CHAPTER XVIWHO ABDUCTED OWLET?
“The child has been abducted,” said Roma, turning very pale, and closing her lips very grimly.
Her two companions looked up in alarm.
“By whom, in the name of heaven, do you think??” inquired Parson Shaw.
“I am not certain,” she replied.
“What shall you do?” asked Lawyer Merritt.
“Order a carriage, though it will be of little or no use, so far as the recovery of the child is concerned, if she has been carried off by the person whom I suspect,”Roma said, her lip beginning to quiver and her eyes to fill, despite all her firmness.
“Whom do you suspect, my dear?” inquired the parson, while the countenance of the lawyer expressed the question which he did not put in words.
“There is only one person open to suspicion,” she said.
“That dandy devil, Hanson!” exclaimed Mr. Merritt.
“Hanson! Yes, there can be little doubt but that he has had me under espionage for a long time past, even while he himself was far away, and has learned, among other facts, my adoption of and affection for this child, and may hope to get a hold on me through my attachment to her. Yet, really, the plan seems so futile, the means so inadequate to the end proposed, as to be quite unworthy of the intelligence even of Hanson. So he may not, after all, have been the abductor.”
“But if not Hanson, who then?” demanded Mr. Merritt.
“I don’t know. But we are losing precious time. I will go and order the carriage. Will you kindly accompany me to the village, gentlemen?”
“Certainly.” “Of course; with pleasure,” responded the parson and the lawyer in a breath.
And the three turned toward the house—Miss Frond leading the weeping black infant, who seemed to have been converted into an inexhaustible fountain of tears.
“We will take the child with us. The drive may distract her grief,” said Roma as they walked on.
On the lawn before the house they found Puck, who had just returned from the post office with a packet of letters and papers in his hand.
“Take them into the parlor, and leave them on the table. I have no time to look at them now,” said Miss Fronde.
“Yes, ma’am,” replied the negro. Then, noticing Ducky Darling: “W’y, wot de name ob sense is de matter ’long o’ yo’, Dorky?” he inquired of the wailing little one.
“W’ite man!—Owly!—ta’yidge!” wailed the child.
“Wot? Wot she mean, young mist’ess?” politely questioned the father.
“Owlet has been carried off in a carriage by some man.”
“Oh, Lor’!”
“There is no time to talk about it now.”
“An’ she jus’ doted on dat w’ite chile, Dorky did. Who could ’a’ done it?” persisted the amazed negro.
“We are going to see. Hurry, now, and put the bays to the barouche, and bring it around to the door.”
“Is me or Uncle Pompous to dribe?”
“You. Hasten!”
“Nebber heard ob sich a fing in all my born days! Man to steal a w’ite chile? Wot ebber any man want ’long ob a chile wot don’t ’long to him passes me. Trouble ’nuff wid dem we has to ’vide fo’,” muttered Puck to himself as he ran away to do his errands.
Miss Fronde passed into the house, went upstairs, put on her bonnet, mantle and gloves, covered Ducky Darling’s little curly black head with one of Owlet’s hats, and came down, leading the child, into the hall, where she found the two gentlemen ready, and waiting for her.
The carriage was at the door. They entered it, Mr. Merritt lifting the little darky to a seat beside her mistress, and were soon on their way.
An hour’s rapid drive brought them to the village.
They drew up before the Goeberlin House, where Mr. Merritt got out to make inquiries concerning the suspected man, who, if he stopped any time in the little town, must have put up there, as it was the only hotel of any sort in the place.
He entered the office to interview the clerk, while Roma remained with her companions in the carriage, anxiously awaiting the result of the lawyer’s investigation.
The little darky had cried herself into a state of collapse and quietness, with her head on Roma’s lap.
In about fifteen minutes Merritt came out with a very grave face.
“Well?” anxiously exclaimed the young lady. “Well?”
