Felix O'Day

Chapter XXIII

The short winter's day had run its course and a soft, aimless snow was falling—each flake a lazy feather, careless of its fate. The store windows were ablaze, and many of the houses on both sides of “The Avenue” were alive with newly kindled gas-jets, the street-lamps shedding their light over a broad highway blocked with slipping teams, their carts crammed to the utmost with holiday freight.

A spirit of good-fellowship and unrestrained joyousness was everywhere. When a team was stalled, two or three men put their shoulders to the wheels; when a horse slipped and fell, a dozen others helped him to his feet. Snowballs, thrown in good humor and received with a laugh, filled the air. New York was getting ready to celebrate the night before New Year's, the maddest night of all the year in old Manhattan, when groups of merrymakers, carrying tin horns and jingling cow-bells, crowd the sidewalks, singing and shouting, forming flying wedges, swooping down on other wedges—strangers all—the whole ending in roars of laughter and “Happy New Year's,” repeated again and again until the next collision.

None of this roused Felix as, with heavy heart, he turned into Kitty's. Of what the morrow would bring forth he dared not think. Father Cruse, he knew, would do what he could to save Barbara, and the British consul—a man he had always avoided—might help. But nothing of all this could lighten his load or relieve his pain. She might be given her freedom for a time, or she might be turned over to one of the reformatories for a term of years—either course meant untold suffering to a woman reared as his wife had been. These mental tortures of the day had burned their way into his brain, as branding-irons burn into flesh, the agony seaming the lines of his face and deep-hollowing the eyes, forming scars that might take years to efface.

As his fingers gripped the knob of Kitty's outside office, shouts of “Happy New Year” rang out from a group of girls showering each other with snowballs.

“Pray God,” he said to himself, “that it be better than the one which is passing,” and stepped inside, to find Kitty in the kitchen.

“I have come to talk to you,” he said, speaking as a man whose strength is far spent. “And if you do not mind, I will ask you to go into the sitting-room where we shall not be disturbed. I have something to say to you. Will you be alone?”

Kitty gave a start. She knew at once that some new development had brought him to her at this hour.

“Yes, not a soul but me. John and Bobby are up to the Grand Central, Mike's bailed out, and yer tramp just come over from Otto's. They're cleanin' out the stables. Is it some news ye have of her?”

“No—nothing more than you know. That must wait until to-morrow. Nothing can be done to-night.”

She followed him into the room, dragged out a chair from against the wall, waited until he had slipped off his mackintosh, and then seated herself beside him.

“No,” he repeated, passing his hand across his eyes as if to shut out some haunting vision. “There is no news. She is in a cell, I suppose. My God, what does it all mean!”

He paused, his head averted, staring straight ahead.

“You have been very kind to me, Mrs. Cleary, since I have been here—you and your husband. You may not have realized it, but I do not think I could have gone through the year without you—you and little Masie. I have come to the end now, where no one can help. I have tried to carry it through alone. I did not want to burden you with my troubles and—if I could prevent it, I would not now, but you will know it sooner or later, and I would rather tell you myself than have you hear it from strangers.”

He hesitated for an instant, looked into her eyes, and said slowly: “The woman you picked up in the street and who is now in prison, is my wife, or was, until a year ago.”

Kitty neither moved nor spoke. The announcement did not greatly surprise her. What absorbed her was the new, hard lines in his face, her wonder being that such suffering should have fallen upon the head of a man who so little deserved it.

“And is that what has been breakin' yer heart all these months ye lived with us?”

Felix moved uneasily. “Yes. There has been nothing else.”

“And she's the same one ye've been a-trampin' the streets to find?”

Felix bowed his head in assent.

“And ye kep' all this from me?” she asked, as a mother might reproach her son.

“You could have done nothing.”

“I could have comforted ye. That would have been somethin'. Did she leave ye?”

Again Felix bowed his head in answer. The spoken words would only add to his pain.

“For another man, was it?—Yes, I see—you twice her age, and she a chit of a child. Ye can't do much for that kind once they get their heads set—no matter how good ye are to them. And I suppose that when I found her that night on the door-steps and brought her into the kitchen, he'd turned her into the street. That's it, isn't it? And then she got to stealin' to keep from starvin'?”

“Yes, I suppose so—I do not know. I only know she is a criminal. That is shame enough.”

“And is that all ye came to tell me?” She was going to the bottom of it now. This man was gripped in the tortures of the damned and could only be helped when he had emptied out his heart—all of it, down to the very dregs.

