Felix O'Day

Chapter XI

The discovery of her lodger's title made but little difference to Kitty, nor did it raise him a whit in her estimation. At best, it only confirmed her first impression of his being a gentleman—every inch of him. She may have studied the more closely her lodger's habits, noting his constant care of his person, the way in which he used his knife and fork, the softness and cleanliness of his hands—all object-lessons to her, for she broke out on her husband the day after her talk with the Englishman in the hansom cab with:

“I want to tell ye that ye'll have to stop spatterin' yer soup around after this, John, dear. I'm going to have a clean table-cloth on every day, and a clean napkin for him, and as I'm doin' the washing myself ye've got to help an' not muss things. First thing ye know he'll sour on what we are giving him and be goin' off worse than ever, trampin' the streets till all hours of the night.” At which John had stretched his big frame and with a prolonged yawn, his arms over his head, had remarked: “All right, Kitty, you're boss. Sir or no sir, he's got no frills about him—just plain man like the rest of us.”

Neither would his title, had they known it, have made the slightest difference to any one of the habitues who gathered in Tim Kelsey's book-shop.

Who Felix was, or what he had done, or what he was about to do, were questions never considered, either by Kelsey or by his friends. That he was part of the driftwood left stranded and unrecognized on the intellectual shore was enough. All that any of them asked for was brains, and Felix, even before the first evening had ended, had uncovered a stock so varied, and of such unusual proportions, and of so brilliant a character that he was always accorded the right of way whenever he took charge of the talk.

And a queer lot they were who listened, and a queer lot they had to be, to enjoy Kelsey's confidence. “Men are like books,” he would often say to Felix. “It is their insides I care for, no matter how badly they are bound. The half-calf or all-morocco sort never appeal to me. Shelf fellows seldom handled, I call them, and a man who is not handled and rubbed up against, with a corner worn off here and there, is like a book kept under glass. Nobody cares anything about it except as an ornament, and I have no room for ornaments.”

That is why the door was kept shut at night, when some half-calf rapped and Tim would get a look at his binding through the shutter and tiptoe back, closing the door of the inner room behind him.

Among Kelsey's collection was old Silas Murford, the custom-house clerk—a fat, stupid-looking old fellow whose chin rested on his shirt-front and whose middle rested on his knees, the whole of him, when seated, filling Tim's biggest chair. Tim prized this volume most, for when Silas began to talk, the sheepish look would fade out of his placid face, his little pig eyes would vanish, and the listener would discover to his astonishment that not only was this lethargic lump of flesh a delightful conversationalist but that he had spent every hour he could spare from his custom-house in a study of the American system of immigration—and had at his tongue's end a mass of statistics about which few men knew anything.

Crackburn, an authority on the earlier printers, then in charge of the prints in the Astor Library, and who, for diversion, ground lenses on the sly, was another prize document. And so was Lockwood, the lapidary, famous as a designer of medals and seals; and many more such oddities. “Fine old copies,” Kelsey would say of them, “hand-printed, all of them; one or two, like old Silas, extremely rare.”

That he considered Felix entitled to a place in his private collection had been decided at their first meeting. “Met a mask with a man behind it,” he had announced to his intimates that same night. “Got a fine nose for what's worth having. Located that chant book as soon as he laid his hands on it. I didn't get any farther than the skin of his face and you won't, either. He has promised to come over, and when you have rubbed up against him for half an hour, as I did this morning, you will think as I do.”

Since that time, Felix had spent many comforting hours in Kelsey's little back room. Sometimes he would drop in about nine and remain until half past ten; at other times, it would be nearer midnight before he would turn the knob.

As for the shop itself, nothing up and down “The Avenue” was quite as odd, quite as ramshackly, or quite as picturesque. What the public saw, on either side of the down-two-steps entrance, was a bench with slanting shelves, holding a double row of books and two patched glass windows, protecting disordered heaps of prints, stained engravings, and old etchings, the whole embedded in dust.

