Felix O'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. ”

“ Kitty turned quickly, her eyes two round O's, all the ruddiness gone from her cheeks. “Mr. O'Day! Why! Why!—and what's Otto done to ye? I'll go to him this minute and—”
Felix laughed gently. “You will do nothing of the kind. Mr. Kling is all right and so am I. I want the job for a tramp who tried to hold me up one night, and who is now scrubbing the floor in a rather disreputable public house on Third Avenue.” ”

“ 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? ”

“ I'm up agin it hard. Can't you see I ain't lyin'? You ain't never starved or you'd know. You ain't—” He wavered, his eyes glittering, edged a step nearer, and with a quick lunge made a grab for O'Day's watch.
Felix sidestepped with the agility of a cat, struck straight out from the shoulder, and, with a twist of his fingers in the tramp's neck-cloth, slammed him flat against the wall, where he crouched, gasping for breath. ”

“ Martha had known, of course, that there had been bankruptcy and ruin; that Oakdale, the ancestral estate of the O'Days—theirs for two centuries, with all its priceless old furniture, tapestries, pictures, and porcelains—had, after the owner's death, been sold at public auction; that Fernlodge, Mr. Felix's own home, had gone in the same way; that Lady Barbara, for some reason, had returned to her father, Lord Carnavon; that the girl baby had died; and that “Mr. Felix,” as she always called him, had gone to London where he had taken up his abode at his club. ”

“ Come down and see my stuff! It's only in 10th Street—not twenty minutes' walk. Maybe you can sell some of my things for me. And bring that blessed little girl—she's the dearest, sweetest thing I've seen for an age. Your daughter?”
Felix laughed gently. “No, I wish she were. She is Mr. Kling's child.”
“And your name?”
“O'Day.”
“Irish, of course—well, all the same, come down any morning this week. My name is Ganger; I'm on the fourth floor—been there twenty-two years. You'll have to walk up—we all do. Yes, I'll expect you.”
Kling, whom Felix consulted, began at once to demur. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ The long procession of guests coming up to hand her their gifts, and her fun next day when looking them over—knowing how queer some of them would be—had been part of her joyful anticipation, but Felix would not yield.
“You see, Masie, darling,” he coaxed, “now that you are going to be a real princess,” he was smoothing back her curls as he spoke, “you are going to be so high up in the world that nobody will dare to give you any presents. That is the way with all princesses. ”

“ It was for Kitty that Felix had been on the lookout ever since the guests began to arrive, and no sooner did her rosy, beaming face appear behind that of her husband, than he pushed his way through the throng to reach her side. “No, not out here, Mistress Kitty,” he cried. Had she been of royal blood he could not have treated her with more distinction. “You are to stand alongside of Masie when she comes in; the child has no mother, and you must look after her.”
“No mother! Mr. O'Day! God rest your soul, she won't need to do without one long, she's that lovely. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ He stopped suddenly, staring in blank amazement at Felix, who had just emerged from the side door and was stopping for a word with one of John's drivers. “My God!” he muttered in a low voice, as if talking to himself. “I can't be mistaken.”
Felix nodded a good morning to Kitty and, with an alert, quick stride crossed the sidewalk diagonally, and bent his steps toward Kling's.
The Englishman followed him with his gaze, his open pocketbook still in his hands. “Is that gentleman a customer of yours?” Had he seen a dead man suddenly come to life he could not have been more astounded. ”

“ Look at the pair before us; there they go, the pride, both o' them, God knows, of the whole parish; but still when I think of the bitterness of Felix's friends, Susy, I can't help being afeard. His brother Hugh is a dark man, and his sister Maura is against it. God pity them! It's a cruel world, acushla, when people like them can't do as they'd wish to do. But, Susy, you're a child, and knows nothing at all about it.”
Felix and Alley walked on, unconscious of me ominous forebodings which the superstition of the affectionate woman prompted her to utter. ”

“ Even Kitty noticed the new light in his eyes when they all came back, for Felix brought the two old painters into her sitting-room so that they might renew an acquaintance they had made on the night of the ball and “become better known to a woman of distinction,” as he laughingly put it, which so delighted the dear soul that that night she said to her husband:
“He'll stop trampin' pretty soon, I think, John. Somethin's soaked into him in the last day or two. It's them old painters, I think, that's helpin' him. ”

“ O'Day. What'll I pay him, and when's he comin?”
Felix waved his hand deprecatingly. “And so you never think, Mistress Kitty, that it may be the woman's fault?”
“Yes, sometimes it is. Faults on both sides, maybe. If it's the woman's fault, it always begins when she lets her man do all the work. Look up and down 'The Avenue' here! Every wife is helpin' her husband in his business, and every wife knows as much about it as the man does. That ain't the way up around Central Park. ”

“ Just here, oddly enough, he began to think of Felix—that cold-blooded, unimaginative man, who knew absolutely nothing about how to treat a woman, and, for that matter, knew nothing about anything else in so far as the practical side of life was concerned. ”

“ Along this blinding whirl blaze the playhouses, their wide portals aflame with crackling globes, toward which swarm bevies of pleasure-seeking moths, their eyes dazzled by the glare. Some with heads and throats bare dart from costly broughams, the mountings of their sleek, rain-varnished horses glittering in the flash of the electric lamps. Others spring from out street cabs. ”

“ God rest ye. Mr. O'Day! I'm never too busy to eat, sleep, look after John and Bobby, and listen to what ye've got to say. Hold on till I put these bills away. There ain't one of 'em'll be paid till after New Year—not then, if the customer can help it. They'll all spend their own money or somebody else's. There!”—and she laid the pile on a shelf behind her. “Now, go on—what's it ye want? Come, out with it; and mind, I've said 'Yes, and welcome' before ye've asked it.”
O'Day, from his seat near the stove, studied her face for a moment, his own brightening as he felt the warmth of her loyalty. ”

“ O'Day, that Polly Codman will be drivin' through Central Park in her carriage before five years is out; and she deserves it, for there ain't a finer woman from here to the Battery.”
“I am quite sure of it, Mistress Kitty. That is where the American comes in—or, perhaps it is the New Yorker. I have not been here long enough to find out.”
Of all these neighbors, however, it was Timothy Kelsey, the hunchback, largely because of his misfortunes and especially because of his vivid contrast to all the others, who appealed to him most. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Across this flood of frenzied brilliance surge hurrying mobs, dodging the ceaseless traffic, trampling underfoot the wealth of the Indies, striding through pools of quicksilver, leaping gutters filled to the brim with melted rubies—horse, car, and man so many black silhouettes against a tremulous sea of light. ”

“ A small shop of his own followed in the lower part of the town, and then the one a little below Kling's, where he lived alone with only a caretaker to look after his wants.
Kelsey had arrived one morning shortly after Felix had entered Kling's service, carrying a heavily bound book which he laid on a glass case under Otto's nose. “Take a look at it, Otto,” he said, after pausing a moment to get his breath, the volume being heavy. “There is more brass than leather on the outside, and more paint than text on the inside. ”

“ He was but a year or two older than O'Day, but you would never have supposed it had Tim not told you—and not then unless you had looked close and followed the lines of care deep cut in his face and the wrinkles that crowded close to his deep, hollowed-out eyes. When he was a boy of two, his sister, a girl of six, had let him drop to the sidewalk, and he had never since straightened his back. The customary outlets by which fully equipped men earn their living having been denied Tim, he had passed his boyhood days in one of the small, down-town libraries cataloguing the books. ”