The lawyer, standing at the carriage door, made this report:
“Hanson has been staying at the Goeberlin House for the past two days. This morning he hired a carriage from its stables, saying that he was going some miles in the country to bring a little ward who had been left to his guardianship, and take her with him to the North. He was gone about two hours, and returned to the house about an hour and a half ago, bringing the child with him. The child was not taken out of the carriage. She lay very still on the cushions, and seemed to be asleep. Mr. Hanson only stopped long enough to pay his bill and get his valise, and then was driven rapidly off to the railway depot to catch the 1:30P.M.train for the East.”
Such was the story told by the hotel clerk, and repeated by Mr. Merritt.
“To ‘make assurance doubly sure,’ let us drive at once to the depot and make inquiries there,” said Miss Fronde.
The lawyer re-entered the carriage, took his seat, and gave the order.
The horses’ heads were turned, and a few minutes’ fast driving brought them to the depot.
As soon as the carriage was drawn up Mr. Merritt got out and went to the ticket window to ask questions, while his companions waited inside the vehicle in anxious suspense.
In a very few minutes the lawyer returned, and standing in his former position before the carriage door, made his second report, from the ticket clerk and the railway porter:
“A gentleman answering the description of Hanson had come in a close carriage just before the 1:30P.M.train for Baltimore was due. He had taken tickets and engaged a compartment for himself and a little child, who seemed to be sick or sleeping, for he carried her very carefully and tenderly in his arms.”
That was all the employes of the depot could tell.
“Now, you see, he must have chloroformed, or in some other manner drugged and stupefied that unfortunate child, in order to get off with her. He is certainly a most prominent candidate for an election, by a jury of his countrymen, to the penitentiary,” said Mr. Merritt.
Roma was very pale and silent.
The old parson looked from the lawyer to the lady, but said nothing.
“Well, he has got off with the child. But we can telegraph—we can telegraph to the police at Baltimore to arrest him at the depot. And that will be likely to end his career in the State prison. How a man of his intelligence could so recklessly put himself in the power of the law is an act of madness I cannot understand. But I will telegraph at once,” concluded the lawyer, turning from the carriage door to re-enter the depot.
“No,” said Roma, speaking for the first time. “Do not telegraph. He has not put himself in the power of the law. I only wished to ascertain whether Hanson was the man who carried off the child. Now I have done so, I see that I cannot interfere. Let us go home.”
“My dear Roma!” exclaimed the astonished lawyer, “is it possible that you do not know that this scoundrel has committed a felony in the abduction of your ward, for which you can send him to the State prison?”
“Oh, no; we could not convict him of any crime in this case.”
“Why, what do you mean, my dear? Why, in the name of reason and justice, could we not convict him?”
“Because the child he has carried off is his own,” calmly replied Miss Fronde.
“His?” demanded the dazed lawyer.
“His own child—the child of his deceased wife.”
“My dear Roma!” exclaimed the lawyer in utter amazement, while the parson opened wide his eyes and stared in consternation.
“Get in the carriage, Mr. Merritt, and I will explain as we go along. But first tell the coachman to take us back to the Goeberlin House. I would like to question the man who drove this hack. I would like to know exactly how the abduction was effected,” Miss Fronde said.
The lawyer gave the order and resumed his seat.
They reached the Goeberlin House, and sent a boy who was loitering on the sidewalk to fetch the hackman they wanted from the stables.
A young negro man answered the summons. He came up to the carriage door, bowed, and stood at attention.
Roma herself questioned him.
He answered that he had driven the “ge’man” down Goblin Hall road, but had stopped the carriage some distance from the great gate, at the “ge’man’s” orders, where the “ge’man” got out, telling him to wait. The “ge’man” was gone about fifteen minutes, and then came up the road from the direction of the gate, bringing a child, who seemed to be asleep, in his arms, and that another child—a little black child—followed, running and screaming, until the carriage drove off and left her behind. He drove the “ge’man” to the hotel, where he got out to pay his bill and get his valise, and then he drove them to the depot, where they took the 1:30 train for Baltimore. That was all he knew.
Roma thanked the man and dismissed him.
“Now let us go home,” she said.
The order was given, and the carriage started.
