The Fate of Felix Brand
by Florence Finch Kelly · English · Gutenberg #30733 · 368,076 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Fate of Felix Brand
Author: Florence Finch Kelly
Illustrator: Edwin John Prittie
Release date: December 22, 2009 [eBook #30733]
Most recently updated: January 5, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FATE OF FELIX BRAND ***
Produced by D Alexander and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
THE FATE OF
FELIX BRAND
BY
FLORENCE FINCH KELLY
AUTHOR OF "WITH HOOPS OF STEEL," "THE DELAFIELD AFFAIR," "RHODA
OF THE UNDERGROUND," "EMERSON'S WIFE,
AND OTHER WESTERN STORIES," ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY
EDWIN JOHN PRITTIE
PHILADELPHIA
THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1913, by
THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO.
[Illustration: MILDRED ANNISTER MADE APPREHENSIVE INQUIRY ABOUT HIM]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. FELIX BRAND HAS A MYSTERIOUS EXPERIENCE 9
II. "LIKE OTTAR OF ROSES OUT OF AN OTTER" 15
III. THE MASK OF HIS COUNTENANCE 27
IV. BILLIKINS IS FRIGHTENED 40
V. MRS. BRAND'S DREAM SON 62
VI. WHO IS HUGH GORDON? 82
VII. FELIX BRAND READS A LETTER 96
VIII. DAYS OF STRESS 113
IX. BATTLING WITH THE INVISIBLE 128
X. HUGH GORDON WINS HENRIETTA'S CONFIDENCE 140
XI. PENELOPE HAS A VISITOR 158
XII. DR. ANNISTER HAS DOUBTS 179
XIII. MILDRED IS MILITANT 190
XIV. "THERE IS NOT ROOM FOR US BOTH" 199
XV. FELIX BRAND HAS A BAD QUARTER OF AN HOUR 215
XVI. MRS. FENLOW IS ANGRY 230
XVII. "WHICH SHOULD HAVE THE GIFT OF LIFE?" 249
XVIII. ISABELLA TAKES ONE MORE RIDE 272
XIX. "AND YOU COULD DO THIS, FELIX BRAND!" 285
XX. "SAVE ME, DR. ANNISTER!" 295
XXI. HUGH GORDON TELLS HIS STORY 317
XXII. "A MOST INTERESTING CASE!" 335
XXIII. WHITHER? 341
ILLUSTRATIONS
MILDRED ANNISTER MADE APPREHENSIVE INQUIRY
CONCERNING HIM
_Frontispiece_
PAGE
"HARRY, DEAR, HAVE YOU HEARD FROM HIM?" 84
HE SANK FACE DOWNWARD ON THE BED 139
"MILDRED!" HIS WHITE LIPS WHISPERED, THEN STIFFENED AND
WERE STILL 340
THE FATE OF FELIX BRAND
CHAPTER I
FELIX BRAND HAS A MYSTERIOUS EXPERIENCE
Felix Brand awoke with a start and looked about him with a puzzled
stare. And yet there was nothing unfamiliar in what met his gaze. The
bed wherein he lay and its luxurious appointments were of his own
recent buying. He had himself designed the decorations of the room
and selected its furnishings. As his eyes leaped from one object to
another his bewildered glance seemed to slide unnotingly over the
furniture, and the draperies, walls and pictures, indicative of a
fastidious taste, that made up the interior of his bedroom.
But it was no more than a few seconds until his consciousness came
again into accord with his surroundings. His look of perplexity
quickly changed into one of satisfaction and amusement, and he
exclaimed aloud:
"Good Lord, how vivid that was! Never before has it been so strong!"
He rubbed his eyes, slapped his arms and moved about in the bed as if
to be assured of his bodily intactness and smiled again as he thought:
"No, I'm here, all right, and I'm I, as usual! But it seems as if I'd
only have to close my eyes to swing back into it again!"
His eyelids dropped as if in response to his thought, but quickly
opened again, with a little frown, as he murmured, "No, I guess not.
This is better!"
He rested his head upon his locked hands and stretched himself full
length upon his back, as his eyes roved about the beautiful interior.
They dwelt caressingly upon its details with the pride and pleasure of
the creator and the satisfaction of the owner for whom possession has
yet the bloom of newness.
It was a handsome face, framed in dark, waving hair, that thus lay
back against the whiteness of the pillow; dark skinned, smooth
shaven, squarish in its general outline, with regular, pleasing
features; a mobile face, whose whole seeming would depend upon
the expression by which it should be lighted. Just now it looked
sensitive, amiable, satisfied, and, at the first glance, one would be
sure that it bespoke a mind and soul of fine fibre. But if one looked
a second time and more searchingly one would perceive some clouding
and coarsening of that refinement, signs not yet marked enough to tell
their story openly and not likely to be noted by the ordinary
observer, but able to make the keener student of the human countenance
doubt his first impressions.
"It's queer how much more vivid and real those dreams are
nowadays--every time one comes it's stronger than ever it was before,"
Felix Brand's thought was running as he made ready for the day. The
illusion that had possessed him as he awoke surged through him again
and again with such force that it seemed almost strong enough to sweep
his consciousness out of his actual surroundings. Razor in hand, ready
to begin the task of shaving, a fresh onset, still more insistent,
went whirling through his brain and sent a sudden numb sensation down
his arm. He shook himself irritatedly.
"Confound it!" he muttered. "Can't I keep awake this morning? But I'm
not sleepy--I'm as wide awake as ever I was! It's queer!"
He frowned at his reflection in the mirror, then suddenly his
countenance glowed with interest. "I wonder if I could--I believe I'll
try!" he exclaimed aloud. "Jove! What an experience it would be! It's
worth trying!"
He turned to lay the razor down and felt his eyes fasten themselves in
a devouring stare upon its bright blade. An instant, and he was
startled by the sound of a strange voice which he caught just as it
was dying out of his ears, a strong, vigorous voice, speaking in tones
of authority.
"Who's that?" he cried out, glancing about the room in surprise. What
he had heard had sounded like a name and his thought snatched at it as
it faded quickly away from him. "Hugh Gordon!" he repeated softly, and
said it over to himself as he gazed dazedly about the room. Well
might he turn the name over and over in his mind and wonder about it,
for it was destined to become to him the most hateful thing in the
world.
"Nonsense! What's the matter with me this morning?" and he shrugged
impatiently. "I don't know anybody named 'Hugh Gordon' and there's
nobody in here anyway. The sound must have come from the hall, or,
maybe, from the street."
His eyes fell upon the clock and he started with surprise. "Why, it
can't be that late! Only a moment ago I looked and it was--I couldn't
have seen straight or something's gone wrong with it. Anyway, I'd
better get a move on."
He turned briskly to the mirror to resume the operation of shaving and
stared again as he put out his hand to pick up the razor. For it was
not where he had laid it down a moment before. His wondering glance
quickly discovered it on the other side of the dressing table, and
bewildered amazement overspread his countenance. It was laden with the
results of recent use.
"The devil!" he gasped. "I hadn't shaved! I hadn't even lathered!"
But the half fearful look of inquiry he darted into the mirror showed
his face to be freshly shaven, and in the usual manner, except the
upper lip, where had been left the faint, dark stubble of a mustache.
CHAPTER II
"LIKE OTTAR OF ROSES OUT OF AN OTTER"
"Breakfast is a little late, Harry. Delia is in one of her
introspective moods and it has made her slow. I hope you won't miss
your boat!"
She turned an anxious face toward her sister, who was entering the
room, and Henrietta Marne smiled reassuringly, as she set down a
suitcase, laid her hat and coat upon a chair, and replied in a hearty,
cheerful tone:
"No, indeed! I've plenty of time. And I was glad to have an extra five
minutes with mother. Do you think she's better than she was yesterday?
Bella, I'm afraid I ought not to go to Mr. Brand's theatre party
tonight!" And her countenance clouded with anxiety as they seated
themselves at the breakfast table.
"Don't think of missing it, Harry! Mother will be all right. She
seems a lot better this morning."
"Y-e-s, I thought so, but I'm afraid she'll miss me tonight. It always
seems to please her when I come home in the evening."
"Of course, dear, we'll both miss you! You're the man of our
household, you know, and you go out and battle with the world every
day and bring us a fresh breath from it every night!"
"And you always 'meet me with a smile,'" laughed Henrietta.
"Of course! And we'll be twice as glad to see you tomorrow night, and
we'll smile twice as big a smile, because you'll have such a lot of
things to tell us."
"Mr. Brand has a curious effect upon me that I don't quite like."
Henrietta frowned thoughtfully into her coffee cup while she
hesitated, as if choosing words for further speech. In shirtwaist,
linen collar and cloth skirt she looked trim, well groomed, alert.
Fair-haired and fresh-colored, her expression capable, composed and
sweet-natured, she was what a Scotchman would call "a bonny lass."
Her sister, also fair, was smaller of mold and daintier of look and
manner. She appeared a little older, but her features were finer and
more regular and a twinkle of humor barely hid itself in the corner of
her blue eye, as if ready to spring forth at the first encouragement.
"This begins to sound romantic!" chaffed Isabella. "Let's hope he's at
least a pirate in disguise."
"No, let's not. Because then he'd sail away and I'd have to hunt a new
job. And it is such a nice place, Bella! I don't believe another girl
in my whole class just fell into such good luck as I did. He seems
pleased with my work, too."
"I know he is, Harry, because Mrs. Annister told me last week that Mr.
Brand thinks he has found a jewel of a secretary--the best he's ever
had. I was waiting"--and a gleam of mirth sparkled in her eyes as she
smiled fondly upon her sister--"to tell you until some day when you'd
be feeling blue. But I just couldn't wait any longer."
Henrietta flushed with pleasure. "I'm so glad to know that! If he'll
just keep on being satisfied a few months longer, we'll have this
place paid for!"
"Oh, we're going to pull through all right!" Isabella exclaimed,
hopeful conviction in her tones and smile. Then she puckered her brows
and did her best to look doubtful and alarmed as she went on in a
tragic half whisper, her blue eyes dancing: "If he doesn't turn pirate
and sail away in the meantime, or, maybe, make a villain out of you,
with this wicked influence you're getting alarmed about, so that
you'll maybe steal your own salary and run away with it and leave
mother and me to star-r-ve! To think that a famous architect should
be just oozing badness all around him like that--as Mark Twain said,
'like ottar of roses out of an otter'--at the same time that he's
evolving such beautiful things out of his brain! Ugh! It's awful!"
Henrietta laughed, a short, chuckling laugh that suggested deeper
amusement than it expressed. "Is there anything you wouldn't make fun
of, Bella? Very likely it isn't he, after all, but just my own innate
wickedness coming to the surface. It's only that I feel a great desire
to amuse myself, and am more willing to be selfish about it than I
used to be. Three months ago I wouldn't have gone to this theatre
party, with mother ill and you alone with her. I know I'm a beast to
do it, but I do want to go dreadfully, and----"
"And you're going, and you're not to coddle your conscience any more
about it. It's all right, and we're all right, and mother and I would
feel we were two beasts if you stayed away on our account. What makes
you think Mr. Brand responsible for this awful depravity? Because he
invited you to his house-warming?"
"Oh, no! It was thoughtful and lovely of him to include poor little me
among his guests, and I'm as grateful as--Cinderella. But he sometimes
says some little thing, in connection with what we are doing, about
the pleasure there is in beautiful things and how it and the joy one
ought to get out of life enlarge and deepen one's existence. And then
I begin to feel, away down inside of me, a longing for pleasure, and
as if I could reach out and grasp all sorts of--of things, just for my
own enjoyment."
"And that makes you feel dreadfully wicked!" Isabella's laugh tinkled
through the room, a lighter, merrier sound than her sister's. "Dear
me! As if we didn't all feel that way once in a while!"
"You never do," Henrietta interrupted.
"Don't inquire too deeply into my feelings, unless you want to be
shocked. Suppose we have some hot toast to cheer us up after this
awful confession. Delia," to the maid who entered in response to her
ring, "have you some fresh toast ready?"
"The toast is awfully good this morning, Delia," said Henrietta
smiling at her. "It's always nice, but it's particularly good, exactly
right, this morning."
"Thank you, Harry!" said Isabella as the maid disappeared. "I'm so
glad you said it. Maybe it will make her feel better. Did you see that
determined, dare-and-die look on her face? I'm sure something's going
to happen!"
"And we've raised her wages twice already," the other exclaimed, as
her face took on the same anxious expression that had just clouded her
sister's.
"Yes, and we can't pay her any more than we're giving her now. She
isn't worth it and we couldn't afford it if she were."
"Just as we've begun to feel sure she was satisfied and would stay.
Oh, Bella! It's too bad! But maybe it's no worse than it was the last
time we got scared, when her cousin was married and she wanted a day
off. You remember, she had two days of the introspective mood then."
"Thank you, Delia! It's done to a turn!" and Isabella smiled sweetly
at the returning maid, who retreated a step and stood still, fumbling
her tray, an embarrassed, determined look upon her face.
"It's perfectly lovely," chimed in Henrietta with enthusiasm.
The girl shuffled from one foot to the other but her expression did
not relax. Isabella cast an "I-told-you-so" look at her sister and
glanced expectantly at the maid.
"What is it, Delia?"
"I'm thinkin', Miss Marne, you'd better be lookin' for a new girl."
"Why, what's the matter? You don't want to leave us, do you?"
"No, miss, I don't want to, an' that's the truth. But I don't think
I'll be stayin' any longer than you can get another girl."
"What's the trouble, Delia?"
"It's lonesomeness, Miss Marne. It's that respectable out here that
there's niver a policeman comes along this street for days at a time.
An' the milkman comes around that early I niver see him, an' anyway
he's elderly an' the father of four. An' it's so high-toned, there
ain't a livery stable anywhere, an' so there's none of them boys to
pass a word with once in a while. An' there's only the postman, an'
him small and married."
There was silence for a moment while the maid shuffled her feet and
turned her tray about and the sisters bit their lips. Then Isabella
exclaimed, in a tone of brisk sympathy:
"Yes, Delia, I understand how you feel, and I don't blame you at all,
but----"
"Don't make up your mind right away, Delia," Henrietta broke in.
"Think about it a little longer. Maybe something will happen."
"And only think, Harry," Isabella groaned, as Delia left the room,
"what a wonderful bargain that real estate agent made us think we were
getting, just because there were so many restrictions there could
never be anything or anybody objectionable within a mile of us!"
"I had an inspiration just in the nick of time," Henrietta replied.
"Mrs. Fenlow told me, when she was in the office the other day,
waiting for Mr. Brand, that she is going to move her garage to this
end of her property, which you know is just a block away, with an
entrance from this street--she hoped it wouldn't annoy us--and she
said she was going to have a new chauffeur. And we can hope, Bella,
that he'll be young and tall and handsome and inclined to be
flirtatious with good-looking maids who sometimes work in front
door-yards nearby. Why, here's Billikins! You naughty doggie, where
have you been?"
A white fox terrier had bounded into the room and was giving her
exuberant greeting, having stopped first to drop at her feet a
rag-doll that he carried in his mouth. "There, that will do," she
laughed as he sprang to her lap, and thence to her shoulder and
testified his overflowing affection with voice and tongue. "Get down
now and take care of your babykins!"
"I must go now," she declared, and, rising, began putting on hat and
coat. "I'll just run upstairs and kiss mother good-bye again. If
anything should happen, Bella, or should you want me to come home for
any reason, you can 'phone me at the office until five o'clock, and
after that at Dr. Annister's. Mrs. Annister, you know, is going to
chaperon Mildred and me. Wasn't it sweet of her to ask me to stay all
night with them!"
Five minutes later she came hurrying downstairs again, and Isabella,
waiting for her at the front door, put the suitcase into her hand,
pressed an arm about her waist, and gave her a farewell greeting.
"Have just as good a time as you can, Harry, dear," she said gaily,
"so you'll have all the more to tell mother and me tomorrow night!"
The morning sun shone down through the golden autumn foliage of the
maple trees that lined the street, and now irradiated Henrietta's
figure and then dyed it somberly as she passed with rapid step through
open space and shadow. Isabella watched her progress down the quiet
road toward the avenue, half a dozen blocks away, whence came the
clang of street cars and the rattle of traffic. But the girl turned
now and then and cast an eager glance in the other direction.
"I'm so glad she could go tonight," Isabella was thinking. "She works
so hard and she doesn't have many pleasures--neither do I! But I don't
mind--very much!" She cast another glance up the street and caught
sight of a smallish man's figure bending one-sidedly under a burden of
other people's joys and sorrows as he passed in and out of the
gateways in the next block. A pleased smile brightened her face and
she turned back to watch her sister's progress.
"There! She was just in time to catch that car! She's just a brick,
Harry is! What a funny notion about Felix Brand! If it was little
Bella, now--" She threw up her head saucily and danced a step or two
as she faced about to see how near the postman had come.
