CHAPTER XVIIICATCHING A TARTAR
After Hanson had carried off Owlet in the manner so incoherently announced by Ducky Darling, and more intelligibly related by the hack driver and the railway officials; after he had got her quietly and safely bestowed in the snug compartment he had engaged in the Pullman car, and the train had started, he felt quite satisfied with his work. So far it seemed a complete success.
Owlet lay on the short sofa opposite to him, sleeping under the influence of the chloroform he had administered to her at the instant of first seizing her. She was very quiet, almost too quiet, he at length began to fear.
He did not wish to run any risks.
He stooped over her and looked into her face.
It was very placid; her eyes were closed, her lips slightly apart, her cheeks faintly flushed. She was breathing easily.
“She’ll do,” he said, and sank back into his seat. He drew a newspaper from his pocket, unfolded it, and began to read. He had read half way down the first sporting news column, and was deeply absorbed in his subject, when he was suddenly startled by a voice peremptorily demanding:
“Who are you?”
He actually sprang as he looked up from his paper to see Owlet sitting bolt upright on her sofa, regarding him with great solemn eyes, fearless and critical. He was really thrown off his mental balance for a moment. He had not expected to be brought to book by such a question from such a child. But then he did not know Owlet. He hesitated, and then, pursing up his lips, and opening his eyes very wide, he answered solemnly:
“I am the Great Mogul.”
“I don’t believe it,” Owlet replied, without a change of countenance.
“I am also the Khan of Tartary,” he continued, gathering his brows together.
“You are no such thing,” said Owlet.
“Likewise the Tycoon of Japan,” he concluded, in a deep voice.
“You are telling stories! And if you tell stories you will go down into the dark, dark world, where there is no sun and it is always night, and no moon nor stars, and no grass nor trees, nor even water. Oh! you better look out, and tell me the truth.”
“Well, then, little monkey, I am your legal guardian, if you understand what that is.”
Her look of grave reproof now changed to one of contempt.
“I don’t believe you are possessed of common sense,” she said.
“What!” he exclaimed, with a laugh. “Why?”
“You cannot be, to tell me such a tale as that, and think I will believe you. Yes, and I know who you are, now I look at you good,” she added.
“Who am I, then?”
“You are the man who came to the lady’s house yesterday and made yourself a nuisance.”
“A nuisance, did I?”
“Yes, a horrid one. Oh, I saw you before Lady did. I saw you coming up the walk to the house. When Lady saw you she took me and Ducky in the house.”
“Oh! she did?”
“Yes, she did that; and she was in the right of it, too, I reckon.”
“Why was she in the right of it?”
“Because she knowed you, and knowed you was not possessed of common sense.”
“Ah!”
“Yes. And she knowed you’d do something bad, I reckon. Yes. And now I do remember all about it. I do.”
“Oh, you do?”
“Yes, I do that. You came up to where me and my Ducky Darling was sitting under the trees by the roadside, and I was piecing my sensible quilt, and she was playing on her music box, and you killed me.”
“Killed you!” exclaimed the young man in amazement.
“Yes, you did. And you need not stretch out great big eyes at me, as if it wasn’t true, neither, for you did. You did kill me stone dead, all in a minute, before I could holler. I did hear Ducky Darling holler, and then I went stone dead, and so near heaven that I did hear the angels playing on cymbals through my whole head. And then I knowed nothing till I come to life this minute, right here,” Owlet said, quite simply.
“Now, don’t you know that you are talking the beastliest nonsense that ever was heard? If anybody had killed you stone dead how could you come to life again? Tell me that,” Hanson said.
“I know it sounds like nonsense,” Owlet frankly admitted, “and if anybody had told me such a strange thing, and wanted me to believe it, why, you know, I should have told them they were not possessed of common sense. But for all that, I know it is the truth. And if anybody but you had called it nonsense I should not have blamed them; but you know it is the truth. You did kill me stone dead—dead! dead! dead!—dead as a doornail!”
“Well, then, how the devil did you contrive to come to life again?” laughed Hanson.
