
night. She heard him leave the room, and then she got out of bed and
dressed herself in her very best clothes, and put on her prettiest coral
necklace and armlets, and her finest hat, made up a little bundle of
clothes and pinned them in a paper, and then left the room and went
down—not by the elevator, but by the stairs—and passed from the house
through the “ladies’ entrance,” without attracting any attention from
anyone but the porter, who opened the door for her, without any
suspicion that there was anything irregular in her going out in that
self-possessed, matter-of-fact manner.
The gas had just been lighted on the streets, and the scene was very
brilliant. The shops were fairy palaces. But Owlet did not stop to look
at any of them, she was much too eager to hurry to “Lady.”
She had no idea of the distance that separated her from her beloved.
Goblin Hall was out of the city among the trees somewhere. And people
must know where it was, and she would inquire for it, as soon as she
should see some one who was not in such an awful hurry as all the folks
seemed to be on this street.
The Owlet of a month before would not have hesitated to stop the busiest
man on the sidewalk and ask to be directed, but the Owlet of to-day was
sad, subdued and timid, and so she walked a long distance down Broadway,
until she came in sight of the trees in City Hall Park, and was ready to
drop with fatigue, for she was still very weak. She had not found
courage to speak to any of the crowd, until, at length, she saw an old
woman, very old, very dirty, and very ragged, sitting on a cellar door,
against the wall of a house, and with a huge bundle of foul smelling
rags on her lap.
Owlet only perceived the poverty, and not the wickedness of the
personality before her. She said to herself:
“This old woman is not proud, nor busy, nor in a hurry. I will ask her,
and I reckon she will know; and when I get to Goblin Hall I will have
Lady give her some new clothes, and some——”
Then she stopped before the wretch, and said:
“Please, ma’am, will you show me the way to Goblin Hall?”
“Goblet which?” demanded the crone, who seemed to be rather deaf.
“Goblin Hall.”
“Oh! Goblet Hall! I dunno sich a place. Is it a s’loon or mus’um?”
“I don’t know what is a s’loon or mus’um, ma’am. Goblin Hall is a fine
house where Lady lives. It has trees, and flowers, and chickens and
Ducky Darling. And, please, I am lost, and can’t find it.”
“Oh! you are lost?” inquired the crone, devouring, with her eyes the
rich dress, the fine hat and the coral trinkets worn by the child, and
the bundle carried in her hand.
“Yes, ma’am, please, lost; and I want to go home.”
“Where did you say you wanted to go to?”
“To Goblin Hall, ma’am.”
“Oh! I know the place! I’ll take yer straight there, my little lady,”
said the hag, gloating over the finery of the child, and counting how
many glasses of rum she could buy with the money for which she could
pawn the hat, the dress, the coral ornaments, and the contents of the
bundle.
“Oh! thank you, ma’am. Lady will——” Owlet was about to add, “pay you
well for bringing me home,” but an innate delicacy caused her to pause
before offering so poor a woman pay for a kind action, and to say,
instead—“will be ever so much obliged to you.”
“All right. Come along o ’me,” said the hag, hoisting her huge bundle
upon her shoulders, rising and taking the child’s hand.