"'An' him small an' married!'" she repeated to herself and laughed
softly as she watched his slight, burdened figure on its slow
progress. "Poor Delia! If I was in her place I'm afraid I'd flirt with
him anyway!"
She ran down the walk to the gate and greeted him with a merrily
smiling, "Good morning."
"Only one this morning, Miss Marne," he said, smiling back at her, and
then added, as he saw her face brighten, "but it's the one you want, I
guess!"
"Yes," she gaily replied, "you're always very welcome when you bring
me a letter like this!"
She was keenly conscious of the caress in her hand as she held the
letter in close clasp. Once inside the door again, she pressed the
missive softly to her cheek as she whispered, "Dear Warren! You dear
boy! I just knew you were writing to me yesterday, and you didn't
disappoint me!"
CHAPTER III
THE MASK OF HIS COUNTENANCE
It was a curious mixture of people whom Felix Brand had bidden to the
theatre party and house-warming with which he celebrated the setting
up of his bachelor household gods in a studio apartment house. But the
varied contents of that mixture were not so much indicative of
catholic tastes in human nature as of an underlying trait of his own
character, a trait which led him to look first, in whatever he did,
for his own advantage. But whatever their differing attitudes toward
life there were few of his guests who did not follow his movements
with admiring eyes and think of him as one of Fortune's favorites.
For in this artistically decorated and luxuriously furnished apartment
there was nothing to hint that until recent years he had lived as
yoke-fellow with severest economy. The son of a school-teacher in a
Pennsylvania town, the family purse had had all that it could do to
provide for him a course in college and the training for his
profession. But at the beginning of his career he had won a rich prize
in an architectural competition, and afterwards commissions and
rewards and honors had flowed in upon him in constantly increasing
measure. While he did not yet quite merit the adjective which Isabella
Marne had applied to him, there was every promise that he would soon
be, in truth, a "famous architect."
Although he had barely entered his third decade, certain
characteristic features of his work had already won attention, and
these had been praised so much, and had begun to exercise so evident
an influence, that many looked upon him as destined to be and as,
indeed, already becoming, the leader of a new and fruitful movement in
American architecture. A Felix Brand design, whether for a dwelling, a
church, a business building, or a civic monument, was sure to be
marked by simplicity of conception, exquisite sense of proportion and
rhythmic harmony of line.
"What a perfectly charming manner he has!" said Miss Ardeen Andrews to
Henrietta Marne, who knew of her as a rising young actress. "And such
wonderful eyes! Why, there is a caress in them if he only looks at
you!"
"Yes," replied Henrietta in a matter-of-fact way, "it's a very
pleasant expression, isn't it? But it doesn't mean anything in
particular. It's just their natural expression."
"And he's not only handsome," Miss Andrews went on with enthusiasm,
"but he's the most sensitive and refined-looking man I've met in a
long time." And she flashed a glance of covert admiration across the
room at their host, who was talking with two men of such different
type as to make his own courtly manner and intellectual features
noticeable by contrast.
A little later Henrietta, passing the two men, heard them speculating,
in tones touched with an Irish brogue, as to whether or not the young
architect was already making money enough out of his profession to pay
for such surroundings as these in which he was settling himself.
"There's money enough in it when you get to the top," one of them was
saying. Henrietta remembered him as a certain district political
leader, Flaherty by name, with whom her employer had lately held
several conferences. "Money enough to buy old masters to paper your
walls with and velvet chairs to sit in for a year, and never the same
one twice. But Brand's not up to the top yet. He must have some other
jug to go to, and I'd like to know just what it is and how big it is!"
Henrietta could have told them what it was, and she was presently
reminded of it when two men were presented to her and she recognized
their names as that of the firm of brokers through which Felix Brand
had for some time been carrying on what she knew to be very profitable
operations in stocks.
"The doctor won't forget us entirely, will he, Mrs. Annister?" the
host was saying to the tall and handsome woman with iron-gray hair and
warm-colored cheeks who sat beside him at the supper table.
"I hope not; but you know I never vouch for him. Mildred impressed it
upon him that he must be here in time for supper," and she glanced at
the young replica of herself at Brand's other hand.
"Yes," confirmed the girl, "he promised very faithfully that he'd come
as soon as he could. But he was to see a case tonight in which he's
very much interested, and if he gets to thinking and reading about
that, you know, Mr. Brand, that he is just as likely as not to forget
all about us."
"Oh, yes, that case!" said her mother. "It's most curious and
interesting--one of the sort that makes you feel creepy."
"Do tell us about it then," exclaimed Ardeen Andrews, farther down the
table.
"It's a man possessed by the illusion that his dreams are the real
thing and his waking hours are imaginary. Just think what a
topsy-turvy state that must keep his family in!"
Felix Brand looked up with sudden interest, but before he could speak
a man's voice called out from the other end of the table, "The doctor
doesn't consider faith in one's dreams evidence of a pathological
state, does he, Mrs. Annister?" It was Robert Moreton, a young author,
whose name was of frequent occurrence in magazine tables of contents.
"If he does," Mrs. Moreton broke in, "how crazy he would think you,
Rob! You see, when he is writing a story," and she glanced up and down
the table, "Robert imagines it's being acted out around him, and I
have to be the heroine and the villainess and the parlor maid and the
cook and answer to all their names."
"That must give some variety to existence, Mrs. Moreton," said Brand.
"And variety is the best spice for life that I know of."
"Do you know that story of Colonel Higginson's," Moreton went on,
"called 'A Monarch of Dreams,' about a man who developed the power of
controlling his dreams and became so delighted and absorbed in them
that he gave himself up to the life he lived while asleep and allowed
his real existence to wither away until it was of no consequence at
all to him or any one else? It has always seemed to me a wonderful bit
of eerie imagination. And there are such alluring suggestions for
experiment in it!"
Felix Brand's brown eyes were fixed in a speculative stare upon the
mass of roses that glowed at the center of the table. Miss Marne,
glancing at him, knew that, whether or not he was thinking of them, he
was conscious of their beauty in every fibre of his being. "I wonder,"
he said slowly, and she saw Mildred Annister's gaze turn quickly upon
him as the girl bent forward with parted lips. "I wonder very, very
much," he repeated, "just how much one could do toward making one's
dream-people come alive. I mean, toward making the different kind of
person one sometimes is in a dream the real person when one is awake.
You know how different you seem sometimes when you are asleep, not at
all the same kind of person you are when you are awake. Now, wouldn't
it be interesting if you could make yourself be that person sometimes
after you wake up? It seems to me it would be a delightful change from
being the same person all the time. This being tied fast to yourself
year in and year out gets very monotonous."
Miss Annister gave a little gasp and leaned nearer to him, distress in
her eyes.
"Don't say that!" she begged, hardly above a whisper. "Don't even
think such things! You are you, and I wouldn't have you different for
worlds and worlds!"
Her disturbed little appeal was shielded from observation by a
vivacious feminine voice which called out simultaneously: "Please
finish my house before you turn yourself into anybody else, Mr. Brand!
You know we've only settled on the back porch and one dormer window,
so far, and I'll leave it to these good people if that's enough for a
family of six to live in!"
Henrietta smiled discreetly at her plate, for she knew along what a
tortuous path of inchoate ideas and breezy caprices Mrs. Grahame
Fenlow, upon the sightliness of whose new chauffeur she and her sister
were basing their hopes of keeping their maid of all work, had led the
architect in his attempt to design a new house for her.
"Aren't you afraid, mother," exclaimed Mark Fenlow, from his seat
beside Henrietta, "if you don't decide pretty soon whether you want
that dormer window in the cellar or the roof and whether the back
porch is to be before or behind the house, that Mr. Brand will be
driven to try a new personality, or incarnation, or--or drink, or
whatever you call it!"
"Why, here's the doctor at last," cried Felix Brand as he rose to
greet the newcomer and lead him to his seat at the table.
Dr. Philip Annister, smiling affably at the company, scarcely looked
the famous specialist in nerve diseases that he was. Short and slight
in physique, his head, when he stood beside his handsome wife, was
barely on a level with hers. Wherefore, his shoes, ever since his
wedding day, had been noticeably high of heel, and rarely was he
known to wear other head covering than a silk hat. He had cast aside
the look of abstraction which commonly possessed his thin, pale
countenance and his manner and speech of modest geniality soon won for
him the favor of all the heterogeneous company to whom he was not
already known. His wife noticed that his eyes rested frequently upon
their host and later she said to him:
"Felix is looking handsomer than ever tonight, isn't he!"
"Yes, I suppose so," he answered hesitatingly. "But, Margaret,
there's an expression growing on his face that I don't like. It's
creating a doubt about him in my mind."
"What do you mean? His manner tonight toward all this queer mixture
of people has been perfect--cordial, unassuming, delicately courteous
and friendly toward every one. And, really, Philip, I don't know a
handsomer man! His face is so refined, and those brown, caressing eyes
of his are enough to turn any girl's head. I don't wonder in the least
that Mildred is so completely in love with him. What is it you don't
like about his looks, Philip?"
"I don't quite know, and perhaps it isn't fair to him to put it into
words until I do know. It is less evident tonight, when he is all
animation and his thoughts are full of the entertainment of his
guests, than I have seen it sometimes lately. You know, Margaret,
Felix has an unusually expressive countenance. It's like a crystal
mask, and it's bound to reveal the very shape and color of his soul. I
think I begin to see signs in it of selfishness and grossness--"
"Oh, Philip! How can you! Grossness! He's the most refined----"
"You haven't announced Mildred's engagement yet, have you?" her
husband interrupted. "I'm glad of that," he went on in a relieved tone
as she shook her head, "and I hope you will not for some time."
"Mildred is beginning to look forward rather eagerly to being
married," said Mrs. Annister, smiling soberly. "I'm almost afraid
she's more in love than he is."
"I'm so glad I came tonight. It has been lovely!" Henrietta Marne at
that moment was saying to her host, at the other side of the room.
"You have enjoyed it?" and he bent upon her his brown eyes with their
look of caressing indulgence. "I'm glad of that, for I'm afraid you
don't have as many enjoyments as a girl ought to have, by right of her
youth and beauty and charm."
"I was afraid I ought not to come, because my mother is ill."
"Ah, that Puritan conscience of yours, Miss Marne! Don't be so afraid
of it when the question is nothing more than getting some innocent
pleasure out of life."
"But one isn't afraid of one's conscience. One just takes counsel of
it, or with it."
"Of course! But if one--you, for instance--yielded to it more than its
due--and it really is insatiable, you know, if you let it get the
upper hand--what a wretched affair life would be! Simply unendurable!"
"But there's always a satisfaction in doing what one ought to do, Mr.
Brand--don't you think so?--even if it is hard."
"Oh, if you like your satisfaction to taste hard and bitter! I don't!
I think it's much better to hold ourselves free to take advantage of
all the possibilities of happiness, little and big, that come our way.
It's really a duty that we owe ourselves. And, of course, if we are
happy we make others about us happy too. You, I'm sure, need enjoyment
so much that it would be a great mistake for you to throw away any
opportunity. And I'm very glad you didn't neglect this little one!"
Mrs. Fenlow and her son were at his elbow to say goodnight, and as he
shook hands with Mark, whose mother had already passed on to an
exchange of confidences concerning hairdressers with Miss Ardeen
Andrews, he laid his hand affectionately on the young man's shoulder
and said in a low tone:
"You're coming tomorrow night, Mark, of course?"
"Sure! D. V. and d. p.--God willing and the devil permitting!"
"It will be very different from this," and Brand smiled slightly, a
winning, deprecating smile, as with the least perceptible motion of
his head he indicated the company that filled his spacious drawing
room. "But a man doesn't want his relaxations to be all alike, any
more than he wants all flowers to be of the same color."
CHAPTER IV
BILLIKINS IS FRIGHTENED
It was inevitable that the personality of Felix Brand should loom
large in the home of his secretary. Mrs. Marne was a semi-invalid and
suffered frequent relapses into more serious illness. The care of her
and the management of their little household were Isabella's part,
and to these two, much confined at home and by necessity cut off from
nearly all outside pleasures and interests, the chief daily event was
Henrietta's return from her busy hours and responsible tasks in the
architect's office. But, of still more importance, their worldly
welfare hung upon the salary which he paid to the younger sister.
Mrs. Marne's husband had been a physician in one of the smaller cities
of Massachusetts; but, though a New Englander, he had not possessed
the characteristic thrift of the sons of that region, and consequently
his widow and his daughters found, after his death, that the
settlement of his affairs left them a very slender sum of money. It
was necessary that one of the young women should become an income
earner, and it was decided that Henrietta, since she had a better head
for affairs and more liking for business, should take this share of
their burden. There was enough money to give her a course in
secretarial training in a women's vocational college in Boston and to
support them all in economical comfort until she should be ready to
begin her work. As she was at once successful in finding a position in
New York, they invested the few hundred dollars still left in a first
payment upon a little home in Staten Island, and they were now
carefully husbanding Henrietta's salary and paying off the remaining
debt upon the instalment plan.
It was through Dr. Annister that Henrietta found a good position so
quickly. He and Dr. Marne had been classmates and warm friends during
the years of their medical training, and afterward, although one had
gone to New York and become one of the famous specialists of his
generation and the other had sunk into the obscurity of general
practice in a small city, they had kept up their friendship in a
desultory way, with occasional meetings at medical conventions and now
and then a letter. When Dr. Marne died, a missive came from his friend
that seemed so simple and genuine in its feeling that it deeply
touched Henrietta, to whom fell the duty of answering it, because of
her mother's stricken condition.
The memory of that letter and a warmly reverent feeling for the
friendship that had called it forth stayed long in her heart. And at
last, when she was ready to try conclusions with the world, and felt
sure, with the usual conviction of youth, that it would be much better
to go somewhere else to begin, she wrote to Dr. Annister, telling him
briefly her plans and hopes and what her training had been. And the
famous Dr. Philip Annister interested himself in the daughter of
his old friend, and at once found for her a well-paid position as
secretary for Felix Brand, his prospective son-in-law. Mrs. Annister
also showed much kindly feeling for the girl and often had her stay
overnight at their home for a visit to the theatre or the opera.
Between Mildred Annister and Henrietta there existed a friendship
which made up in outward warmth what it lacked in depth. For Mildred,
with her woman's heart but lately awakened and filled to the brim with
absorbed and adoring first love, could not help some secret resentment
that any other woman should be anything to her beloved or give him
any service. Her good sense told her that this was unreasonable, while
her respect and kindly feeling for Henrietta made her ashamed of it.
So she did her best to conceal it and in the effort overdid her
expressions of affection. Henrietta would have responded to these with
girlish ardor, for she liked Mildred and greatly admired her tall and
stately beauty, had she not felt some barrier just below the surface
that kept her as reserved, in all the little confidences that usually
go on between young women, as was Mildred herself. She did not even
know of the semi-engagement, to which Dr. and Mrs. Annister had not
yet given their full assent, that existed between Mildred and Felix
Brand, although she felt sure that the girl was whole-heartedly in
love with him.
As the weeks went on and autumn merged into winter, Henrietta
sometimes noticed a harried look upon her employer's countenance. She
wondered much about this, for he was winning success and honors in
ample measure. An international committee of artists and architects,
sitting in judgment upon the competitive designs submitted for a
memorial building to one of the country's heroes, had announced their
decision awarding the prize to Felix Brand. He had been made a member
of the municipal art advisory commission and a little later a national
society of architects had elected him to its presidency. There were
private commissions in plenty, enough to keep him and his assistants
busy. And, finally,--and Brand laughingly told his secretary that he
considered this the most signal success of his career--Mrs. Fenlow had
approved his last design for the country house she purposed to build
up the Hudson and had been moved to transports of enthusiasm over its
every detail.
In addition to these honors and successes, Henrietta knew that he was
making much money outside of his profession; that his operations in
stocks were nearly always profitable, that once or twice they had been
richly so, and that he had bought a large number of shares in a marble
quarry for whose product his designs often called.
So she marveled much within herself that he should so often look
careworn and show a furtive anxiety in his eyes and face when he had,
or was rapidly winning, almost every good thing that mortals count a
source of happiness and when even her intimacy with his affairs did
not reveal a solitary cause for distress or uneasiness of mind.
She spoke of this sometimes at home. For her mother and sister were
always concerned to know what her day had been, and Felix Brand being
so important a person to their lives, they were deeply interested in
whatever he did or said and in everything Henrietta could tell them
about him. They were scrupulously careful not to ask or to speak about
anything that would approach too nearly her confidential relations
with her employer. But outside those lines there was a large and
interesting territory wherein they could and did have much converse
together about the architect, his success, and his personality.
On a bright and mild Sunday morning in mid-winter, whose sunshine was
full of that guileful promise of spring with which the tricky weather
goddess of the Manhattan region loves to play pranks upon its
residents, the two Marne sisters, in their mother's room, were
chatting with her as she reclined in the sun beside a south window.