“No, there is something else. I wanted to speak to you about Masie. I may go back to England in a few days and I am not satisfied to leave her unprotected. She has no mother and you have no daughter—would you look after her for me? I have learned to love her very dearly—and I am greatly disturbed over her future and who is to look after her. Her father will not listen to any plans I might make for her, nor will he take proper care of her. He thinks he does, but he lets her do as she pleases. She will be a woman in a very short time, and I shudder when I think of the dangers which beset her. A shop like Kling's is no place for a child like Masie.”

Kitty had turned pale when Felix announced his probable departure, something to which she had not yet given a thought, but she heard him to the end.

“I will do all I can for Masie, but that can wait. And now I'm goin' to talk to ye as if ye were my John, and ye got to be patient with me, Mr. O'Day. God knows I'd help ye in any way I could, but ye've got to help me a little so I can help ye the better. May I go on?”

“Help! How can I help?” he asked listlessly.

“By trustin' me—and I can be trusted, and so can John. I found out some months ago that ye were Sir Felix O'Day, but ye never heard me blab it to any livin' soul, nor did John either—not even to Father Cruse. I've watched ye go in and out all these months, and many a night, tired as I was, I didn't get to sleep, worryin' about ye until I'd heard ye shut yer door. Ye said nothin' to me and I could say nothin' to ye. I knew ye'd tell me when the time come and it has, with ye nigh crazy, and she on her way to Sing Sing. What she's been through since that night I brought her here, I don't know—but she'd 'a' broke your heart if ye'd seen her staggerin' weak, followin' me and John like a whipped dog. I thought then she had got the worst of it, somehow, and that she hadn't deserved what had been handed out to her, and John thought so, too. What it was I didn't know, but I've got somebody now who does know and who will tell me the truth, and I'm askin' ye to give it to me straight. If she was your wife she must be a lady, for ye wouldn't 'a' married anybody else. And if she was a lady, how has it happened that she is locked up in the Tombs, and that a gentleman like ye is working at Otto's? And before ye answer, remember that I'm not askin' for meself, but for you and the poor woman ye tried to find to-day.”

His tired eyes had not left her own during the long outburst. He had never doubted her sincerity nor her kindliness, but now, as he listened, there stole over him a yearning, strange in one so habitually reticent, to share with her the secret he had hidden all these months—except from Father Cruse.

“Yes, you shall know,” he answered, with a sigh of relief. “It is best that somebody should know, and best of all that it should be you. But first tell me how you found out that I could use my father's title—I have never told anybody here.”

“An Englishman told me, who wanted his trunk taken to the steamer. He saw you cross the street. 'That's Sir Felix O'Day,' he said, 'and he has had more trouble than any man I ever knew.'”

“Did you check the trunk?”

“Yes.”

“That explains how my solicitor in London, whom I have just heard from, discovered my address. He mentioned a trunk-tag as his clew; he and the Englishman evidently met. As to the title, it was of no use to me here. I may use it now, at home, for he writes that there were several hundreds of pounds sterling saved out of my own and my father's wreck, together with a small cottage and a few acres of land near London. Had I known it, however, before I came here, it would have made no difference, nor would it have altered my plan. I had come here to find my wife, for I knew that sooner or later she would be utterly stranded, without a human being to whom she could appeal; but I never expected to find her a criminal. Terrible! Terrible! I cannot yet take it in. Poor child! What is to become of her, God only knows!”

He had risen, and in his agony walked to the window, his updrawn shoulders tense, like those of a man standing by an open grave. He stood there for a moment, Kitty silently watching him, until, with a deep sigh, he came back to his chair.

“I have been a fool, no doubt, to pursue this thing as I have, but there seemed no other way. I could not have lived with myself afterward, if I had not made the effort. I knew that you and your husband often wondered at the life I led, and I have often thanked you in my heart for your loyalty. It is but another one of the things that have made this home so dear to me. I told Father Cruse what brought me to New York, so that he could help me find her, and he has been more than kind. Many a night we have tramped the streets together, or have searched haunts that either she, or the man who ruined her, might frequent, or where we should meet persons who had seen them, but so far, you are the only person who has brought us near to each other.

“I tell you now because it is better that you and I should understand each other before I sail, and because, too, you are a big, brave, true-hearted woman who can and will understand. You may not think it, but you have been a revelation to me, Mrs. Cleary—you and this home—and the neighborhood, in fact, peopled with clean, wholesome men and women. It has been a great lesson to me and a marvellous contrast to what had surrounded me at home. You were right in your surmise that my wife is a lady, and that I have been born a gentleman. And now I will tell you why we are both here.”