What the owner's intimates saw, once they got inside and continued to the end of the building, was a low-ceiled room warmed by an old-fashioned Franklin stove and lighted by a drop covered by a green shade. All about were easy chairs, a table or two, a sideboard, some long shelves loaded down with books, and an iron safe which held some precious manuscripts and one or two early editions.

When the room was shut the shop was open, and when the shop was shut, the shutters fastened, and the two benches with their books lifted bodily and brought inside, the little back room, smoke-dried as an old ham, and as savory and inviting, once you got its flavor, was ready for his guests.

On one of these rare nights when the room was full, it happened that the same fifteenth-century chant book, which had brought Tim and Felix together, was lying on the table. The discussion which followed easily drifted into the influence of the Roman Catholic church on the art of the period; Felix maintaining that but for the impetus it gave, neither the art of illumination nor any of the other arts would at the time have reached the heights they attained.

“This missal is but an example of it,” he continued, drawing the battered, yellow-stained book toward him. “Whatever these old monks, with their religious fervor, touched they enriched and glorified, whether it were an initial letter, as you see here, or an altar-piece; and more than that, many of them painted wonderfully well.”

“And a narrow-minded, bigoted lot they were,” broke in Crackburn. “If they'd had their way there would not have been a printing-press in existence. If you are going to canonize anybody, begin with Aldus Minutius.”

“Only a difference in patrons,” chimed in Lockwood, “the difference between a pope and a doge.”

“And it's the same to-day,” echoed Kelsey, taking the book from O'Day's hand, to keep the leaves from buckling. “Only it's neither pope nor doge, but the money king who's the patron. We should all starve to death but for him. I've been waiting for Mr. O'Day to hunt one down and make him buy this,” he added, closing the book carefully. “Nobody else around here appreciates its rarity or would give a five-dollar bill for it.”

“Go slow,” puffed old Silas, hunched up in his chair. “Money kings are good in their way, and so perhaps were popes and doges, but give me a plain priest every time. You wonder, Mr. O'Day, what those great masters in art could have done without the protection of the church. I wonder what the poor of to-day would do without their priests. Go up to 28th Street and look in at St. Barnabas's. Its doors are open from before sunrise until near midnight. When you are in trouble, either hungry or hunted, and most of the poor are both, walk in and see what will happen. You'll find that a priest in New York is everything from a policeman to a hospital nurse, and he is always on his job. When nobody else listens, he listens; when nobody else helps, he holds out a hand. I haven't lived here sixty years for nothing.”

“When you say 'listen,'” asked Felix, whose attention to the conversation had never wavered, “do you refer to the confessional?”

“I do not. That's the least part of it. So are the mass and the candles and choir-boys and the rest of the outfit, all very well in their way, for Sundays and fast-days, but just so much stage scenery to me, though its heaven to the poor devils who get color and music and restful quiet in contrast to their barren homes. But praying before the altar is only one-quarter of what these priests are doing every hour of the day and night. It's part of my business to follow them around, and I know. Hand me a light, Tim, my pipe's out.”

Felix, being nearest the box, struck a match and held it close to Silas's bowl, a cloud of smoke rising between them. When it had cleared, O'Day remarked quietly: “Don't stop, Mr. Murford; go on, I am listening. You have, as you said, only told us one-quarter of what these priests are doing. Where do the other three-quarters come in?”

Silas rapped the bowl against the arm of his chair to clear it the better, and, twisting his great bulk toward O'Day, said slowly: “If I tell you, will you listen and keep on listening until I get through?”

Felix bowed his head in acquiescence. The others, knowing what a story from Silas meant, craned their necks in his direction.

“Well! One night last winter—over on Avenue A, snow on the ground, mind you, and cold as Greenland—a row broke out on the third floor of a tenement house. In the snow on the sidewalk shivered a half-naked girl. She was sobbing. Her father had come in from his night shift at the gas house, crazy drunk, a piece of lead pipe in his hand.

