Felix O'Day Part 5

"Vell, den, say eight o'clock."

Again O'Day shook his head slowly and thoughtfully as if some insurmountable obstacle had suddenly arisen before him. Then he said firmly: "I am afraid I must decline your kind offer, Mr. Kling. The latest I could stay on any evening is seven o'clock--some days I might have to leave at six--certainly no later than half past. I suppose you have dinner at seven, Mrs. Cleary?"

Kitty nodded. She was too interested in this new phase of the situation to speak.

"Yes, seven would have to be the hour, Mr. Kling" said O'Day.

"Vell, make it seven o'clock, den."

"And if," he continued in a still more serious voice, "I should on certain days--absent myself entirely, would that matter?"

Otto was being slowly driven into a corner, but he determined not to flinch with Kitty standing by. "No, I tink I git along vid my little Beesvings."

O'Day studied the pavement for an instant, then looked into s.p.a.ce as if seeking to clear his mind of every conflicting thought, and said at last, slowly and deliberately: "Very well. Then I will be with you in the morning at nine o'clock. Now, good day, Mrs. Cleary. I know we will get on very well together, and you, too, Mr. Kling. Thank you for your confidence." Then, turning to the Irishman: "Don't forget, Mike, that the street-door is open and that I'm up two flights. You will find the number on this card."

Chapter IV

The customary scene took place when Felix, late that afternoon, handed his landlady the overdue rent. Now that the two crisp bills which O'Day owed her lay in her hand, she was ready to pa.s.s them back to him if the full payment at all embarra.s.sed him. Indeed, she had never had a more quiet and decent lodger, and she hoped it didn't mean he was "goin'

away," and, if she was rather sharp with him the night before, it was because she had been "that nervous of late."

But Felix, ignoring her overtures, only shook his head in a good-natured way. He would begin packing at once, and the express wagon would be here at six. She would know it by the white horse which the man was driving.

When his trunks were finished he would put them outside his bedroom door, and please not to forget his mackintosh and leather hat-case which he would leave inside the room.

So the packing began. First the sole-leather trunk, from which he had taken the hapless dressing-case the night before, was pulled out and the heavy black tin box hauled into position and unlocked. With the raising of the scarred and dented top a ma.s.s of letters and papers came into view, filling the box to the brim--some tied with red tape, others in big envelopes. In a corner lay some photographs--one in a gilt frame, the edge showing clear of the tissue-paper in which it was wrapped. This he took out and studied long and earnestly, his lips tightly pressed together. Retying the paper, he tucked them all back into place, turned the key, shook the box to see that the lock held tight, picked it up with one hand by its side handle, and, throwing open the door, deposited it on the landing outside. Its leather companion was then placed beside it, the hat-case crowning the whole.

Mike's voice was now heard in the narrow front hall. "How fur is it up, mum? Oh, another flight! Begorra, it's as dark as a coal-hole and about as dirty!" This was followed by: "Oh, is that you, sor? How many pieces have you?"

"Only two, Mike; and the mackintosh and hat-case," answered Felix, who had watched him stumbling up the stairs until his red face was level with the landing. "By the way, mind you don't lose the rubber coat, for, although I never wear an overcoat, this comes in well when it rains."

"I'll never take me eyes off it. I bet ye niver bought that down on the Bowery from a Johnny-hand-me-down!"

"And, Mike!"

"Yes, sor?"

"Will you please say to Mrs. Cleary that I may not be in to-night before eleven o'clock?"

"Eleven! Why that's the shank o' the evenin' for her, sor. If it was twelve, or after, she'd be up." Then he bent forward and whispered: "I should think ye would be glad, sor, to get out of this rookery."

Felix nodded in a.s.sent, waited until the leather trunk had been dumped into the wagon, watched Mike remount the stairs until he had reached his landing, helped him to load up the balance of his luggage--the tin box on one shoulder, the coat over the other, the hat-case in the free hand--and then walked back to his empty room. Here he made a thoughtful survey of the dismal place in which he had spent so many months, picked up his blackthorn stick, and, leaving the door ajar, walked slowly down-stairs, his hand on the rail as a guide in the dark.

"And you aren't comin' back, sir?" remarked the landlady, who had listened for his steps.

"That, madame, one never can tell."

"Well, you are always welcome."

"Thank you--good-by."

"Good-by, sir; my husband's out or he would like to shake your hand."

O'Day bowed slightly and stepped into the street, his stick under his arm, his hands hooked behind his back. That he had no immediate purpose in view was evident from the way he loitered along, stopping to look at the store windows or to scrutinize the pa.s.sing crowd, each person intent on his or her special business. By the time he had reached Broadway the upper floors of the business buildings were dark, but the windows of the restaurants, cigar shops, and saloons had begun to blaze out and a throng of pleasure seekers to replace that of the shoppers and workers.

