Felix O'Day Part 28

"Come some night--say about eight o'clock. It's not far from here. I am glad you pulled yourself together and went to work. That is a good deal better than the business you tried to follow when we first met,"--and one of his dry smiles flickered about his mouth. "And now, good night,"

and he held out his hand.

The man drew back. It was a new experience. "You mean it?" he asked.

"Yes, give me your hand. Now that you are decent I want to shake it.

That is the only way we can help each other."

Kitty was poring over her accounts when Felix arrived at the express-office and made his way to her sitting-room. She had had a busy day, the holiday season always bringing a rush of extra work, and her wagons had been kept going since daylight. The trend of travel was to Long Island and Jersey towns, the goods being mainly for the Christmas and New Year's festivities. John was away--somewhere between the Battery and Central Park--and so were Mike and Bobby, the boy having been pressed into service now that his vacation had begun.

"Are you too busy to talk to me, Mistress Kitty?" he said, stripping off his mackintosh and hanging it where its drip would do no harm.

"Too busy! G.o.d 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. "Don't promise too much till you hear me out. I am looking for a job."

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."

Kitty let out all her breath and brought her plump hands down on her plump knees, her body rocking as she did so. "Oh, is that it? What a start ye give me! I thought ye and Kling had quarrelled. Sure, I'll take your tramp if ye say so. We want a man to wash the wagons, and help Mike clean up. John fired the macaroni we had last month and I didn't blame him. What can yer man do?"

"Not much."

"What do ye know about him?"

"Nothing, except that he tried to rob me."

"And what do ye want me to take him on for? To have him get away some night with a Saratoga trunk and--"

"No, to KEEP him from getting away with it. He's been on the ragged edge of life for some months, if I read him aright, and has all he can do to keep his footing. I found him a while ago by the merest accident, and he is still holding on. A week with you and your husband will do him more good than a legacy. He will get a new standard."

"What's he been doin' that he's up against it like this?" she asked, ignoring the compliment.

"Trying to forget a wife who went back on him--so he tells me."

"Has he done it?"

"Yes. If you can believe him. She has become a drunkard."

"Well--that's about the worst thing can happen to a man--if he's telling ye the truth. What's become of her?"

"He did not say. All I know is that he has not seen her since she went away."

"Maybe he didn't want to," she flashed back. "Did ye get out of him whose fault it was?"

Felix, whose remarks had been addressed to the red-hot coals in the stove, glanced quickly toward Kitty, but made no answer.

"Ye don't know, that's it, and so ye don't say I'll tell ye that it's the man's fault more'n half the time."

"And what makes you think so, Mistress Kitty?" he asked, trying to speak casually, not daring to look at her for fear she would detect the tremor on his lips, wondering all the time at her interest in the subject.

"It ain't for thinkin', Mr. O'Day, it's just seein' what goes on every day, and it sets me crazy. If a man's got gumption enough to make a girl love him well enough to marry him, he ought to know enough to keep it goin' night and day--if he don't want her to forget him. Half of 'em--poor souls!--are as ignorant as unborn babes, and don't know any more what's comin' to them than a chicken before its head's cut off. She wakes up some mornin' after they've been married a year or two and finds her man's gone to work without kissin' her good-by--when he was nigh crazy before they were married if he didn't get one every ten minutes.

The next thing he does is to stay out half the night, and when she is nigh frightened to death, and tells him so with her eyes streamin', instead of comfortin' her, he tells her she ought to have better sense, and why didn't she go to sleep and not worry, that he was of age and could take care of himself--when all the time she is only lovin' him and pretty near out of her mind lest he gets hurted. And last he gets to lyin' as to where he HAS been--maybe it's the lodge, or a game in a back room, or somethin' ye can't talk about--anyhow, he lies about it, and then she finds it out, and everything comes tumblin' down together, and the pieces are all over the floor. That runs on for a while, and pretty soon in comes a dandy-lookin' chap and tells her she's an abused woman--and she HAS been--and he begins pickin' up the sc.r.a.ps and piecin'

them together, tellin' her all the time the pretty things the first man told her and which, fool-like, she believes over agin, and then one fine day she skips off and the husband goes round, tearin' his hair with shame or shakin' his fist with rage, and says she broke up his home, and if she ever sets foot on his doorstep again he'll set the dogs on her, or let her starve before he'd give her a crumb. Don't it make you laugh?

It does me. And you should see 'em swell round and air their troubles when most everybody knows just what's happened from the beginnin'! If it was any of my business, I'd let out and tell 'em so.

"What my John knows, I know; and what I know, he knows. There's never been a time, and there ain't one now, when I'm beat out and my bones are hangin' stiff in me--and I get that way sometimes even now--that I don't go to John and say, 'John, dear, get yer arms around me and hold me tight, I'm that tired,' and down goes everything, and he's got my head on his shoulder and pattin' my cheeks, and up I get all made over new, and him too. That's the way we get on, and that's the way they all ought to get on if--"

She paused, stretching her neck as if for more air.

"G.o.d save me! Will ye hear me run on? And ye sittin' there drinkin' it all in, not known' a word about the women and carin' less. Ye've got to forgive me, for I'm like John's alarm-clock in this wife business, and when I'm wound up I keep strikin' until I run down. Whew! What a heat I got myself into! Now go on, Mr. 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. Half of 'em ain't out of bed till purty nigh lunch-time. I've heard 'em all talk; and worse yet, they glory in it. What can ye expect when there ain't five of 'em to a block who knows whether her husband has made a million in the past year or whether he's flat broke, except what he tells her? No wonder, when trouble comes, they shift husbands as they do their petticoats, and try it over again with a new one!"