“Two or three people had stopped, gazed at the girl, and passed her by. Tenement-house rows are too common in some districts to be bothered over. A policeman crossed the street, peered up the stairway, listened to the screams inside, looked the sobbing girl over, and kept on his way, swinging his club. A priest came along—one I know, a well-set-up man, who can take care of himself, no matter where. He touched the girl's arm and drew her inside the doorway, his head bent to hear her story. Then he went up—in jumps—two steps at a time—stumbling in the dark, picking himself up again, catching at the rail to help him mount the quicker, the screams overhead increasing at every step. When he reached the door, it was bolted on the inside. He let drive with his shoulder and in it went. The girl's mother was crouching in the far corner of the room, behind a heavy sofa. The drunken husband stood over her, trying to get at her skull with the piece of lead pipe.

“At the bursting in of the door the brute wheeled and, with an oath, made straight for the priest, the weapon in his fist.

“The priest stepped clear of the door-jamb, moved under the single gas-jet, drew out his crucifix, and held it up.

“The drunkard stood staring.

“The priest advanced step by step. The brute cowered, staggered back, and fell in a heap on the floor.”

“Magnificent,” broke out Lockwood. “Superb! And well told. You would make a great actor, Murford.”

“Perhaps,” answered Silas with a reproving look, “but don't forget that it HAPPENED.”

“I haven't a doubt of it,” exclaimed Felix quietly, “but please go on, Mr. Murford. To me your story has only begun. What happened next?”

Silas's eyes glistened. Lockwood's criticism had gone over his head; he was accustomed to that sort of thing. What pleased him was the interest O'Day had shown in his pet subject—the sufferings of the poor being one of his lifelong topics of thought and conversation.

“The confessional happened next,” replied Silas. “Then a sober husband, a sober wife, and a girl at work—and they are still at it—for I got the man a job as night-watchman in the custom-house, at Father Cruse's request.”

Felix started forward. “You surely don't mean Father Cruse of St. Barnabas's?” he exclaimed eagerly.

“Exactly.”

“Was it he who burst in that door?”

“It was, and there isn't a tramp or a stranded girl within half a mile of where we sit that he doesn't know and take care of. So I say you can have your money kings and your popes and your doges; as for me, I'll take Father Cruse every time, and there's dozens just like him.”

Felix pushed back his chair, reached for his hat, said good night in his usual civil tone, and left the shop, Murford merely nodding at him over the bowl of his pipe, the others taking no notice of his departure. It was the way they did things at Kelsey's. There were no great welcomings when they arrived and no good-bys when they parted. They would meet again the next night, perhaps the next morning—and more extended courtesies were considered unnecessary.

All the way back to Kitty's the erect figure of Father Cruse, holding the emblem of his faith in that dimly lighted room stood out clear. He wondered why he had not seen more of the man whose courage and faith he himself had dimly recognized at their first meeting, and determined to cultivate his acquaintance at once. Long ago he had promised Kitty to do so. He would keep that promise by timing his visit so as to reach St. Barnabas's when the service was over. The balance of the evening could then be spent with the father.

He glanced at his watch and a glow of satisfaction spread over his face as he noted the hour. Kitty would be up, and he would have the opportunity of delighting her with the details of the tribute Murford had paid her beloved priest. The more he pictured the effect upon her, the lighter grew his heart.

He began before the knob of the sitting-room had left his hand and had gone as far as: “Oh I heard something about a friend of yours who—” when she checked him by rising to her feet and exclaiming:

“Hold on a minute and listen to me first. I have something that belongs to ye. I found it after ye'd gone out, and ran after ye. I thought ye'd miss it and come back. I wonder ye didn't. Ye see I was tidyin' up yer room, and yer brush dropped down behind the bureau; and when I pushed it out from the wall I found this under the edge of the carpet. Ye better keep these little things in the drawer.” Her hand was in the capacious pocket of her apron as she spoke, her plump fingers feeling about its depths. “Oh, here it is,” she cried. “I was gettin' nigh scared ter death fer fear I'd lost it. Here, give me your cuff and I'll put it in fer ye.”