“It wasn’t the devil, and I didn’t contrive nothing; and I don’t know, unless maybe I didn’t get quite loose out of my body, for you know I only heard the angels playing on the cymbals. I did not go among them; and maybe the shaking of the train shook me down again into my body, and so I come to life. But I don’t know. It makes my head ache to think,” said the child, putting both hands up to her forehead.
“Then don’t think. It won’t pay,” Hanson advised.
“I must,” said Owlet. “There ain’t nobody else here to think for me. And now, then,” she exclaimed, withsudden energy, dropping her hands and fixing him with her eyes, “what do you mean by it?”
“Mean by what, monkey?”
“By killing me and carrying me off?”
“I never hurt a hair of your head.”
“I know you didn’t hurt me, but you killed me as dead as Jubious Cedar.”
“I didn’t kill you.”
“Well, never mind, I come to life again, anyhow. But what did you bring me here for?”
“I told you before. I am your legal guardian, and I have to take care of you,” said Hanson, smiling on the child.
“Now you are going it! Ain’t you afraid of the dark world?”
“Pooh! pooh!”
“You are not my guardian! Lady is my guardian, and you shall not take care of me; and the next place the cars stop at I mean to get out and go home to Lady. I know she is fretting after me now, and Ducky Darling is crying her eyes out, too. Oh, yes, I must get out at the very next place and go home.”
“But suppose I cannot let you go?” inquired Hanson, partly amused and partly annoyed by the child’s persistence.
“I’d just like to see you try to stop me,” said Owlet, turning her head on one side and looking at him out of the corner of her eye in the most mocking manner.
“Why, what would you do?”
“I’d raise such a row they would think the train was on fire—I’d scream and scream and scream, until everybody would run to see what was the matter.”
“And then what would you do?”
“I would tell them all about it, and I would beg somebody to take me home to Lady, and tell them how much Ducky Darling would love them.”
“And who is Ducky Darling?”
“Oh, she is the sweetest thing you ever did see! My sweet, lovely, dear Ducky Darling!”
“Oh, the little black monkey that yelled sowhen——” Hanson began, but stopped. He did not wish to admit too much to this uncanny child.
But Owlet took up the thread he dropped, and said:
“Yes, she was the one who screamed so when you killed me right before her eyes. I should think she might. I heard her just as I went dead and heard the cymbals.”
Hanson said no more just then. He was thinking intently.
He knew that they were approaching a station, where the train would stop fifteen minutes for refreshments, and where this uncanny elf would certainly give him trouble unless he could circumvent her in some way.
“How far is the next place where the cars stop?” Owlet suddenly asked.
“About ten miles; but, my child, if we get off there we shall have to sit up all night at the station, for there is no train coming for Goeberlin that will stop there till to-morrow morning.”
“Well, I would not mind sitting up all night to get back to Lady in the morning,” said Owlet eagerly.
“Yes, but by going on a little further, and stopping at the second station, we can get a down train in a few minutes afterward, and get back to Goeberlin by nine o’clock, and to Lady by ten o’clock. Wouldn’t that be better?”
“How far is the second place we stop at off from here?” cautiously inquired Owlet before committing herself.
“Oh, only about fifteen miles. We shall soon get there.”
“And you’ll take me out and take me back home by the next train that passes?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“If you don’t, you know, I’ll raise a row, and then how will you feel?”
“How, indeed! But I assure you, on the honor of a gentleman, if, when we reach the second station you wish to get out, I will take you out.”
“There! We are coming to the first place now!”Owlet exclaimed as the steam whistle shrieked its warning.
“Yes, here we are,” Hanson said as the train drew near the station.
“Oh, I wish we could get out here and get home!” Owlet said.
“But we could not get back from here to-night, as I told you. But a few miles off we can get out and take the down train.”
“And will you—oh, will you take me back to my own Lady?”
“I have sworn it.”
“Are you sorry you killed me and brought me here?”
“But I did not kill you, little one. I would not have hurt you for the whole world. Now look straight in my face and tell me if you don’t believe me.”
“W-e-l-l,” drawled Owlet, hesitatingly, “I may believe you didn’t intend to do it, but you did do it, all the same, and what you did it for the Lord only knows—I don’t.”
Here the train stopped, and people began to leave their seats.
“What are they going out for?” inquired Owlet.