“And now you see she must have been chloroformed in the first instance,” said Mr. Merritt.
“And you say she was his own child, Roma? How could that have been, my dear?” inquired Dr. Shaw.
“Yes, dear friends, Owlet is William Hanson’s own child,” Roma replied.
“Explain, my dear,” said Mr. Merritt.
“That poor young woman, known to us as Madam Marguerite Nouvellini, who died in my arms in Washington a few days ago, was the abandoned wife of William Hanson, who had married her under a falsename when he was but a youth and she little more than a child. She never knew his real name. A few months after their marriage he left her in Paris, and went, under pretence of business, to California, from where he wrote piteous letters from a pretended bed of sickness—letters which grew shorter and more piteous—until at length they prepared her to receive a black-bordered and black-sealed letter from his invented physician announcing his death from the fever. To the hour of her death she never knew her decamped husband was still living.”
“Roma, my dear child, are you quite sure of what you are telling us? For the story shows the man to be a greater sinner, if possible, than we have yet believed him,” said Parson Shaw.
“Quite sure, my dear doctor. I have indubitable proof of the fact.”
“Did you know all this when you first took the poor young woman under your protection?” inquired Mr. Merritt.
“No, not then, but in a very few weeks afterward. She was a very simple, childlike creature. She put me in possession of her short life’s story. She showed me the picture of her husband—Guilliaume Nouvellini she called him—who met her at a Parisian theater, and married her there. I recognized the picture as that of William Hanson. His sister, Rebecca Bushe, has the counterpart of it. She showed me also some of the letters and verses he had written to her, in which she took the greatest pride, poor soul! I recognized his peculiar, well-known handwriting. I was, therefore, absolutely certain that the dead Guilliaume Nouvellini, the husband for whom she had been mourning for nearly five years, and the living William Hanson, who had tried to marry me, were one and the same man.”
“You did not tell her this?”
“Of course not. Of what use could the information have been to her, poor soul? Why should I have disturbed the last days of a dying wife by such a tale? No, she never knew it.”
“Are you sure that there was a lawful marriage?” inquired Parson Shaw.
“She showed me the documentary proofs both of her marriage and of the birth and baptism of her child, which she carefully preserved, because, she said, she was the granddaughter and heiress of Mrs. Arbuthnot, of Arbuthnot, in the Highlands of Scotland, whom, however, she had never once seen, for the reason that the stern old lady, who was of ancient family, and of the Church of Scotland, and prejudiced both by birth and by creed against the stage, had discarded her only child, Marguerite’s mother, for marrying an actor. Marguerite, however, cherished hopes that, now the old lady was nearly eighty, she might, before death, relent toward her descendants and seek them out.”
“I should think it highly probable she would,” said Lawyer Merritt.
“No professing Christian, as she is reported to be, dare go before the Divine Judge with malice in her heart,” added Parson Shaw.
“Have you these documents, my dear?” inquired the lawyer.
“Certainly; very carefully put away,” replied Roma.
“And, of course, you have written to the Scotch lady?” added Dr. Shaw.
“Yes, of course. Immediately after the death of that poor young creature I wrote to Mrs. Arbuthnot, giving her full particulars of her granddaughter and the condition in which her infant great-grandchild was left. I said nothing of William Hanson. There has not yet been time to receive an answer to my letter,” concluded Roma.
“Do you think, my dear, that Hanson knows the child he has carried off to be his own daughter?” inquired Dr. Shaw.
“I have not a doubt of it. Else he would not have dared to take her. I suppose he has had me under espionage for a long time, and even during his long disappearance. I think, of course, that he knows theparentage of my adopted pet as well as he knows my affection for her.”
“Now, my dear Roma, are you quite sure that you have not been deceived in this matter? Even that your poor protégée was not herself deceived?” inquired Lawyer Merritt.
“Quite sure. I can show you documents and correspondence that will place the matter beyond question, even of a Washington lawyer. But here we are at home.”
The carriage drew up before the entrance.
Puck got down from his box and opened the door.
