Felix O'Day

by Francis Hopkinson Smith

“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 passing 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 space protected only by the sacred ashes of the dead.

For some time he sat motionless, listening to the muffled 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 pawned or sold, the end would come.

None of these anxieties had ever assailed 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 incumbent 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, passed 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-passenger 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.