“To get something to eat. Shall I go and fetch you some cake and some sweet wine?”
“Oh, yes, do! I am awful hungry! My stomach’s gone to my backbone. I’m as hollow as—as anything.”
Hanson went out and crossed to the refreshment room, and soon returned with a paper bag of cakes and a glass of sweet wine.
“Here,” he said, “drink the wine first, because I must take the glass back to the room. You can eat your cake while I am getting something for myself.”
“All right,” said Owlet. “Don’t let me keep you.”
Hanson returned to the refreshment room, made as good a meal as he could under the circumstances, and came back to his seat just an instant before the train started.
Owlet had finished her lunch, and, being a tidy littleold party, she had gathered up the crumbs, put them in the paper bag, and thrown them out of the window.
“How do you feel?” inquired Hanson, looking at her attentively.
“So good,” murmured Owlet, raising her heavy eyelids for an instant and then letting them fall over the great, somber eyes as she sank back in her corner with a sigh of profound satisfaction.
The next moment she was fast asleep.
The sun was low in the west, and as their compartment was at the back of the car the level rays struck in through the window and shone upon the child’s head, seeming to kindle sparks in her golden brown hair.
The train was rushing eastward with fearful speed, but the motion only seemed to deepen the sleeper’s slumber.
Hanson lifted her from the corner and laid her on the sofa, arranged her comfortably, covered her, and tucked her in, and then drew down the blind to shade her face.
“She will give no more trouble to-night,” he said as he sat back in his seat and lighted a cigar, for it was now too dark to read with the curtains drawn.
The sun set, and the porter came in to light the lamp. The flash failed to wake the sleeping child; yet, as a precaution, Hanson drew out his pocket handkerchief and spread it over her face.
Then he took his newspaper and resumed his reading.
The porter left the compartment.
The sleeper slept on, and on, and on, through every stoppage and every start of the train, until it reached Philadelphia and ran into the lighted station.
She was so still that Hanson grew uneasy again, feeling that he was playing a dangerous game with this child, that might affect his life as well as her own. He felt her pulse, but found it perfectly normal. He lifted and turned her over, with her face away from the light. She drew a deep sigh of relief, as ifrefreshed by the change of position, and then sank into still deeper slumber.
Hanson left the train and went into the restaurant, where he made a very satisfactory, if rather late, dinner.
He took his seat in his compartment just as the train was about to start.
The child seemed sleeping well.
He lighted another cigar and smoked it out. Then he composed himself for a doze, while the train sped on from Philadelphia to New York.
It was half-past ten o’clock when the train ran into the depot at Jersey City.
Hanson lifted the sleeping child in his arms, arranged her dress, put on her hat, and laid her head over his shoulders, saying to himself:
“Now, I wonder what my yachting and sporting friends would think if they could see me here playing nursemaid to a young child.”
He laughed at the conceit as he stepped off the train and passed along the platform, mingling with the crowd hurrying to the ferryboat. He hurried onto the boat and into the saloon, where he found a seat in the most shady part of a well-lighted place. He sat down, laid the child across his knees and looked with some uneasiness into her sleeping face, when, to his dismay, she opened her great, solemn, brown eyes and looked at him. But there was no “speculation” in her gaze, and, with a weary sigh, she closed her eyes again and relapsed into slumber.
When the crowd of passengers had all found seats and leisure to look about them, several people, mostly women, noticed the young man with the sleeping child on his knees, a rather unusual sight.
“Look at that young father with his child on his lap. See how tender he is of her, how careful not to wake her,” said one woman to another.
“Yes; but where is the mother? There doesn’t seem to be anybody with him,” said her companion.
“Oh,” replied the first speaker, lowering her voice, “don’t you see, the poor young fellow is in black?”
“That’s nothing. So many men wear black. It is so becoming, you know,” said the second speaker.
“Yes; but the child is in black, too. Little girls don’t wear black frocks unless they are in mourning.”
“Oh, yes. I see. That’s so. Poor things. I’m sorry for both.”
