Felix O'Day

by Francis Hopkinson Smith

Much of this information had been gathered from newspaper clippings that her old uncle, living in London, had mailed to her. More particulars had come in a letter from James Muldoon, one of the grooms at Oakdale, who gave a most pitiful and graphic account of the way the London dealers crowded about the old porcelains in the ebony cabinets, and of the prices paid by the Earl of Brinsmore, who bought most of the pictures, half of the old Spanish furniture, as well as the largest but one of the great tapestries, to enrich the new mansion he was then building in London and in which James Muldoon was happy to say he had been promised a place.

In still other letters, open references had also been made to a much discussed speculation, entangling many of those whom Martha had formerly known, followed by a grand financial explosion in which some of the same people had been badly injured. In connection with these disasters mention was likewise made of a certain Mr. Dalton, who had disappeared shortly after, leaving rather a bad name behind him, altogether undeserved, according to many of the papers, he always having been a “financier of the highest standing.” This last ball of gossip was rolled Martha's way by her nephew, who was a clerk in a solicitor's office off the Strand and who had mailed an editorial on the matter to his uncle, who promptly forwarded it to Martha. She had read it carefully to the end and had put it in her drawer without at first grasping the full meaning of the fact that, but for the activities of this same Mr. Dalton, her dear mistress and her dear mistress's husband, Felix O'Day, and her dear mistress's father-in-law, the late Sir Carroll O'Day, would still be in possession of their ancestral estates and in undisturbed enjoyment of whatever happiness they, individually and collectively, could get out of life.

What the dear woman never knew, and it was just as well that she did not, were the special happenings which ended in the overwhelming catastrophe.

It really began with a tea basket, holding enough for two, which was opened one lovely afternoon under the big willows skirting that little strip of land bordering the backwater at Cookham-on-Thames. My lady at the time was wearing a wide leghorn hat with blue ribbons that matched her eyes and set off the roses in her fair English cheeks. Her companion was in white flannels—a muscular, well-set-up young man of thirty, fifteen years younger than her husband and with twice his charm—one of those delightful companions who possess the rare quality of making an hour seem but five minutes. A gay party had dropped down the river in her father's launch, which had been tied up at Ferry Inn, and Dalton had insisted on taking my lady for just a half-hour's poling in a punt, Felix and the others preferring to take their tea at the Inn—plans readily agreed to and carried out, except that the half-hour prolonged itself into two whole ones.

Then there had come a week-end at Glenmore Castle and a garden party outside London, and then five-o'clock teas at half a dozen private houses, including one or two meetings a trifle more secluded. And all quite as it should be, for a most desirable and valuable guest was this same Mr. Guy Dalton, a man received everywhere with open arms, as “one of the rising men of the time, my dear sir,” a financier of distinction, indeed, and a promoter of such skill that he had only to issue a prospectus, or wink knowingly on the street, or take you aside at the club and whisper confidentially to you, when everything he had issued, winked at, or whispered about would go up with a rush, and countless men and women—a goodly number were women—would be hundreds, nay, thousands of pounds the richer before the week was out.

That his own buoyant imagination, as well as that of those who followed his lead, should have been stretched to the utmost was quite within the possibilities when one recollects that the basis of all this wealth was crude rubber, a substance of pronounced elasticity. This, too, accounts for the vim and suddenness of the final recoil attending the final collapse—a recoil which smashed everything and everybody within its reach.

There were “words,” of course, between Dalton and some of his victims. There always are “words” when the ball bounces back and you catch it full in the eye. And for salves and soothing plasters there were the customary explanations regarding the state of the market, the tightness of money, the non-arrival of important details, the delaying of despatches owing to a break in the cable, together with offers of heavy discounts, and increased allotments of stock for renewed subscriptions. But the end came, just as it always does.

And so did the aftermath, as was shown by the advertisements in the auction columns of the daily papers and the motley mob of hungry, perspiring dealers, pawing over the household gods; and, more disastrous still, because of its rarity, Felix's brave fight to save his father's name, the whole struggle ending in his own ruin.

As for the very pretty young woman who had been wearing the hat with blue ribbons, it may be as well to remark that when the milk in the heart of a woman has become slightly curdled, it is to be expected that, under certain exciting influences, the whole will turn sour. When to this curdling process is added the loss of her child and her fortune, calamities made all the more insupportable by reason of an interview lasting an hour in which her two hot hands were held in those of a sympathetic man of thirty, her cheeks within an inch of his lips, the quickest—in fact, the only way—yes, really the only way, to prevent any further calamity is to put your best gown in your best dressing-case, catch up your jewels, and exchange your husband's roof for that of your father's. And this is precisely what my lady did do, and there in her father's house she stayed, despite the entreaties of her own and her father's friends.

“And why not?” she had argued, with flashing eyes: “I am without a shilling of my own, owing to the Quixotic ideas of my husband, who, without thinking of me, has beggared himself to pay his father's debts. And that, too, just when I need to be comforted most. He does not care how I suffer; and now that my father has offered me a home, I will lead my own life, surrounded by the few friends who have loved me for myself alone.”