This aspect of New York appealed to him most. There were fewer people moving about the streets and in less of a hurry, and he could study them the closer.

In a cheap restaurant off Union Square he ate a spare and inexpensive meal, whiled away an hour over the free afternoon papers, went out to watch an audience thronging into one of the smaller theatres, and then boarded a down-town car. When he reached Trinity Church the clock was striking, and, as he often did when here at this hour, he entered the open gate and, making his way among the shadows sat down, on a flat tomb. The gradual transition from the glare and rush of the up-town streets to the sombre stillness of this ancient graveyard always seemed to him like the shifting of films upon a screen, a replacement of the city of the living by the city of the dead. High up in the gloom soared the spire of the old church, its cross lost in shadows. Still higher, their roofs melting into the dusky blue vault, rose the great office-buildings, crowding close as if ready to pounce upon the small s.p.a.ce protected only by the sacred ashes of the dead.

For some time he sat motionless, listening to the m.u.f.fled peals of the organ. Then the humiliating events of the last twenty-four hours began crowding in upon his memory: the insolent demands of his landlady; the guarded questions of Kling when he inspected the dressing-case; the look of doubt on both their faces and the changes wrought in their manner and speech when they found he was able to pay his way. Suddenly something which up to that moment he had held at bay gripped him.

"It was money, then, which counted," he said to himself, forgetting for the moment Kitty's refusal to take it. And if money were so necessary, how long could he earn it? Kling would soon discover how useless he was, and then the tin box, emptied of its contents and the last keepsake p.a.w.ned or sold, the end would come.

None of these anxieties had ever a.s.sailed him before. He had been like a man walking in a dream, his gaze fixed on but one exit, regardless of the dangers besetting his steps. Now the truth confronted him. He had reached the limit of his resources. To hope for much from Kling was idle. Such a situation could not last, nor could he count for long either on the friendship or the sympathy of the big-hearted expressman's wife. She had been absolutely sincere, and so had her husband, but that made it all the more inc.u.mbent upon him to preserve his own independence while still pursuing the one object of his life with undiminished effort.

A flood of light from the suddenly opened church-door, followed by a burst of pent-up melody, recalled him to himself. He waited until all was dark again, rose to his feet, pa.s.sed through the gate and, with a brace of his shoulders and quickened step, walked on into Wall Street.

As he made his way along the deserted thoroughfare, where but a few hours since the very air had been charged with a nervous energy whose slightest vibration was felt the world over, the sombre stillness of the ancient graveyard seemed to have followed him. Save for a private watchman slowly tramping his round and an isolated foot-pa.s.senger hurrying to the ferry, no soul but himself was stirring or awake except, perhaps, behind some electric light in a lofty building where a janitor was retiring or, lower down, some belated bookkeeper in search of an error.

Leaving the grim row of tall columns guarding the front of the old custom-house, he turned his steps in the direction of the docks, wheeled sharply to the left, and continued up South Street until he stopped in front of a ship-chandler's store.

Some one was at work inside, for the rays of a lantern shed their light over piles of old cordage and heaps of rusty chains flanking the low entrance.

Picking his way around some barrels of oil, he edged along a line of boxes filled with ship's stuff until he reached an inside office, where, beside a kerosene lamp placed on a small desk littered with papers, sat a man in shirt-sleeves. At the sound of O'Day's step the occupant lifted his head and peered out. The visitor pa.s.sed through the doorway.

"Good evening, Carlin; I hoped you would still be up. I stopped on the way down or I should have been here earlier."

A man of sixty, with a ruddy, weather-beaten face set in a half-moon of gray whiskers, the ends tied under his chin, sprang to his feet. "Ah!

Is that you, Mr. Felix? I been a-wonderin' where you been a-keepin'

yourself. Take this chair; it's more comfortable. I was thinkin' somehow you might come in to-night, and so I took a shy at my bills to have somethin' to do. I suppose"--he stopped, and in a whisper added: "I suppose you haven't heard anything, have you?"

"No; have you?"

"Not a word," answered the ship-chandler gravely.

"I thought perhaps you might have had a letter," urged Felix.

"Not a line of any kind," came the answer, followed by a sidewise movement of the gray head, as if its owner had long since abandoned hope from that quarter.

"Do you think anything is the matter?"

"Nothin', or I should 'a' 'eard. My notion is that Martha kep' on to Toronto with that sick man she nursed on the steamer. Maybe she's got work stiddy and isn't a-goin' to come back."

"But she would have let you KNOW?" There was a ring of anxiety now, tinged with a certain impatience.

"Perhaps she would, Mr. Felix, and perhaps she wouldn't. Since our mother died Martha gets rather c.o.c.ky sometimes. Likes to be her own boss and earn her own living. I've often 'eard her say it before I left 'ome, and she HAS earned it, I must say--and she's got to, same as all of us.