WILL HARCOURT’S ADVENTURE
When Will Harcourt had answered Roma Fronde’s confiding and affectionate
note by a letter of vague confession and final renunciation, he looked
upon his own life as “done and finished,” so far as any hope in the
future was concerned.
What had he to live for?
Roma, his adored, his ideal woman, his muse, his goddess, was lost to
him forever! was worse than lost, for she was repulsed, repudiated, and
by himself.
His youthful ambition was gone forever; was worse than gone, for it was
turned to humiliation, and by his own act.
Oh, misery! Oh, misery!
What had he to live for, indeed?
What?
For one bitter end! To expiate his sin! To toil hard at the roughest
sort of work, among honest laborers, with whom he did not feel good
enough to associate, to look forward to nothing better than the coming
of that bitter day which should deprive him of his only friend in the
death of his aged mother, and leave him free to deliver his conscience
of his guilty secret, nay, constrain him to denounce himself as a
criminal, to give himself up to justice, to be dealt with according to
law, to suffer—what penalty?
Imprisonment, with penal servitude, for the term of his natural life,
must be the lightest doom that could be meted out to him, as the measure
of his great offense.
For the term of his natural life. And he was but twenty-four years old!
A half century of imprisonment and penal slavery.
Well, let it come, he thought, not defiantly, indeed, but humbly. He had
deserved it all. And, long as it might last, it would end some time. And
there was an after life, where faith, repentance and reformation in this
world would surely be followed by rest, peace and joy in that world to
come, where, also, as some believed, true lovers severed here would meet
to part no more forever, because from their creation their souls had
been essentially one, though apparently two.
And, if this should be true, as some deep inspiration whispered that it
surely was—man might bear patiently, hopefully, courageously all that
the world, the flesh and the devil might inflict upon him even the
hardest of all to bear the disgrace and penalty of his own sin and
folly.
In this mood of mind Harcourt reached New York late one evening toward
the last of April.
He went directly to his lodgings, passed up the four flights of stairs
to the attic floor, and paused a moment in the passage before his own
and his neighbor’s door.
There he heard the old, familiar thumper-thumper-thumper-thumper of
Annie Moss’ sewing machine, going on as he had heard it all the time he
had lived in the next room, as he had heard it on the evening he had
taken leave of her, as if it had never stopped during the three weeks of
his absence.
“Oh, these poor working women!” he thought. “How patient they are, at
their monotonous work! What a lesson it is to others.”
He rapped at the door.
“Well! Who is it?” inquired the pleasant voice, as the sound of the
machine stopped.
“It is I, Annie,” he answered.
Although she was old enough to be his mother, he had got to calling her
“Annie,” because everybody else did, so far as he knew—Adler and Adler’s
wife and their children, all called Mrs. Moss Annie. The name seemed to
suit the fair, gentle, helpful woman.
“Oh, Mr. William, I am so glad that you have come back,” she said, as
she opened the door.
“And I am very glad to see you. I hope you are well?”
“Oh, very well, thank you, Mr. William. I am always well, you know.”
“And happy?”
“Yes, and happy.”
“You deserve to be so.”
“I don’t know that I do. I hope you left your mother well, Mr. William.”
Harcourt sighed.
“As well as most women are at her advanced age. My dear mother is nearer
eighty than seventy, you must know.”
“Then so much nearer to her eternal youth,” sweetly and solemnly replied
Annie Moss.
“Yes,” assented Harcourt, in a low tone, “that is all she has to comfort
her now—the prospect of the future better life.”
“Many young people, as well as the aged, have nothing else to hope for.”
“That is indeed true, Annie; but I do not know how so good and happy a
woman as yourself should have found it out,” said Harcourt.
“Come in, Mr. William, and sit down and rest yourself, while I make a
cup of tea that will refresh you after your journey.”
“No, thank you. Not now. I only came to see how you are, and to get my
key,” replied the young man.
“But your room has been shut up, and without a fire in it for nearly a
month, and though I have aired it two or three times a week I know it is
cold and damp, and you are just off a long journey. You had better come
in, and let me get you a cup of tea, and after you have taken it you
will feel better able to tackle with a damp room and a cold hearth. Come
in, now. Why not? Are we not all brethren and sisters?”
“Oh! my dear Annie, you are really too good for this world,” said
Harcourt, very stupidly, it must be admitted, for he even thought so
himself, yet in perfect good faith.
“Nonsense! There are no provisions laid up in your room, either, and I’d
like to know what you expect to do about supper at this time of night,
when all the stores are closed?”