“What is it? A cuff button?” he asked, controlling his disappointment but biding his time.

“Yes, and a good one.”

“I'm sorry, Mistress Kitty, but it cannot be mine,” he returned with a smile. “I have but one pair, and both buttons are in place, as you can see,” and he held out his cuffs.

“Well, then, who can this one belong to? Take a look at it. It's got arms on one button and two letters mixed up together on the other,” and she dropped it into his hand.

Felix held the sleeve-links to the light, smothered a cry and, with a quick movement of his hands, steadied himself by the table.

“Where did you get this?” he breathed rather than spoke.

“I just told ye. Down behind the bureau where ye dropped it, along with your hair-brush.”

Felix tightened his fingers, straining the muscles of his arms, striving with all his might to keep his body from shaking. He had his back to her, his face toward the lamp, and had thus escaped her scrutiny. “I haven't lost it,” he faltered, prolonging the examination to gain time and speaking with great deliberation.

“Ye haven't! Oh, I am that disappointed! And ye didn't drop it? Well, then, who did drop it?” she cried, looking over his shoulder. She had been thinking all the evening how pleased he would be when she returned it, and in her chagrin had not noticed the mental storm he was trying to master.

“And ye're sure ye didn't drop it?” she reiterated.

“Quite sure,” he answered slowly, his face still in the shadow, the link still in his hand.

“Well, that's the strangest thing I ever heard! We don't have nobody—we ain't never had nobody up in that room with things on 'em like that. The fellow that John and I fired didn't have no sleeve-buttons.”

“Perhaps somebody else may have dropped it,” he answered, sinking into a chair. He was devouring her face, trying to read behind her eyes, praying she would go on, yet fearing to prolong the inquiry lest she should discover his agitation.

“No, there ain't nobody,” she said at last, “and if there was there wouldn't—Stop! Hold on a minute, I got it! You've bin here six months or more, ain't ye?”

Felix nodded, his eyes still fastened on her own. A nod was better than the spoken word until his voice obeyed him the better.

“An' ye ain't had a soul in that room but yerself since ye've been here? Is that true?”

Again Felix nodded.

“Of course it's true, whether ye say it or not. What a fool I was to ask ye! I got it now. That sleeve-link belongs to a poor creature who slept in that room three or four days before ye come and skipped the next morning.”

Felix's fingers tightened on the arm of the chair. For the moment it seemed to him as if he were swaying with the room. “Some one you were kind to, I suppose,” he said, lifting a hand to shade his face, the words coming one at a time, every muscle in his body taut.

“What else could we do? Leave the poor thing out in the cold and wet?”

“It was, then, some one you picked up, was it not?” The room had stopped swaying and he was beginning to breathe evenly again. He saw that he had not betrayed himself. Her calm proved it; and so did the infinite pity that crept into her tones as she related the incident.

“No, some one Tom McGinniss picked up on his beat, or would have picked up hadn't John and I come along. And that wet she was, and everything streamin' puddles, an' she, poor dear, draggled like a dog in the gutter.”

Felix's sheltering hand sagged suddenly, exposing for a moment his strained face and wide-open eyes.

“I didn't understand it was a woman,” he stammered, turning his head still farther from the light of the lamp.

“Yes, of course, it was a woman, and a lady, too. That's what I've been a-tellin' ye. Here, take my seat if that light gets into your eyes. I see it's botherin' ye. It's that red shade that does it. It sets John half crazy sometimes. I'll turn it down. Well, that's better. Yes, a lady. An' she wet as a rat an' all the heart out of her. An' that link ye got in yer hand is hers and nobody else's. John and I had been to evening service at St. Barnabas's, an' we hung on behind till everybody had gone so as to have a word with Father Cruse, after he had taken off his vestments. We bid him good night, come out of the 29th Street door, and kept on toward Lexington Avenue. We hadn't gone but a little way from the church, when John, who was walking ahead, come up agin Tom McGinniss. He was stooping over a woman huddled up on them big front steps before you get to the corner.

