Chapter XXIV: He Goes to His Doom

Harcourt did not go to bed that night. He sat by the back window, with his head bowed upon his hands, or he rose and walked up and down the door of his room.

Until midnight the sound of his neighbor’s sewing machine kept him company. Then it ceased. He threw himself for the last time in his chair, and sat with his elbow on the window sill, his forehead on his fingers, trying to nerve his soul for the ordeal in store for him.

When the earliest streaks of dawn appeared in the east he got up, bathed his face, and prepared to set out for Adler’s rooms.

Harcourt was without a dollar, and it was necessary to borrow money to pay his way to Virginia.

As he went into the hall he heard Annie stirring about in her apartment.

He went and rapped at her door.

She quickly opened it, saying:

“Good-morning, Mr. William. I knew it was you. I heard you come out of your own room.”

“Yes, Annie; I must go to see Adler before starting on my journey. I just stopped to ask you if you would be so good as to prepare the child to accompany me. You can tell her that I am going to take her to Lady.”

“Yes, Mr. William; but suppose Lady won’t have her?”

“I cannot suppose anything of the sort in the case of this lady and child; but even in the improbable event you suggest I should be able to place the little one in good hands,” said Harcourt, thinking of the benevolent and prosperous Wynthrops, as he turned to go.

“Mr. William!” said Annie, calling him back.

“Well, Annie?”

“You’ll have no call to get anything or to worry over the fire, just as you are going on a long journey. I will have breakfast ready by the time you come back from Adler’s.”

“Oh, Annie!” he said, with a deprecating sigh, “how you do invite me to impose on you.”

“Now, Mr. William, you know I’m a lone widow, growing old, without even an ‘only son of his mother’ to comfort me, unless it’s you, and I feel like a mother to you.”

“Since ever I have known you, Annie, you have been like—a dear, elder sister; but lately you have done too much for me.”

“No! no! Mr. William. And as for this, why, it’s nothing. Besides, you wouldn’t have time to go to Adler’s and come back and cook your breakfast and catch your train.”

“No, indeed, I should not, Annie; so now I must thank you and hurry away.”

He ran downstairs, out of the house, and down the street to the avenue, where he hailed a car and jumped on board.

Ten minutes’ ride brought him to the corner of the street on which Adler lived.

He jumped off the car and ran up the sidewalk until he reached his friend’s home.

It was still so early that the family had just risen.

The wife was getting breakfast ready.

“You are our morning star, Mr. William. You always shine before sunrise,” said Mrs. Adler, laughing at her own fancy, as she wiped her fingers and shook hands with him; but the next instant she saw his woebegone face, and hastened to exclaim:

“Something has happened to you, Mr. William! What is it? Can Adler or I do anything for you?”

“You are right, my friend. I have had very bad news. My mother is ill, perhaps dying. I am called to her bedside,” Harcourt replied.

“Oh, I am so sorry,” said the sympathetic woman.

“Adler, can I speak to you a moment?” he inquired of the man.

“Certainly. Mr. William. Come, and we will take a walk on the pavement while the mother is getting breakfast,” said the man, leading the way out.

As they paced up and down before the house Harcourt told his friend of his trouble, and ended by saying:

“This evening we shall all be paid off our semimonthly wages, but as I shall not be at work to-day the contractor will only owe me for eleven days’ work. That will be sixteen dollars and fifty cents. Now, Adler, if you can conveniently advance me that money I will give you an order to receive my wages, due to-night, and I shall be more than grateful to you for a very great accommodation. It is to pay the expenses of my journey south, for I have not a dollar. Nothing but the extreme illness of my mother would induce me to——”

“Now, Sir. William, not another word, or you’ll hurt my feelings!” exclaimed Adler, interrupting the speaker. “I owe you every cent I have in the world. I owe you life itself. Ever since that night when you plucked me out of the very jaws of death and hell I have had good luck. I have had steady work, and never lost a day, or a half day. Nor has the wife, nor any of the kids, had an hour of illness. That was the turning point of my luck, Mr. William, and it was you, under Providence, that turned it. I have lived well and saved up forty-seven dollars, and every single dollar of it is heartily at your service,” he added cordially, catching and clasping the hand of his friend.

“Thank you! thank you!” warmly exclaimed Harcourt. “Thank you! But the amount that may be covered by the wages due me will be amply sufficient for my necessities. Nor would it be honest in me to borrow more, for heaven only knows whether I should ever be able to repay you.”

“Oh, hush! hush! You hurt my feelings! You do, indeed! Come in, now, and I will get the ammunition for the battle of life,” said Adler.

They had been walking back toward the house, and had now reached the door.

They entered the room where the wife had the breakfast ready.

“Your husband will tell you all about it, Mrs. Adler,” said Harcourt in answer to her anxious, questioning looks.

Adler went into an inner room, but soon returned with a sealed envelope, which he silently put in the hand of his friend.

Harcourt pressed his hand in mute thanks, and then—declining their hospitable invitation to join their morning meal, on the plea that he had to hasten back to his lodgings with all speed, to pack his valise and catch his train—took leave of the kind family, ran to the corner of the street, boarded a passing car, and rode home.

He found breakfast waiting on Annie’s stove, ready to be put on the table, and little Owlet in the seventh heaven of delight at the prospect of being taken immediately home to Lady by Mr. William.