Harcourt smiled, and submitted.
Although Annie Moss called her neighbor so formally “Mr. William,” she
really considered him as something like a foster son.
She made him sit down in the only armchair, where he drew off his
gloves, put them in his hat, set that on the floor, and made himself
comfortable, while Annie filled her kettle and set it on the stove, and
laid a clean cloth on the table in preparation for tea.
“How is work now, Annie?” he inquired, while she flitted from cupboard
to table, and back and forth.
“Plentiful with me; I have just as much as I can jump at,” she answered,
brightly.
“And work fourteen hours out of the twenty-four.”
“Sometimes, yes. It don’t hurt me. I always sleep so well.”
“I am glad to hear it. How is work with Adler?”
“Oh, he has got a steady job on the new railroad.”
“I am very glad to hear that, too.”
“Isn’t it strange, Mr. William, that Adler has never been out of work a
day since that night when you saved his life. Oh! it must be a glorious
thing to save life—especially the life of a young father of a family!”
said Annie Moss.
“How do you know I saved his life, Annie?”
“Oh! why, Adler told me himself; and so did his wife. They have told
dozens of people. They will never forget the ‘good turn’ you did him, as
they call it; and they say, besides, it turned his luck, for he has
never been out of employment since; and now he has got a job on the new
railroad.”
“I wonder if I could work on that road?”
“Yes, I think so. Adler told me only last night that they wanted more
laborers,” said Annie Moss, as she set the tea to draw, and placed
plates of bread, butter and cold corned beef on the table.
Poor and plain as was her home in the attic of the four-storied tenement
house, Annie Moss lived better than most of the needle women in the
city. She had no one but herself to support, and as she slept well, ate
well and lived cleanly, she had good health and great capacity for work.
When the feast was spread she invited Harcourt to draw up his chair—the
armchair in which he sat, she said, for he would be more comfortable in
that.
He obeyed her gratefully.
She also sat down at the table, saying that she had not yet taken her
own tea and would join him.
Annie Moss was pleased to see that her guest made a very satisfactory
supper.
After it was finished, Harcourt thanked his hostess, and, as it was now
very late, asked for the key of his room.
Annie got it for him, and then lighted a candle and gave it to him. He
thanked her, bade her good-night, and went to his apartment. He found
the place as damp, chilly and comfortless as Annie had predicted.
“If I had had the sense to write to this good woman, and named the day I
was to come back, she would have had everything ready for me, fire made
and room aired,” he said to himself, as he raised the window looking out
on the bay, and went to the cupboard, from the floor of which he got
some waste paper and kindlings, which he piled on the cold hearth, and
lighted from the candle Annie had given him with the key.
He had soon a bright blaze without a hot fire.
And between the open window and the blazing hearth the atmosphere of the
room was soon improved.
Then, about midnight, he retired to bed. But he was an uneasy sleeper,
and had been so ever since that fatal fifteenth of September, when he
fell under the power of the tempter and descended into the inferno.
He passed a restless night, and with the earliest dawn of day he arose
and dressed himself, went out to buy his breakfast, came in in a few
minutes, kindled his fire, made his coffee and cooked his chops.
When he had eaten his meal and set his room in order, he took his hat
and set out to see Adler, and find out what was his chance of getting
work.
It was still very early in the morning; the sun but newly risen.
He found Adler at breakfast, surrounded by his family.
They all started up from the table to welcome their returned friend.
Adler pressed him to join them at the meal; but Harcourt thanked him,
and declined upon the reasonable ground that he had just finished his
own breakfast.
He took the chair that one of the children brought him, and sat down,
answering all their kindly questions about his mother and himself, and
asking some few of them concerning their welfare, until at last Adler
arose from the table to go to his work.
“You’ll excuse me, William. It is after six o’clock, and you know I have
to go,” he said.
“I will walk with you as far as the car,” Harcourt answered.
“All right. I shall be glad to have your company.”
Harcourt bade good-by to the family, and the two men walked out
together.
On their way, Harcourt made known his wish to get work on the road.
“I don’t understand you, William! I don’t, indeed! I can’t see the use
of a highly educated man like you hankering after this sort of work,
hanged if I can!” said Adler.
“We have discussed this subject before, my friend. You know my mind,”
replied the young man.
“Well, then, get in the car with me, and come along up. The contractor
wants more hands than he can get just now. And—here comes our car.”
As the car approached the crossing Adler hailed it.
