ROMA AND HER ASPIRATIONS
“Oh, Lady! Lady! Lady! Oh, Lady! Lady! Lady!” cried Owlet, in a wild
rapture of delight, as she clung about the neck and bosom of her
benefactress.
“Owlet! Why, Owlet! Darling! Mr. Merritt—what does all this mean?”
demanded Miss Fronde, in supreme astonishment, as she returned the
child’s caresses, and raised her eyes to the lawyer’s amused face.
He had just entered after Owlet, and now stood looking on the scene.
“I did not want her to take you by surprise,” he said. “I wanted to come
in first, and tell you that she had been found and brought back; but,
heavens! she darted past me and into your arms as soon as the door was
opened.”
“Oh, Lady! Lady! Lady! I saw you, and I couldn’t help it! I couldn’t! I
couldn’t! I couldn’t! I know I’m not possessed of common sense now, but
I don’t care! I don’t care! so I’m possessed of you!” exclaimed the
child in an ecstasy of joy.
“When Owlet becomes calm you will perhaps explain where she was found,
how she came here, and who brought her,” Roma said.
Mr. Merritt nodded, and sat down.
It was not long, however, before the child’s transports subsided, and
she lay, quiet and contented, on the bosom of her lady.
Presently she said:
“Lady, where is dear little Ducky Darling? Did you bring her here with
you?”
“No, my dear. I could not take her away from her father and mother, you
know,” Roma answered.
“Oh, no; so you couldn’t. Are you going back soon, Lady?”
“In about a month, dear.”
“Then we will take Ducky Darling some dolls. She likes dolls, if I
don’t. Did she cry after me?”
“Yes, dear.”
“I knew she would! Poor little Ducky Darling!” said Owlet, and once more
she subsided into silence, with her head on Miss Fronde’s bosom.
“Am I too heavy for you, Lady? Do I tire you?” she inquired at length.
“No, darling; not at all,” Miss Fronde replied, smiling at the idea of
herself being fatigued.
“Do I bother you a bit, lying here?”
“Not in the least.”
“Oh! you know it has been so long! so long! since I saw you! So many,
many years! years and years! and years! I did think I would never see
you no more! Never no more! Never no more! Oh, Lady!”
“You shall never leave me again, my dear, if I can possibly help it.”
“That man who took me away was not possessed of common sense. Now, was
he, Lady?”
“I am afraid he had not that excuse for his wickedness; but don’t think
anything more about him, dear. Try to compose yourself,” Miss Fronde
said gently, smoothing the brown curls away from the flushed little
face.
“Yes, I will do everything you tell me,” said the child, and with a sigh
of infinite satisfaction she subsided into quietude, and soon into
sleep.
Roma only waited to feel assured that the slumber was too profound to be
disturbed by movement, and then she arose softly, carried the child into
her own chamber, laid her on the bed, loosened her clothes, and left her
fast asleep.
Then she returned to the sitting-room, where she found the lawyer still
waiting for her.
She sat down beside him and said:
“Now, if you please, explain this affair to me, Mr. Merritt.”
The lawyer gave her a “brief” of the case.
“We already know by inference from the evidence collected at Goeberlin,
that the child was chloroformed when she was snatched away from Goblin
Hall. We also know that she was passed off, in her insensibility, as a
sick child, fast asleep, and that Hanson took a small private
compartment in the Pullman car for himself and the child. All this we
know from what we heard from railway officials and others.”
“But afterward—afterward!” said Miss Fronde.
“Afterward, from what could be gathered from the child’s disjointed
story, which, by the way, confirmed the truth of all the foregoing
collected from Goeberlin, it seems that her abductor must have
administered some narcotic to her in her food at some way station not
far from Goeberlin. She must have slept all the way from the
neighborhood of Goeberlin to New York City, for after she came to, after
a long illness—for it seems she really was very ill when that fellow
wrote to you——”
“Poor child! Poor, weary dove!” sighed Roma.
“When she came to herself,” resumed the lawyer, “after a dangerous
illness, caused, no doubt, by the effects of the horrible drugs that had
been given her, she had no sense of the time or space that had been
passed since her abduction. She thought she had only been away a day or
so, and that she was still in the neighborhood of Goblin Hall, and her
one longing and one prayer was to be carried back to you.”
“My poor little Owlet!”
“At last she ran away from her strange owner, and went, like some poor,
little, lost dog, to hunt its mistress through the wide, wide world. But
she thought that Goblin Hall lay somewhere among the woods and fields
outside the city. She went, trying to find her way out, until she
wandered down somewhere—it must have been in the neighborhood of the old
Five Points, for she fell into the hands of a thieving ragpicker, who
beguiled her into some den, stole her clothes, wrapped her in an old rag
of a shawl, took her away in the dead of night, carried her some
distance, left her under a stoop, and deserted her.”