Harcourt spent but little time over his repast and then went to his room to pack his bag.

Looking around, and remembering that he should never return to that room, and that its simple furniture might be worth something to his kind neighbor, he called her.

She came to him promptly.

He could not find it in his heart to sadden her by telling her he should never come back again, so, when, after waiting a minute for him to tell her why he had called her, she inquired:

“What is it, Mr. William? What can I do for you?” He answered:

“You know, Annie, that our landlord’s prudent agent always makes us pay the month’s rent in advance.”

“Yes, Mr. William; and I think it is just as well, for it’s off our minds then, you know.”

“Yes. Well, I have paid my month’s rent in advance, as usual. I will leave you the receipt for the rent, Annie. There are three weeks yet to run. If I should not return at the end of that time you may give up my room, Annie, and take possession of my furniture. I give it all to you. In the meantime, dear soul, use this room and all there is in it as if it were your own. The weather will soon be warm, and from my room here you will get the sea breeze.”

“Oh, Mr. William, you make my heart ache! Why do you talk so? You are not going to die! You are young and healthy! You will come back all right!” said Annie, with her eyes swimming in tears.

“Annie,” he said, forcing a smile, “there are other changes besides death, you know.”

“That is true,” she murmured. “You might come into a fortune, or you might get married, or you might do both. But you will write and tell me?”

“Oh, yes, I will write and tell you; but I want you to know now that after I am gone you are to use this room and furniture as your own to the end of the month, and then, if I do not return, take possession of the furniture,” concluded Harcourt, feeling a secret satisfaction in the knowledge that, whatever should happen to him in the near future, this good woman and sympathetic friend would never know the tragedy of his life—would never recognize in William Harcourt, the convict, William Williams, the young workman.

“If anything prevents your coming back, Mr. William, I hope it will be a wife and a fortune,” said Annie as she left the room.

Harcourt locked his valise, took a last look around his apartment, and followed her.

When he re-entered Annie’s room he found Owlet dressed for her journey.

Poor Annie had invested another dollar of her scanty savings for the child’s benefit.

She knew that it would not be proper to start the child on a railway journey with a gentleman—and Annie had never been misled into any mistake as to “Mr. William’s” real social position—in a pink calico frock and a white apron, and so she extinguished Owlet’s fiery plumage under a little brown coat, more suitable to a little bird of wisdom, and for which she had paid sixty cents at that convenient corner store for which she worked. She put a brown ribbon of the same shade of the coat on the little straw hat, in place of the blue band, put a pair of ten-cent brown gloves on the tiny hands, and a five-cent handkerchief in the little pocket, with—which was an injudicious put—a penny roll of peppermint lozenges. Last of all, she folded up a paper of sandwiches for luncheon, and gave them to Owlet, charging her to hand them over to Mr. William when they should have taken their seats in the car.

“And now you are all equipped for your travels, little mite, and may the Lord have you in his care,” said Annie, just as Harcourt entered the room, valise in hand.

He did not notice Owlet’s traveling dress, much less compute its cost, or ask himself where the cash had come from that paid for it. He was as ignorant of all such knowledge as the child was. And Owlet herself must have been surprised had she suddenly discovered how little of common sense was possessed either by herself or her protector on this subject. Childlike, she took all this for granted. Harcourt’s mind was burdened by heavier matters.

He bade good-by to Annie with emotion that she could not understand. She did not know, as he did, that this was probably, almost certainly, their final parting.

And in this he had still only the one poor consolation—that when she should read in the newspapers of the conscience-stricken criminal who had given himself up to justice she would never think of connecting him with her sometime neighbor.

After this sad leave taking Harcourt led his little protégé out of the house and to the foot of Cortlandt Street, which was not far off. They boarded the ferryboat as it was about to start.

“Do you remember ever having crossed this water before?” inquired Harcourt as the boat steamed away from the pier.

“No,” Owlet answered.

“Yet you must have crossed this water when you came to this city.”

“Must I?”

“Of course.”

“Well, then, I must have crossed it while I was dead. I went dead several times while—while I was with him.”

“Him? Who?”

“The man who took me away from Lady and Ducky Darling.”

“Who was that man, my dear?”

“Oh, I don’t know; but Lady wouldn’t let him come in, and he wouldn’t go away, and Pompous Pirate set the dog on him—Tiger, you know.”

Harcourt knew perfectly well; and if he ever had had a doubt as to the identity of the child’s abductor that doubt was set at rest now. He also understood what Owlet meant by going dead, and by what means the child stealer had managed to quiet her at intervals during their journey.

When the boat reached Jersey City, Harcourt, leading the child with one hand and his valise in the other, hurried on with the throng to the depot. When he reached the ticket office and took out and opened Adler’s sealed envelope, he found, not the sixteen dollars and fifty cents he had asked for, but thirty dollars, in three notes of ten each.

“More than half of his six months’ savings,” he said to himself. “Ah, me! the more I see of Adler the worse I think of myself. But his money must not be used—no, indeed, it must not. I must return it as soon as I get to Washington, and trust to Providence for future supplies.”

He took tickets for himself and the child and hurried to the train. In two more minutes they were seated side by side in the common car, Harcourt next the window, lest Owlet should endanger her safety by putting her head out of it.