Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

“ AT GOBLIN HALL Little Owlet, though a young child, was an old traveler. Before she met her benefactress the days of her life that had not been spent in hotels and theaters had been passed in steamboats and railway trains. So to her there was none of the novelty that so much delights children. Yet she could not but enjoy the rapid motion through a beautiful country just bursting into leaf and blossom all over the land.
Mr. Merritt’s friendly care had supplied Roma with all the new magazines, and for Owlet a basket of fruit and confectionery. ”

“ It is bad to look at, but it makes her better; she always says so. She is better, really, now, is she not?” pleaded the child, looking in doubt at the changed features of her mother.
“Yes, my darling, she is better now,” said Roma in a broken voice as she took the hand of Owlet to lead her away.
But the child was now gazing in terror at the face of death. She snatched her hand from Roma’s clasp and flung herself upon the dead bosom, crying:
“Mamma! mamma! Oh, mamma! What is the matter now? What makes you look so? Oh, ma’am, what is the matter with my mamma? Why don’t she speak to me?” ”

“ There, nestled among the trees, she saw the little whitewashed shanty, with clotheslines full of newly washed clothes hanging all around it.
“Poor souls!” Roma said to herself. “That is the nearest approach to the country life they long for to be found in the suburbs of the city; and how much better is that little nest in the fragrant pine wood than a room in a stifling tenement house.”
As she walked toward the shanty, Lucy, in a red turban and a blue gown, came out of the house with a tub of clothes in her hands, and began to take them out and hang them on the line. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Harcourt replied never a word, but walked on like a condemned prisoner before his executioner.
“Oh, come! Pull yourself together! You have lost Roma, to be sure; but just consider what you have saved, man—your life, your liberty, your good name, your future, your ambition, your proud career, your aged mother’s life and peace of mind, your betrothed bride’s honor and reputation—all these that you have saved by one sacrifice, you would have lost, had you been proved a swindler, a sneak thief and a murderer. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Owlet looked and listened in solemn disapproval.
“What do you think about it, ma’am?” inquired Roma, to draw the child out.
“I don’t like to say,” she answered.
“Oh, but I insist.”
“Well, then, if Tom had talked that way I should think Tom was not possessed of common sense.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Roma.
“Don’t mind her,” pleaded Marguerite. “She don’t know any better. She is such a strange child. Her mind is not right. I do think she is half an idiot.” ”

“ To whom ought she to have been married? Such questions, relative to a woman, right or wrong, just or unjust, reasonable or unreasonable, must always be damaging. Curiosity investigates without justice; thoughtlessness perverts, and malice distorts. I must be prepared to meet all this,” concluded Roma, with a profound sigh.
“My dear child,” said Dr. Shaw, “give me your authority to tell your whole story from beginning to end, without any concealments from your friends and neighbors, and believe me, Roma, it will meet with nothing but full confidence, sympathy and admiration. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ At length, with a desperate resolution, as one who had been compelled to go into fire would take the plunge, he tore open the letter, and read:
“Will, my own dear Will, I have only just this instant learned where you are staying. Come to me at once, my beloved. We cannot reach a mutual understanding by letters. I am just starting for Goblin Hall. Meet me there. Your own
Roma.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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?” ”

“ 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? ”

“ Harcourt laid the child down on his white bed, shrinking involuntarily from the offensiveness of the foul rag that wrapped her.
“And she talks of Roma, and Mr. Merritt, and Dr. Shaw! It is very strange. I cannot comprehend it all. But I will appeal to Annie. Annie will be able to learn more from her than I could,” he said to himself.
“Oh, please, sir, will you give me something to eat?” asked the child.
“Yes, dear. Are you so very hungry?” kindly inquired Harcourt.
“Oh! so hungry—so very hungry! I never was so hungry in all my life before. ”

“ She found Owlet, who always rose with the birds and the chickens, already up and dressed, and sitting on the steps of the porch, with her pup at her feet, and with her tiny workbasket beside her, filled with scraps of brilliant satin and velvet and spools of bright sewing silk, busy at work on the square of a crazy quilt. Owlet never dressed dolls, never played with or possessed one. ”

“ Roma replied.
“Yes,” added Owlet, striking into the conversation, “you need not think we only like to see you for what you can do for us. We like to see you because we like you.”
“Thank you, ma’am; that is very complimentary,” laughed the old lawyer.
“I meant it to be,” said Owlet solemnly.
“Now, Roma, my dear,” said Mr. Merritt, as he rose to bid them good-night, “instead of meeting you at the depot at nine o’clock to-morrow morning, as I had first intended to do, I shall call here with a carriage at half-past eight to take you and the child there.” ”

“ Owlet seated herself beside the invalid boy, and said:
“Titus, I have got such lots and lots and lots to tell you! Not such stories like Cinderella, because them’s all lies, you know; but real, awful ’ventures with a wicked man, who was not possessed of a grain of common sense, and stole children away and made them go dead! Yes, and about horrid old women who smell enough to knock you down, and tell you such lies! Oh! I’ve got lots of ’ventures to tell you, Titus.” ”