“Oh, heavens! How long ago was that?”
“Only two nights.”
“How was she found? Who rescued her? Who brought her to Washington? Go
on, please!”
The lawyer paused for a moment and then answered:
“William Harcourt.”
“William Harcourt!” echoed Roma in boundless amazement.
“Yes,” quietly replied Mr. Merritt.
“How, in the name of heaven and all the angels, could he have found
her?” demanded Miss Fronde in unabated wonder.
“He was in New York at the time. He was coming out of his lodging-house,
in the gray of the morning, on the day before yesterday, when he heard a
moan of distress near the steps. He followed the sound and found the
child. She was half dead with cold, hunger and fright. He took her in,
and with the assistance of a poor seamstress, a fellow lodger in the
house, he succored her until she was able to give some account of
herself—just such a confused account as a child of six years, who had
been drugged, first with chloroform and then with opium, and brought
three hundred miles in a state of stupor, had had brain fever, and had
come to her senses to find herself in a strange city, among strangers,
had run away, had fallen among total thieves, had been left to die under
a stoop, and had been found half dead, might be supposed to be able to
give.”
“Oh, the dastardly villain!
“‘There may be heaven!—there must be hell!’”
exclaimed Miss Fronde, as the words of Browning rushed into her mind.
“In the child’s imperfect story they heard such names as ‘Roma,’ ‘Goblin
Hall,’ ‘Dr. Shaw,’ and even that of your humble servant. Of course,
Harcourt recognized these names at once, and he knew from what place the
child had been stolen, though he did not know the name of the thief, nor
the motive of the theft; for those the child did not herself know, and
could not tell him.”
“And did Will Harcourt send the child to Washington?”
“Wait a moment. First of all, he wired me that the child had been found.
That was on the day before yesterday. You were on your way from
Goeberlin Hall to Washington. I could not consult you; therefore, I
wired back that you could not interfere in the case of the recovered
child. I thought I would tell you all about it when you should get to
Washington, but you arrived late, and I did not wish to tell you any
news that might keep you awake all night. I deferred the announcement
until this afternoon. In the meantime, it seems Harcourt received a
telegram from Miss Wynthrop, summoning him immediately to his mother’s
sick bed. In his dilemma as to what he should do with the forlorn child,
he decided to bring her with him, and even take her, if necessary, to
Lone Lodge. On his arrival in Washington he brought her to my office,
giving us, as it were, the refusal of her. I thought, when I heard his
statement, that under the circumstances you might receive her, and
having this engagement to dine with you this evening, I ventured to
bring the child with me.”
“Of course I will receive her, and of course I will hereafter protect
her against the unnatural monster who deserted her to destitution in her
helpless infancy, and afterward stole her for blackmail and endangered
her life with his poisonous drugs.”
“I do not think that he will ever again disturb you in the possession of
the child. I do not think he will dare to do it,” said Mr. Merritt
earnestly.
“I do not think he will. But why did not Will Harcourt himself bring me
the child?” Roma inquired, not without some bitterness.
“My dear, remember that he had to take the first train west to fly to
his mother’s sick bed. He had to hurry on. He really had no alternative,
Roma. Yet, I will not deceive you. He told me that under no
circumstances should he dare to present himself before Miss Fronde,”
said the lawyer.
“Ah, heaven! Oh, my dear guardian, what can be this hidden horror that
parts my friend from me?” demanded Miss Fronde, with a profound sigh.
“It is no secret to me, I think, my dear. It is, of course, his
complicity in the matter of that fraudulent marriage.”
“No! no! no! no!” indignantly exclaimed the lady. “It is some mental
disturbance, superinduced upon his brain fever, and of which Hanson, the
fiend, took advantage.”
“I fear that it is something more serious than mental disturbance which
we have hitherto supposed to be the cause of his strange conduct. Since
my interview with him this afternoon I have been under the impression
that he is suffering from some deep remorse.”
“Remorse!—Will Harcourt!” Roma fairly gasped for breath in her
astonishment.
“He said that in a few days we should know all—or words to that effect.”
Roma sighed deeply.
“But to change the subject, my dear, what are you going to do with the
child, now that you have so much upon your hands?” inquired the lawyer,
to divert the lady’s mind from the sorrowful mystery of William
Harcourt.
“I shall keep her with me, wherever I may be; take her with me, wherever
I may go. She will be no hindrance.”
“But when you go to Scotland?”
“I shall take her with me to Scotland; and, moreover, in the interests
of the orphan, I shall take her to see that awful ancestress of hers,
that Highland chieftainess and Covenanter, Mistress Griselda Margaret
Arbuthnot, of Arbuthnot Kill, Cuthbert, Caithness. There’s name, title
and place for you.”
At this moment ’Pollyon Syphax entered the parlor to lay the cloth for
dinner, and by so doing stopped the conversation for the time being.
