Felix O'Day Part 6

I suppose you been keepin' it up same as usual--trampin' and lookin'?"

"Yes." This came as the mere stating of a fact.

"And I suppose there ain't nothin' new--no clew--nothin' you can work on?" The speaker felt a.s.sured there was not, but it might be an encouragement to suggest its possibility.

"No, not the slightest clew."

"Better give it up, Mr. Felix, you're only wastin' your time. Be worse maybe when you do come up agin it." The s.h.i.+p-chandler was in earnest; every intonation proved it.

O'Day arose from his seat and looked down at his companion. "That is not my way, Carlin, nor is it yours; and I have known you since I was a boy."

"And you are goin' to keep it up, Mr. Felix?"

"Yes, until I know the end or reach my own."

"Well, then, G.o.d's help go with ye!"

Into the shadows again--past long rows of silent warehouses, with here and there a flickering gas-lamp--until he reached Dover Street. He had still some work to do up-town, and Dover Street would furnish a short cut along the abutment of the great bridge, and so on to the Elevated at Franklin Square.

He was evidently familiar with its narrow, uneven sidewalk, for he swung without hesitation into the gloom and, with hands hooked behind his back, his stick held, as was his custom, close to his armpit, made his way past its shambling hovels and warehouses. Now and then he would pause, following with his eyes the curve of the great steel highway, carried on the stone shoulders of successive arches, the sweep of its lines marked by a procession of lights, its outstretched, interlocked palms gripped close. The memory of certain streets in London came to him--those near its own great bridges, especially the city dump at Black-friars and the begrimed buildings hugging the stone knees of London Bridge, choking up the snakelike alleys and byways leading to the Embankment.

Crossing under the Elevated, he continued along the side of the giant piers and wheeled into a dirt-choked, ill-smelling street, its distant outlet a blaze of electric lights. It was now the dead hour of the twenty-four--the hour before the despatch of the millions of journals, damp from the presses. He was the only human being in sight.

Suddenly, when within a hundred feet of the end of the street, a figure detached itself from a deserted doorway. Felix caught his stick from under his armpit as the man held out a hand.

"Say, I want you to give me the price of a meal."

Felix tightened his hold on the stick. The words had conveyed a threat.

"This is no place for you to beg. Step out where people can see you."

"I'm hungry, mister." He had now taken in the width of O'Day's shoulders and the length of his forearm. He had also seen the stick.

Felix stepped back one pace and slipped his hand down the blackthorn.

"Move on, I tell you, where I can look you over--quick!--I mean it."

"I ain't much to look at." The threat was out of his voice now. "I ain't eaten nothin' since yisterday, mister, and I got that out of a ash-barrel. 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. "Oh, that's it, is it?" he said calmly, loosening his hold.

The man raised both hands in supplication. "Don't kill me! Listen to me--I ain't no thief--I'm desperate. When you didn't give me nothin'

and I got on to the watch--I got crazy. I'm glad I didn't git it. I been a-walkin' the streets for two weeks lookin' for work. Last night I slep'

in a coal-bunker down by the docks, under the bridge, and I was goin'

there agin when you come along. I never tried to rob n.o.body before.

Don't run me in--let me go this time. Look into my face; you can see for yourself I'm hungry! I'll never do it agin. Try me, won't you?" His tears were choking him, the elbow of his ragged sleeve pressed to his eyes.

Felix had listened without moving, trying to make up his mind, noting the drawn, haggard face, the staring eyes and dry, fevered lips--all evidences of either hunger or vice, he was uncertain which.

Then gradually, as the man's sobs continued, there stole over him that strange sense of kins.h.i.+p in pain which comes to us at times when confronted with another's agony. The differences between them--the rags of the one and the well-brushed garments of the other, the fact that one skulked with his misery in dark alleys while the other bore his on the open highways--counted as nothing. He and this outcast were bound together by the common need of those who find the struggle overwhelming.

Until that moment his own sufferings had absorbed him. Now the throb of the world's pain came to him and sympathies long dormant began to stir.

"Straighten up and let me see your face," he said at last, intent on the tramp's abject misery. "Out here where the full light can fall on it--that's right! Now tell me about yourself. How long have you been like this?"

The man dragged himself to his feet.

"Ever since I lost my job." The question had calmed him. There was a note of hope in it.

"What work did you do?"

"I'm a plumber's helper."

"Work stopped?"

"No, a strike--I wouldn't quit, and they fired me."

"What happened then?"

"She went away."

"Who went away?"

"My wife."

"When?"

"About a month back."

"Did you beat her?"

"No, there was another man."

"Younger than you?"

"Yes."

"How old was she?"

"Eighteen."

"A girl, then."

"Yes, if you put it that way. She was all I had."

"Have you seen her since?"

"No, and I don't want to."

These questions and answers had followed in rapid succession, Felix searching for the truth and the man trying to give it as best he could.