Felix O'Day

Chapter XII

The morning brought him little relief. He drank his coffee in comparative silence and crossed the street to his work with only a slight bend of his head toward Kitty, who was helping Mike tag some baggage. She noticed then how pale he was and the wan smile that swept over his face as she waved her hand at him in answer, but she was too busy over the trunks to give the subject further thought.

Masie was waiting for him in the back part of the shop, which, by the same old process of moving things around, had been fitted up into a sort of private office for Kling, two high-back settles serving for one wall, three bureaus for another, while some Spanish chairs, a hair-cloth sofa studded with brass nails, an inlaid table, and a Daghestan rug helped to make it secluded and attractive. Kling liked the new arrangement because he could keep one eye on his books and the other on the front door, thus killing two birds with one stone. Masie loved it because when Felix had so many customers that he could neither talk nor play with her, it served her as a temporary refuge—as would a shelter until the rain was over—and Felix delighted in it because it kept Kling out of the way, the good-natured Dutchman having often spoiled a sale by what Felix called “inopportune remarks at opportune moments.”

Although Masie's business on this particular morning was nothing more important than merely saying good-by to her “Uncle Felix” before she went to school, her wee stub of a nose had, until she saw him cross the street, been flattened against the glass of her father's front door, her two eager, anxious eyes fixed on Kitty's sidewalk. Felix was over an hour late, something which had never happened before and something which could not have happened now unless he had either overslept himself—an unbelievable fact, or was ill—a calamity which could not be thought of for a moment.

While a nod and a faint smile had done for Kitty, and a “No, I was not very well last night,” had sufficed for Kling, whose eyebrows made the inquiry—he never finding fault with O'Day for lapses of any kind—the case was far different when it came to Masie. The little lady had to be coaxed into one of the easy chairs in the improvised office and comforted with an arm around her shoulder, to say nothing of having her hair smoothed back from her face, followed by a kiss on her white forehead, before her overwrought anxieties were allayed.

That he was not himself was apparent to every one. Masie was still sure of it when she bade him good-by, and Kling became convinced of it long before the day was over. As the afternoon wore on, however, he grew calmer. His indomitable will began to reassert itself. His manner became more alert, and his glance clearer.

When he found himself able to think, he determined that his first move must be to find Carlin, and that very night. It had been some weeks since he had visited the ship-chandler. He had tried the latch several times, and would have repeated his visits had not a bystander told him that Carlin was in the country fitting out a yacht for one of his customers and would not be back for a month. The time was now up.

And yet, when he thought it all over, could he, in view of this new phase of the case, seek Carlin's help and advice? What might be better—and his heart gave a bound—would be to see Father Cruse. The woman whom Kitty had picked up might be one of his waifs, who, overcome by fatigue or illness after leaving the church, had fallen on the door-step where the policeman had found her.

At six o'clock he left the shop with a formal good night to Kling, a hasty, almost abrupt good-by to Masie, and, without a word of any kind to Kitty, whose quiet scrutiny he dreaded, bent his steps to a small eating-room in the basement of one of the old-time private houses in Lexington Avenue, where he sometimes took his meals. At seven o'clock he was threading his way through the crowds in Third Avenue, searching the face of every one he met. At eight o'clock, his impatience growing, he turned into 28th Street and mounted the short flight of steps in front of St. Barnabas's. The tones of the organ, as well as the illumined stained-glass windows and the groups of people around the swinging doors of the vestibule, showed that a service was being held. These, however, were the only evidences that a body of people had met to pray inside, both pavements outside being filled with hurrying throngs, as were the barrooms opposite, crowded with loud-talking men lining the bars, with here and there a woman at a table.

Passing through the vestibule doors, he entered the church and found a seat near the entrance. Father Cruse, in full vestments, was officiating. He was before the altar at the moment, his back to the congregation. Most of them were working people who had only their evenings free, and for whom these services were held: girls from the department stores, servants with an evening out, trainmen from the Elevated, off duty for an hour or two, small storekeepers whose places closed early, with their wives and children beside them, all under the spell of the hushed interior. Some prayed without moving, their heads bowed; others kept their eyes fixed on the priest. One or two had their faces turned toward the choir-loft, completely absorbed in the full, deep tones that rolled now and then through the responses.

Nothing of all this impressed Felix at first. He had always regarded the Roman Catholic church as embodying a religion adapted only to the ignorant and the superstitious. But, as he looked about on the rapt body of worshippers, he suddenly wondered if there were not something in its beliefs, forms, and ceremonies that he had hitherto missed.