Hanson overheard the whole conversation between the two women, their penetrating whispers rather more distinctly than their normal tones. And he smiled at their inferences. Yet he was not very easy in his mind, either. He was very much in dread of meeting some acquaintance, especially some young sporting man, who, recognizing him, and finding him in his present occupation, after so mysterious a disappearance and so long an absence, might embarrass him with questions or vex him with “chaff.”
A little later that was just what happened.
The ferryboat touched the pier at the foot of Cortlandt Street, and some people came on board to meet friends who were arriving by it.
Hanson recognized a few of his acquaintances among them, but, fortunately, they all seemed too much engaged in searching out and welcoming friends whom they had come to meet, to take any notice of him.
Carrying the child in his arms, Hanson left the boat with the crowd and stood in the midst of another crowd—a vociferous crowd of hackmen and hotel drummers.
Holding the child in one arm, with her head on his shoulder, he beckoned one yelling Jehu, and the man jumped to obey.
“Bring up your carriage at once,” said the young man, and the fortunate candidate for public patronage darted off with amazing alacrity to execute the commission, leaving his patron standing there, with the sleeping child in his arms.
The hackman had scarcely disappeared when Hanson was suddenly saluted with a startling clap on the shoulder and a——
“Hello! By Jove! Where did you come from? Dropped from the skies?”
“How are you, Larkins? I’m devilish glad to see you!” exclaimed Hanson, lying as coolly as he could, under the circumstances, and extricating his right hand to offer the newcomer, a tall, young fellow, with dark hair and mustache, light, gray eyes and pug nose—making up rather a good-humored, mocking countenance, and the last man on earth Hanson would have liked to meet. “Yes, I have dropped from the skies! In other words, just returned from an infernal voyage around the Horn.”
“Around the Horn! What the deuce ever took you around the Horn?”
“The merchant shipArgonaut, a beastly old wash-trough; but it is too long a story to tell you now.”
“And—hello!—what the deuce have you got there? I thought it was your duster thrown over your shoulder, but now I see it is something alive. What the mischief is it?”
“You may well ask. It is an orphan child, for whom and for whose estates I have the honor to be appointed guardian and trustee.”
“Holy poker! You appointed guardian of a child! Why, I should as soon think of your being consecrated bishop of New York!”
“So should I,” coolly responded Hanson.
“You’ll bring the boy up a spendthrift.”
“It is a girl.”
“A girl! Whe—ew! Pray, are you ordained nursemaid to an infant girl?”
“None of your nonsense, Larkins. This responsibility was thrust upon me suddenly. I did not choose to retain the young girl who was the child’s maid. She was too pretty and vivacious.”
“For the interests of propriety; I see. I didn’t know you were so very particular! But, then, I suppose, being left guardian to a child does ‘solemnize’ a man. But why didn’t you find an old woman?”
“Hadn’t time to look one up.”
“What are you going to do with the imp?”
“‘Imp’ you may well call her,” said Hanson, wincing at his own reminiscences.
“She was a deal of trouble on the journey, I dare say.”
“Not in the sense I think you mean. But she utterly repudiates me as her guardian. Favored me with her opinions in very plain language. Threatened to ‘kick up a row’ if I didn’t take her back to—to——”
“To whom?”
“To her handsome nursemaid. But she became very tired and soon went to sleep, and since that has given me no trouble at all.”
“Charming child! But, as I remarked before, what are you going to do with her?”
“I should have taken her to my mother and sister; but the first news I heard on reaching my native shores was that they had left theirs.”
“Yes; they sailed for Liverpool a few days ago, I am sorry to say, on my own account.”
“How do you and Reba get on?”
Larkins shrugged his shoulders and made no reply. “And, by the way, how came you down here? Whom did you expect to meet?”
“Not you, certainly, old chap; though I am deuced glad to see you. I came to meet themater, who was to have arrived by this train from Washington, only she didn’t come—she never does. I’m used to it. I shall find a tel. when I get back to Sixty-second Street.”
“Here’s my carriage now. Good-by, Larkins. Call and see me at the Star to-morrow.”
“Thank you. By-by.”
The friends parted.
Hanson went to the carriage.
Larkins waved his hand and walked off.
The hackman jumped down from his box and opened the door for his fare.
