Felix O'Day

Chapter VI

The glimpse which Felix had caught of these two poor, unappreciated old men, living contentedly from hand to mouth, gayly propping each other up when one or the other weakened, had strangely affected him. If, as he reasoned, such battered hulks, stranded these many years on the dry sands of incompetency, with no outlook for themselves across the wide sea over which their contemporaries were scudding with all sails set before the wind of success—if these castaways, their past always with them and their hoped-for future forever out of their reach, could laugh and be merry, why should not he carry some of their spirit into his relations with the people among whom his lot was now thrown?

That these people had all been more than good to him, and that he owed them in return something more than common politeness now took possession of his mind. Few such helping hands had ever been held out to him. When they had been, the proffered palm had generally concealed a hidden motive. Hereafter he would try to add what he could of his own to the general fund of good-fellowship and good deeds.

He would continue his nightly search—and he had not missed a single evening—but he would return earlier, so as to be able to spend an hour reading to Masie before she went to bed, or with his other friends and acquaintances of “The Avenue”—especially with Kitty and John. He had been too unmindful of them, getting back to his lodgings at any hour of the night, either to let himself in by his pass-key—all the lights out and everybody asleep—or to find only Kitty or John, or both, at work over their accounts or waiting up for Mike or Bobby or for one of their wagons detained on some dock. And since Kling had raised his salary, enabling him not only to recover his dressing-case, which then rested on his mantel, but to take his meals wherever he happened to be at the moment—he had seldom dined at home—a great relief in many ways to a man of his tastes.

Kitty, though he did not know it, had demurred and had talked the matter over with John, wondering whether she had neglected his comfort. When she had questioned him, he had settled it with a pat on her shoulders. “Just let me have my way this time, my dear Mrs. Cleary,” he had said gently but firmly. “I am a bad boarder and cause you no end of trouble, for I am never on time. And please keep the price as it is, for I don't pay you half enough for all your goodness to me.”

Now under the impulse of his new resolution, and rather ashamed of his former attitude in view of all her unremitting attentions, he resumed his place at her table. Nor did he stop here. He taught her to broil a chop over her coal fire by removing the stove lid—until then they had been fried—and a new way with a rasher of bacon, using the carving-fork instead of a pan. The clearing of the famous coffee-pot with an egg—making the steaming mixture anew whenever wanted instead of letting the dented old pot simmer away all day on the back of the stove—was another innovation, making the evening meal just that much more enjoyable, greatly to the delight of the hostess, who was prouder of her boarder than of any other human being who had come into her life, except John and Bobby.

These renewed intimacies opened his eyes to another phase of the life about him, and he soon found himself growing daily more interested in the sweet family relations of the small household.

“What do I care for what we haven't got,” Kitty said to him one night when some economies in the small household were being discussed. “I'm better off than half the women who stop at my door in their carriages. I got two arms, and I can sleep eight hours when I get the chance, and John loves me and so does Bobby and so does my big white horse Jim. There ain't one of them women as knows what it is to work for her man and him to work for her.” All the other married couples he had seen had pulled apart, or lived apart—mentally, at least. These two seemed bound together heart and soul.

More than once he contrived to stop at the Studio Building, where both of the old fellows were almost always to be found sitting side by side, and, picking them up bodily, he had set them down on hard chairs in a rathskeller on Sixth Avenue, where they had all dined together, the old fellows warmed up with two beers apiece. This done, he had escorted them back, seen them safely up-stairs, and returned to his lodgings.

It was after one of these mild diversions that, before going to his room, he pushed open the door of the Clearys' sitting-room with a cheery “May I come in, Mistress Kitty?”

“Oh, but I'm glad to see ye!” was the joyous answer. “I was sayin' to myself: 'Maybe ye'd come in before he went.' Here's Father Cruse I been tellin' ye about—and, Father, here's Mr. O'Day that's livin' wid us.”

A full-chested man of forty, in a long black cassock, standing six feet in his stockings, his face alight with the glow of a freshly kindled pleasure, rose from his chair and held out his hand. “The introduction should be quite unnecessary, Mr. O'Day,” he exclaimed in the full, sonorous voice of a man accustomed to public speaking. “You seem to have greatly attached these dear people to you, which in itself is enough, for there are none better in my parish.”

Felix, who had been looking the speaker over, taking in his thoughtful face, deep black eyes, and more especially the heavy black eyebrows that lay straight above them, felt himself warmed by the hearty greeting and touched by its sincerity. “I agree with you, Father, in your praise of them,” he said as he grasped the priest's hand. “They have been everything to me since my sojourn among them. And, if I am not mistaken, you and I have something else in common. My people are from Limerick.”

“And mine from Cork,” laughed the priest as he waved his hand toward his empty chair, adding: “Let me move it nearer the table.”