The wonder grew upon him as he watched the worshippers, his eyes resting now on a figure of a woman on her knees before the small altar at his left, her half-naked baby flat on its back beside her; and again that of an unkempt gray-haired man, his clothes old and ragged, his body bent, his lips trembling in supplication. All at once, and for the first time in his life, he began to realize the existence of a something all-powerful, to which these people appealed, a something beneficent which swept their faces free of care, as a light drives out darkness, and sent them home with new hope and courage. Religion had played no part in his life. From his boyhood he had made his fight without it. Had they tried and failed and, disheartened in their failure, sought at last for higher help, realizing that no one man was strong enough to make the fight of life alone?

As he asked himself these questions, the personality of the priest began to exert its influence over him. He followed his movements, the dignity and solemnity with which he exercised his functions, the reverential tones of his voice, the adoration shown in his every act and gesture. And as he watched there arose another question—one he had often debated within himself: Were these people about him calmed and rested by the magnetic personality of the big-chested, strong-armed man; were they aided by the seductions of music, incense, and color, including the very vestments that hung from his broad shoulders; or did the calm and rest and aid proceed from a source infinitely higher, more powerful, more compelling, as had been shown in the case of the would-be murderer cowed by the sight of a sacred emblem? And if there were two personalities, two influences, two dominant powers, one of man and the other of God, which one had he, Felix O'Day, come here to invoke?

At this mental question, the more practical side of his nature came to the fore.

“Neither of them,” he said firmly to himself, “neither God nor priest.” What he had come for had nothing to do with religion or with its forms. A woman had been found lying on a door-step near this church, who might have attended the same evening service. If so, Father Cruse might have seen her—no doubt knew her, in fact, must have both seen and recognized her. She was the kind of woman whom Murford said Father Cruse helped. What he was here for was to ask the priest a simple, straightforward question. This over, he would continue on his way.

Then a sudden check arose. How was he to describe this woman? He had not dared probe Kitty for any further details than those she had given him. To waste therefore, the valuable time of Father Cruse with no more information than he at present possessed would be as inconsiderate as it was foolish.

With this new view of the difficulty confronting him, he reached for his hat, so as to be ready at the first break in the service to tiptoe noiselessly out. He would then go back to Kitty and, without exciting her suspicions, learn something more of the outward appearance of the object of her tender sympathy.

As he was about to leave the pew, the tones of a tiny bell were heard through the aisles. Instantly a deep, almost breathless, silence fell upon the church. The penitents, who were on their knees beneath the clusters of candles lighting the side chapels, remained motionless; those in the seats bowed their heads, their foreheads resting on the backs of the pews.

As he listened with lowered head, a dull, scuffling sound was heard near the swinging doors of the vestibule, as if some one were being roughly handled. Then an angry voice, “she shan't go in!” followed by high-pitched, defiant tones: “Get out of my way. I shan't go in, shan't I? I'd like to see you or anybody else keep me out! This place is free, and so am I. Jim hasn't showed up, and I'm going to wait for him here. I've got a date.”

She was abreast of Felix now, a girl of twenty, maudlin drunk, her hat awry, her hair in a frowse, her dress open at the neck.

She steadied herself for a moment, and became conscious of Felix, who had risen, horror-stricken, from his seat.

“Jim ain't showed up. He is all right, and don't you forget it. Them guys wanted to give me the grand bounce, but I got a date, see?”

She reeled on up the aisle until she reached the steps of the altar. There she stood, swaying before the lights, repeating her cry: “They dassen't touch me. I got a date, I tell you!”

Father Cruse, without turning, continued his ministrations with the same composure he would have maintained at a baptism had its solemnity been disturbed by the cry of a child. By this time, several women, appalled by the sacrilege, left their seats and moved toward her, begging, then commanding, her to stop talking, all fearing to add to the noise yet not daring to let it continue, until they gently but firmly pushed her through the door at the end of the church and so on into the street.

Felix had followed every movement of the girl with an intensity that almost paralyzed his senses. He had looked into her bloodshot eyes, noted the hard lines drawn around the corners of her mouth, the coarse, painted lips, dry hair, and sunken cheeks. He had heard her harsh laugh and caught the glint of her drunken leer. A cold shiver swept through him. It was as if he had stepped on a flat stone covering a grave which had tilted beneath his feet, revealing a corpse but a few months buried. Had he been anywhere else he would have sunk to the floor—not to pray, but to rest his knees, which seemed giving out under him.