Hanson entered, and laid the child down on the cushion on the front seat, and sank down into the back one with a sigh of relief. The child had becomea burden, and he had not been accustomed to heavy burdens. He was very tired.
“Where, sir?” inquired Jehu.
“First, take these checks and go to the baggage car and get my valise and hatbox; and don’t be half so long about it as you were in bringing up the carriage,” said Hanson.
“So many vehicles ahead of me, sir, couldn’t get here any sooner,” said the man, as he took the credentials and darted off as swift as Jove’s Mercury.
He soon came back with the properties, which he piled up on his own seat, not to incommode the inside passengers.
Then he came around to the door and inquired:
“Where, sir?”
“To the Star.”
Jehu closed the door, sprang to his seat, and started his horses.
Twenty minutes’ rapid drive brought them to the “Star.”
It was now about a quarter to twelve o’clock.
Leaving the child sleeping on the cushions, and telling the hackman to wait, Hanson went into the office and inquired if he could engage a large bedroom for himself, with a small one communicating with it for his little ward, a child between five and six years of age.
He could, on the third floor front, was the answer he received.
Having registered his name—William Hanson, of New York, and ward—he returned to the carriage, attended by two porters, one of whom took his valise and hatbox, and the other the sleeping child.
Hanson paid and discharged the hack, and then followed the porters into the house—first into the reception room, and then by the elevator to the third story, where he was shown into his small suit of two rooms.
One porter set the luggage down on the floor, and the other laid the sleeping child down on the bed.
Hanson “tipped” them both, and dismissed them.
Then he turned up the gas, and went to look at his poor little charge. A change had come over her. Her face was flushed, her skin was hot and dry, her lips parched, her pulse quick, and her breathing short.
“Poor little devil, I am afraid I have done for her!” said Hanson to himself, in some alarm, as he hastily and awkwardly unfastened the child’s clothes and took off her upper garments, her hat, frock, shoes and stockings.
Then he lifted her in his arms, bore her into the next room and laid her in the cool, fresh bed.
“I wonder if they have put any ice water in the room?” he said, as he went in search of some.
Yes; he found a pitcher full, fished out a lump of ice, broke it into small pieces and put it in a glass. Then he took a towel, put it in the washbasin, poured ice water over it, squeezed it out, folded it, and with that and the pounded ice returned to the little room and to the child’s bedside.
Then he bathed her face, laid the cold, wet towel on her hot and throbbing forehead, and put a thin flake of ice within her parched lips.
She sucked it mechanically and murmured in her sleep:
“Lady—Ducky Darling—chickies.”
Hanson sat down beside her, gave her little chips of ice and renewed the wet towels on her head at intervals. Her skin seemed getting cooler, her breathing softer, but her pulse was still very quick.
“She is going to be ill, I fear. But she is certainly not in any imminent danger at present,” he said, as he arose from his chair, lowered the gas and left the room.
He went downstairs to the supper room and ordered a small but epicurean repast. After he had partaken of this he passed into the reading room and looked over all the day’s papers. Finally he lighted a cigar, and went out for a stroll on the sidewalk.
It was after one o’clock when he re-entered the house and went up to his rooms.
He found Owlet much worse than he had left her.She was burning up with fever, moaning and turning in her sleep.
“This will never do. She is going to be very ill. I must have a physician in the morning. But what if he discovers that the child has been drugged? I shall have to tell him that she has been suffering from malarial fever, accompanied with severe pain in her limbs, and that I had to give her morphia on the train. But I must do what I can for the poor little wretch to-night. This is not opium poisoning, however. It is something else. The combined effect of all that has happened to her to-day. And it need not be fatal,” Hanson concluded, as he took off his coat and sat down beside the child to watch her through the night and cool her scorching head with cold towels and her parched throat with flakes of ice.
No good woman could have been more tender in her ministrations than was this bad man, though their motives would have been different—the first serving from love or benevolence, the second from selfishness, though something of pity, compunction and apprehension entered into his motive.
He dozed in his armchair by the bedside of the child, but woke whenever she moaned or tossed, and moistened her lips with flakes of ice, or cooled her forehead by a fresh application of a wet towel.
So passed the night, until in the gray of the morning, overcome by fatigue, Hanson fell fast asleep in his chair.