“'What are you doin', Tom?' says John.

“'It's a drunk,' he says, 'an I'll run her in an' she'll sleep it off and be all the better in the mornin'.'

“'Let me take a look at her, Tom,' says I; an' I got close to her breath and there was no more liquor inside her than there is in me this minute.

“'You'll do nothin' of the kind, Tom McGinniss,' says I. 'This poor thing is beat out with cold and hunger. Give her to me. I'll take her home. Get hold of her, John, an' lift her up.'

“If ye'd 'a' seen her, Mr. O'Day, it would have torn ye all to pieces. The life and spirit was all out of her. She was like a child half asleep, that would go anywhere you took her. If I'd said, 'Come along, I'm goin' to drown ye,' she'd 'a' come just the same. Not one word fell out of her mouth. Just went along between us, John an' I helpin' her over the curbs and gutters until she got to this kitchen, an' I sat her down in that chair, close by the stove, and began to dry her out, for her dress was all soaked in the mud and streamin' with water. I got some hot coffee into her, an' found a pair of John's old shoes, an' put 'em on her feet till I had dried her own, an' when she got so she could speak—not drunk, mind ye, nor doped; just dazed like as if she had been hunted and had given up all hope. She said like a sick child speakin': 'You've been very kind, and I'm very grateful. I'll go now.'

“'No, ye won't,' I says; 'ye'll stay where ye are. Ye don't leave this place to-night. Ye'll go up-stairs and git into my bed.' She looked at me kind o' scared-like; then she looked at John an' our big man Mike who had come in while I was dryin' her out, but I stopped that right away. 'No, ye needn't worry,' I said, 'an' ye won't. Ye're just as safe here as ye would be in your mother's arms. Ye ain't the first one my man John an' I have taken care of, an' ye won't be the last. Take another sip o' that hot coffee, an' come with me.'

“Well, we got her up-stairs, an' I helped her undress, an' when I unhooked her skirt an' it fell to the floor, I saw what I was up aginst. She had the finest pair of silk stockings on her feet ye ever seen in your life, and her petticoat was frills up to her knees. She said nothin' an' I said nothin'. 'Git in,' I said, an' I turned down the cover and come out. The next mornin' the boys had to get over to Hoboken, an' I was up before daylight and then back to bed again. At seven o'clock I went to her room and pushed in the door. She was gone, an' I've never seen her since. That cuff-link's hers. Take it up-stairs with ye an' put it in the wash-stand drawer. I'll lose it if I keep it down here, an' she's bound to come back for it some day. What time is it? Twelve o'clock, if I'm alive! Well, then, I'm goin' to bed, and you're goin', too. John's got his key, and there's his coffee, but he won't be long now.”

Felix sat still. Only when she had finished busying herself about the room making ready to close the place for the night did he rouse himself. So still was he, and so absorbed that she thought he had fallen asleep, until she became aware of a flash from under the overhanging brows and heard him say, as if speaking to himself: “It was very good of you. Yes, very good—of you—to do it, and—I suppose she never came back?”

“She never did,” returned Kitty, drawing a chair away from the heat of the stove, “and I'm that sorry she didn't. I'll fix the lights when ye've gone up. Good night to ye.”

“Good night, Mrs. Cleary,” and he left the room.

In the same absorbed way he mounted the stairs, opened his own door and, without turning up the gas, sank heavily into a chair, the link still held fast in his hand. A moment later he sprang from his seat, stepped quickly to the gas-jet, turned up the light, and held one of the small buttons to the flame, as if to reassure himself of the initials; then with a smothered cry fell across the narrow bed, his face hidden in the quilt.

For an hour he lay motionless, his mind a seething caldron, above which writhed distorted shapes who hid their faces as they mounted upward. When these vanished and a certain calm fell upon him, two figures detached themselves and stood clear: a woman cowering on a door-step, her skirts befouled with the slime of the streets, and a priest with hand upraised, his only weapon the symbol of his God.