Felix O'Day Part 21

The priest leaned forward, a startled look on his face. "You surely don't mean she is dead?"

O'Day did not answer.

Father Cruse settled back into the depths of his chair. "She has left you, then," he said in a conclusive tone.

"Yes--a year ago."

He stopped, started to speak, and, with a baffled gesture, said: "No, you might better have it all. It is the only way you will understand; I will begin at the beginning."

The priest laid his hand soothingly on O'Day's wrist. "Take your time. I have nothing else to do except to listen and--help you if I can."

The touch of the priest had steadied him. "Thank you, Father," he said simply, and went on.

"A year ago, as I have said, my wife left me and went off with a man named Dalton. Later I learned she was here, and I came over to see what I could do to help her."

Father Cruse raised his eyebrows inquiringly.

"Yes, just that--to help her when she needed help, for I knew she would need it sooner or later. She was not a bad woman when she left me, and she is not now, unless he has made her so. She is only an easily persuaded, pleasure-loving woman, and when my father was forced into bankruptcy and we all suffered together, she blamed me for giving up what money I had in trying to straighten out his affairs; and then our infant daughter died, and that so upset her mind that when Dalton came along she let everything go. That is one solution of it--the one which her friends give out. I will tell you the truth. It is that I was twenty years older than she, that she loved me as a young girl loves an older man who had been brought up almost in her own family, for our properties adjoined, and that when she woke up, it was to find out that I was not the man she would have married had she been given a few more years' time in which to make up her mind.

"When she ran away I lost my bearings. I used to sit in my room in the club for hours at a time, staring at the morning paper, never seeing the print; thinking only of my wife and our life together--all of it, from the day we were married. I recalled her childish nature, her fits of sudden temper always ending in tears, and her wilfulness. Then my own responsibility loomed up. To let this child go to the devil would be a crime. When this idea became firmly set in my mind, I determined to follow her no matter what she had done or where she had gone.

"I had meant to go to Australia and look after sheep--I knew something about them--but I changed my plans when I overheard a conversation at my club and concluded that Dalton had brought her here--although the conversation itself was only the repet.i.tion of a rumor. Since then I have found out that they are both here, or were some six months ago.

"You can understand, now, why I am living at Mrs. Cleary's and working in Mr. Kling's store. I had but a few pounds left after paying my pa.s.sage and there was no one from whom I could borrow, even if I had been so disposed; so work of some kind was necessary. It may be just as well for me to tell you, too, that n.o.body at home knows where I am, and that but two persons in New York know me at all. One is a man named Carlin, who served on one of my father-in-law's vessels, and the other is his sister Martha, who was a nurse in my wife's family.

"Dalton, so I understood, had considerable money when he left, enough to last him some months, and until yesterday I have hunted for them where I thought he would be sure to spend it, in the richer cafes and restaurants, outside the opera-houses and the fas.h.i.+onable theatres--places where two strangers in the city would naturally spend their evenings, and a woman loving light and color as she did would want to go.

"All these theories were upset last night when Mrs. Cleary gave me some details of a woman she had picked up near your church. She found her, it seems, some months ago--last April, in fact--on the steps of a private house near your church--here on 29th Street--took her home and made her spend the night there. In the morning she disappeared without any one seeing her. Yesterday, while moving the bureau in my room, Mrs. Cleary found a sleeve-link on the carpet; she thought it was one I had dropped.

I have it in my trunk. It is one of a pair my wife gave me on my birthday, the year we were married. I missed it from my jewel case after she left, and thought somebody had stolen it. Now I know that my wife must have taken it, and then dropped it at Mrs. Cleary's. So I came here tonight hoping against hope--it was so many months ago--to get some further information regarding her. Then I remembered that I had not asked Mrs. Cleary what the woman looked like, and I was about to return home, when that poor girl staggered in, and I got a look at her face. I lost my hold on myself then and--"

He sprang to his feet and began striding across the room, his eyes blazing, one clinched fist upraised: "By G.o.d! Father Cruse, I know something of Dalton's earlier life and of what he is capable. And I tell you right here, that if he has brought my wife to that, I shall kill him the moment I set my eyes on him. To take a child of a woman, foolish and vain as she was--stupid if you will--and--" he halted, covered his face in his hands, and broke into sobs.

During the long recital Father Cruse had neither spoken nor moved. He was accustomed to such outbursts, but it had been many years since he had seen so strong a man weep as bitterly. Better let the storm pa.s.s--he would master himself the sooner.