"I've some good news," said Henrietta. "I didn't tell you last night,
because I knew we'd all be gossiping in here this morning and it would
be so cosy to talk it all over then. Mr. Brand has raised my salary,
to date from the first of this month!"
Mrs. Marne's thin hand sought her daughter's where it lay upon the arm
of her chair and then hastened to wipe away a tear or two. For she was
nervously much broken and her tears, whether of joy or sorrow, came
easily.
Isabella sprang up, exclaiming, "Harry! How splendid!" And the two
girls hugged each other delightedly and kissed first each other and
then their mother. Then they kissed each other again and whirled about
in a waltz measure. Billikins, the white fox terrier, quickly put a
stop to this exuberance by endeavoring to take part in it himself,
barking furiously and making ecstatic rushes between them.
"The second time, dear!" exclaimed Isabella as they settled down
again, cheeks flushed and eyes shining. "Only think of it! At
Christmas, and now again so soon!"
"It isn't so very much," said Henrietta, "only ten dollars a month
more, but it will be a lot for us, and it means a great big lot to me,
because it makes me feel that I'm succeeding. What is it, Billikins?
Do you want to come up? And you've brought babykins, haven't you? Come
on, then, both of you." The fox terrier was begging and wriggling
beside her, his inseparable companion and plaything, a dilapidated
rag-doll, in his mouth. She lifted them to her lap, where, after much
licking and nuzzling of the doll, he curled himself up to sleep.
"Of course you're succeeding!" cried Isabella. "How could you help it
when you're the cleverest girl in New York and work the hardest
and--have such a nice home to stay in at night!"
"It will soon be nicer," rejoined Henrietta with a laugh, "when we get
rid of its mortgage decoration. Now we can get that all paid off by
the end of the summer and then we'll be sure of a home, whatever
happens."
Mrs. Marne pressed her hand in a closer clasp. "Dear child! You and
Bella are the best children a mother ever had. I've just been thinking
that I really have three children, a son as well as two daughters. For
you're just as good as a son, Harry, besides being a daughter too.
When you were born, dear, I was disappointed that you weren't a boy,
and sorry for you that you weren't."
"Were you sorry about me, too?" demanded Isabella saucily.
"You, dear! Why, when you came--you were the first, you know--I was
too proud and delighted to think of anything but just that I had you.
By the time Harry arrived I had learned more about what it means to be
a woman and I was sorry I had brought another into the world. But I
soon got over all that and was so glad to have you both. After all,
girls, it is a grand thing to be a wife and a mother!"
"Yes, if you can only get your salary raised often enough," said
Isabella gaily. "And I guess," she went on as she saw a little wave of
amusement cross her mother's face, "I'd better have that settled right
away. I'll write to Warren that I shall expect an increase every time
Harry gets one. Tell us more about your raise, Harry. What did Mr.
Brand say?"
"Oh, he was very nice--but he always is nice, just as kind and
courteous as can be. He said he was much pleased with the good
judgment and the care with which I had managed things while he was
away. Before this, when he's been gone for a day or two or three, he
has made some arrangements beforehand and has told me where he would
be so that I could telegraph or 'phone him on the long distance if
necessary. But lately he's been called away twice so suddenly that he
left me no directions and I didn't know his address, and so, although
he was gone only two or three days each time, I had a good deal of
responsibility. But he was very kind and praised everything I did and
yesterday he told me that he thought I deserved a reward and as he
might be called away again the same way, he didn't think it was fair
to put so much more upon me without paying me for it."
"Isn't he lovely!" exclaimed Isabella. "As Delia says about Mrs.
Fenlow's chauffeur, 'he's sure very gentlemanly and strong!'"
"Indeed, you've been most fortunate in getting so good a position,
Harry, dear!" said Mrs. Marne, her voice trembling with her depth
of feeling. "I fairly ached with anxiety over your going into this
secretarial work, but Mr. Brand has proved to be all that even his
secretary's mother could expect or wish."
"And here he is, right now!" cried Isabella as she glanced from the
window at the sound of an automobile in the quiet street. "And if he
isn't going to honor our humble but happy home with a call from his
very handsome self!" she went on excitedly as the machine slowed down
and its occupant, glancing at the house numbers, stopped in front of
their cottage.
He told Henrietta that he had just learned it might be necessary
for him to leave town that day and that he wanted to give her some
instructions for her guidance if he should be away more than a day or
two. His manner was disturbed and restless, although not lacking in
its usual suave and gentle courtesy, and she noted in his face, more
strongly marked than she had seen it before, that troubled, anxious
look concerning which she had already wondered much. And from the
whole man there seemed to her to emanate an unconscious appeal, as of
one in such sore and badgering straits that he knew not where to turn
for help.
"I may be able," he said, "to--put off this trip, to make some
arrangement about--this matter, so that it will not be necessary for
me to go. I hope so--I don't want to leave the office just now. And,
by the way, if I do go, there's another thing. If there should be a
letter in my general mail--not marked 'personal,' you know--" he
hesitated, and Henrietta observed that he turned his eyes away and did
not meet her gaze as he went on, "but not of the regular business
sort, just glance at the signature first thing, won't you, please? And
if it should be signed 'Hugh Gordon,' don't read it, but lay it aside
for me to look at when I return."
He straightened up and she could feel the effort of will with which he
conquered his perturbation and continued in a more offhand way:
"Gordon is apt to write confidential things about his own affairs and
he is the sort of man who would never think of marking a letter
'personal.'"
Billikins trotted into the room, his doll in his mouth, and, laying
his burden down in mid-floor, as if to make easier the concentration
of his faculties upon the duty of investigating this stranger,
advanced with signs of ready friendship. Brand responded to his
overtures, but the dog, after a preliminary smell or two, broke into
a sudden howl and trembled as if with fear. Reproved by Henrietta,
he hastened back to his babykins, with which he rushed to a place
of safety beneath her chair. There she heard him giving vent to his
emotions in subdued whining and growling and in much worrying and
tearing of the rag-doll.
Brand rose to go, but lingered beside his chair and made conversation,
as though loath to take his leave; and Henrietta, catching a glimpse
of Isabella passing through the hall, called her in.
Whenever Isabella entered a room it was like the advent of a merry
little breeze. For all the look and manner of her suggested buoyant
spirits and gaiety of heart, from the lurking twinkle in her blue eye
to her light quick step. Daintiness and prettiness characterized her
attire, which she carried gracefully, to the accompaniment of a soft,
faint rustle. With pleasure Henrietta watched her employer's face
brighten and clear as he talked with her sister. The agitation faded
from his manner and presently she was aware that the impression she
had had of struggle and appeal, which had begun to tense her own
nerves, had disappeared.
"I don't wonder," she thought. "Bella is so light-hearted and so
merry, and so pretty and sweet, too, that she could charm away
anybody's dumps. I wish I had some of her gift that way--I'm always
so serious."
Brand suggested that they should take a spin with him in his
automobile. "The day is so fine," he pleaded, as they hesitated a
little before answering. "You don't know how splendid it is! And the
roads are good down through the island." He glanced from one to the
other and Henrietta saw in his brown eyes a look of eager wistfulness.
"It would be lovely and a great treat for us," she said. "You've no
idea, Mr. Brand, what a temptation it is. But we don't like to leave
mother alone, for she's never very well."
"Oh, is that all?" he exclaimed. "Then bring her along! It would do
her a lot of good. Wrap her up well and I'll carry her out to the
auto."
He begged Isabella not to desert him while Henrietta went to prepare
their mother for the drive.
"How well they get on together," said Mrs. Marne, smiling at the gay
laughter that now and then floated up the stairs.
As they came slowly down, the elder woman leaning heavily upon the
other's shoulder, Felix Brand ran into the hall, exclaiming:
"Why didn't you call me and let me bring her down!" And at once,
notwithstanding her assurance that she could walk, he picked her up
and carried her to the street in his arms, saying, "I can just as well
save you that fatigue," and carefully settled her in the automobile.
"You'll sit in the front with me and help me drive, won't you?" he
said to Isabella as the two girls came out cloaked and furred.
"Yes, do, Bella," said Henrietta cordially in response to a glance
from her sister, "and give me a chance to show what good care I can
take of mother."
Although Isabella was the elder of the two by three years and formerly
had been accustomed to take the lead between them, since the younger
had become the support of the family she was beginning, quite
unconsciously, to lean upon and defer to her sister. During the drive
Henrietta and her mother exchanged many pleased glances as they
listened to the merry chatter and the frequent laughter that drifted
back from the front seat. It was a smiling Felix Brand, suave, serene,
and courtly of manner, who helped them from the machine on their
return and carried Mrs. Marne into the house.
"Please don't," he said as they protested their enjoyment of the ride
and their sense of his kindness. "For I assure you it has meant a
great deal more pleasure and benefit to me than it possibly could to
you."
"I think he really meant that," said Henrietta when the three women,
alone again, were talking over what Mrs. Marne called their "little
escapade," "because when he came he seemed so disturbed and depressed
and by the time we got back he was quite himself again. I think it was
mainly you, Isabella," she smiled at her sister, "for you seemed to
have a very stimulating effect on him."
"Oh, I'm willing to be a cocktail for him whenever he wants to bring
his auto over here. Never mind, mother," and she kissed one finger at
Mrs. Marne in response to that lady's shocked "Isabella!" "That's just
modern symbolism, you know. And the ride has made you look as if you'd
had one yourself. I'm going to write to Warren that I've found a much
nicer and handsomer man than he is and if he doesn't get a stronger
grip on my heart right quick it's likely to get away from him."
"Bella, dear! Don't say such things!" admonished her mother in a
grieved tone.
Isabella flew to her side and patted her cheek and kissed her brow.
"There, there, mother! Don't you know I'm just funning? Warren is the
best man in the world, even if he hasn't got bee-youtiful, caressing
brown eyes, and I love him awfully, and we're going to be married and
live happily forever after. But, all the same, Felix Brand is
perfectly lovely, and you think so too, now, don't you, mother dear!"
"We all think alike about Mr. Brand, I'm sure," she answered.
"Except Billikins," amended Henrietta, and then told them of the fox
terrier's disgraceful behavior. "It seemed so queer for him to act
that way," she added, "when he's always so friendly toward visitors
and so effusive that he usually has to be put out of the room."
"It was strange," said Mrs. Marne, "for with his pleasant voice and
gentle manner you would think Mr. Brand would be as attractive to
animals as he certainly is to people. And he must be as kind and
sweet-natured as he seems, for not one young man in a thousand would
have taken the trouble he did to give three forlorn women a little
pleasure."
Henrietta made no reply as she laughed with her mother at the lively
scolding Isabella was giving to the dog, but her thoughts were busy
with the problem of why Felix Brand had seemed so anxious for them to
go with him.
Her loyalty to her employer would not let her throw the least shade
upon their enthusiastic appreciation of his courtesy and kindness. But
her months of work at his side--she had been his secretary almost a
year--had given her an intimate knowledge of his character and of his
habits of thought and feeling.
She had learned that his habitual mental attitude was, "What is there
in this for me?" He did not indeed use just those words or give such
crude expression to his self-centeredness; but she had come to know
that personal advantage was the usual mainspring of his actions.
Presently deciding that Isabella's enlivening effect upon his mood had
inspired his desire for their company, her mind went on to busy itself
with speculation over the cause for his despondency and uneasiness.
"I believe it must have something to do with that Hugh Gordon he
mentioned, whoever he is," she thought. "For he seemed most disturbed
when speaking of him. Maybe it's some relative who is giving him
trouble--some black sheep of his family, very likely."
She walked to the window and stood there silently, her thoughts
hovering around this unknown personality, and became conscious of the
upspringing in her breast of a feeling of disapproval and even of
enmity toward the man because of the trouble he seemed to be giving
to the employer she admired so much and for whose appreciation and
unvarying kindness she felt so much gratitude.
Then there surged over her a wave of discontent, against whose
threatened onslaught she had half consciously been doing battle ever
since she had talked with Felix Brand in the morning. Now it was upon
her. How monotonous seemed her life, how destitute of the pleasures
that most girls had as their right! If she could only use for her own
enjoyment some of that money she worked so hard to earn! But that
everlasting mortgage on their home which had to be paid off--how the
thought of it irked and galled when she longed to travel, buy
beautiful clothes, go to the theatre and the opera, have young friends
and ride and drive and play golf and dance and sing with them. It was
the playtime of life and she was having to spend it in work, work,
work!
"Oh, there isn't anybody who would enjoy all those things as I
should," she thought, "and I want them so!"
She turned impatiently from the window and her glance fell upon her
mother, smiling gently and happily as she lay back in her easy chair,
and remorse entered her heart.
"What an ungrateful little beast I am," she stormed at herself, "to
feel like that when I ought to be thankful I can earn money enough to
keep mother in comfort! Was it because Mr. Brand was here that I felt
that way? Harry Marne, be ashamed of yourself! Aren't you old enough
to be responsible for your own thoughts?"
She sat down beside her mother and taking her hand pressed it tenderly
against her cheek.
CHAPTER V
MRS. BRAND'S DREAM SON
It was half a week after that spring-like Sunday when Felix Brand
motored to his secretary's home on Staten Island, and a feathery pall,
white as forgiven sins, was sifting down from the heavens upon all the
eastern seaboard. In a town within the suburban radius of Philadelphia
its mantle of purity lay almost undisturbed upon lawns and streets and
vacant lots. Two women were looking out upon the snow-covered earth
and snow-filled sky from the side window of a cottage near the edge of
the town. One, small and gray-haired, perhaps looked older than she
was because of the pathetic droop of her shoulders and the worn,
patient expression of her face. But lined and sad though her
countenance was, it told of a sweet and gentle soul and it was lighted
now with a look of pleasure.
"Just look at it, Penelope!" she exclaimed, a little thrill of
enthusiasm in her voice. "I never saw it snow harder, or look
prettier! Isn't it beautiful!"
She turned a pair of soft brown eyes upon a younger woman sitting
beside her in a wheel chair, who put down the book she had been
reading, and sighed as she answered: "Yes, it is beautiful, mother,
very beautiful. But when I look at it I can't help thinking how long
it will be until spring comes again and I can be out in the yard under
the trees."
The mother put out her hand, small and once of the shape that
chirognomists call "the artistic hand," but now wrinkled, bony and
toil-hardened, and rested it gently for a moment upon the mass of
dark, waving hair, already well-threaded with gray, that crowned the
other's head. Her face filled with sympathy but her voice broke
cheerfully upon the silence:
"Oh, it won't be long now, Penelope, and not a bit longer because of
this beautiful storm!"
The figure in the wheel chair bent forward again and looked out upon
the pearly whiteness of the earth. It was a sad travesty of the human
form, undersized, humped and crooked. But it bore a noble head with a
broad, full brow and a strong, intellectual face that had in it
something of the elder woman's sweetness of expression. But in her
brown eyes the other's softness and wistfulness gave place to a
keener, more flashing look that told of a high and soaring spirit. And
in the lines of her face was a hint of possible storminess, though it
was softened by an expression of self-mastery, eloquent of many an
inner battle waged and won.
The window from which they looked commanded one side of their own wide
yard, a vacant block, and beyond that a cross-street. The snow was
feathering down so fast that it gave to the air a milky translucence
through which bulked dimly an occasional traveler on the other
thoroughfare. Penelope's eyes fixed themselves upon one of these vague
shapes.
"Look, mother!" she exclaimed. "Do you see that man just turning the
corner to come this way? It looks like Felix!"
"So it does!" the other cried.
They were both silent for a moment as they gazed intently at the
dim figure, gaining definiteness now with each step toward them.
"It doesn't walk like him," Penelope commented, her face already
showing that she knew it was not he. But the mother hung a little
longer to her hope. "No, it isn't Felix," she presently acquiesced,
disappointment evident in her gentle tones. "I so hoped it was, at
first."
With a firm, rapid stride the young man was coming eagerly up the
street, his eyes upon their house. "He doesn't walk at all like
Felix," Penelope repeated thoughtfully as his figure became more
plainly visible through the veiling snow, "but it's curious how much
like him he looks, after all."
"See, Penelope!" the mother exclaimed, reaching out to grasp her
daughter's hand in sudden enthusiasm. "See how he comes out of the
snow mist! Isn't it just like a figure in a dream getting plainer and
clearer, and more like life!"
Penelope pressed her mother's hand and smiled up at her fondly. "Just
like you, mother, to make something pretty out of a disappointment!"
They gazed at the advancing figure with renewed interest and saw that
the man, with slightly slackened pace, seemed to be closely observing
their house and yard. What he saw was a one-story red cottage, needing
paint, its green window shutters looking old and somewhat dilapidated,
its yard, of ample size and dotted with trees and shrubbery,
surrounded by a wooden fence in whose palings were occasional breaks
and patches. It was a commonplace object in an ordinary winter scene,
but he seemed to feel in it the deepest interest. There was even a
frown on his brow as his alert glance rested on a broken pane in the
kitchen window.