Both men boarded it, and were soon on their way uptown.
Harcourt found no difficulty in getting work. He was taken on at once.
And from this day his routine of hard, daily labor began.
He wrote regularly to his mother, two letters each week, and he heard
from her frequently, either by notes from herself or from Margaret
Wynthrop. He knew that the aged lady continued in fair bodily health,
though she did not improve in mental strength. His only satisfaction in
thinking of her was that she was happy, comfortable, well cared for, and
without the slightest suspicion of the straits to which her poor, only
son had been reduced.
So he labored on—humbly, patiently, heroically, as one waiting for an
anticipated but an unknown denouément.
And what denouément?
He had acquired a habit, forced upon him by circumstances, of retiring
early at night and rising with the dawn of day. He sometimes took a walk
before breakfast, then returned and prepared his frugal meal, ate
sparingly, set his room in order and started for his day’s work.
One morning he arose from a very restless bed, much earlier than usual,
dressed himself and went down the four flights of stairs to the ground
floor.
None of his fellow lodgers were yet stirring.
He opened the front door and looked out.
The street was as quiet as a churchyard. The sky was just beginning to
grow faintly light.
Harcourt closed the door behind him, and went down the steps.
As he reached the sidewalk he heard a low moan and sob.
He stopped in surprise to listen and look up and down the street.
But he could see no one.
The moan and sob were repeated so near him that, as there was no one in
sight, it seemed weird, ghostly, supernatural.
He looked all around the doorstep, but still saw nothing.
The moan and sob were reiterated with the tearful wail:
“Oh, why don’t she come? Why don’t she come?”
Then, at length, he was able to locate the voice. It came from under the
stoop.
He bent down and looked there. And first he smelt, and then he saw a
little creature wrapped up in a noisome rag or shawl, he could not tell
which, and she was moaning, and sobbing, and crying:
“Why don’t she come? Oh, why don’t she come?”
He bent lower, and inquired, gently:
“What is the matter, little one?”
“Oh, I don’t know—I don’t know why she don’t come back!” sobbed the
child.
“Who do you mean?” inquired Harcourt.
“Oh! she—she—she!”
“Who is she?”
“Oh, I don’t know. She was a ragged woman, and smelt awful.”
“What did she do to you?”
“Oh, she took off my nice clothes, but I reckon they were wet, and she
wrapped me up in this nasty shawl, and she left me here and said she
would come back and carry me to Lady. But she never came, and I am so
chilly, and so hungry, and so sick at my stomach with the smell of this
shawl. I am almost dead. Oh, dear me!”
“Come out here, little girl, and let me see you,” said Harcourt, kindly.
The child seemed perfectly fearless. All her horrible experiences had
not had the power to make a coward of her.
She crawled out, tottered to her feet, and stood before him—a little
creature clothed only in an old, ragged, foul shawl, reaching from her
shoulders to her knees, leaving exposed to view the fair head and neck,
and the delicate ankles and feet of a beautiful girl child.
She looked something like a small, old-fashioned chimney sweep, wrapped
in his sooty, little blanket, except for the loveliness of her fair face
and hands.
“Foul play!” exclaimed Harcourt, as he took in the whole incongruous
picture at a glance.
“How long have you been lying under that stoop, poor child?” he
inquired.
“Oh! I don’t know. I went to sleep. I just woke up a little while ago.
Oh, sir, please do take me to Lady,” pleaded the child.
“Who is Lady, my dear?”
“Oh, she is Lady, you know, Lady.”
“But what is her name?”
“I—don’t—think—I—quite—know.”
“But what do other people call her? Everyone does not call her Lady, I
suppose?”
“No—nobody but me. I call her Lady. But the black people do call her
‘young mist’ess,’ and Mr. Merritt and Dr. Shaw call her ‘Roma, my
dear’.”
Harcourt started.
“‘Roma?’—‘Dr. Shaw?’—‘Mr. Merritt?’ What does all this mean?” he
muttered to himself in strong agitation. Then:
“Where does this lady live, my child?” he asked, in a shaking voice.
“Oh! at Goblin Hall. Such a lovely place! Oh, sir, please—oh! please do
take me home to my own dear Lady!” pleaded the child, putting her
little, white hands together and looking up in his face.
“Yes, yes, you shall be restored to your Lady,” he said. “This is very
strange. I cannot comprehend it at all. But I know that I must succor
this little one,” he thought, as he lifted the unresisting child to his
shoulder and carried her up the four flights of stairs to his room.