Felix O'Day Part 40

"Does this man work over at Cleary's express?"

"He does. Vy?"

"Oh, nothing. I may want him later. And, say!"

"Vell," again replied Otto.

"Git wise and surprise that little girl of yours with something else--she'll never wear that mantilla. So long," and he strode out of the store.

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-fellows.h.i.+p 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. s...o...b..a.l.l.s, 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 k.n.o.b of Kitty's outside office, shouts of "Happy New Year" rang out from a group of girls showering each other with s...o...b..a.l.l.s.

"Pray G.o.d," he said to himself, "that it be better than the one which is pa.s.sing," 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, pa.s.sing 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 G.o.d, 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 a.s.sent.

"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 d.a.m.ned 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. G.o.d 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 t.i.tle--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 t.i.tle, 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, G.o.d 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.