When service was over, he made his way down the aisle, waited until the last of the worshippers had had their final word with their priest, and, with a respectful bend of the head in recognition, followed Father Cruse into the sacristy.

“You remember me?” he said in a hoarse, constrained voice when the priest turned and faced him.

“Yes, you are Mr. O'Day—Kitty Cleary's friend, and I need not tell you how glad I am to see you,” and he held out a cordial hand.

“I have come as I promised you I would. Can you give me half an hour?”

“With the greatest pleasure. My duties are over just as soon as I put these vestments away. But I am sorry you came to-night, for you have witnessed a most distressing sight.”

Felix looked at him steadily. “Do such things happen often?” he asked, his voice breaking.

“Everything happens here, Mr. O'Day,” replied the priest gravely; “incredible things. We once found a baby a month old in the gallery. We baptized him and he is now one of our choir-boys. But, forgive me,” he added with a smile, “such sights are best forgotten and may not interest you.” He was studying his visitor as a doctor does a patient, trying to discover the seat of the disease. That Felix was not the same man he had met the night at Kitty's was apparent; then he had been merely a man with a sorrow, now he seemed laboring under a weight too heavy to bear.

Felix drew back his shoulders as if to brace himself the better and said: “Can we talk here?”

“Yes, and with absolute privacy and freedom. Take this chair; I will sit beside you.” It was the voice of the father confessor now, encouraging the unburdening of a soul.

Felix glanced first around the simple room, with its quiet and seclusion, then stepped back and closed the sacristy door, saying, as he took his seat: “There is no need, I suppose, of locking it?”

“Not the slightest.”

For a moment he sat with head bowed, one hand pressed to his forehead. The priest waited, saying nothing.

“I have come to you, Father Cruse, because I need a man's help—not a priest's—a MAN'S. If I have made no mistake, you are one.”

The fine white fingers of the priest were rising and falling ever so slightly on the velvet arm of the chair on which his hand rested, a compound gesture showing that both his brain and his hand were at his listener's service.

“Go on,” he said gently and firmly. “As priest or man, Mr. O'Day, I am ready.”

Felix paused; the priest bent his head in closer attention. He was accustomed to halting confessions, and ready with a prompting word if the sinner faltered.

“It is about my wife.”

The words seemed to choke him, as if the grip of a long-held silence had not yet quite relaxed its hold.

“Not ill, I hope?”

“No, she is not ill.”

The priest leaned forward, a startled look on his face. “You surely don't mean she is dead?”

O'Day did not answer.

Father Cruse settled back into the depths of his chair. “She has left you, then,” he said in a conclusive tone.

“Yes—a year ago.”

He stopped, started to speak, and, with a baffled gesture, said: “No, you might better have it all. It is the only way you will understand; I will begin at the beginning.”

The priest laid his hand soothingly on O'Day's wrist. “Take your time. I have nothing else to do except to listen and—help you if I can.”

The touch of the priest had steadied him. “Thank you, Father,” he said simply, and went on.

“A year ago, as I have said, my wife left me and went off with a man named Dalton. Later I learned she was here, and I came over to see what I could do to help her.”

Father Cruse raised his eyebrows inquiringly.

“Yes, just that—to help her when she needed help, for I knew she would need it sooner or later. She was not a bad woman when she left me, and she is not now, unless he has made her so. She is only an easily persuaded, pleasure-loving woman, and when my father was forced into bankruptcy and we all suffered together, she blamed me for giving up what money I had in trying to straighten out his affairs; and then our infant daughter died, and that so upset her mind that when Dalton came along she let everything go. That is one solution of it—the one which her friends give out. I will tell you the truth. It is that I was twenty years older than she, that she loved me as a young girl loves an older man who had been brought up almost in her own family, for our properties adjoined, and that when she woke up, it was to find out that I was not the man she would have married had she been given a few more years' time in which to make up her mind.

“When she ran away I lost my bearings. I used to sit in my room in the club for hours at a time, staring at the morning paper, never seeing the print; thinking only of my wife and our life together—all of it, from the day we were married. I recalled her childish nature, her fits of sudden temper always ending in tears, and her wilfulness. Then my own responsibility loomed up. To let this child go to the devil would be a crime. When this idea became firmly set in my mind, I determined to follow her no matter what she had done or where she had gone.

“I had meant to go to Australia and look after sheep—I knew something about them—but I changed my plans when I overheard a conversation at my club and concluded that Dalton had brought her here—although the conversation itself was only the repetition of a rumor. Since then I have found out that they are both here, or were some six months ago.