Then, in broken words, with long pauses between, he told her the story of his own and Lady Barbara's home life, and of Dalton's perfidy with all the horror that had followed, Kitty's body bent forward, her ears drinking in every word, her plump, ruddy hands resting in her lap, her heart throbbing with sympathy for the man who sat there so calm and patient, stating his case without bitterness, his anger only rising when he recounted the incidents leading up to his wife's estrangement and denounced the man who had planned her ruin.

Only when the tale was ended did she burst out: “And I ain't surprised yer heart's broke! Ye've had enough to kill ye. The wonder to me is that ye're walkin' around with yer head up and your heart not soured. I been thinkin' and thinkin' all these months, and John and I have talked it over many a night; but we never thought it was as bad as it is. And now I'm goin' to ask ye a question and ye must tell me the truth. What are ye goin' to do next?”

“See Father Cruse to-night and tell him what I have found out. He must do the rest. I have gone as far as I dared, and can go no further. I must draw the line at crime. In spite of it all, I would have gone down-stairs to see her, had she not been sent away, but I am glad now that I did not. She comes of a proud race and that would have been the last thing she could have borne. As it is, she thinks I am in Australia, and it's better that she should. She would have thought I had come to taunt her, and no one could have undeceived her. I know her—and her wilfulness. Poor child! She has always been her own worst enemy. And so, just as soon as I learn what is to happen to her, I shall settle my account with the man who has caused her ruin, and return to England—and I can go the easier, and pick up my old life again the better, if I can be assured that you will look after little Masie, and see that no harm comes to her.”

Kitty raised her hands from her lap and folded them across her bosom. “Let me talk a little, will ye, Mr. O'Day? Ye needn't worry about Masie. I'll take care of her—all that Kling will let me. I knew her mother, who died when the child was born, and a fine woman she was—ten times as good as Kling whom her father made her marry. But there's somebody else who needs me, and who needs ye more than Masie needs us, and that's yer wife. How do ye know her heart is not breakin' for somebody to say a kind word to her? Are ye goin' home and leave her like this? That's not like ye, and I don't want to hear ye say it. Do you mean that if she is put away up the river, ye won't stay here and—”

“What for, to sit for five years waiting for her to come out? And what then? Have you ever seen one reform?”

“And if she gets off, and wanders around the streets?”

“Father Cruse must answer that question.”

“But ye came all these miles to New York to pull her out of the mess she had got into with that man who's ruined yer home, and ye out in the cold without a cent—and ye forgave her for that—and now that she's locked up with only herself to suffer, ye turn yer back on her and leave her to fight it out alone.”

“I did not forgive HER, Mrs. Cleary,” he said in deliberate tones. “I forgave her childish nature, remembering the way she had been educated; remembering, too, that I was twice her age. Nor did I forget the poverty I had brought upon her.”

“And why not forgive her this?” She could hardly restrain a sob as she spoke.

His lips straightened and his brows narrowed. “This is not due to her nature,” he answered coldly, “nor to her bringing up. She has now committed a crime and is beyond reclaim. Once a thief, always a thief. I must stop somewhere.”

“But why not hear her story from her own lips?” she pleaded, her voice choking. “YOU hear it—not Father Cruse, nor me, nor anybody but YOU, who have loved her!”

Felix shook his head. “It is kinder for me to stay away. The very sight of me would kill her.” His answer was final.

Kitty squared herself. “I don't believe it,” she cried, the tears now coursing down her cheeks. “Oh, for the blessed God's sake don't say it—take it back! Listen to me, Mr. O'Day. If she ever wanted a friend it's now. I'd go meself but I'd do no good—nor nothin' I'd tell her would do her any good. It's a man she wants to lean on, not a woman. I can almost lift my John off his feet with one hand, but when I get into trouble I'm just so much putty, runnin' to him like a baby, weak as a rag, and he pattin' my cheek same as if I was a three-year-old. Go and get yer arms around her and tell her ye don't believe a word of it, and that ye'll stand by her to the end, and ye'll make a good woman of her. Turn yer back on her, and they'll have her in potter's field if she gets out of this scrape, for she can't fight long—she hasn't got the strength.