"It has been a long time since Felix was here--six months, hasn't it,
mother?" said Penelope, leaning back wearily again as the stranger
passed from her range of vision.
"Hardly so long as that, dear. It was last fall. But, of course, he is
very busy. He hasn't the time to travel around now and go visiting,
even over here to see us, that he used to have, before he had begun
to be so successful. We mustn't expect too much." As she spoke, her
gentle tones as full of indulgence and excuse as her words, she moved
to the front window and sought the figure of the stranger, now
striding along the snow-covered sidewalk in front of her own yard.
"Penelope! He's coming here!" she exclaimed, starting back and
dropping the muslin curtain she had pushed aside. "He's turning in at
our gate! He does look like Felix--a little. Who can it be!"
Penelope bent forward to peer through the curtains and saw the man
mounting the steps to their little veranda and stamping the snow from
his feet. Instantly she wheeled her chair about and sped it into the
adjoining room as her mother opened the door to their visitor.
"You are Mrs. Brand, I think? Felix Brand's mother?" he said. "I
am a friend of his--my name is Hugh Gordon--and as I was coming to
Philadelphia I promised him I would run out here and see you."
As they entered the living room his keen, dark eyes swept it alertly,
as they had the exterior of the house. A shade of disappointment
crossed his face.
"Your daughter?" he asked abruptly. "May I not see her, too?"
Mrs. Brand hesitated. The shyness of her girlhood years still lingered
in her manner when in the presence of strangers, and she glanced at
her visitor, then at the floor, and her hands fluttered about her
lap. Gordon's face and eyes softened as he looked at her. There was
something very sweet and appealing in the gentle diffidence of this
little, plain, elderly woman.
"Penelope doesn't often see people--anyone, and she is very unwilling
to meet strangers. Perhaps Felix told you--you know----"
"Yes, I know. I understand how she feels, but I want very much to see
her. I know Felix well, and I know a good deal about her, enough to
make me honor and admire her very much. Won't you tell her, please,
that I came out here particularly to see you and her, and that I shall
be much disappointed if I have to go back without meeting both of
you?"
Penelope soon returned with her mother and both had many questions
to ask concerning Felix. Was he well? Was he working harder than he
ought? Was his new apartment very beautiful? Had Mr. Gordon seen the
plans for the new monument with which he had won in the national
competition?
He used to send them photographs, Penelope said, but lately they knew
little about his work unless they saw pictures of it in the
newspapers.
But, indeed, they didn't expect so much attention from him now, her
mother quickly added, for as his work increased and became of so much
importance they understood how necessary it was for him to give it all
his time and thought.
"It would really be selfish," she went on, "as I sometimes tell
Penelope, to want him to spend time on us, writing long letters, or
coming over here, when we know that his success depends upon his
devoting all his energies to his work."
Penelope, silent and gazing out of the window, was conscious of
Gordon's quick glance at her, and was conscious too of the appeal in
her mother's wistful brown eyes, which she felt were turned upon her.
So many years these two had passed in intimate companionship and in
loving ministration on one side and utter dependence on the other,
that spoken word was scarcely needed between them to make known the
mood of each to the other.
In immediate response she turned, with a smile that lighted up her
controlled, intellectual face, and said:
"Of course, we quite understand how occupied Felix is all the time,
but that doesn't keep us from liking to know about him. So your visit,
Mr. Gordon, is quite a godsend, and you mustn't be surprised that we
ask you so many questions about Felix and want to know all about him
and what he is doing."
Her voice was low, with rich notes in it, and her manner quite without
self-consciousness. Notwithstanding her deformity and her secluded
life, she betrayed neither shyness nor embarrassment. In both manner
and speech was the poise that is usually the result of much
association with the world.
"Yes," Gordon was assenting, "Felix has many irons in the fire, and he
is planning to have more. But he thinks of you both, and you would be
surprised to learn how much I know of you--through him." He rose and
as he moved across the room to Penelope's chair he continued: "You,
I know, Miss Brand, love the sunshine and the out-of-doors." He
hesitated a moment and then went on, pouring out his words with a sort
of abrupt eagerness:
"But I don't want to call you 'Miss Brand!' It doesn't seem as if I
were talking to you. I feel as if I had known you so long that I want
to call you 'Penelope,' as Felix does. Will you let me? You won't mind
if I do? Oh, thank you! You are very kind to me, for I realize what a
stranger I must seem to you, although I feel as if I had known you
both such a long time. Well, then, Penelope," and he smiled and nodded
at her, as he crossed the room to the front window and drew back the
curtain, "how would you like to have one end of this porch enclosed
with glass, so that you could sit out there with your wraps on, all
winter, even on days like this, and feel almost as if you were out of
doors? It wouldn't seem quite so shut in as the house, would it?"
She leaned back with a sigh and then smiled. "Yes, it would be
pleasant. But it is now some years since I quit wishing for the
things I can't have."
"Ah, but you're going to have this," he exclaimed, his face beaming.
"Felix is preparing a little surprise for you, but he gave me
permission to tell you about it."
The expression upon the faces of both women and their little
exclamations told Gordon, as he glanced from one to the other, that
their surprise was as great as their pleasure.
"Felix is going to have it done for you," he went on, "as soon as he
returns. I forgot to tell you, and perhaps, as he went away rather
unexpectedly, he didn't write you, that he was called out of the city
a few days ago on pressing business. I saw him when he was leaving and
I know you may expect to hear from him about the porch as soon as he
returns. I'll tell him how pleased you are about it."
They gave him messages of gratitude and love and the three of them
discussed the little improvement with the intimacy of old friends.
Several books, one of them still open at the page where Penelope had
been reading, were on a table beside the window. Gordon took them up
one by one and ran over their titles. "Ah, poetry--and fiction--and
biography--how catholic your interests are, Penelope! But I knew that
already. Sociology, too. Yes, I knew that is your favorite study. It
is mine, too, but I haven't had as much time yet to read along that
line as I would like. What have you lately read on that subject?"
She told him of some of the recent books that had interested her most
and mentioned the titles of others that she thought would be worth
while.
"After you read them," he said, in his quick, decisive way, "I'd like
very much to know what you think of them."
"I'd be glad to talk them over with you, but it's not likely I can
have the opportunity of reading them very soon. I take books from the
town library, and so many people always want the new ones that
sometimes my turn is a long time coming."
He was making a note of their titles. "I'll tell Felix you're
interested in them," he rejoined casually, "and I'm sure he'll send
them to you."
Wonderment filled the minds of both mother and daughter and showed in
their faces.
"You and my brother must be great friends," Penelope hastened to say,
"although you seem to be so different from him. You resemble him a
little--yes, a good deal, physically, but in manner, expression and, I
should think, in mind and temperament and character, you must be very
different. But perhaps that only makes you the better friends. You
see," she went on, smiling frankly, "mother and I are already talking
with you as if we knew you as well as Felix does."
"I hope that you will, and that very soon," he responded, and his
manner reminded her for a fleeting instant of the winning deference,
the slightly ceremonious politeness, of her brother's habitual
demeanor.
"That was just a little like Felix," she thought. "Perhaps he has been
with Felix so much that he has unconsciously caught something of his
manner. Felix has a very pleasing manner, but--I like this man's
better."
"I don't think Mr. Gordon so very unlike Felix," her mother was
saying, "that is, unlike Felix used to be. Naturally, he has changed a
good deal of late years. It's to be expected that a young man will
change as he grows up and enters upon his life's work. But Mr. Gordon
looks more as I used to think Felix would when he grew up, and
something as my husband did when we were married, but still more--"
she paused, searching his countenance with puzzled eyes. He started a
little, as if pulling himself together.
"Now I know," she exclaimed. "Penelope, Mr. Gordon looks like your
Grandfather Brand! If you wore your hair longer, Mr. Gordon, and had
no mustache, you'd look very like an old picture I have of him when he
was young. He was such a good man and I admired and respected him so
much! I used to hope, when Felix was a little boy, that he would grow
up to be like his grandfather."
"He has grown up to be a very able man," Gordon responded gravely. "He
has opened the way toward being a famous one, and he has the capacity
to go far in it. He has much more talent than I."
"Are you an architect, too?" asked Mrs. Brand.
"No, I have not done anything, yet. But it is only now becoming
possible for me to do anything of consequence." His manner and
expression grew suddenly even more earnest and serious. "And there is
so much that I want to do, that needs to be done, so much that urges
one to action, if he feels his responsibility toward others."
Mrs. Brand was looking at him with startled, swimming eyes. "Oh, you
are so like Father Brand!" she exclaimed. "How often have I heard him
speak in just that way! He was rather a stern man, because he wanted
to hold people to a high standard. But he fairly burned to do good in
the world and make it better. I used to hope, when Felix was a little
boy, that he'd have the same kind of spirit when he became a man."
She stopped and her worn face flushed at the thought that she
had almost spoken slightingly of her son, had at least hinted
disappointment in him. She fidgeted with embarrassment as silence fell
upon them and she felt Gordon's eyes upon her. She could not resist
his steady gaze, and as her eyes met his the look in them stirred her
mother-heart to its depths and set her to trembling. She saw in it
wistfulness and loneliness and felt behind it the persistent
heart-hunger of the grown man for the mother in woman, for maternal
understanding and solicitude and affection.
"I knew right away," she said afterward to Penelope, "that he'd never
known a mother's love and that he was homesick for it and it made my
heart warm toward him more than ever. He looks so young, even younger
than Felix, and that minute he seemed as if he were just a boy."
"I hope you will let me come again," said Gordon as he bade them
good-bye. He took Mrs. Brand's toil-worn hand in both of his and with
gravely earnest face looked down into hers as he went on: "And if you
should hear--if I should do anything that seems--well, not friendly,
toward Felix, I hope you will try to believe that I am not doing it
to injure him, but because it seems to me right and because I truly
think it for his good."
Mrs. Brand was still trembling and she felt strangely moved. But her
usual shyness was all gone and she did not even notice that she was
finding it easy to talk with this stranger, easier, indeed, than it
had been, of late years, to talk with Felix. Her heart swelled and
throbbed with yearning over him.
"I am quite sure," she said, "that you will not do anything unless you
are convinced that it is right and for the best. No matter how it may
seem to others, I shall know that you expect good to come of it."
"Thank you!" His voice was low and it shook a little. He bent over her
hand and raised it to his lips. "If I had a mother I should want her
to be just like you! Will you try to think of me, sometimes, no matter
what I do, as being moved, perhaps, by the same spirit, at least the
same kind of spirit, as that of--of Felix's and Penelope's
grandfather?"
Her patient face and her brown eyes glowed with the emotions that
thrilled and fluttered in her heart. Belief in him, the sudden, sweet
intimacy into which their brief acquaintance had flowered, his seeming
need of her, and her own ardent wish to respond with all her
mother-wealth, filled her breast with new, strange life and stirred
her imagination.
"I shall think of you," she answered with sweet earnestness, "as if
you were the boy--a man--I don't know how to say just what I mean, but
perhaps you'll understand--as if you were the man who had grown up out
of the dreams I used to have about my boy.
"Don't think," she added hastily, "that I'm displeased or dissatisfied
with Felix, because I'm not, though what I've said might give that
impression. He is a good son and I am proud and glad to be his mother.
But a mother has so many dreams about a son when he is little that no
boy could possibly fulfill all of them. He must follow his own bent,
and the other things she has dreamed for him must be left behind. So
I'll just feel as if, in some mysterious way, those dreams had come
alive in you. And--oh, Penelope! Do you remember what I said a little
while ago, when we saw Mr. Gordon coming toward us out of the storm,
that it was just like someone taking form and shape in a dream? I'll
think of you as my dream son, Mr. Gordon--Hugh!"
Impulsively he seized her hand again and held it closely clasped in
both of his. "Will you do that? Will you think of me in that way?"
Penelope, in her wheel chair beside them, fidgeted her weak, misshapen
body. Her nerves were tense with an excitement which she knew was not
all due merely to an unexpected call from a stranger. Unaccustomed
emotions, strong but undefined, were filling her breast and tugging
at her heart. To her sharpened perception it seemed almost as if
something uncanny were hovering in the room. She shivered and leaned
back wearily. What spell was coming over them? Were those two beside
her, strangers until an hour ago, about to sink sobbing into each
other's arms? And was she, Penelope, the calm and self-mastered, about
to shriek hysterically?
"How ghostly you two are becoming," she exclaimed, with an effort at
vivacity, "with your dreams and your spirits! You make me afraid that
Mr. Gordon, substantial as he looks, will melt away into thin air
before our very eyes!"
"We are getting wrought up, aren't we?" Gordon assented as he turned
to her. "And you are pale, Penelope! I hope I haven't tired you too
much. Seeing you both, and your being so kind, have meant a lot to me,
more than you can guess. And if your mother is going to be my dream
mother, Penelope, you'll be my dream sister, won't you?"
He smiled as he said this, then all three laughed a little, more to
lessen the tension which all of them felt than because they were
amused, and presently the two women were alone again. Afterward, as
they talked over all the incidents of the afternoon, they recalled
that it was the only time during his long call that Gordon had
laughed, and they wondered that a young man who seemed so full of
vigor and life should have so serious a demeanor.
CHAPTER VI
WHO IS HUGH GORDON?
Felix Brand did not appear at his office the next day after his call
at the home of his secretary, and she inferred that he had gone on the
journey of which he had spoken. The week went by and he did not
return. It was longer than any previous absence had been, but
Henrietta, being prepared for it, was able to keep his affairs in
order. Nevertheless, as the days slipped by and no message came from
him, she began to feel solicitous. On Monday and Tuesday of the next
week, Mildred Annister made apprehensive inquiry concerning him over
the telephone. On Wednesday, big headlines in all the newspapers told
a city not yet so cynical but that it could read the news with
surprise, that Felix Brand, its successful and promising young
architect, was charged with having won his appointment upon the
municipal art commission by means of bribery.
An investigating committee had been secretly feeling about in another
city department with no thought of uncovering corruption, or even of
looking for it, in a body of city servants whose character,
occupations and ideals lifted them so far above suspicion.
Then they received an intimation that even there all was not as pure
as it might be and had called before them the man from whom the hint
had come. Guided by his information they had followed a devious trail,
apparently quite clean at first, but showing undoubted befoulment
as they neared its source. And finally they had traced it to its
beginnings in an unsavory local politician, Flaherty by name, who was
powerful in his own district and therefore had influence in his party
organization. And Flaherty, they had discovered, had been well
rewarded for efficient work in engineering the matter and inspiring
those above him to suggest and secure the appointment.
Scarcely had Henrietta reached her office on the morning of this
publication when Mildred Annister rushed in, anxious, excited and
indignant.
"Harry, dear, have you heard from him? Do you know where he is? I know
he would write to me, if he could write at all, before he would to any
one else, but, oh, do tell me if you know whether anything has
happened to him!"
"No, Mildred, dear, I don't suppose I know much, if any, more than you
do. But certainly nothing serious could have happened or some message
would have been sent here."
"You're not keeping anything from me?" the girl demanded, staring at
Henrietta with wild, suspicious eyes. "Oh, Harry, you don't know what
all this means to me! I've hardly slept for the last two nights! You
must tell me everything! Oh, I know you are his confidential secretary
and you must not betray his trust, but--you don't know--I've never
told you--I'm almost the same as his wife. We're engaged, and we'd
have been married before this but for some notion father has. So I've
the right to know, Harry--you must tell me all you can!"
[Illustration: "HARRY, DEAR, HAVE YOU HEARD FROM HIM!"]
Henrietta bent toward the girl sympathetically. "I don't think you
need to be so anxious," she said reassuringly, although her own heart
misgave her. "I'm so glad to know about your happiness," she went on,
stroking Mildred's clenched hand where it lay upon her desk, "and I'm
sure this will come out all right. He went away very suddenly.
Did--did you know that he was going?"
Mildred nodded and wiped some hysterical tears from her eyes. It was
a moment before she could control her voice: "Yes. He had promised
to come to our house on Sunday evening. But instead he sent me a
note--the dearest little letter--" and her hand involuntarily moved to
her breast as she paused and smiled. Her listener marveled at the
light that played over her countenance for a moment. "He said he had
been suddenly called out of the city and might be away several days,
but would see me again as soon as he could get back, and in the
meantime I must not be anxious. But I can't help it, Harry! I'm wild
with anxiety! Oh, if anything should happen to him I couldn't bear
it--I couldn't live!"
"There, there, dear, don't be so alarmed. Calm yourself and I'll tell
you all I know." Mildred was hysterically weeping and Henrietta moved
to her side and with an arm about her shoulders soothed her and went
on:
"Sunday morning he motored over to my house to tell me that he might
have to be out of the city for a few days and to give me some
directions about matters here in case he should have to go. He said he
didn't know how long he would be gone but hoped he would be back
inside of a week."