A full minute elapsed, and then, with a groan that seemed to come from the depths of his being, O'Day lifted his head, brushed the hot tears from his eyes, and continued:

"You must forgive me, for I am utterly broken up. But I can't go on any longer this way! I have got to let go--I have got to talk to somebody.

That dear woman with whom I live is kindness itself and would do anything she could for me, but somehow I cannot tell her about these things. I may be wrong about it--but I was born that way. You know black from white--you live here right in the midst of it--you see it every 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. "As you see, she is rather small, with fair hair, blue eyes, and a slight figure--the usual English type.

She has very beautiful teeth--very white--teeth you would never forget once you saw them; and she has quite small ears and, although the picture does not show this, small hands and feet."

"And how would she dress now? This evidently was taken some years ago.

I mean, what was her habit of dress? Would it be such as an Englishwoman would wear?"

Felix pondered. "Well, when Lady Barbara left she had--"

An expression of surprise on the priest's face cut short the sentence.

O'Day looked at him in a startled way; then he recalled his words.

"Pardon me, but it is only fair that you should know that Lady Barbara is the daughter of Lord Carnavon, and that since my father's death they call me Sir Felix. I have never used the t.i.tle here and may never use it anywhere. I would have a.s.sumed some other name when I arrived here, except that I could not bring myself to give up my own and my father's--he never did anything to disgrace it. He was caught in a trap, that is all, and I signed away everything I could to help him out. He stood by me when I was in India, and when he had a s.h.i.+lling he gave me half. I would rather have died, much as my wife blamed me, than not to have done what I did.

"And I would do it all over again, although I did not realize how big the load was until settling-day came. Dalton was at the bottom of it all. He floated the company. There was a story going around the clubs that he had got me into squaring it all up, knowing that I would be done for, and he could get away with her easier, but I never believed it.

He has come into his own, if this wretched, suffering woman that Mrs.

Cleary picked up is my wife; and I will come into mine"--here his eyes flashed--"if he has dragged her down and--"

Father Cruse again laid his quieting fingers this time on Felix's wrist.

"He has not dragged her down, Mr. O'Day. Of that you may be sure. A woman of her cla.s.s doesn't go to pieces in a year. When she reaches the end of her means she will either seek work or she will go to one of the inst.i.tutions to wait until she can hear from her people at home. I have known--"

Felix shook his head with an impatient movement. "You don't know her,"

he exclaimed excitedly, "nor do you know her family. Her father has shut his door against her, and would step across her body if he found it on the sidewalk rather than recognize her. Nor would she ask him for a penny, nor let him or me or any one else know of her misery."

Again the priest sat silent. He did not attempt to defend his theory--some better way of calming his visitor must be found. He merely said, as if entirely convinced by O'Day's denial: "Oh, well, we will let that go, perhaps you know best"; and then added, his voice softening, "and now one word more, before we go into the details of our search, so that no complications may arise in the future. You, of course, are hunting for Lady Barbara to reinstate her as your wife if--"

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? NEVER! That chapter in my life is dosed. My hunt for her all these months has been to save her from herself and from the scoundrel who has ruined her. When that is done I shall pick up my life as best I can, but not with her."

For some seconds the priest did not speak. Then he said gently, again avoiding any disagreement. "Let us hope that so happy an ending to all your sufferings is not far off, my dear Mr. O'Day. And now another question before we part for the night, one I perhaps ought to have asked you before. Are you quite positive that Kitty's visitor was your wife?"

He had reserved this hopeful suggestion--one he himself believed in--for the last. It would help lift the dead weight of bitter anxiety which was sure to overwhelm his visitor in the wakeful hours of the night.

Felix moved impatiently, like one combating a physician's cheering words. "It must have been she, who else could have dropped the sleeve-link?"

"Several people. Excuse me if I talk along different lines, but I have had a good deal of experience in tracing out just such things as this, and I have always found it safest to be sure of my facts before deducing theories. It is not all clear to me that Kitty's woman dropped the links. And even if she did, the fact is no proof that the woman is your wife."

"But the links are mine. There is no question of it--my initials and arms are cut into them." The impatience was gone and a certain curiosity was manifesting itself.

"Quite true, and yet you once thought the links were stolen. So let us presume for the present that they were stolen and that this woman either bought them, or was given them, or found them."

Felix began pacing the floor, a gleam of hope illumining the dark corners of his heart. The interview, too, had calmed him--as do all confessions.

The priest settled back in his seat. He saw that the crisis had pa.s.sed.

There might be another outburst in the future, but it would not have the intensity of the one he had just witnessed. 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?"