"And if she takes this last plunge, when will she wake up to her mistake?" asked Felix, in a low voice.

"Oh, ye can't always tell. It'll generally run on for a while until she starts up and stares about her like she's been in a trance or a nightmare, and then the dear G.o.d help her after that, for n.o.body else can--nor will! That's the worst of it--NOR WILL! John was readin' out to me the other night about the Red Cross Society for pickin' up wounded off the battle-field, and carryin' them in where they can be patched up again and join their companies when they get well. Why don't they have a Red Cross for some of the poor girls and wives who are hurted--hundreds of 'em lyin' all over the lot--and patch 'em up and bring 'em back to their homes? Now I'm done."

"No! Not yet. One more question. After the last nightmare, what?"

"The gutter--or worse--that's what! And when it's all over, most people say: 'Served her right--she had a happy home once, why didn't she stay in it?' And somebody else says: 'She was always wild and foolish--I knew her as a girl.' And some don't say a blessed word because they couldn't dirty their clean lips with her name-the hypocrites!--and so they cart off her poor body and dump it in a lot back of Calvary cemetery. Oh, I know 'em, and that's what makes me get hot under the collar every time I get talkin' as I've been to-night!--And now let's quit it. If yer dead-beat wants a job, and we can keep him from stealin' the tires off the wagon and the shoes off my big Jim, he can come to work in the mornin', and John will pay him a dollar a day and he can sleep over the stables. And if he's decent, he can come in here once in a while and I'll warm him up with a cup of coffee. I'm glad to take him on just because ye want it--and ye knew that before I said it, for there's nothin' I wouldn't do for ye, and ye know that, too. Listen! That's John drivin' in, and I'm going out to meet him."

Chapter XVII

To the fears already possessing Lady Barbara a new one had now been added, freezing her blood and leaving her prostrate and helpless, like a plant stricken by an icy blast.

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. 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 cla.s.s. 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.

Their inability to find him of late might mean that he had given up the search, having found no trace of her during all the months in which he had been trying to find her. Or it might mean that he, too, had succ.u.mbed to the same poverty which she had endured and, being no longer able to maintain himself in the great city, had sought work elsewhere.

As the thought of this last possibility suddenly took possession of her, her heart gave a great bound of relief, and in the quiet that ensued, a certain tenderness for the man whom she had wronged began to well up within her. She recalled their early life and his unfailing generosity.

Never in all the years she had known him had he refused her the slightest thing which could, in any way, add to her happiness. Indeed, he had often denied himself many of the luxuries to which a man of his tastes and training was ent.i.tled, in order to add to her store. Nor had he ever restrained her in her whims or her extravagance, and never, in any way, had he curtailed her freedom. She had been free to come and free to go, and with whom she pleased. Her intimacy with Dalton had been proof of all this, as well as her friendships with various men to whose companionship many another husband might have objected. "All right, Barbara," was his invariable reply; "you will get over your youth one of these days, and then you and I will settle down."

Even when the financial crash had come, he had begged her to go with him to Australia, where he had important family connections, and where he could build up his fortunes anew. It was by no means certain, he had told her, that he was entirely ruined. His father's estate, when all the debts were paid, might still leave a surplus. There was some land just outside of London, too, on the line of suburban improvement, and this, with the t.i.tle which had come to him with his father's death, would doubtless, after a few years, enable them to return to England and resume their former position. She remembered very well the night he had pleaded with her, and she remembered, too, with a gripping at her heart, her own contemptuous answer, and her departure the next morning for her father's roof. And then the lie she had told!--that Felix had bluntly announced to her his plan for raising sheep in Australia, ordering her to get ready to go with him at once.

She recalled, too, this time with burning cheeks, a certain unsigned letter, in an unknown hand, which had reached her after her flight with Dalton, describing her husband as stunned and dazed by the blow, the writer denouncing her for her desertion, and warning her of the retribution in store for her if she remained with a man like the one on whom she had staked her future happiness. She had laughed at its contents and tossed it across the table to Dalton, who had read it with a smile, caught it between a pair of tongs and, lighting a match, held it over the flame until it was consumed.

Then--as, tortured by these recollections, she lay staring at the dark--Martha's prediction, based on Stephen's, belief, that Felix would kill Dalton at sight, rose up in her mind, and with it came another great fear--one that, for a moment, stopped her heart from beating and left her numb. In the quick succession of blows that Martha had dealt, she had not fully grasped this part of the story. Now she did. That her husband was capable of it she fully believed. Quiet, reticent men like Felix--men who had served their country both in India and Egypt--men who never boasted, who never discussed their intentions or plans until they were carried out, were the men to take the law into their own hands when their honor was involved, no matter who was hurt. Such a catastrophe would not only bring to light her own misery, but the unavoidable publicity would tarnish still further the good name of her people at home. Even were only an attempt on Dalton's life made, and an official investigation held--as she was convinced would be the case--the scandal would be almost as bad. Rather than have this occur she would make any sacrifice, even that of humiliating herself on her knees before Felix--begging his forgiveness, not for the sake of the man she now feared and detested, but for the sake of her father at home, and to shield her own ident.i.ty. She feared, too, for Felix. He, of all men, should be saved from committing such an act.