Francis Hopkinson Smith

“ 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.” ”

“ There had been no sleep for her after Martha's revelations regarding the presence of Felix in town, and turn as she would on her pillow, she could not escape the dread of one hideous possibility—her meeting him face to face, uncovering to his penetrating gaze her shame.
That he had had any other purpose in pursuing her across the sea than to humiliate and punish her, she did not believe. No man, certainly no man as proud as her husband, would forgive a woman who had trailed his ancestral name in the mud, and made his family life a byword in clubs and drawing-rooms. ”

“ 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?” ”

“ I know very well that there is not a single human being at home who would not shut the door in my face. Some of them do not understand, and never will, and I should never try to explain my life to them. I have suffered for my mistakes and made myself an outcast, and nobody has any compassion for an outcast. That is why I sit and wonder about Stephen, and why I have sat all day and wondered about you, and whether I ought to run away, for I could not stay here if you felt about me as I know those people feel at home. I want you to love me, Martha. ”

“ His face now came into view, with its well-modelled nose and square chin—the features of a gentleman of both refinement and intelligence. A man of forty—perhaps of forty-five—clean-shaven, a touch of gray about his temples, his eyes shadowed by heavy brows from beneath which now and then came a flash as brief and brilliant as an electric spark. He might have been a civil engineer, or some scientist, or yet an officer on half pay.
“Otto Kling, 445 Fourth Avenue,” he repeated to himself, to make sure of the name and location. ”

“ That Martha believed he could still love her was natural. Such good souls, women of the people, who had always led restrained and wholesome lives, would believe nothing else, but not a woman of her own class. She had only to recall a dozen instances where the bonds of marriage had been broken, with all the attendant scandal and misery, to be convinced of what would befall her were she and Felix to meet.
Her one hope was that her husband, baffled in his search, had left the city, and that neither Martha nor Stephen would ever see him again. ”

“ He had nodded pleasantly to the captain, who, in return, had frowned severely at him while the father of the boy was making the complaint; had winked good-naturedly at him the moment the accuser had left the room; had asked after Kitty and John, motioned to him to stay around until somebody put in an appearance to go bail, and had then busied himself with more important matters. A thick-set man, in a brown suit and derby hat, accompanied by an officer and another man, had brought in a frail woman, looking as if life were slowly ebbing out of her; and the four were in a row before his desk. ”

“ Kitty could talk of nothing else. The beauty of the room; the charm of Masie's costume; Kling's generosity; and last, O'Day's bearing and appearance as he led the child through the stately dance, looking, as Kitty expressed it, “that fine and handsome you would have thought he was a lord mayor,” were now her daily topics of conversation.
Masie was equally enthusiastic, rushing down-stairs the next morning to throw her arms around his neck with an “Oh, Uncle Felix, I never, NEVER, NEVER was so happy in all my life!” ”

“ It's getting worse all the time, instead of getting better. God knows what's to become of her! She's most beat out now, and can't stand much more; and she's the best of the lot, except Mr. Felix, for she's clean inside of her, and only her heart is to blame—and that father of hers, Lord Carnavon, with his dirty pride, and this scoundrel she's wrecking her life on, and all the fine ladies at home who turned up their noses at her when half of them are twice as bad—oh, I know 'em—you can't fool Martha Munger! ”

“ 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.” ”

“ He spread out the mantilla again and looked it over carefully. Then a smile of cunning crossed his face. “Just what I want,” he said, folding it up and tucking it inside his capacious cape.
He now made a tour of the room, his tread like that of a cat, lifted the plates on the dresser as if in search of something behind them, rummaged through the work-basket, opening and turning the leaves of a book lying on the table. So occupied was he that he did not hear Martha's noiseless step nor know that she had entered the room. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A small fellow this Pestler, with a round head and up-brushed hair set on a long, thin stem of a neck, the whole growing out of a pair of narrow shoulders, quite like a tulip from a glass jar.
And then there were Jarvis, the spectacle man, and that canny Scotchman Sanderson, the florist, who knew the difference between roses a week old and roses a day old, and who had the rare gift of so mixing the two vintages that hardly enough dead stock was left over for funerals including those presided over by his fellow conspirator Digwell, the undertaker, who lived over his mausoleum of a back room. ”

“ Get down off the platform, Jane Hoggson, and talk to this dear little girl. You see, Mr. O'Day, now that the art of the country has gone to the devil and nobody wants my masterpieces, I have become an Eastern painter, fresh from Cairo, where I have lived for half a century—principally on Turkish paste and pressed figs. My specialty at present—they are all over my walls, as you can see—is dancing-girls in silk tights or without them, just as the tobacco shops prefer. I also do sheiks, muffled to their eyebrows in bath towels, and with scimitars—like that one above the mantel. ”

“ Tim Kelsey, the hunchback, often dropped in. Otto Kling, after Masie was abed; Digwell, the undertaker, quite a jolly fellow during off hours; Codman and Porterfield, with their respective wives; and, most welcome of all, Father Cruse, of St. Barnabas's Church around the corner, the trusted shepherd of “The Avenue”—a clear-skinned, well-built man, barely forty, whose muscular body just filled his black cassock so that it neither fell in folds nor wrinkled crosswise, and whose fresh, ruddy face was an index of the humane, kindly, helpful life that he led. For him Kitty could never do enough. ”

“ The two stood talking in a low voice, Felix's eyes downcast as if in deep thought, the priest apparently urging some plan, which O'Day, by his manner, seemed to favor. They were too far off, and spoke too low, for Otto to catch the drift of the talk, and it was only when Felix, who had followed the priest outside the door, had returned that he called, from his high seat under the gas-jet: “Vell, vat did Father Cruse say?”
Felix drew his brows together. “Say about what?” he asked, as if the question had surprised him. ”

“ Heretofore, with the exception of his visits to Stephen—long since discontinued now that he feared she was an outcast—he had mingled with the throngs crowding the Great White Way ablaze with light or had haunted the doors of the popular theatres and expensive restaurants, and the waiting-rooms of the more fashionable hotels. After this it must be the byways, places where the poor or worse would congregate: cheap eating-houses; barrooms, with so-called “family rooms” attached; and always the streets at a distance from those trodden by the rich and prosperous classes. ”

“ O'Day would not have stepped to its edge, nor would Otto have been so red in the face, nor Kitty so radiant.
Felix raised his hand to command supreme silence.
“Masie wishes me,” he began in his low, even voice, “to tell you that she has done her best to remember every one, and that she hopes nobody has been forgotten. These little trifles she is about to give you are not gifts, but just little mementos to express her thanks for your kindness in coming to her first party. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Underneath stretched Third Avenue, its perspective dimmed in a slowly gathering fog.
As he tramped on, the brim of his soft hat shadowing his brow, he scanned without ceasing the faces of those he passed: the men with collars turned up, the women under the umbrellas—especially those with small feet. At 28th Street he entered a cheap restaurant, its bill of fare, written on a pasteboard card and tacked on the outside, indicating the modest prices of the several viands. ”

“ 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? ”