“ Our bodies are not ourselves—they are only the things we live in; they are no more ourselves than our gloves are our hands, or our shoes are our feet. Do you understand, dear? Your mamma is not here in that body; she is well and happy in a better place. You understand?”
“Oh, yes, but I want my mamma. Oh, I want my own mamma!” the child wailed, and would not be comforted.
Roma held her again in her arms, and kissed and embraced her, and wished with all her heart that some one would come into the room. ”

“ There was another reason, also, why Roma wished to get away from Goblin Hall as soon as possible.
Paul Stone, in his character of adviser and assistant in the work of founding the free colored school, had been an almost daily visitor at the hall. He had been attracted and fascinated by the gracious and majestic beauty of the person and character of Roma Fronde. He loved, adored and worshiped her. He was completely infatuated with her, and though he never breathed the passion that was consuming him, he constantly betrayed himself. ”

“ I was not even aware that you had set up a wife. May I ask what misguided woman was idiot enough to marry you? Accept my congratulations,” said the lawyer dryly.
“You know very well, sir, that I allude to your former ward. Miss Roma Fronde, who became my wife on the fifteenth of last November,” Hanson said with cool insolence.
“Or, rather, whom you sought to marry, without her knowledge or consent, by the basest fraud that ever was practiced upon human being. That fraudulent marriage ceremony was set aside by the courts as illegal, therefore null and void,” Mr. Merritt explained. ”

“ You are prettier than the flowers and sweeter than the birdies!” said Owlet.
“Dese aine birdies; dey is chickies,” said the little negro.
“You are sweeter and prettier than the chickies, then. You darling thing! What is your name?”
“Docky,” replied the black child.
“Ducky? Oh, Ducky, I love you! Ducky, darling! Ducky, darling!” exclaimed Owlet, suddenly throwing her arms around the black child and kissing her. “You are a Ducky darling. You shall be my little playmate. Come to the house with me now, and see my dear lady. I want to show you to her, and I want to show her to you, as well. ”

“ Cutts, I must entreat you to drop it, after this, my ultimatum: That as you will only speak in vindication of some innocent person, I repeat that no innocent person shall be accused or suffer for me. Now that we perfectly understand each other, pray let us say no more about the horror,” said Harcourt, turning his head away from his persecutor. ”

“ She heard every detail of her abduction from Goblin Hall, her journey, and her sojourn in New York, that the child knew, and, much more than any one else, had been able to draw from her.
All Miss Fronde’s worst suspicions were confirmed, and she resolved to defend little Owlet against Hanson, even if she should have to do so in the courts of justice, as the child’s “best friend.” She also emphasized her resolution to take the orphan to Scotland with her, and to bring her, if possible, to the acquaintance of that austere ancestress of whom poor Marguerite Nouvellini had spoken with so much awe. ”

“ My dear child!” sighed the old minister, taking her hand.
Roma winced. She hated to be pitied, even by her kind-hearted pastor.
“The only way in which the wretch can hurt me is by his false, unscrupulous tongue. He will tell every one who will listen to him that he married me, while I am known to be living here as a single woman. This will cause humiliating gossip. People always get facts distorted in cases like this, out of the routine of life. Questions will be asked and answered recklessly. ”

“ She sank down on the solitary chair beside the bed, and holding the waiter of breakfast in her lap, said:
“Now sit up and take this, while I get a good look at you.”
Again, with a feeble smile, Harcourt obeyed her, took the offered cup from her hand, and while he eagerly quaffed the fragrant coffee, which he found so grateful to his parched throat and fainting frame, she regarded him with the eyes of experience.
“Yes, young man,” she said gravely and tenderly, “you have seen trouble—plenty of trouble, but that is the lot of human beings. ”

“ And there’s old Mr. Shaw, who preaches such long sermons he almost makes me gape the top of my head off; and there’s Lawyer Merritt, who is good for nothing, ’cept when he is Santa Claus. And, yes, there’s old, old, old Grandfather Toomie, but he has got one wife already, and I don’t think she’d like him to marry Lady. There, Mr. William! Them’s all the men Lady has to choose from to marry, unless it’s you, you know, and if you are possessed of common sense you will marry Lady.”
“But, my dear, I am not possessed of common sense,” said Harcourt in a serio-comic tone. ”

“ But you must not be afraid. Mr. William will be sure to keep his word and hunt up your friends,” said Annie.
275“Oh, I know he will! If I didn’t believe in you and him, I should not be possessed of common sense,” said the child.
“Now, my dear, will you get up and let me dress you? Or would you rather lie here a little longer?”
“Oh! thank you, ma’am, I would like to get up. But you needn’t trouble about dressing me. I always dress myself.”
“Oh, you do? That is quite right. Now, then, here is your suit of clothes from head to foot,” said Annie, placing the pile on a chair beside the bed. ”