"Sunday--then you saw him after I did. Did he seem well? Was he all
right?"
"Yes, except that he looked anxious and disturbed."
"Oh, I knew there was something wrong! Why didn't he come to me and
tell me all about it! I would have comforted him! I'd have done
anything for him--I'd have gone at once and been married, whatever
father might say, if he had wanted me to!"
"I don't think it could have been anything very serious, dear, nothing
more than just a temporary depression of spirits, because--well, you
know what a merry little piece my sister is and how she jokes and
laughs and says nonsensical things until you can't help being cheered
up and laughing, too. She seemed to amuse Mr. Brand and he was very
kind and took us all for a ride in his auto. And, oh, Mildred, you
should have seen how lovely he was with my poor, frail mother! He
insisted that she must go, that it would do her good, and he carried
her in his arms out to the auto and back, and was as tender and
careful with her as a son could have been!"
"How like him!" the girl beamed. "He is so good and kind! Harry, there
isn't another man like him in this whole world! It would kill me to
lose him!"
"We had a delightful ride and Mr. Brand seemed to enjoy Bella's merry
talk. She sat with him, and when we came back and he returned to the
city he was looking quite himself again."
"Oh!" said Mildred, drawing back and looking at Henrietta with
narrowing eyes. She was too absorbed in her own intense emotions to
perceive the embarrassment which suddenly gripped her companion.
Henrietta, wildly groping about in her own mind for something to say
which would relieve the momentary strain, chanced upon what her
employer had said about Hugh Gordon and her own subsequent suspicions,
which had been made sharper by the charges in the morning newspapers.
"Mildred, dear!" she exclaimed. "Has Mr. Brand ever said anything to
you about a man called Hugh Gordon?"
"Hugh Gordon!" The girl straightened up, her color rising and her eyes
flashing with indignation. "Why, he's that dreadful creature who is
responsible for all that horrid mess in the papers this morning, isn't
he?"
"The committee's report says that he gave them their first information
and told them how to get the rest of it."
"Horrid creature! I know it's all a mess of lies! No, I never heard of
him before. Why do you ask? Do you know anything about him? Did Felix
ever speak of him to you?"
"Only once--last Sunday," Henrietta hesitated.
"What was it?" the other demanded. "What did he say? Oh, I knew you
were keeping something from me! Tell me, Harry!"
"Truly, dear, it wasn't anything of any consequence. It wasn't about
himself, or his business, so I suppose it's all right for me to tell
you. He only asked me, if any letters should come signed 'Hugh
Gordon,' not to read them but to put them aside for him when he should
return, because this man was likely to write confidentially about his
own affairs. That's all Mr. Brand ever said to me about him--the only
time he's ever mentioned the man's name. But I thought maybe--it was
just my own conjecture, you know--that maybe this Gordon is some
dissipated relative, some black sheep of his family, whom Mr. Brand is
trying to help."
"Oh, I see through it all! It's as plain as day!" cried Mildred
impetuously. "This Gordon is a blackmailer who is trying to force
money from Felix! I knew all the time there wasn't a word of truth in
that disgusting story! Felix has been helping him--perhaps he's a
cousin, or something, and he has demanded more and more money, and
Felix has refused, and now in revenge he has done this! And he's got
Felix shut up somewhere to make him give in! That's why I haven't
heard from him! Oh, it's perfectly plain! The thing to do now is to
find this horrible Hugh Gordon and make him tell where Felix is!"
The office boy entered to say that some reporters wanted to see Mr.
Brand's secretary. Henrietta was about to send back the message that
as she knew nothing whatever of any consequence it was not worth while
for her to see them, when Miss Annister interposed.
"No, Harry, let them come in," she said. "Perhaps they will know
something that we don't."
While the reporters questioned Henrietta they stole many a covert
glance at Mildred Annister, who sat beside her, dignified and
beautiful, her cheeks glowing and eyes brilliant with excitement,
listening with intense interest.
Henrietta soon told them the little that she knew about the matter.
Mildred waited until they had asked all the questions they could think
of and then, leaning forward in her absorption and gazing intently at
one of the group, she said: "Now tell us all that you know about this
Hugh Gordon. I want to know all you can tell me, because I have a
theory about him."
Her intensity and eagerness roused the hope that perhaps here they
might find something with which to embellish a story in which, so far,
they had uncovered little to add to that of yesterday. But first they
must know who this lovely girl was.
"You are a relative of Mr. Brand?" one of them hazarded.
"I am Mildred Annister, Dr. Philip Annister's daughter, and I am Felix
Brand's promised wife."
The instant ripple of interest among the reporters caused Mildred to
shrink back in sudden self-consciousness, her face scarlet.
"But please don't put that in the papers," she went on. "It's of no
interest to anybody but us, and we don't want the engagement announced
yet. I told you so you would understand how much right I have to be
interested. I am perfectly sure this dreadful creature, Hugh Gordon,
is at the bottom of the whole business, that these charges in the
papers this morning are nothing but revenge for his failure to
blackmail Mr. Brand, and it is just as certain as can be that he has
got Mr. Brand imprisoned somewhere, maybe drugged, and the thing for
you to do now is to find this Gordon and make him tell where Felix is.
Oh, please do!" she ended, with a sudden drop in her manner, her voice
choking.
Seasoned news gatherers though they were they could not repress all
sign of the gratification they felt at her words. They loosed a
battery of questions upon the two young women, but soon discovered
upon what a slender basis Miss Annister had based her theory.
They could tell her nothing whatever about the mysterious Hugh Gordon.
But they promised to follow her clue and to hunt him down if he could
be found. They went away well pleased, for even if this suggestion
should not lead to anything of consequence they had enough already to
warrant "scare heads" over tomorrow's story and to furnish a narrative
of even more "human interest" than the one set forth that morning.
Mildred Annister opened the paper the next morning with the greatest
eagerness and expectation. But she sank back in horrified dismay as
she saw the headlines. "I told them they mustn't say anything about me
or our engagement," she said to her father, "and now just look at
that!"
"Well, well," he replied, as he glanced over the article, "they've
been fairly decent, at any rate, in the way they've written it up,
though it's not pleasant for you to be thrown into the limelight like
this. As for their making known your engagement, it can't be helped
now, so there's no use worrying about it. But you mustn't want to be
married too soon, daughter."
Mildred welcomed this final grudging half-acquiescence and felt that
it was well worth the price. "Now it will be easy to persuade him to
let us be married soon, when Felix comes back," she thought.
But the morning's news had not an atom more of information concerning
the architect's whereabouts than she had known the day before.
Hugh Gordon also had disappeared. Before the publication of the
investigating committee's report several newspaper men had seen him
and talked with him about it, but the next day they could not find him
anywhere, nor any one who had the least idea whither he had gone. One
member of the committee knew Brand very well and, in pursuit of Miss
Annister's idea that Gordon and the missing architect might be
relatives, the reporters had questioned him about Gordon's
disappearance.
There was some resemblance, he said, although he had not thought about
it at the time. Gordon was a larger man, he thought, and a younger,
and his manner was very different. Brand was always affable, very
polite, and inclined to be somewhat ceremonious; but Gordon was
brusque, rather aggressive, and seemed to be much in earnest. His
evident sincerity and honesty had impressed the committee very much.
But, on the whole, he concluded, there was some resemblance between
the two men in feature and coloring; enough, perhaps, to indicate that
they might be relatives.
Mildred was keenly disappointed to find so little of consequence
or of promise in the news of the morning, but the committeeman's
description of Brand's accuser confirmed her in her conviction.
"If they can only find him," she thought, "it will solve the whole
mystery and set Felix right before the public again."
She telephoned to the paper which had seemed most active in the hunt
for Gordon, begged that they would continue the search, and made the
city editor promise to call her up if they should find out anything
new about him or come upon any trace of his movements. For the rest of
the day she refused to leave the house and sat all the time in
high-strung expectation near the telephone, that she might not lose a
moment in responding to its ring. But no call came until late in the
evening, when the city editor rang her up to say that his men had
discovered absolutely nothing new, and that nobody had any more idea
what had become of either Brand or Gordon than they had had the day
before.
CHAPTER VII
FELIX BRAND READS A LETTER
When Henrietta Marne entered her office on the morning of the second
day after the publication of the charges against Felix Brand, she
found her employer already there, but sitting moodily at his desk, his
head in his hands.
As she came forward, exclaiming joyfully and making anxious inquiries
about his welfare, he shrank back for a bare instant, with a slight
turning away, as of one who fears observation. But he quickly
recovered himself, rose with his usual deferential politeness and gave
her cordial greeting. She noted that he looked well, although his face
still bore a harrowed expression. A something out of the ordinary in
his appearance her eyes soon resolved into the fact that his dark,
waving hair, which previously he had always worn rather long and
parted in the middle, was so short that it curled closely over his
head.
"I've seen the papers," he told her, "and I'm quite flattered to find
I'm of enough consequence to have such a fuss made over me just
because I left the city for a few days. If I had dreamed there would
be this sort of an ado I'd have told you where I was going. But my
idea was to keep my whereabouts quiet while I went down into West
Virginia, in the mountains, to look into the proposition of developing
a marble quarry. I expected when I left to return in three or four
days, but it was necessary to go so far on horseback that I couldn't
get back that soon and I was so far from the telegraph that I couldn't
communicate with you."
"Every one was very anxious, and, down in my heart, I was, too, but I
told everybody that it was all right, that you were just away on
business and that I expected you back any minute."
"Yes, I saw what a good face you put on it when the reporters insisted
on knowing everything you knew, or guessed, or could make up. I'm
grateful to you, Miss Marne, for the very sensible stand you took.
You showed sense and prudence and did all that you could to stop that
absurd fuss. If I should happen to go away again unexpectedly,--" he
hesitated, wincing ever so little, but quickly went on: "My deal fell
through this time, but I may have to go again, although I hope not,
for it's a beastly journey. But if I should, and there should be any
disturbance about it, you can say frankly that I've gone to look at
some land in the West Virginia mountains, away off the railroad, so
that it is impossible to get hold of me until I return to civilization
again."
He stopped for a moment, as though turning something over in his mind.
"But I don't want to say just where it is," he proceeded cautiously,
"because I don't want certain parties to know that I am after this
property. And if I don't tell you where it is," and he turned toward
her with a pleasant smile and the caressing look in his soft brown
eyes that had so much power to stir feminine hearts, "you can
truthfully say, if you are asked, that you don't know where I am or
how I can be reached."
"How considerate of me he always is," thought Henrietta as she thanked
him.
It was not until she had gone through the accumulation of mail with
him and had explained to him all that she had done during his absence
that he mentioned Hugh Gordon. Then he merely asked, with some
hesitation at the name, as though he could with difficulty bring
himself to speak it, if no letter had come from him.
"Yes," she replied, unlocking a drawer and taking out a bulky
envelope, "this came yesterday, but I guessed that it was from him and
so did not open it."
Brand's dark, handsome face turned a trifle paler and his hand
trembled as he thrust the letter quickly into his breast pocket.
When the newspapermen came to ask if there were yet any news of him
Brand saw them in his own room. He said nothing to Henrietta about the
charges made against him by the investigating committee, but in the
evening papers and again in those of the next morning she read his
defense.
He knew Mr. Flaherty, knew him quite well, he told the reporters, and
had had business dealings with him. Mr. Flaherty had advised him
about several investments he had thought of making and had helped him
in getting some out-of-the-way information concerning them. He had
been impressed by the shrewdness of Mr. Flaherty's judgment in these
matters, had relied on him a good deal and, altogether, had felt under
so much obligation to him that when, after a while, he put a
considerable sum of money into Mr. Flaherty's hands for investment, he
had insisted upon the politician's taking a more liberal commission
than was customary. His idea had been to show his appreciation and
relieve himself from any entanglement or obligation. If Mr. Flaherty
had chosen to consider it a bribe, he, Felix Brand, could hardly be
held responsible for another's idiosyncrasies.
Yes, he had talked with Mr. Flaherty about the municipal art
commission and quite possibly had said, in some such conversation,
that he would like to be a member of that body because of certain
desirable things which it could do, if it would make the effort, for
the city's benefit.
He did not know, but he supposed that Mr. Flaherty, agreeing with him
about these things and perhaps moved by both public spirit and
friendly impulse, had persuaded some of his own friends higher up to
suggest his appointment to the commission. He had been, he declared to
the newspapermen, surprised and deeply gratified by that appointment
and keenly sensible of how great an honor it was, and he had hoped to
make his service upon the commission tell for the good of the city.
But he did not wish to hold any position, and especially one so
peculiarly delicate in its relations to the public service, under
suspicion of any sort of evil practice. And therefore he was willing
to resign at once if the investigating committee and the mayor thought
they were warranted even in assuming his guilt, although he himself
would deeply feel the injustice of such a decision and would be
profoundly disappointed should he be unable to make trial of the plans
he had been formulating.
The men from the papers were eager to know all that he could, or
would, tell them about Hugh Gordon. Had Gordon tried to blackmail
him? Was he a relative? What had become of him? Was there anything in
Miss Annister's suggestion that Gordon had made a prisoner of him and
tried to extract money in that way?
The reporters all noticed that he answered their questions on this
subject slowly and with caution. Some of the queries he evaded, some
he adroitly ignored, only a few did he meet squarely and fully, and he
gave them the very distinct impression that he thought this phase of
the matter of no consequence whatever. The sum total of the
information they got from him was that he had a very slight
acquaintance with "this man Gordon," who, he admitted, was a sort of
connection; that he could not exactly say the fellow had tried to
blackmail him, although he had made some threats and also had, to
express it politely, borrowed money of him; that he had not been held
in durance vile during his absence, but had been freely chasing the
almighty dollar in a backwoods region of the South; and that he had
not the slightest idea whither Gordon had gone, or what had become of
him.
And all the time that he talked, and, indeed, through every moment of
the day, the one thing of which he was supremely conscious was that
bulky envelope that seemed like a weight of lead in his breast pocket.
Many times, when he found himself alone, did his hand move quickly
toward it. But each time, with a little shudder of repulsion and a
furtive glance about the room, his arm fell back and the letter was
left untouched. It was not until late in the evening, when he had
returned to his apartment and had sat for many minutes alone in his
library, his expression telling of a dark and bitter mood, that at
last, with sudden resolution, he drew the packet from his breast.
Even then he did not at once open it, but held it in a shaking hand,
and stared at it with an angry frown. Once he grasped it in both hands
and made as if he would tear it in two. But his fingers stopped with
their first movement and his arms dropped.
Springing impatiently to his feet he moved toward the grate as if he
would fling the missive upon the coals. But again his will weakened
and with a resentful exclamation he walked back to his seat. As he
tore the envelope open, he looked up, startled, as if he had heard
some unusual sound, gazed about the room, moved the hangings at the
window, hurried to the door, which stood ajar, and, after a glance
into the next room, closed and locked it. Again he started and stared
about him apprehensively. Had he heard, he asked himself, or only
imagined, the sound of a scornful, arrogant laugh?
At last, forcing himself to the task, he began to read the letter. It
was written in a large, open, round hand that was very legible,
notwithstanding the somewhat irregular formation of the letters.
"I went last week to see your mother and sister," it began
abruptly, "and you must understand, right now, that you must
pay more attention to them. You must have the house repaired
and, in general, make them more comfortable--you can see, as
well as another, what needs to be done. They would like to
have some sign, now and then, that you remember and care
about them, and you must give it. I enclose the titles of
some books that Penelope would like to read and you must buy
them and send them to her at once. I told her you would. And
I told them, too, that you are planning to give Penelope a
surprise by enclosing one end of the porch with glass so
that she can sit there during the winter. You'd better make
them a visit over Sunday--next Sunday--and give the order
for the work while you are there. Oh, I know that your
beauty-loving soul shrinks from having to look at poor,
helpless, misshapen Penelope. I understand perfectly well
that you much prefer to look at young and pretty women, but
my mind is set on this matter. You must do as I--shall we
say, suggest?--and that without delay or--there will be
consequences. Her poor body is not half so ugly or repulsive
as your selfish soul, Felix Brand, and you know very well
who is responsible for them both."
As Brand read these last words a quick flush darkened his face, his
lips twitched angrily and with a sudden access of wrath he was about
to tear the sheet into strips, when his eye caught the next sentence
and his countenance paled again as quickly as it had flushed. "And it
is my opinion," the letter went on, "that she also is not entirely
ignorant on that question."
Brand half rose, crushing the letter in his hand. "Blackguard! I'll
read no more of his scurrilous stuff!" he exclaimed with angry
emphasis. But the next instant he hesitated, glanced about the room
with a sort of dazed uncertainty, then sank into the chair and resumed
the letter.