“No, I will take my old seat, if you do not mind. Please do not move, Mr. Cleary; I am near enough.”

“And are you an importation, Father, like myself?” continued Felix, shifting the rocker for a better view of the priest.

“No. I am only an Irishman by inheritance. I was brought up on the soil, born down in Greenwich village—and a very queer old part of the town it is. Strange to say, there are very few changes along its streets since my boyhood. I found the other day the very slanting cellar door I used to slide on when I was so high! Do you know Greenwich?”

He was sitting upright as he spoke, his hands hidden in the folds of his black cassock, wondering meanwhile what was causing the deep lines on the brow of this high-bred, courteous man, and the anxious look in the deep-set eyes. As priest he had looked into many others, framed in the side window of the confessional—the most wonderful of all schools for studying human nature—but few like those of the man before him; eyes so clear and sincere, yet shadowed by what the priest vaguely felt was some overwhelming sorrow.

“Oh, yes, I know it as I know most of New York,” Felix was saying; “it is close to Jefferson Market and full of small houses, where I should think people could live very cheaply”; adding, with a sigh, “I have walked a great deal about your city,” and as suddenly checked himself, as if the mere statement might lead to discussion.

Kitty, who had been darning one of John's gray yarn stockings—the needle was still between her thumb and forefinger—leaned forward. “That's the matter with him, Father, and he'll never be happy until he stops it,” she cried. “He don't do nothin' but tramp the streets until I think he'd get that tired he'd go to sleep standin' up.”

Felix turned toward her. “And why not, Mrs. Cleary?” he asked with a smile. “How can I learn anything about this great metropolis unless I see it for myself?”

“But it's all Sunday and every night! I get that worried about ye sometimes, I'm ready to cry. And ye won't listen to a thing I say! I been waitin' for Father Cruse to get hold of ye, and I'm goin' to say what's in my mind.” Here she looked appealingly to the priest. “Now, ye just talk to him, Father, won't ye, please?”

The priest, laughing heartily, raised his protesting hands toward her. “If he fails to heed you, Mrs. Cleary, he certainly won't listen to me. What do you say for yourself, Mr. O'Day?”

Felix twisted his head until he could address his words more directly to his hostess. “Please keep on scolding me, my dear Mrs. Cleary. I love to hear you. But there is Father Cruse, why not sympathize with him? He tramps to some purpose. I am only the Wandering Jew, who does it for exercise.”

Kitty held the point of the darning-needle straight out toward Felix. “But why must you do it Sundays, Mr. O'Day? That's what I want to know.”

“But Sunday is my holiday.”

“Yes, and there's early mass. Ye'd think he'd come, wouldn't ye, Father?”

One of O'Day's low, murmuring laughs, that always sounded as if he had grown unaccustomed to letting the whole of it pass his lips, filtered through the room.

“You see what a heathen I am, Father,” he exclaimed. “But I am going to turn over a new leaf. I shall honor myself by visiting St. Barnabas's some day very soon, and shall sit in the front pew—or, perhaps, in yours, Mrs. Cleary, if you will let me—now that I know who officiates,” and he inclined his head graciously toward the priest. “I hope the service is not always in the morning!”

“Oh, no, we have a service very often at night, sometimes at eight o'clock.”

“And how long does that last?”

“Perhaps an hour.”

“And so if I should come at eight and wait until you are free, you could give me, perhaps, another hour of yourself?”

“Yes, and with the greatest pleasure. But why at those hours?” asked the priest with some curiosity.

“Because I am very busy at other times. But I want to be quite frank. If I come, it will not be because I need your service, but because I shall want to see YOU. Your church is not my church, and never has been, but your people—especially your priests—have always had my admiration and respect. I have known many of your brethren in my time. One in particular, who is now very old—a dear abbe, living in Paris. Heaven is made up of just such saints.”

The priest clasped his hands together. “We have many such, sir,” he replied solemnly. The acknowledgment came reverently, with a gleam that shone from under the heavy brows.

Felix caught its brilliance, and the sense of a certain bigness in the man passed through him. He had been prepared for his quiet, well-bred dignity. All the priests he had known were thoroughbreds in their manner and bearing; their self-imposed restraint, self-effacement, absence of all unnecessary gesture, and modulated voices had made them so; but the warmth of this one's underlying nature was as unexpected as it was pleasurable.

“Yes, you have many such,” O'Day repeated simply after a slight pause during which his thoughts seemed to have wandered afar. “And now tell me,” he asked, rousing himself to renewed interest, “where your work lies—your real work, I mean. The mass is your rest.”

The priest turned quickly. He wondered if there were a purpose behind the question. “Oh, among my people,” he answered, the slow, even, non-committal tones belying the eagerness of his gesture.

