Felix O'Day Part 7

With the last answer the man drew a step nearer and, in a voice which was fast getting beyond his control, said: "You know now, don't you? You can see it plain as day how long it takes to make a b.u.m of a man when he's up agin things like that. You--" He paused, listened intently, and sprang back, hugging the wall. "What's that? Somebody comin'! My G.o.d!

It's a cop! Don't tell him--say you won't tell him--say it! SAY IT!"

Felix gripped his wrist. "Pull yourself together and keep still."

The officer, who was idly swinging a club as if for companionship along his lonely beat, stopped short. "Any trouble, sir?" he said as soon as he had Felix's outline and bearing clear.

"No, thank you, officer. Only a friend of mine who needs a little looking after. I'll take care of him."

"All right, sir," and he pa.s.sed on down the narrow street.

The man gave a long breath and staggered against the wall. Felix caught him by his trembling shoulders. "Now, brace up. The first thing you need is something to eat. There is a restaurant at the corner. Come with me."

"They won't let me in."

"I'll take care of that."

Felix entered first. "What is there hot this time of night, barkeeper?"

"Frankfurters and beans, boss."

"Any coffee?"

"Sure."

"Send a double portion of each to this table," and he pulled out a chair. "Here's a man who has missed his dinner. Is that enough?" and he laid down a dollar bill--one Kling had given him.

"Forty cents change, boss."

"Keep it, and see he gets all he wants. And now here," he said to the tramp, "is another dollar to keep you going," and with a shift of his stick to his left arm Felix turned on his heel, swung back the door, and was lost in the throng.

Kitty was up and waiting for him when he lifted the hinged wooden flap which provided an entrance for the privileged and, guided by the glow of the kerosene lamp, turned the k.n.o.b of her kitchen door. She was close to the light, reading, the coffee-pot singing away on the stove, the aroma of its contents filling the room.

"I hope I have not kept you up, Mrs. Cleary. You had my message by Mike, did you not?" he asked in an apologetic tone.

"Yes, I got the message, and I got the trunks; they're up-stairs, and if you had given Mike the keys I'd have 'em unpacked by this time and all ready for you. As to my bein' up--I'm always up, and I got to be. John and Mike is over to Weehawken, and Bobby's been to the circus and just gone to bed, and I've been readin' the mornin' paper--about the only time I get to read it. Will ye sit down and wait till John comes in?

Hold on 'til I get ye a cup of hot coffee and--"

"No, Mrs. Cleary. I will go to bed, if you do not mind."

"Oh, but the coffee will put new life into ye, and--"

"Thanks, but it would be more likely to put it OUT of me if it kept me awake. Can I reach my room this way or must I go outside?"

"Ye can go through this door--wait, I'll go wid ye and show ye about the light and where ye'll find the water. It's dark on the stairs and ye may stumble. I'll go on ahead and turn up the gas in the hall," she called back, as she mounted the steps and threw wide his room door. "Not much of a place, is it? But ye can get plenty of fresh air, and the bed's not bad. Ye can see for yourself," and her stout fist sunk into its middle.

"And there's your trunks and tin chest, and the hat-box is beside the wash-stand, and the waterproof coat's in the closet. We have breakfast at seven o'clock, and ye'll eat down-stairs wid me and John. And now good night to ye."

Felix thanked her for her attention in his simple, straightforward way, and, closing the door upon her, dropped into a chair.

The night's experience had been like a sudden awakening. His anxiety over his dwindling finances and his disappointment over Carlin's news had been put to flight by the suffering of the man who had tried to rob him. There were depths, then, to which human suffering might drive a man, depths he himself had never imagined or reached--horrible, deadly depths, without light or hope, benumbing the best in a man, destroying his purposes by slow, insidious stages.

He arose from his chair and began walking up and down the small room, stopping now and then to inspect a bureau drawer or to readjust one of the curtains shading the panes of gla.s.s. In the same absent-minded way he drew out one of the trunks, unlocked it, paused now and then with some garment in his hand only to awake again to consciousness and resume his task, pushing the trunk back at last under the bed and continuing his walk about the narrow room, always haunted by the tramp's haggard, hopeless look.

Again he felt the mysterious sense of kinship in pain that wipes away all distinctions. With it, too, there came suddenly another sense--that of an overwhelming compa.s.sion out of which new purposes are born to human souls.

The encounter, then, had been both a blessing and a warning. He would now stand guard against the onslaught of his own sorrows while keeping up the fight, and this with renewed vigor. He would earn money, too, since this was so necessary, laboring with his hands, if need be; and he would do it all with a wide-open heart.

Chapter V

If O'Day's presence was a welcome addition to Kitty's household, it was nothing compared to the effect produced at Kling's. Long before the month was out he had not only earned his entire wages five times over by the changes he had wrought in the arrangement and cla.s.sification of the stock, but he had won the entire confidence of his employer. Otto had surrendered when an old customer who had been in the habit of picking up rare bits of china, j.a.panese curios, and carvings at his own value had been confronted with the necessity of either paying Felix's price or going away without it, O'Day having promptly quadrupled the price on a piece of old Dresden, not only because the purchaser was compelled to have it to complete his set but because the interview had shown that the buyer was well aware he had obtained the former specimens at one-fourth of their value.

And the same discernment was shown when he was purchasing old furniture, bra.s.s, and so-called Sheffield plate to increase Otto's stock. If the articles offered could still boast of either handle, leg, or back of their original state and the price was fair, they were almost always bought, but the line was drawn at the fraudulent and "plugged-up"

sideboards and chairs with their legs shot full of genuine worm-holes; ancient Oriental stuffs of the time of the early Persians (one year out of a German loom), rare old English plate, or undoubted George III silver, decorated with coats of arms or initials and showing those precious little dents only produced by long service--the whole fresh from a Connecticut factory. These never got past his scrutiny. While it was true, as he had told Kling, that he knew very little in the way of trade and commerce--nothing which would be of use to any one--he was a never-failing expert when it came to what is generally known as "antiques" and "bric-a-brac."