It was a tête-à-tête dinner, but as the waiter with the baleful name was
in attendance all the time there could be no confidential communication
between lawyer and client.
Dinner was scarcely over, and the table cleared off, when Dr. Washburn
was announced.
Roma arose to meet him with outstretched hand.
“How good of you to come so promptly, dear doctor,” she said.
“Miss Fronde should know that I am always at her orders, and happy to
serve her,” replied the worthy, old-fashioned gentleman, lifting the
tips of her fingers to his lips and bowing over them.
Then he shook hands with Lawyer Merritt, who was an old friend, and sank
into the deep armchair Miss Fronde had drawn forward for him.
After some informal conversation Roma broached the subject on which she
wished to consult him, namely, the organization of a sanitorium for the
poor, on the Isle of Storms.
The doctor had by this time come to understand the daughter of his old
friend, Colonel Fronde, or to think that he did, and in his private
opinion he set her down as a very eccentric woman, as well as a very
rich and beautiful one, who meant to live the life of a philanthropic
old maid, like that of the then Miss Burdette Coutts. He knew perfectly
well that it would be utterly useless for any one to oppose her in her
projects, so he thought the best policy for him to pursue, both in her
interest and in that of those whom she wished to benefit, would be to
fall in with her plans and give her the advantage of his advice and
assistance in all the details of the humane enterprise.
The three friends sat down at a table together, with pencils and tablets
in hand, and talked “sanitorium” all the evening.
“I shall not be able to get off by the boat to-morrow morning, Mr.
Merritt. There is so much more to be done here in the city than I had
calculated upon that I doubt very much whether I shall be able to go
before next week,” said Miss Fronde as she closed her well-filled
notebook at the end of the conference.
“The longer you may be detained here, Miss Fronde, the better we shall
all be pleased,” said Dr. Washburn, striking into the conversation as he
rose to take leave.
Both gentlemen bade the young lady a cordial good-night and went away.
A few minutes later there came a modest tap at the door, and to Miss
Fronde’s pleasant “Come in!” Tom entered.
He had a broad smile on his good-natured face. He plucked his old hat
off his head and bowed, and continued to bow, and smiled, and continued
to smile, until Miss Fronde held out her hand and said:
“How do you do, Tom? Come here and shake hands with me.”
Then he shyly approached the gracious lady, and took the hand she
offered him, and showed his love and honor in the best way he knew how,
by slowly swaying it up and down, smiling all the while in respectful
silence, until Miss Fronde gently withdrew her fingers and inquired:
“How have you been since I saw you last, Tom?”
“Firs’ yate, mist’ess. Been fetchin’ an’ ca’in’ clo’es back’a’ds an’
fo’a’ds fo’ mammy,” Tom answered.
Then he smiled a broader smile than ever, and said:
“Soon’s ebber mammy tol’ me how yo’ was come back yere I yunned yight
ober yere to pay my ’bed’ence; but Mr. ’Pollyon Syphax tol’ me how yo’
had comp’ny, ma’am, so I didn’ like to ’trude; but I’s moughty p’oud to
see yo’, mist’ess, ’deed I is.”
“Thank you, Tom. How would you like to go to the Isle of Storms with
me?”
“I’d des like to go to de een’ ob de worl’ ’long o’ yo’, mist’ess; but
I’d yudder go to dat ole p’ace wiv yo’ dan to any yudder p’ace on dis
yeth—I would, fo’ a fac’,” said Tom, almost tempted to turn a somersault
in his delight.
“Then you shall go.”
“How is little Miss Cafferine, mist’ess?”
“She is well. She is with me here. She will go with us to the Isle of
Storms.”
“Oh! aine I g’ad! We shall all be so happy, mist’ess.”
“I hope so. Now, Tom, as it is late, you had better go home to your
mother. She may be uneasy about you.”
“Yes, mist’ess, dat’s so. So mammy mought. Good-night, mist’ess.”
“Good-night, Tom.” The boy went away.
Roma passed into her chamber, and seeing her newly recovered pet
sleeping most sweetly and safely on the outside of her bed, kneeled down
by the side and gave thanks to heaven for the restoration of the child.
Then she prayed for Will Harcourt.
Finally she arose, and undressed the little slumberer, so softly and
deftly that the latter did not wake.
Only as she laid her between the sheets Owlet murmured in her dreams
something about “Lady” and “Ducky Darling,” and some one else who “was
not possessed of common sense.” Then almost instantly she relapsed into
sound sleep.
Roma went to bed.
Toward morning Owlet talked again in her sleep, this time of “Mr.
William” and of “Mrs. Annie.”
In the gray of the dawn she half awoke, and spoke to her bedfellow,
calling her “Mrs. Annie.”
But when Miss Fronde replied, Owlet instantly remembered where she was,
and with a sigh of ineffable content she sank into happy sleep again.