“You can understand, now, why I am living at Mrs. Cleary's and working in Mr. Kling's store. I had but a few pounds left after paying my passage and there was no one from whom I could borrow, even if I had been so disposed; so work of some kind was necessary. It may be just as well for me to tell you, too, that nobody at home knows where I am, and that but two persons in New York know me at all. One is a man named Carlin, who served on one of my father-in-law's vessels, and the other is his sister Martha, who was a nurse in my wife's family.

“Dalton, so I understood, had considerable money when he left, enough to last him some months, and until yesterday I have hunted for them where I thought he would be sure to spend it, in the richer cafes and restaurants, outside the opera-houses and the fashionable theatres—places where two strangers in the city would naturally spend their evenings, and a woman loving light and color as she did would want to go.

“All these theories were upset last night when Mrs. Cleary gave me some details of a woman she had picked up near your church. She found her, it seems, some months ago—last April, in fact—on the steps of a private house near your church—here on 29th Street—took her home and made her spend the night there. In the morning she disappeared without any one seeing her. Yesterday, while moving the bureau in my room, Mrs. Cleary found a sleeve-link on the carpet; she thought it was one I had dropped. I have it in my trunk. It is one of a pair my wife gave me on my birthday, the year we were married. I missed it from my jewel case after she left, and thought somebody had stolen it. Now I know that my wife must have taken it, and then dropped it at Mrs. Cleary's. So I came here tonight hoping against hope—it was so many months ago—to get some further information regarding her. Then I remembered that I had not asked Mrs. Cleary what the woman looked like, and I was about to return home, when that poor girl staggered in, and I got a look at her face. I lost my hold on myself then and—”

He sprang to his feet and began striding across the room, his eyes blazing, one clinched fist upraised: “By God! Father Cruse, I know something of Dalton's earlier life and of what he is capable. And I tell you right here, that if he has brought my wife to that, I shall kill him the moment I set my eyes on him. To take a child of a woman, foolish and vain as she was—stupid if you will—and—” he halted, covered his face in his hands, and broke into sobs.

During the long recital Father Cruse had neither spoken nor moved. He was accustomed to such outbursts, but it had been many years since he had seen so strong a man weep as bitterly. Better let the storm pass—he would master himself the sooner.

A full minute elapsed, and then, with a groan that seemed to come from the depths of his being, O'Day lifted his head, brushed the hot tears from his eyes, and continued:

“You must forgive me, for I am utterly broken up. But I can't go on any longer this way! I have got to let go—I have got to talk to somebody. That dear woman with whom I live is kindness itself and would do anything she could for me, but somehow I cannot tell her about these things. I may be wrong about it—but I was born that way. You know black from white—you live here right in the midst of it—you see it every day. Mr. Silas Murford told me the other night at Kelsey's that you knew everybody in this neighborhood, and so I came to you. Help me find my wife!”

Father Cruse drew his chair closer and laid his hand soothingly on O'Day's knee.

“It is unnecessary for me to tell you I will help you,” he answered in his low, smooth voice: “And now let us get to work systematically and see what can be done. I will begin by asking you a few questions. What sort of a looking woman is your wife?”

Felix straightened himself in his chair, felt in his inside pocket, and took from it a colored photograph. “As you see, she is rather small, with fair hair, blue eyes, and a slight figure—the usual English type. She has very beautiful teeth—very white—teeth you would never forget once you saw them; and she has quite small ears and, although the picture does not show this, small hands and feet.”

“And how would she dress now? This evidently was taken some years ago. I mean, what was her habit of dress? Would it be such as an Englishwoman would wear?”

Felix pondered. “Well, when Lady Barbara left she had—”

An expression of surprise on the priest's face cut short the sentence. O'Day looked at him in a startled way; then he recalled his words.

“Pardon me, but it is only fair that you should know that Lady Barbara is the daughter of Lord Carnavon, and that since my father's death they call me Sir Felix. I have never used the title here and may never use it anywhere. I would have assumed some other name when I arrived here, except that I could not bring myself to give up my own and my father's—he never did anything to disgrace it. He was caught in a trap, that is all, and I signed away everything I could to help him out. He stood by me when I was in India, and when he had a shilling he gave me half. I would rather have died, much as my wife blamed me, than not to have done what I did.

“And I would do it all over again, although I did not realize how big the load was until settling-day came. Dalton was at the bottom of it all. He floated the company. There was a story going around the clubs that he had got me into squaring it all up, knowing that I would be done for, and he could get away with her easier, but I never believed it. He has come into his own, if this wretched, suffering woman that Mrs. Cleary picked up is my wife; and I will come into mine”—here his eyes flashed—“if he has dragged her down and—”

Father Cruse again laid his quieting fingers this time on Felix's wrist.