"As you will, doubtless, have learned when you read this, I
have done what I told you I would about that municipal art
commission affair. You didn't believe I knew enough to carry
the thing through successfully. But you know better now. I
hope it will convince you that when I make--a suggestion, I
mean it and that you'd better follow my advice unless you
are willing to take the consequences. That bargaining you
did with Flaherty was so idiotic that I lost all patience
with you. If you had been willing to wait a while, a year or
so, you could have got the position in a perfectly
honorable way. But, no! you must have it right now, in order
to further your own selfish ends. And so you reach out and
snatch it, just as you try to grasp ruthlessly whatever you
need or desire for your own purposes. And, as usual, you
left the mark of your pitchy fingers. Your soul is so
blackly selfish, Felix Brand, that it oozes corruption out
of your very finger-ends and contaminates whatever you
touch.
"I am much interested in your mother and sister, and I want
them to be happy. Unless you do for them more of what it is
in your power to do, as I told you before, there will be
consequences--I don't know what, just yet, but I can promise
you that you will find them unpleasant. I have an eye on
several other people also and if it is possible for you to
stop any of the mischief you have set going you must do it.
It would take too long to speak of all the people you have
started in evil ways with your insidious, damnable
philosophy, and would probably be useless, too. But there is
young Mark Fenlow, on the down grade already, though out of
college less than a year. And it was you who put him there.
"Oh, I know how blameless you consider yourself! I know you
say it is the right of every one to taste every pleasure
within his reach; that it is necessary for one's all-round
development to know all sides of life; that it adds not only
to one's pleasure, but also to his knowledge of life and so
to his personal power to try for himself every possible new
experience. You are strong enough to dabble in every filthy
pool you encounter, and then to let it alone and go on to
another. You live your philosophy and, so far as others can
see, although you and I know better, you are none the worse
for it. You are a promising young architect, already winning
wealth and fame, a charming fellow, a handsome genius, whose
friendship is worth having and whose example it is surely
all right to follow! But what about those who do follow it
and have less will power and perhaps less of that
self-control that ambition gives? Are you so hide-bound in
your selfishness that you feel no responsibility for them?
"But I know you are. And so I demand that you do something
to try to keep Mark Fenlow away from the gaming table and
make him understand what will be the outcome of the way he
is going now. There's Robert Moreton, too. He begins to look
like a dope fiend. I don't know whether he is or not, but he
looks it. If he is, it is all because you described to him
what a wonderful experience you had when you spent a night
in an opium joint and told him he'd better try it, just to
see what it was like. I want you to look him up, put him
into a sanitarium and, if he needs it, help him financially.
"There are many others, but I can not stop to speak of them
all now. Your own conscience ought to tell you of them--if,
indeed, you have a conscience, except for me--and move you
to try to repair the damage you have done. I insist only
that you shall do something, and I'll leave the matter in
that shape for the present--until I come again. For I shall
come again, Felix Brand, and you can not hinder me. I do not
know when, but it will not be long, I promise you.
"I do not know yet just what I shall do. I have been hoping
there would be room enough in life for us both. But I begin
to doubt that a man so evil as you has the right to live,
and big plans are stirring within me. But it will all
depend, I think, upon you; upon whether or not you show a
desire to overcome your deliberately fostered selfishness
and a willingness to recognize your human
responsibilities,--upon whether you try to refrain from evil
paths yourself and to right the effects of your influence
upon others. Yes, I think I can say that the end of all this
will depend upon you. And I shall be square with you. I
shall do nothing without giving you fair warning and
affording you every chance.
"With the money I borrowed of you--willy-nilly, it is true,
but still borrowed, for I shall repay it--I intend to go
into the real estate business. I have been looking about a
little in several cities--New York, Boston,
Philadelphia--that was why the reporters could not find me
these few days--and have decided where I shall make my
beginning and selected the man I shall take into
partnership. A week or two when I return, and then it will
be plain sailing. I shall repay that compulsory loan with my
earliest profits, for I do not choose to be in the least
indebted to you.
"As I have what I profoundly feel to be your best interests
at heart, and am working for them, I can, with a clear
conscience, sign myself,
"Faithfully yours,
"HUGH GORDON."
As Brand read the last lines he sprang to his feet with a sharply
indrawn breath and a muttered oath. In his eyes, instead of their
habitual soft, affectionate look, was the glitter of a roused animal.
"Impudent devil!" he exclaimed. "Scoundrel! Dictating to me as if he
had the right!" He crushed the letter in one fist and, striding across
the room, threw it upon the coals with an angry jerk of his arm.
"The fellow used to be amusing," he said to himself, scowling with
anger as he watched the sheets blaze up, "but he's getting too
insolent to put up with any longer."
His scowl deepened as he watched a word or phrase shine out in the
lapping flame, and remembered the context. "Damn you," he cried aloud,
whirling about and shaking his fist at the empty room. "I'll take no
orders from you! I'll force you back where you belong--and I'll do it
in my own way, too!"
CHAPTER VIII
DAYS OF STRESS
The little puff of popular interest in Felix Brand's disappearance and
in the charges against him soon disappeared, as some other sensation
of a day took its place in the newspaper headlines. People ceased
talking about the matter as suddenly as they had begun and Brand
congratulated himself that a bank failure, and then a mysterious
suicide, and after that an appalling dynamite explosion followed so
closely upon his return. He told himself that his own misadventure
would speedily be forgotten.
As the weeks went by he became more and more secure in that
conclusion. Hugh Gordon did not reappear. And as time passed on and no
official action was taken upon the investigating committee's report
the architect felt assured that the whole matter had sunk into an
oblivion which held no menace for him, and his spirit rose in
exultation.
Nor was this the only matter over whose outcome he had reason to be
satisfied. All his investments were doing well and his transactions in
stocks, during the weeks after his return, brought him money in one
good haul after another. And he secured the commission to design a new
capitol building for a western state for which there had been lively
competition among the most prominent architects of the country.
In her complete loyalty to her employer Henrietta Marne rejoiced to
see the harried look leaving his face and his former ease of manner
and good spirits return. Knowing, as she did, that his material and
professional affairs were fulfilling their earlier promise, she
attributed the improvement in his spirits to the apparent sinking out
of sight of the man who, she was convinced, had been responsible for
all his trouble.
A curious change in Brand's demeanor strengthened her in this
conjecture. Something of the spirit of triumph became manifest in his
air, his smile was self-confident and in his manner was the
assuredness of the man who has won some sort of victory.
His secretary, noting all this with observant but discreet eyes, said
to herself that undoubtedly it was all on account of Hugh Gordon.
Brand had not mentioned the man's name to her again nor had she
learned anything more about his mysterious identity. But she felt sure
that he had been trying, from some evil motive, to injure her employer
both personally and professionally, and his sudden disappearance,
followed by the easing of Brand's anxiety and the betterment of his
spirits, convinced her that Gordon had been at the bottom of all the
trouble and made her hope that the architect had stopped his
machinations and would be annoyed by him no more.
She felt that this Hugh Gordon must be a despicable creature, who
tried to do his malevolent work in mean, underhand ways, and when she
thought of him it was always with suspicion and enmity.
The winter days sped on and Felix Brand, feeling confident that his
footing was once more entirely firm and safe, opened one morning with
no misgiving an envelope that bore the stamp of the mayor's office.
But even with its first lines his heart, lately so buoyant, turned to
lead. It began by saying that doubtless Mr. Brand's duties on the
municipal art commission would demand more time and attention than he
could bestow upon them in justice to his own exacting private affairs
and that therefore whenever he wished to tender his resignation it
would receive immediate consideration.
"I shall be sorry," the mayor added, "to lose from that body
one who could contribute to the public service so much exact
knowledge and artistic feeling; but I have convinced myself
that the conclusions of my investigating committee were
correct, notwithstanding your denial and plausible
explanation. Consequently, I feel that the interests of good
government make this step necessary."
Brand was a good deal disturbed by this letter. He had coveted the
position much and had been deeply gratified when he received the
appointment. For the carrying out of certain plans he had in mind
would have brought him prominently into the public eye and secured for
him much popular esteem and favor, greatly to the benefit, he
believed, of his professional reputation and his income. And now
suddenly all these hopes withered and died under the touch of this
veiled but peremptory demand for him to get down and out; and he
feared that if he did not give quick heed he would have to undergo
more publicity of the affair and much humiliation. So he sent at once
his letter of resignation.
Soon after this episode Henrietta began to notice in his face again
the signs of apprehension and to wonder why he sometimes gave a little
nervous start and threw a furtive look about the room.
"Aren't you working too hard, Mr. Brand?" she said to him one day.
"You seem to be under such a nervous strain since you began on that
capitol building. Don't you think you ought to take a rest before you
really give yourself up to it? I'm afraid you won't do yourself
justice if you go on with the work while you are in this condition."
He looked at her with his winning, caressing smile of mouth and eyes.
"Thank you, Miss Marne. It's kind of you to be so thoughtful about me.
A rest would be pleasant, but I couldn't leave, just now, I'm afraid.
You know Stewart Macfarlane has asked me to design a country house
with big grounds on some property he has bought down toward the south
end of Staten Island, and I must go over there soon and study the lay
of the land and then begin work on that. And I've got to have the
design for that capitol building ready to submit by a certain date.
There are three or four unfinished orders on hand and I'm on the track
of another public building that I want to land. So I guess it isn't
rest I need just now, Miss Marne, so much as a straight course of
ten-hour working days. If--if I should have to go South again----"
He straightened up with an impatient jerk, the smile faded from his
face and his mouth settled in determined lines. "But I'm not going to
take that journey again," he went on impatiently, and then added with
decision, "I've settled that."
A few days after this conversation Brand received a letter from the
directors of the National Architectural Society suggesting that he
resign as president of that body.
"We do not feel," they said, "that our society can afford to
continue in that office a man against whom such serious
charges of misconduct have been made and who has not asked
for an investigation. We do not wish to have the matter
exploited publicly any more than is absolutely necessary. To
call a general meeting of the society for its discussion
would be sure to result in newspaper notice that would
doubtless be as disagreeable to you as it would be offensive
to us and injurious to our organization. Accordingly, we
have decided that the better plan would be for you quietly
to resign.
"If you prefer, a general meeting can be called to consider
the matter and the society can then decide whether or not to
ask for your resignation. The decision rests with you."
Brand immediately replied to the letter, complying with its
suggestion in dignified phrases that assured the directors of his
loyalty to the best interests of the society, although he was keenly
sensitive to the injustice that they were doing him.
"It ought to make them ashamed of themselves," thought Henrietta as
she typed the letter. "I never heard of such injustice! They ought to
beg his pardon and ask him to keep the office."
No such missive of apology and reparation came, although Henrietta
more than half expected it. But Felix Brand cherished no such hope.
Instead, premonitions of disaster of which these two episodes would be
but the beginning, began to dog his thoughts. His heart was sore with
disappointment and mortification, and his breast swelled with bitter
resentment against the man whose deliberate action had started this
series of events. As he dwelt upon the blasting of his immediate
hopes, the smirching of his reputation and the sudden sharp check to
the sweeping course of his career, his eyes would burn with hate and
anger.
The old look of worry returned to his face, but with it was combined
one of grim determination that set in hard lines his usually soft and
smiling mouth. Sometimes, Henrietta, coming suddenly into his private
office, surprised in his countenance signs of fear. But what she
oftenest saw there was the look of dogged resolution. She began to be
conscious, too, of some sort of struggle going on within him. She
could see it in these unaccustomed expressions of his countenance,
hear it in the petulant voice in which he sometimes addressed her, so
different from his usual suave tones, and feel it in the nervous
strain under which he was evidently laboring.
As the days went by the very atmosphere in which they worked seemed to
her to grow tense with it, and on days when it was necessary for her
to be much in his room she would go home in the evening with her own
nerves quivering from its influence.
On a day in early March, a bracing day of brilliant sky, clear air and
sharp west wind, Brand said to Henrietta when he left the office for
luncheon that probably he would not return in the afternoon. "I
think," he said, "that I shall go across to Staten Island and motor
down to Macfarlane's property and get a general idea of the site and
the surroundings."
"A splendid idea," she assented with enthusiasm. "It's such a fine
day, the ride will do you good."
"Do you think," he said with a smile, "that your sister would bear me
company?"
"I'm sure she would be delighted," Henrietta smiled back, and not
until an hour later did she remember, with a little qualm of
doubtfulness, Mildred Annister's evident jealousy of their previous
motor ride.
"Dear Mildred!" she thought. "She is so completely wrapped up in her
love. I wish Dr. Annister would consent for them to be married soon.
It would make Mildred so happy and I'm sure it would be a good thing
for Mr. Brand."
When Henrietta reached home she found her sister only just returned,
and in high spirits. At dinner, her eyes sparkling and her cheeks
flushed with delicate pink, her droll little stories, and her merry
laughter kept them all in a gay humor.
"We've had such a good time this evening," said Mrs. Marne when, at
her early bedtime, she bade Henrietta goodnight. "Wasn't Bella
charming! And so pretty she looked with her bright eyes and that
dainty color in her cheeks! It made me wish Warren was here to see
her. I suppose I'm dreadfully old-fashioned, Harry, but it always
seems to me that if a woman is looking especially beautiful or
charming it's somehow just wasted if the man who loves her isn't there
to see it. Wasn't it kind of Mr. Brand to take Bella out this
afternoon! And she did enjoy it so much! I can't be grateful enough
that you were so fortunate as to get a position under such a thorough
gentleman!"
Billikins was Henrietta's dog and her particular care. When she went
to the kitchen to feed him after dinner she found him licking many
gaping wounds in the body and clothing of his cherished plaything, the
rag-doll. Delia had an excited story to tell her of his disreputable
conduct during the afternoon.
"It was very queer and strange, Miss Harry, the way he acted when Mr.
Brand was here. An' him always such a mild and innocent little dog!
Of course he had to run into the hall when the bell rang, like he
always does, to see what's happening, with babykins in his mouth, and
as I went upstairs to call Miss Bella, he trotted into the parlor
where I'd shown the gentleman. An' when I come down you just ought
to've heard the wild an' awful noises he was making! He'd dropped his
doll and was whining an' howling an' growling, and he'd run toward Mr.
Brand an' bark an' growl, and then he'd run back and stand over
babykins as if he was afraid something would happen to her, an' growl
an' whine an' bark! I called him and he wouldn't pay no attention to
me and I had to go in and pick him up and carry him out, him an'
babykins together, and bring them out here. And he tried to go back
and I shut the door and then he crouched down beside it and worried
babykins an' tore holes in her an' whined an' growled an' trembled as
if he was most scared to death. Now, wasn't it queer and strange, Miss
Harry?"
Billikins had stopped eating and was looking up into their faces as
if he understood what they were talking about. Henrietta bent over him
and he crept whining to her feet and looked up at her with dumb appeal
in his eyes, as though begging to be saved from some mysterious,
menacing, unseen thing. She took him up in her arms and felt his
little body trembling with fear and excitement. Vivid recollection
came to her of how her own nerves had quivered and jangled in the
office that day, as long as her employer was there, until it had taken
all her strength to keep them under control.
"Poor little doggie," she said, stroking and cuddling him. "Come along
and we'll take babykins upstairs and sew her all up as good as new and
forget all about it."
"So that was the man you work for, Miss Harry!" Delia exclaimed as
Henrietta turned to leave the room. "I was dusting in the parlor when
he come an' I watched him as he come up the walk, and he's got a firm
and manly tread. He's fine-legged and handsome, Miss Harry, but if I
was you I'd be afraid of a man that a dog's afraid of, Miss Harry."
"We had such a jolly time," said Isabella to her sister as Henrietta
came to her room for a confidential chat during bedtime toilette
rites. "Felix Brand is just the loveliest ever. But you know I always
did think that, even before I met him. Mother was having her afternoon
nap when he came and I was doubtful about going. But he said,
nonsense, she'd sleep till I'd get back.
"At first I couldn't help feeling a little uneasy about her and
perhaps I was a tiny bit glum and not as entertaining as he thought
I'd be. And he seemed sort of glum and grim, too, and, altogether,
Harry, on the first lap the ride didn't promise to be entirely
successful.
"But after a while he was afraid I was cold and said we must find
something to warm us up. So we stopped at the Wayside Tavern--you
remember it, don't you? You know we went there on the trolley last
summer and took a long walk into the woods and had some lemonade on
the porch while we waited for the car on our way back. Well, we went
in there and this time it was champagne----"
"Bella! You didn't, did you?"
"Of course I did! Why not?"
"It doesn't seem to me quite a--a nice thing for a girl to do, Bella."
"Oh, nonsense, Harry! What's the matter with it? Anyway, there wasn't
anything the matter with the champagne; nor with the rest of our ride
either. We went to the Macfarlane place and circled round it and he
told me some of the things he is going to do there, and then we did
some speeding that was--oh, Harry, we fairly flew! It was just grand!