“She could hardly get up-stairs the night I put her to bed—she was that tremblin', and she's no better to-day. Don't let yer pride shut up yer heart, Mr. O'Day. You are a gentleman and ye've lived like one, and ye've got your own and yer father's name to keep clean, and that poor child has dragged it in the mud, and the papers will be full of it, and the disgrace of it all dries ye up, and ye can go no further, and so ye cut loose and let her sink. No, don't ye get angry with me—if ye were my own John I'd tell ye the same. Listen—do ye hear them horns blowin' and the children shoutin'? It's New Year's Eve—to-morrow all the slates will be wiped clean—the past rubbed out and everybody'll have a new start. Make a clean slate of yer own heart—wipe out everything ye've got against that poor child. Take her in yer arms once more—help her come back! If God didn't clean His own slate once in a while and forgive us, none of us would ever get to heaven. Hush! Quiet now! Somebody's just come into the office. I'll not let any one in to disturb ye. Stay where ye are till I see. I hear a voice. WHAT! Well, as I'm alive, it's Father Cruse—what's he come for at this hour? Shall I let him in?”

Felix lifted himself slowly to his feet, as would a man in a hospital ward who sees the doctor approaching.

“Yes, let him in; I was going to look him up.” He was relieved at the interruption. Kitty's appeal had deeply stirred him, but had not swerved him from his purpose. He had done his duty—all of it, to the very last. The day's developments had ended everything. He had no right to bring a criminal into his family.

Kitty swung wide the door and Father Cruse stepped in. He wore his heavy cassock, which was flecked with snow, and his wide hat.

“My messenger told me you were here, Mr. O'Day,” he cried out, in a cheery voice, “and I came at once. And, Mrs. Cleary, I am more than glad to find you here as well.”

Felix stepped forward. “It was very good of you, Father. I was coming down to see you in a few minutes.” They had shaken hands and the three stood together.

The priest glanced in question at Kitty, then back again at Felix. “Does Mrs. Cleary—”

“Yes, Mrs. Cleary knows,” returned Felix calmly. “I have told her everything. Lady Barbara—” he paused, the words were strangling him, “has been arrested—for stealing—and is now in the Tombs prison.”

Father Cruse laid his hand on O'Day's shoulder. “No, my friend, she is not in the Tombs. I took her to St. Barnabas's Home and put her in charge of the Sisters.”

Felix straightened his back. “You have saved her from it.”

“Yes, two hours ago. And she can stay there until the matter is settled, or just as long as you wish it.” His hand was still on O'Day's shoulder, his mind intent on the drawn features, seamed with the furrows the last few hours had ploughed. He saw how he had suffered.

Felix stretched out his hand as if to steady himself, motioned the priest to a chair, and sank into his own.

“In the Sisters' Home,” he repeated mechanically, after a moment's silence. Then rousing himself: “And you will see her, Father, from time to time?”

“Yes, every day. Why do you ask such a question—of me, in particular?”

“Because,” replied Felix slowly, “I may be away—out of the country. I have just asked Mrs. Cleary to look after Masie and she has promised she will. And I am going to ask you to look after my poor wife. They must be very gentle with her—and they should not judge her too harshly.” He seemed to be talking at random, thinking aloud rather than addressing his companions. “Since I saw you I have received a letter from my solicitor. There is some money coming to me, he says, and I shall see that she is not a burden to you.”

The priest turned abruptly, and laid a firm hand on O'Day's knee. “But you will see her, of course?”

“No, it is better that you act for me. She will not want to see me in her present condition.”

Kitty was about to protest, when Father Cruse waved her into silence. “You certainly cannot mean what you have just said, Mr. O'Day?”

“I do.”

The priest rose quickly, passed though the kitchen, and opened the door leading to the outer office. Two women stood waiting, one in a long cloak, the other clinging to her arm, her face white as chalk, her lips quivering.

“Come in,” said the priest.

Martha put her arm around Lady Barbara and led her into the room.

Felix staggered to his feet.

The two stood facing each other, Lady Barbara searching his eyes, her fingers tight hold of Martha's arm.

“Don't turn away, Felix,” she sobbed. “Please listen. Father Cruse said you would. He brought me here.”

No answer came, nor did he move, nor had he heard her plea. It was the bent, wasted figure and sunken cheeks, the strands of her still beautiful hair in a coil about her neck, that absorbed him.

Again her eyes crept up to his.

“I'm so tired, Felix—so tired. Won't you please take me home to my father—”

He made a step forward, halted as if to recover his balance, wavered again, and stretched out his hands.

“Barbara! BARBARA!” he cried. “Your home is here.” And he caught her in his arms.

Prev Next