Chapter XIX: 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.