Masie--Kling's only child--a slender, graceful little creature with a wealth of gold-yellow hair flying about her pretty shoulders and a pair of blue eyes in which were mirrored the skies of ten joyous springs, had given her heart to him at once. She had never forgotten his gentle treatment of her dog Fudge, whose attack that first morning Felix had understood so well, lifting and putting the refractory animal back in her arms instead of driving him off with a kick. Fudge, whose manners were improving, had not forgotten either and was always under O'Day's feet except when being fondled by the child.

Until Felix came she had had no other companions, some innate reserve keeping her from romping with the children on the street, her sole diversion, except when playing at home among her father's possessions or making a visit to Kitty, being found in the books of fairy-tales which the old hunchback, Tim Kelsey, had lent her. At first this natural shyness had held her aloof even from O'Day, content only to watch his face as he answered her childish appeals. But before the first week had pa.s.sed she had slipped her hand into his, and before the month was over her arms were around his neck, her fresh, soft cheek against his own, cuddling close as she poured out her heart in a continuous flow of prattle and laughter, her father looking on in blank amazement.

For, while Kling loved her as most fathers love their motherless daughters, Felix had seen at a glance that he was either too engrossed in his business or too dense and unimaginative to understand so winning a child. She was Masie, "dot little girl of mine dot don't got no mudder," or "Beesvings, who don't never be still," but that was about as far as his notice of her went, except sending her to school, seeing that she was fed and clothed, and on such state occasions as Christmas, New Year's, or birthdays, giving her meaningless little presents, which, in most instances, were shut up in her bureau drawers, never to be looked at again.

Kitty, who remembered the child's mother as a girl with a far-away look in her eyes and a voice of surprising sweetness, always maintained that it was a shame for Kling, who was many years her senior, to have married the girl at all.

"Not, John, dear, that Otto isn't a decent man, as far as he goes,"

she had once said to him, when the day's work was over and they were discussing their neighbors, "and that honest, too, that he wouldn't get away with a sample trunk weighing a ton if it was nailed fast to the sidewalk, and a good friend of ours who wouldn't go back on us, and never did. But that wife of his, John! If she wasn't as fine as the best of em, then I miss my guess. She got it from that father of hers--the clock-maker that never went out in the daytime, and hid himself in his back shop. There was something I never understood about the two of 'em and his killing himself when he did. Why, look at that little Masie!

Can't ye see she is no more Kling's daughter than she is mine? Ye can't hatch out hummin'-birds by sittin' on ducks' eggs, and that's what's the matter over at Otto's."

"Well, whose eggs were they?" John had inquired, half asleep by the stove, his tired legs outstretched, the evening paper dropping from his hand.

"Oh, I don't say that they are not Kling's right enough, John. Masie is his child, I know. But what I say is that the mother is stamped all over the darling, and that Otto can't put a finger on any part and call it his own."

Whether Kitty were right or wrong regarding the mystery is no part of our story, but certain it was that the soul of the unhappy young mother looked through the daughter's eyes, that the sweetness of the child's voice was hers, and the grace of every movement a direct inheritance from one whose frail spirit had taken so early a flight.

To Felix this companionship, with the glimpses it gave him of a child's heart, refreshed his own as a summer rain does a thirsty plant. Had she been his daughter, or his little sister, or his niece, or grandchild, a certain sense of responsibility on his part and of filial duty on hers would have clouded their perfect union. He would have had matters of education to insist upon--perhaps of clothing and hygiene. She would have had her secrets--hidden paths on which she wandered alone--things she could never tell to one in authority. As it was, bound together as they were by only a mutual recognition, their joy in each other knew no bounds. To Masie he was a refuge, some one who understood every thought before she had uttered it; to O'Day she was a never-ending and warming delight.

And so this man of forty-five folded his arms about this child of ten, and held her close, the opening chalice of her budding girlhood widening hourly at his touch--a sight to be reverenced by every man and never to be forgotten by one privileged to behold it.

And with the intimacy which almost against his will held him to the little shop, there stole into his life a certain content. Springs long dried in his own nature bubbled again. He felt the sudden, refreshing sense of those who, after pent-up suffering, find the quickening of new life within.

Mike noticed the change in the cheery greetings and in the pa.s.sages of Irish wit with which the new clerk welcomed him whenever he appeared in the store, and so did Kling, and even the two Dutchies when Felix would drop into the cellar searching for what was still good enough to be made over new. And so did Kitty and John and all at their home.

Masie alone noticed nothing. To her, "Uncle Felix," as she now called him, was always the same adorable and comprehending companion, forever opening up to her new vistas of interest, never too busy to answer her questions, never too preoccupied to explain the different objects he was handling. If she were ever in the way, she was never made to feel it.

Instead, so gentle and considerate was he, that she grew to believe herself his most valuable a.s.sistant, daily helping him to arrange the various new acquisitions.

One morning in June when they were busy over a lot of small curios, arranging bits of jade, odd silver watches, seals, and pinchbeck rings, in a gla.s.s case that had been cleaned and revarnished, the door opened and an old fellow strolled in--an odd-looking old fellow, with snow-white hair and beard, wearing a black sombrero and a shirt cut very low in the neck. But for a pair of kindly eyes, which looked out at you from beneath the brim of the hat, he might have been mistaken for one of the dwarfs in "Rip Van Winkle." Fudge, having now been disciplined by Felix, only sniffed at his trousers.