“When she ran away I lost my bearings. I used to sit in my room in the club for hours at a time, staring at the morning paper, never seeing the print; thinking only of my wife and our life together—all of it, from the day we were married. I recalled her childish nature, her fits of sudden temper always ending in tears, and her wilfulness. Then my own responsibility loomed up. To let this child go to the devil would be a crime. When this idea became firmly set in my mind, I determined to follow her no matter what she had done or where she had gone.
“I had meant to go to Australia and look after sheep—I knew something about them—but I changed my plans when I overheard a conversation at my club and concluded that Dalton had brought her here—although the conversation itself was only the repetition of a rumor. Since then I have found out that they are both here, or were some six months ago.
“You can understand, now, why I am living at Mrs. Cleary's and working in Mr. Kling's store. I had but a few pounds left after paying my passage and there was no one from whom I could borrow, even if I had been so disposed; so work of some kind was necessary. It may be just as well for me to tell you, too, that nobody at home knows where I am, and that but two persons in New York know me at all. One is a man named Carlin, who served on one of my father-in-law's vessels, and the other is his sister Martha, who was a nurse in my wife's family.
“Dalton, so I understood, had considerable money when he left, enough to last him some months, and until yesterday I have hunted for them where I thought he would be sure to spend it, in the richer cafes and restaurants, outside the opera-houses and the fashionable theatres—places where two strangers in the city would naturally spend their evenings, and a woman loving light and color as she did would want to go.
“All these theories were upset last night when Mrs. Cleary gave me some details of a woman she had picked up near your church. She found her, it seems, some months ago—last April, in fact—on the steps of a private house near your church—here on 29th Street—took her home and made her spend the night there. In the morning she disappeared without any one seeing her. Yesterday, while moving the bureau in my room, Mrs. Cleary found a sleeve-link on the carpet; she thought it was one I had dropped. I have it in my trunk. It is one of a pair my wife gave me on my birthday, the year we were married. I missed it from my jewel case after she left, and thought somebody had stolen it. Now I know that my wife must have taken it, and then dropped it at Mrs. Cleary's. So I came here tonight hoping against hope—it was so many months ago—to get some further information regarding her. Then I remembered that I had not asked Mrs. Cleary what the woman looked like, and I was about to return home, when that poor girl staggered in, and I got a look at her face. I lost my hold on myself then and—”
He sprang to his feet and began striding across the room, his eyes blazing, one clinched fist upraised: “By God! Father Cruse, I know something of Dalton's earlier life and of what he is capable. And I tell you right here, that if he has brought my wife to that, I shall kill him the moment I set my eyes on him. To take a child of a woman, foolish and vain as she was—stupid if you will—and—” he halted, covered his face in his hands, and broke into sobs.
During the long recital Father Cruse had neither spoken nor moved. He was accustomed to such outbursts, but it had been many years since he had seen so strong a man weep as bitterly. Better let the storm pass—he would master himself the sooner.
A full minute elapsed, and then, with a groan that seemed to come from the depths of his being, O'Day lifted his head, brushed the hot tears from his eyes, and continued:
“You must forgive me, for I am utterly broken up. But I can't go on any longer this way! I have got to let go—I have got to talk to somebody. That dear woman with whom I live is kindness itself and would do anything she could for me, but somehow I cannot tell her about these things. I may be wrong about it—but I was born that way. You know black from white—you live here right in the midst of it—you see it every day. Mr. Silas Murford told me the other night at Kelsey's that you knew everybody in this neighborhood, and so I came to you. Help me find my wife!”
Father Cruse drew his chair closer and laid his hand soothingly on O'Day's knee.