The two gentlemen alighted.
Poor Ducky Darling had cried herself to sleep, sitting on the floor of the carriage, with her head on Roma’s lap.
She lifted her very tenderly, and said:
“Here, Puck, take little Dorcas very carefully, so as not to wake her, and carry her to her mother. Never mind the horses for the present. You know they will stand until you return.”
The man obeyed under protest.
“’Deed, young mist’ess, yo’ sp’ils dis young ’un! ’Deed yo’ does. ’Taine no good treatin’ ob her jus’ like she was a w’ite chile! ’Deed it ain’t! ’Ca’se yo’ see yo’ can’t keep it up, yo’ know, w’en she gets ol’er,” he said, as he carried off his little burden.
“The man is in the right, my dear,” said Dr. Shaw as he gave his hand to Roma to help her from the carriage.
Miss Fronde threw off her bonnet, mantle and gloves in the hall, where the gentlemen also left their hats, for they were to stay and dine.
The three entered the sitting-room and found seats.
“Well, we have returned from a fruitless errand,” said Mr. Merritt, with a sigh.
“Not quite, since we know for a certainty that it was the father who carried off the child; and surely no father, not even Hanson, could fail to be kind to his own and only child—the child of his youth and love, the motherless child of his young, deserted, deadwife,” said Miss Fronde, trying to console herself for the loss of her protégée, “and at least we have got rid of Hanson,” she added.
“Only for the present, I fear. He is a very persistent wretch,” said Merritt.
“Yes, he will come again, and that brings me to what I intended to say to you, my dear Roma, as soon as I knew that you had returned to live here alone, and before I had heard the sad story you told me this morning.”
“Speak your mind, dear Dr. Shaw. I shall be grateful for your counsel. It was to seek it, you know, that I begged your presence here this morning,” Roma replied.
“Then, my dear girl, this is what I wished to say to you—that since you declined to accompany your relatives abroad, and have decided to live here, in this remote manor house, you should not live alone.”
“I do not. I have faithful servants and powerful dogs. I am perfectly safe here,” said Miss Fronde.
“In person, yes, perhaps. But that is not the question, my dear. You will understand me when I say that you should have some elderly, respectable woman—some lady, in fact—to live with you as your chaperon and companion.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Miss Fronde. “Should I? Is that necessary?”
“Absolutely necessary, in my opinion, Roma.”
“Cannot a woman, nearly twenty-three years of age, who is intrusted with the management of a large estate and the expenditure of a princely revenue, be also trusted with the care of herself?”
“Not in the opinion of the world, my dear Roma. For the world rates—and rightly rates—a woman’s fair reputation far above land or money,” gravely replied the old minister.
Roma’s fair face flushed crimson to the edges of her blond hair.
“But,” she said, somewhat indignantly, “I think the world places a very low and evil estimate on woman when it presumes to infer that because she is neithermarried, widowed nor aged, she cannot, therefore, be trusted to preserve her own good name and fair fame.”
“Perhaps so, my child,” temperately replied the old rector, “but we are not the autocrats of society; public opinion is, and it is generally right; so that in every instance in which it does not conflict with conscience we should submit to its laws.”
“Very well, Dr. Shaw. I will advertise for an elderly lady as chaperon, though I do shrink from having the constant companionship of a perfect stranger,” said Roma submissively.
“Well, child, it is a risk, I know; for even in the most respectable woman, most highly recommended, you may chance to find an uncongenial companion, or you may find a ‘perfect treasure.’ But you can always get rid of one who does not suit.”
“Oh, no,” said Roma, “that is just what I could never do. Once having taken a ‘poor lady,’ as such a person must be, into the house, I should not like to send her away.”
“No,” said Mr. Merritt, breaking into the tête-à-tête for the first time, “Roma would keep her for the term of her natural life, however disagreeable she might be—an incubus, an old man of the sea. So you must be very careful, my dear girl, in your selection of a chaperon—as careful as a man should be in the choosing of a wife.”
A summons to dinner broke up the conference.