And I guess my tongue went, too, for he talked and laughed and was as
gay as could be. I forgot all about poor mother until we sighted home
again. But I never had such a good time in all my life."
CHAPTER IX
BATTLING WITH THE INVISIBLE
It seemed to his secretary the next day that Felix Brand was in a
calmer mood. She had become accustomed to read with ease his tell-tale
countenance, through which shone so plainly his states of mind and
feeling, and the first anxious glance she cast upon him with her
morning greeting relieved her forebodings of another trying day.
The signs of inward struggle were no longer manifest, though the same
dogged resolution still sharpened the lines of his face, and it was
evident that he was more able to concentrate himself upon his work
than he had been for many days. Whatever the trouble was that had
barked and snapped so incessantly about him that his combat with it
had distracted his attention and engrossed his energies, for the
present at least, it seemed to be cast aside. In the late afternoon
Henrietta heard him make an engagement over the telephone with
Mildred Annister.
Before he left the office, as he was signing the letters she had
typed, he stopped over one, after writing his name, and considered it
for a moment. It was concerned with an effort he was making to get
control of the marble quarry in which he was interested.
"No," he said, "I'll leave this matter until tomorrow. Please call my
attention to it in the morning, if I should happen not to think of it.
And there are some books, here is a list of them, which I should like
to have here, ready to consult, the first thing tomorrow. You may send
the boy for them now and leave them on my desk. These two he may buy,
but the others have him get from the library. If any of these
shouldn't be in have him buy those also, for I particularly want to
have them ready for use as soon as I get here. And I shall probably,"
he added, looking at her with his pleasant smile as he picked up his
hat and gloves, "work you very hard tomorrow looking up references and
finding things for me that I remember to have seen somewhere inside
the covers of those books."
Henrietta went home much pleased by the favorable turn affairs had
taken. The better prospect for her own personal comfort had its share
in her gratification. But it was small beside her relief that her
employer seemed to have won through his besetting harassments and, his
pleasant, winning self again, was once more earnestly devoting himself
to his affairs. For these had suffered during the last few weeks,
while his absorption in his hidden troubles not only had kept him from
devoting proper attention to them, but even had seemed to dull his
capacities. He himself had felt that his artistic perceptions, usually
so true and keen, were blunted and blurred. Upon the design for one of
his commissions, a country house in the Berkshires, he had made
beginning after beginning, only to throw each one aside in disgust and
discouragement. Nor had the various other orders in hand advanced much
better. He had not even begun the design for the capitol building,
although he was under contract to have it finished in three months.
Henrietta knew that he was beginning to feel worried about the
unsatisfactory trend of his work and she had been watching the course
of affairs with secret anxiety. She knew, too, that recently he had
been disappointed and annoyed by several business matters. He prided
himself upon his acute business sense, but lately he had blundered
more than once in his orders to his stock brokers and had lost some
money.
But, puzzled though she was by these developments in Felix Brand's
character and temperament and apprehensive of their results, if she
could have witnessed the scene that was taking place in his apartment
ten or twelve hours after he bade her that smiling farewell for the
day, far greater would have been her alarm and bewilderment.
It was well toward morning, but every light in every room was shining
at its brightest. From one room to another, from end to end of the
suite and back again, its master was walking rapidly, constantly, as
if he feared to stop for an instant or even to check his pace. The
light, muffled sound of his hurried tread barely disturbed the
silence that hung, close and heavy, over the rooms; that brooding
silence of the late hours of the night which seems to have hushed all
the sounds that ever were, but out of which almost any sound might be
born.
As he rushed through drawing room, chambers, dining room, library,
like another Wandering Jew urged pitilessly, incessantly, back and
forth in a contracted round, not another living eye did his own
encounter in the brilliantly lighted rooms. He was entirely alone. But
every now and then his voice rang sharply through the stillness in
angry, resentful, resolute tones.
"You shall not! You shall not!" he shouted, shaking his fist at the
empty air and squaring his shoulders as though he expected some
ghostly enemy to materialize from behind a door or out of the folds of
a portiere.
He threw off his coat and waistcoat and, wiping the sweat from his
face, hurried on again in his ceaseless round.
In the dining room he halted at the sideboard and filled a glass with
brandy and soda. It was his custom to drink sparingly at all times
and when alone he rarely touched liquor of any sort. So now, when he
saw how much of the brandy bottle was empty, he gave a low whistle of
amazement.
"What!" he exclaimed. "Have I drank all that tonight? And I wouldn't
know that I'd taken a drop!"
He swallowed the mixture eagerly, as if it were some elixir from which
he expected to gain new strength, and turned back upon his tramp. As
he passed through his bedroom his gaze longingly sought the bed and
his steps wavered toward it. His eyelids yearned for sleep and his
strength was ebbing. With a stiffening of his muscles and a clenching
of his fists he held himself steadily on his course.
"No, you don't," he muttered. "I won't give in! Do you hear me? I will
not give in!"
He marched on, his head thrust forward, his mouth set hard in dogged
determination and his hands clenched in his pockets. As he passed
through the library he suddenly wavered and a spasm of apprehension
crossed his face. He paused uncertainly for a moment, then strode to
the entrance door of the apartment, made sure that it was locked, and
brought the key back with him. A gleam of triumph mingled with the
fear and anxiety in his face and eyes as he turned the combination
lock of a little safe set in the wall behind a screen. The door swung
open and with a smile of exultation he put the key inside and was
about to close the door again when he stopped short, and, as if with
the flashing of some new thought, his whole face and figure sagged.
"What's the use?" he muttered disappointedly. "He probably knows this
combination, damn him, as well as I do!"
Anger rose in a quick flood and with a wrathful oath he flung the key
on the floor. His face was grimmer and more resolute than before as he
whirled about and rushed from the room. Already pale and drawn, it
went a shade whiter with the effort of will that kept him on his feet
and still moving. At the door of the drawing room his hands flew
upward to the height of his shoulders and doubled into fists. His
eyes were fixed in a blank stare and his face was working in a mortal
agony.
"Ah-h-h!" he gasped.
And then: "There!" he cried in a triumphant tone, as with one foot he
sent spinning across the room the chair beside which he had halted.
His breast was heaving and his breath coming hard as he looked this
way and that with wild eyes. Throwing open a window he put out his
head and caught the cold air upon his streaming face. The sky was
brightening with the promise of dawn.
"Good God!" he groaned as he turned back into the room. "Why did I try
to stick this out alone? Why didn't I do something, go somewhere, have
some of the fellows come here to an all-night game? Oh, I was
afraid--that's the truth, I was afraid--and you knew it, damn you, you
knew it!" he ended in angry tones.
In the library he looked wistfully toward his favorite easy chair, for
his knees trembled with weariness. "No, no, I must not stop. If I sat
down I'd go to sleep, and then----"
He wheeled about and started back. But he held his head higher and
walked with a more confident air. "I'm winning," he exclaimed, and
there was glad surety in his voice. "It was a close call, but I'm
winning! Get back to where you belong, you dog! Go back to where you
came from, damn you, and stay there! I've won, I tell you!" And he
stamped his foot and cried again, "I've won!"
But confident though he was of having won this victory, whatever it
might be, over the invisible enemy whom he seemed both to hate and to
fear, he did not yet dare to cease from his tramp. Back and forth he
still went; and presently, pausing beside the open window, he saw that
the sky was flushed with sunrise and heard the roar and rattle of
another day rising from the streets.
"A bath soon, and breakfast," he thought, "and then out for the day,
and I'll be fairly safe once more. And if things get hard, I'll motor
over to Staten Island and take Miss Marne's sister out again. That
experiment helped a lot yesterday."
He went through the rooms, putting up shades and pushing back
curtains and switching off electric lights. His face was white and
haggard and in his eyes still lingered the look of wild anxiety which
had filled them for so many hours. With hands that trembled he poured
another glass of brandy and soda. As he passed the door of his chamber
his step lagged, he turned and looked in.
"No! No!" he cried harshly, and tried to walk on. But his feet were
like lead and held him there. Once more his body stiffened for battle,
his teeth ground together and his lips shut in a straight, hard line.
He staggered a little way toward the bed, trying to hold himself back,
as if he were wrestling, with all his remnant of strength and will,
against some immaterial, compelling force. Striking out with one fist,
as at some foe beside him, he shouted thickly, "Go! Go back, I say!"
And with a supreme effort he wheeled about and with uncertain, heavy
steps moved back toward the door.
"I will not! I will not!" he muttered, his voice unsteady and
anguished. From his face had faded the determined look and his eyes,
glassy and staring, were turned upward in terrified appeal.
Even as he spoke his feet once more refused to move. They seemed
rooted to the floor, but his body, though he tried his best still to
face toward the entrance, turned again toward the bed. He caught at
the door and braced himself against it for a moment. Then his grasp
weakened and his arms fell down.
The clutching will that was battling with his moved him one step, and
then another, toward the end that he feared, though he strove so
fiercely against it that the sinews of his neck seemed about to burst
through their restraining skin. Stiffening his body, catching at
chairs and tables and putting all his strength into the effort to hold
his feet firm upon the floor, he fought with the intangible force that
gripped him.
[Illustration: HE SANK FACE DOWNWARD UPON THE BED]
"I will not! I will not!" he gasped; and with a mighty effort tore
himself from his bonds and rushed toward the door. But again viewless
hands seized him and turned him suddenly about. His haggard face
flushed to a dull red and beaded with sweat as he fought with the
unseen power that impelled him, step by step, across the room.
With breath coming in gasps, he struggled on desperately, sometimes
gaining a little space and again losing more; and seeing himself,
despite his utmost efforts, forced nearer and nearer to the goal that
he knew meant his vanquishment. Inch by inch he fought the way with
his invisible enemy to the very bedside. Even there, with his last
ounce of strength, he made a final, futile effort to break away from
his intangible captor. Then he flung up his arms and covered his face
and with a long "oh-h-h," that was half a rageful, hysterical cry and
half a moan of despair, he sank face downward upon the bed.
He had lost the battle in what he had thought to be the very hour of
victory.
CHAPTER X
HUGH GORDON WINS HENRIETTA'S CONFIDENCE
Henrietta reached the office early that morning, lest her employer, in
his eagerness to push his work, now that he could devote himself to it
with undivided energies, should get there first. She looked forward to
the day with pleasant anticipations, for she had assisted him in this
way before and she liked it the best of all her duties. The books were
ready upon his desk, but he had not yet arrived. She waited for him
all the forenoon, employing herself as best she could, and still he
did not come.
In the afternoon she tried to get his apartment on the telephone, but
there was no answer. Surely, he would not have left the city, after
such preparations for a busy day, without sending her some message.
She called up Dr. Annister and asked if he had seen Mr. Brand that
day, or knew whether or not he had unexpectedly gone out of the city.
No, the doctor replied, he had not seen Mr. Brand since the evening
before, when he and Mildred and Mrs. Annister had gone to the theatre
together. As Mildred had been looking quite happy all day he did not
think Felix could have said anything about going out of town. And he
had promised to dine with them tomorrow night. Doubtless if he had
gone anywhere it was only for the day and Dr. Annister was cheerfully
confident Henrietta might expect to see him again on the morrow.
She lingered at the office an hour later than usual, hoping for some
word from the architect. But none came. The next morning she hurried
back, eagerly anticipating a letter or a telegram, but found neither.
All day she waited, her nerves on edge with expectation and anxiety,
but Brand did not come nor did he send her any message.
"This is worse than it was before," thought Henrietta, "for then
he told me beforehand that he might have to go. And he said so
positively, only a little while ago, that he did not intend to take
that trip south again. Perhaps he found he had to go after all.
Anyway, I guess it's what I'd better tell people."
Remembering his dinner engagement at Dr. Annister's, she made that
explanation over the telephone. Both to Dr. Annister and afterward to
Mildred she said that she did not know positively that he had gone to
West Virginia, but that he had told her, when he returned from his
former absence, that that was where he had been and that he might have
to go again, although he had not told her the exact place because, for
business reasons, he did not want it to be known.
Yes, Mildred assented, he had said the same thing to her and she
understood just how it was. But all the same, it was cruel of Felix,
and not at all like him, for he was always so sweetly considerate, to
go off in this sudden, secret way and leave them all in such suspense.
"When we're married," and a happy little laugh came rippling over the
telephone to Henrietta's ear, "it shan't be like this, for then he'll
have to take me with him on all such jaunts and I'll see to it that
you know where we are."
As the days went by, Henrietta, pondering with ever increasing anxiety
the mystery of this second disappearance, began to doubt the
explanation she gave to others. This time there came up no reason for
public interest and so even the knowledge that he was away was
confined to a few of his friends and to those who wished to see him
upon business. With all inquirers his secretary treated his absence as
an ordinary matter, saying merely that she thought he was somewhere in
the mountains of West Virginia, she did not know exactly where, nor
could she say positively when he would be back.
Nevertheless, looking back over what he said to her on his return
after his previous long absence, Henrietta recognized in it a touch of
insincerity. At the time she had accepted it as a matter of course,
but now, scrutinizing her memory of his words and his manner, in the
light of all that had happened since, she finally said to herself, "I
don't believe he was telling me the truth."
But if that southern business trip was a deliberate fabrication, what,
then, could be the reason for a prolonged absence, so injurious to all
his interests, whose real nature and purpose he had been at such pains
to conceal? She had heard of men who sometimes slipped out of sight
that they might plunge unhampered into debauchery, and she began to
wonder if such were the case with him, or if, perhaps, he had fallen a
victim to some secret vice. But against either of these suppositions
both her feminine instincts and her personal liking for her employer
rebelled.
"I don't see how that could be," she thought, "for he is always so
nice and refined. There is no suggestion about him of anything gross
or so--unclean. No, it can't be anything of that sort. And yet, he
seemed so nervous, and just as if he were fighting against something
with all his might--and I suppose it would be like that if he were
fighting the desire to drink or take some kind of dope. But I can't
believe it. I wonder if that Hugh Gordon could have anything to do
with it. Well, whatever the explanation, it's evident he doesn't want
people to know about his being away, and he doesn't like it to be
talked about, so the thing for me to do is to keep as still as a mouse
and not to let anybody else do any more talking than I can help."
Even at home, in her loyalty to her sense of duty, Henrietta said no
more than to make a mere mention of her employer's absence and to
reply, when her mother or sister made occasional inquiry, that he had
not yet returned.
Brand had been away almost a week when the office boy brought her a
card one morning and said the gentleman was particularly anxious to
see her. As she looked at it and read "Hugh Gordon" her heart began to
beat faster and her face flushed a sudden red.
Had he come, she wondered, to bring her news of Brand's whereabouts,
or, perhaps, tidings of some serious misfortune? The apprehensive
thought flashed through her mind that perhaps he would try, under
threat of evil to herself or her employer, to force from her some
personal or business information that he could afterward use as a
lever against the architect, and she told herself that she must be
very careful what she said to him.
She felt assured that he was there for no good purpose, and during the
moment that she waited for the boy to bring him into her room her mind
formed a swift picture of an elderly fellow, slouching and shabby,
red-nosed and unshaven, bearing all the marks of a parasitic and
dissipated life.
When she saw instead a well-groomed young man, wearing an English
looking gray suit, advancing toward her with a quick, firm step and a
self-confident air, the reversal of her preconceived ideas was so
complete that for an instant she thought it must be some one else. The
suggestion of a smile crossed his serious face as he met her
disconcerted look and, halting beside her desk, he repeated his name.
"I have come to see you, Miss Marne, to relieve your mind of any
apprehension you may feel concerning Mr. Felix Brand."
"Oh," she exclaimed, the reassurance his words gave her evident at
once in her voice. "Then you have seen him? You know that he is quite
well?"
His keen, dark eyes swept the room with an alert glance. On her desk
glowed a vase of sunshine-colored daffodils. She remembered afterward
that, while his one swift glance had seemed to take in everything in
the room, it had passed over the flowers as coolly as it had over the
chairs and the typewriter, and she compared it with the way Felix
Brand's eyes would have lingered and feasted upon them.
"I have not seen him for several days," he replied, his gaze again
straight into her eyes. He spoke rapidly, in a direct, almost blunt
manner. "But I can assure you that you need to feel no anxiety about
him. He is quite safe and will be back here as soon as circumstances
permit."
Henrietta hesitated for an instant, in quick debate with herself as to
the most prudent course to pursue. Should she try to find out all that
this man knew, or, refusing to admit how much she was in the dark
herself, thank him for his kindness in such a way as to make him
believe she did not need his information? She was aware that already
she was not so suspicious of him as she had been a few moments before.
The friendly sincerity of his look and the blunt frankness of his
manner compelled her into a less wary, less hostile feeling. Reminding
herself again that she must be on her guard she motioned him to a
chair beside her desk.
"You must know, Mr. Gordon," she said, looking at him with a gaze as
direct as his own, "that your attitude toward Mr. Brand some weeks ago
was not such as to make me feel, now, much confidence in your good
intentions. Frankly, I find it difficult to believe that you have come
here with his good in view."