“Yes, I know; but go on. This is a great city—greater than I had ever supposed—greater, in many ways, than London. The luxury and waste are appalling; the misery is more appalling still. What sort of men and women do you put your hands on?”

“Here are some of them,” answered the priest, his forefinger pointing to Kitty and John.

“We could all of us do without churches and priests,” ventured Felix, his eyes kindling, “if your parishioners were as good as these dear people.”

“Well, there's Bobby,” laughed the priest, his face turned toward the boy, who was sound asleep in his chair, Toodles, the door-mat of a dog, sprawled at his feet.

“And are there no others, Father Cruse?”

The priest, now convinced of a hidden meaning in the insistent tones, grew suddenly grave, and laid his hand on O'Day's knee. “Come and see me some time, and I will tell you. My district runs from Fifth Avenue to the East River, from the homes of the rich to the haunts of the poor, and there is no form of vice and no depth of suffering the world over that does not knock daily at my study door. Do not let us talk about it here. Perhaps some day we may work together, if you are willing.”

Kitty, who had been listening, her heart throbbing with pride over Felix, who had held his own with her beloved priest, and still fearing that the talk would lead away from what was uppermost in her mind—O'Day's welfare—now sprang from her chair before Felix could reply. “Of course he'll come, Father, once he's seen ye.”

“Yes, I will,” answered Felix cordially. “And it will not be very long either, Father. And now I must say good night. It has been a real pleasure to meet you. You have been a most kindly grindstone to a very dull and useless knife, and I am greatly sharpened up. After all, I think we both agree that it is rather difficult to keep anything bright very long unless you rub it against something still brighter and keener. Thank you again, Father,” and with a pat of his fingers on Kitty's shoulder as he passed, and a good night to John, he left the room on his way to his chamber above.

Kitty waited until the sound of O'Day's footsteps told her that he had reached the top of the stairs and then turned to the priest. “Well, what do ye think of him? Have I told ye too much? Did ye ever know the beat of a man like that, livin' in a place like this and eatin' at my table, and never a word of complaint out o' him, and everybody lovin' him the moment they clap their two eyes on him?”

The priest made no immediate answer. For some seconds he gazed into the fire, then looked at John as if about to seek some further enlightenment, but changing his mind faced Kitty. “Is his mail sent here?”

“What? His letters?”

“Yes.”

“He don't have any—not one since he's been wid us.”

“Anybody come to see him?”

“Niver a soul.”

The priest ruminated for a moment more, and then said slowly, as if his mind were made up: “It does not matter; somebody or something has hurt him, and he has gone off to die by himself. In the old days such men sought the monasteries; to-day they try to lose themselves in the crowd.”

Again he ruminated, the delicate antennae of his hands meeting each other at the tips.

“A most extraordinary case,” he said at last. “No malice, no bitterness—yet eating his heart out. Pitiful, really; and the worst thing about it is that you can't help him, for his secret will die with him. Bring him to me sometime, and let me know before you come so I may be at home.”

“You don't think there's anything crooked about him, Father, do you?” said John, who had sat tilted back against the wall and now brought the front legs of his chair to the floor with a bang.

“What do you mean by crooked. John?” asked the priest.

“Well, he blew in here from nowheres, bringin' a couple of trunks and a hat-box, and not much in 'em, from what Kitty says. And he might blow out again some fine night, leavin' his own full of bricks, carting off instead some I keep on storage for my customers, full of God knows what!—but somethin' that's worth money, or they wouldn't have me take care of 'em. There ain't nothin' to prevent him, for he's got the run of the place day and night. And Kitty's that dead stuck on him she'll believe anything he says.”

Kitty wheeled around in her seat, her big strong fist tightly clinched. “Hold your tongue, John Cleary!” she cried indignantly. “I'd knock any man down—I don't care how big he was—that would be a-sayin' that of ye without somethin' to back it up, and that's what'll happen to ye if ye don't mend your manners. Can't ye see, Father, that Mr. Felix O'Day is the real thing, and no sham about him? I do, and Kling does, and so does that darlin' Masie, and every man, woman, and child around here that can get their hands on him or a word wid him. Shame on ye, John! Tell him so, Father Cruse!”

The priest kept silent, waiting until the slight family squall—never very long nor serious between John and Kitty—had spent itself.

“Well, I'm not sayin' anything against Mr. O'Day, Kitty,” broke in John. “I'm only askin' for information. What do you think of him, Father? What's he up to, anyhow? There ain't any of 'em can fool ye. I don't want to watch him—I ain't got no time—and I won't if he's all right.”

The priest rose from his chair and stood looking down at Kitty, his hands clasped behind his back. “You believe in him, do you not?”

“I do—up to the handle-and I don't care who knows it!”

“Then I would not worry, John Cleary, if I were you.”

“Well, what does she know about it, Father?”

“What every good woman always knows about every good man. And now I must go.”