Chapter XXI: 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.