“He has not dragged her down, Mr. O'Day. Of that you may be sure. A woman of her class doesn't go to pieces in a year. When she reaches the end of her means she will either seek work or she will go to one of the institutions to wait until she can hear from her people at home. I have known—”

Felix shook his head with an impatient movement. “You don't know her,” he exclaimed excitedly, “nor do you know her family. Her father has shut his door against her, and would step across her body if he found it on the sidewalk rather than recognize her. Nor would she ask him for a penny, nor let him or me or any one else know of her misery.”

Again the priest sat silent. He did not attempt to defend his theory—some better way of calming his visitor must be found. He merely said, as if entirely convinced by O'Day's denial: “Oh, well, we will let that go, perhaps you know best”; and then added, his voice softening, “and now one word more, before we go into the details of our search, so that no complications may arise in the future. You, of course, are hunting for Lady Barbara to reinstate her as your wife if—”

O'Day sprang from his chair and stood over the priest. The suggestion had come as a blow.

“I will take her back!”

The priest looked up in astonishment. “Yes, is it not so?”

The answer came between closed teeth. “I did not expect that of you, Father Cruse, I thought you were bigger—MUCH bigger. Can't you understand how a man may want to stand by a woman for herself alone without dragging in his own selfishness and—No, I forgot—you cannot understand—you never held a woman in your arms—you do not realize her many weaknesses, her childishness, her whims, her helplessness. But take her back? NEVER! That chapter in my life is dosed. My hunt for her all these months has been to save her from herself and from the scoundrel who has ruined her. When that is done I shall pick up my life as best I can, but not with her.”

For some seconds the priest did not speak. Then he said gently, again avoiding any disagreement. “Let us hope that so happy an ending to all your sufferings is not far off, my dear Mr. O'Day. And now another question before we part for the night, one I perhaps ought to have asked you before. Are you quite positive that Kitty's visitor was your wife?”

He had reserved this hopeful suggestion—one he himself believed in—for the last. It would help lift the dead weight of bitter anxiety which was sure to overwhelm his visitor in the wakeful hours of the night.

Felix moved impatiently, like one combating a physician's cheering words. “It must have been she, who else could have dropped the sleeve-link?”

“Several people. Excuse me if I talk along different lines, but I have had a good deal of experience in tracing out just such things as this, and I have always found it safest to be sure of my facts before deducing theories. It is not all clear to me that Kitty's woman dropped the links. And even if she did, the fact is no proof that the woman is your wife.”

“But the links are mine. There is no question of it—my initials and arms are cut into them.” The impatience was gone and a certain curiosity was manifesting itself.

“Quite true, and yet you once thought the links were stolen. So let us presume for the present that they were stolen and that this woman either bought them, or was given them, or found them.”

Felix began pacing the floor, a gleam of hope illumining the dark corners of his heart. The interview, too, had calmed him—as do all confessions.

The priest settled back in his seat. He saw that the crisis had passed. There might be another outburst in the future, but it would not have the intensity of the one he had just witnessed. He waited until Felix was opposite his chair and then asked, in a low voice: “Well, may I not be right, Mr. O'Day?”

Felix paused in his walk and gazed down at the priest. “I don't know,” he answered slowly. “My head is not clear enough to think it out. Mrs. Cleary might help unravel it. She saw her and will remember. Shall I sound her when I go home—not to excite her suspicions, of course, but so as to find out whether her visitor were large or small—details like that?”

“No, I will ask her, and in a way not to make her suspect. She will think I am hunting for one of my own people. It is wiser that she should not know yet what you have told me. I would rather wait for the time when this poor creature, whoever she is, needs a sister's tenderness. She will get it there, for no finer woman lives than Kitty Cleary.”

A sigh of intense relief escaped Felix. “And now tell me where you will begin your hunt?” he asked, one of his old search-light glances flashing from beneath his brows.

“Nowhere in particular. On the East Side, perhaps, where I have means of knowing what strangers come and go. Then among my own people here. I shall know within twenty-four hours whether she has been in the habit of attending evening service—that is, within the last six months. A woman of the poorer class would be difficult to locate, but there should not be the slightest trouble in picking out one who, less than a year ago, occupied your wife's social position—no matter how badly she were dressed.”

Felix stood musing. He had reached the limit of the help he had come for.

“And what can I do to assist?”

“Nothing. Go home, and when I need you I will send word. Good night.”