Gordon's serious countenance relaxed a little and Henrietta felt
herself impelled to a responsive smile, which she quickly checked.
"No," he agreed, "I can't expect you, not knowing all the
circumstances, to understand that what I did then was intended for
Felix Brand's good. I believed, or at least I hoped, that it would
have a salutary effect upon him and induce him to turn back from a
course of conduct that I foresaw would be disastrous."
He straightened up and his dark eyes, that would have been somber but
for their keenness, ran quickly down over her face and figure and then
rested again with a softened expression upon hers.
"I would like you to believe that, whatever was the result of what I
did, I had no evil or selfish motive in doing it. Can you feel that
much confidence in me, Miss Marne?"
She bent her eyes upon the desk for the moment of silence that
followed his question and made effort to voice her reply in a cool,
disinterested tone.
"I can understand that you might have been moved by a sense of duty
toward the public welfare--if you believed in your own assertions. I
gather from what you said just now that you wish to be considered Mr.
Brand's friend; but that sort of thing does not agree with my idea of
the loyalty there should be between friends."
His black brows drew together in a slight frown as he looked intently
at her averted face. "Well," he said, more slowly than he had
previously spoken, "I shall not try to justify myself. I shall only
repeat that my motive was neither selfish nor malicious. I had not
thought particularly, in fact, I had not thought at all then, about
the public side of it. I did it solely in the hope that it would have
a good effect upon Felix." He paused again for a moment and as she
noted his familiar use of her employer's name she thought that, after
all, the relations between them must be intimate.
"But I hope," he went on, his manner again brusque, "that you will
free your mind from all suspicion as to my reasons for coming here
today."
She flushed and turned a little more away, and he smiled behind his
hand as he stroked his short, thick, black mustache.
"I know already more about Felix Brand and his affairs than pleases me
and I am just now much more interested in my own."
She faced him with a sudden movement and asked sharply: "Do you know
where he is?"
Her eyes caught an inscrutable change in his. Something almost like
awe came into them and into his countenance as his gaze turned to the
window and sought the blue and distant sky.
"No," he said, his voice sounding a solemn note, and repeated: "No, I
do not. I do not know where he is now."
His eyes returned to her face and as he met her startled expression he
exclaimed in a kindly way, leaning forward as if to reassure her:
"There! I've frightened you! Please don't be alarmed. I assure you,
there's nothing to be anxious about. Although I don't know positively
where Felix is, just now, I do know he has suffered no harm, no real
harm, and I believe, I am quite sure, he will be back here again as
well as ever, before very long. I came here to tell you this."
She studied his face for a moment and somehow, against her will, the
conviction came upon her that this man was moved, as he declared, by
good motives.
"It was kind of you," she replied at last with a gracious smile, "and
I thank you very much. I was quite anxious, but I believe what you
have told me and I am greatly relieved."
He looked pleased and exclaimed impulsively: "And I thank you for your
confidence in me!"
As he rose to go, his glance once more traveled quickly down over her
face and figure and returned to her eyes with a look in his own that
her woman's instinct knew to mean appreciation, interest, liking.
"By the way," he said, turning impulsively toward her and speaking in
a quick, brusque way, "there is another matter I must not forget. It
was part of my reason for coming here. There was a letter--you
remember--that Felix had you write the last day he was here and then
asked you not to send just then. You haven't mailed it yet, have you?"
She stared at him in astonishment and said "No," before she could take
counsel of her caution.
"I didn't suppose you had. However, I happen to know, he told me, that
he would like you to send it at once, just as it stands now."
Henrietta was so astounded by this revelation of the intimacy that
must exist between the two men that for a moment she could not reply.
For the letter was concerned with an effort Brand was making to get
control of the marble quarry company in which he had invested some
months before, and she knew that he was keeping the matter very secret
and considered it of great importance. It had worried her more than
anything else in his arrested affairs, for she hesitated to mail it
without farther instructions from him and yet had feared that if she
did not his plans might fall through.
Gordon went on without appearing to notice her surprise, although she
felt sure that he saw it and was amused by it. "As you know, he wanted
to wait a day or two for certain developments at the other end."
Henrietta nodded. "Yes, and I have not been able to find out just what
happened."
"It's all right--just as Felix hoped it would be," he assured her and
went on to tell her briefly what had occurred.
After his departure Henrietta found herself comparing her visitor with
her employer. All her previous thought of Gordon had been in
connection with Brand as the cause of his troubles, as his enemy and
even his persecutor. So now, when Gordon appeared in person, it was
against a contrasting background of the appearance and character of
the man to whom she felt so grateful for the opportunity of livelihood
amid congenial surroundings.
Gordon was much in her mind during the rest of the day; and as she
traveled homeward in the afternoon, in the subway, across the ferry in
the glowing sunset light, and in the clattering trolley car, her
thought was busy with speculation about him, with comparison of him
with Felix Brand, with recollections of what he had said and how he
had looked, with conjecture as to the meaning of his expression when
she asked him if he knew where Brand was.
At dinner she spoke of her caller to her mother and sister. At once
they were interested and were eager to know what he was like and what
Henrietta thought of him. As she answered their questions she felt her
cheeks flushing when she saw their surprise that she should praise or
seem to admire the man who was Felix Brand's enemy.
"I know you are surprised," she said, trying to overcome a sudden
access of self-consciousness, "that he isn't at all the sort of man we
thought him, or at least that I was sure he must be. But it was
certainly considerate of him to come, and there was nothing at all in
anything he said or did that suggested a different motive. I never was
more surprised in my life than I was by his appearance. You know Mr.
Brand told the reporters that he is a relative and I had supposed he
must be some dissipated, disreputable sort of creature. And then in
came this good-looking young man--for he is good-looking, though not
so handsome as Mr. Brand--his face hasn't that look of refinement and
affability. He was well-dressed and looked like a prosperous young
business man, and he has such a straightforward, independent air."
"Does he look like Mr. Brand?" queried Isabella, so interested that
she was forgetting her dinner.
"A little--yes. In some ways a good deal, and then again he seems so
different. He is dark and his features have a family resemblance. But
otherwise the two men are not alike. You know that dear expression Mr.
Brand's eyes always have, so winning and affectionate, and as if he
thought the world of you. Well, Mr. Gordon's eyes are large and
brown, too, but they are keen and they look right through you and he
flashes one glance around the room and you feel that he knows
everything in it. He isn't so polished in his manners----"
"Mr. Brand has the loveliest manners of any man I ever met," Isabella
interrupted. "His mission in life ought to be to travel round and show
them off as a pattern for all other young men. I wish Warren could
have the advantage of a few lessons."
"Bella!" exclaimed her mother reprovingly. "You ought not to speak
that way of the man who is almost your husband. And Warren is such a
good man, too!"
"So is Mr. Brand," Isabella replied saucily, "awfully good, just too
good to be true. Tell us more about Mr. Gordon, Harry."
"Why, as I was saying, his manner isn't so polished as Mr. Brand's. In
fact, he is so direct and positive that he seems a little curt, though
I'm sure he doesn't mean to be. He makes you feel that he's very
sincere, too. Mr. Brand seems to draw people to him without making any
effort, but Mr. Gordon is more compelling and something about him
makes you take an interest in him and believe in him."
"He impressed you a good deal, didn't he, Harry?" said Isabella,
looking at her sister thoughtfully.
Henrietta felt her cheeks warming again and was annoyed at herself
that she should blush in this way when, as she scolded herself, "there
was no reason for it."
"I don't know that he did, particularly," she said defensively. "His
coming was rather curious and you and mother seemed interested and
wanted to know all about him."
CHAPTER XI
PENELOPE HAS A VISITOR
Penelope Brand lay back in her wheel-chair in the glass-enclosed porch
and gave herself up to luxurious enjoyment of its sun-filled warmth.
The table beside her with its books and its sewing, but just now
finished and neatly folded, gave evidence that she had spent a busy
morning. Outside there was bright sunshine, too, but there was also a
raw March wind that filled the air with dust and stimulated the
tear-ducts of the eyes that faced it. The little glass porch had
brought a very great pleasure into her life, giving her, during the
shut-in winter season, always hard for her to endure, wider views of
earth and sky, a flood of the sunshine in which she loved to bask and,
on days when it was possible to keep the entrance open, much more
fresh air.
She sat there alone, loving the sunny warmth and thinking of the
brother who had made her pleasure possible. Her secret mental
attitude toward him was marked by a certain aloofness and a quietly
judicial estimate which she did her best to conceal from her mother.
It had cost her not a little effort, too, to keep this attitude from
developing into stern censorious judgment. Just now it added to her
pleasure that her feeling toward him, at least for the time being,
could be mainly that of gratitude, though gratitude tempered by
curiosity.
"Perhaps he'd have done it long ago if I had asked him," she told
herself. "And I've longed for something of the sort so much. I do
wonder what made him finally think of it himself. It wasn't like him.
He might have thought of it and wanted to do it ten or twelve years
ago, before he had plenty of money. But it's not like him now."
The click of the gate attracted her attention and she saw a man coming
up the walk. "Why, that can't be Felix," she thought in doubting
surprise. Then, as she looked at him more attentively, "Oh, no! It's
that Mr. Gordon who was here last winter. Felix didn't seem to like
very well his calling on us. And mother isn't at home. Well, I'll
have to see him. And perhaps it's just as well, for I don't care
particularly whether Felix likes it or not."
He held her thin, talon-like hand affectionately as he asked how she
was and if she enjoyed her glass cage.
"Enjoy it! Oh, Mr. Gordon! You can't imagine how I delight in it! I
sit here most of the time every day in all kinds of weather. It has
given me the greatest pleasure, and I think I am better and stronger,
too, because of it. I was just thinking how grateful I am to Felix."
His face and eyes, which had been glowing with responsive pleasure,
darkened at her last sentence.
"I don't like that word 'grateful' in connection with such a matter,"
he exclaimed quickly. "It was a little thing for Felix to do, only one
out of all the many things that he could do for you if he would, and
one that he ought to have done long ago. And it doesn't seem to me,
Penelope, that _you_ would have any reason to be 'grateful' to Felix
Brand, no matter how much he might do for you."
The significant tone in which he spoke the last words brought surprise
into her face. She turned toward him with astonished inquiry in her
dark eyes, but, as she met his assured gaze, that expression quickly
changed into one of understanding. It was evident that she knew what
he meant. She looked at him steadily for a moment, a moment of inner
effort in which she brought her own impulse of responsive feeling
under firmer control, before she replied:
"Wouldn't that be a barbarian sort of philosophy to live by?"
"Perhaps it would," he admitted, paused an instant, and then went on
with some heat:
"But when I think of all that you have suffered because of him, and
how little he has tried to make amends, I am so indignant that merely
refraining to be 'grateful' for such a crumb as this seems nothing to
what he deserves."
A faint color crept into her thin, pale cheeks as again she stared at
him wide-eyed.
"I know all about it," he continued, nodding at her gravely. "I know
that you would have been as straight and strong as any girl, and a
noble, capable, active woman, if he hadn't pushed you off the limb of
that apple-tree in your back yard twenty years ago, because he was
determined to have your place."
"Did he tell you about it?" she demanded, her voice trembling with
excitement. "But he must have, because nobody else, not even father or
mother, ever knew. They thought I fell."
"Yes, I know that was the version he gave of the affair, and everybody
accepted it. And you kept the truth to yourself."
"What good would it have done to blame him after it was all over? And
he didn't intend to do it."
"Yes, he did! He meant to push you off and get your place and show you
that he was boss."
"Perhaps, but he had no intention of hurting me--he didn't think that
it would."
"Oh, I know he had no murderous purpose. He just gave up to a selfish,
brutal impulse, and afterwards he was too cowardly and too selfish to
confess the truth."
She turned upon him a steady, wondering gaze and he shrank back a
little and went on more humbly:
"I suppose I ought not to speak in that way to you about your brother,
and I hope you will pardon me. But when I compare your life with his
it makes me too indignant to keep a bridle on my tongue. And, besides,
Penelope," and he leaned toward her with his manner again forceful
with the strength of his convictions, "you know as well as I do how
truthful is every word I have said."
"And even if I do," she rejoined with dignity, "it is possible that I
would not choose to admit all that my secret heart might think."
She stopped with a little start and a drawing together of her brows,
and then, with alarm dawning in her eyes, she leaned forward eagerly
and put a pleading hand upon his arm:
"You won't say anything about this to mother, will you?"
Gordon hesitated, but his eyes, flashing with the intensity of his
feeling, softened as they fell upon her anxious face.
"It's hardly fair," he said doggedly, "it certainly isn't just, for
her to glorify Felix as she does when he is--what he is. In justice to
you she ought to know this."
"That's of no consequence at all beside the pain it would give her to
know the truth. You don't know mother--nobody does but me--and you
can't appreciate in the least what Felix, or, rather, her ideal of
Felix, means to her. Mother is, and always has been, a romantic sort
of woman, as you might guess"--and she smiled faintly at him--"by
the names she gave her children. Her own life has been hard and
monotonous, with little pleasure, little beauty--and she has such a
beauty-loving nature--little opportunity. And she is so shy, too, she
has so little self-confidence. So, don't you see, all the romance and
imagination that have been starved in her have been born over again
for her in Felix. Felix is handsome, magnetic--he attracts people and
makes everybody his friends, as she would have liked to do--he is a
genius, he creates beautiful things, he lives in lovely surroundings,
he is winning fame and wealth--life for him is a Grand Adventure, more
beautiful and wonderful than anything she ever dared to dream. She
knows Felix is selfish, but she can always see so many reasons why it
is impossible for him to do any particular generous thing. Oh, Mr.
Gordon, it would grieve her so to know how that accident really
happened and how he concealed the truth and--and----"
"Ah, you don't like to say it," he broke in as she hesitated and
ceased speaking. "But I know what you mean--how he profited by it. For
the money that would have been divided upon the education of both of
you if you had been well and strong was all spent upon him. And he
took it and kept silent."
Again she stared at him in surprise. "How frankly Felix must have
talked with you!" she exclaimed. "He never would have confessed all
this if he hadn't felt remorseful and repentant!"
"But he isn't!" Gordon blurted out with an irritated start. "He's come
to think it a part of his good fortune. If he had been, or, even, if
he were now--well, things might have turned out differently--that's
all I can say."
"But we're getting away from mother. Don't you see, Mr. Gordon, that
it would be cruel? And what good would it do? Felix is what he is, and
he'll stay so to the end of the chapter. You can't change him and you
would only spoil mother's happiness in him. Promise me, Mr. Gordon,
that you won't tell her anything about it, that you won't say anything
to her about Felix that would make her unhappy!"
Gordon rose abruptly and walked across the little enclosure and back
again, his black brows drawn together, before he replied.
"It is hard to refuse you anything, Penelope," he said finally,
standing in front of her chair. "You have had so little, and you
deserve so much. I know you are right about this, and I shrink from
hurting her as much as you do. But when I think of Felix and the
course he has deliberately followed, it angers me so that I forget
everything except the retribution he so richly deserves. But you are
right and I give you your promise."
He smiled upon her and gently patted the hand that lay, thin and
feeble-looking, on the arm of her chair. But the smile quickly faded
from his face as he met the mingled wonder and displeasure of her
look.
"I thank you for your promise," she said, "but I am surprised to hear
you speak so bitterly of my brother, when you seem to be so friendly
with him and he has given you such intimate confidence."
Again Gordon walked up and down in the narrow space, his countenance
somber with the intentness of his thought.
"The relations between us are peculiar," he said at last, speaking
more slowly and deliberately than was usual with him. "I wonder if I
could tell you what they are. I wonder if you would believe me, or
think me sane, if I should tell you. Sometime I shall tell you,
Penelope, for you are a broad-minded, strong-souled woman and you will
be able to see that what I am doing has been for the best good of
everybody concerned. But I think not now. No, not yet, not till after
I have worked out my plan. But I want you to know, Penelope, and I
shall never be content until you do understand. For I honor and
admire you more than anyone else I know. If I didn't, perhaps my
feeling about Felix wouldn't be quite so strong. And I'll try to curb
my tongue when I speak about him to you."
Penelope had begun to feel much wearied by the interview, with
its demands upon her emotional strength and the strange, tingling
excitement with which Gordon's presence wrought upon her nerves, just
as it had done at their previous meeting.
His compelling personality, that had burst so unexpectedly and so
intimately into her life, inspired in her the wish to believe in
him. But his bitterness toward her brother, notwithstanding their
evident intimacy, made her hesitate. He seemed so sincere and so
straightforward that her impulse was to meet him with equal frankness.
But she was still a little doubtful, a little fearful.
She felt that she must know more about the mysterious relation, with
its apparent contradictions, between him and Felix before she could
give him the confidence he seemed to desire.
"It is all very strange," she said, "and after you are gone I shall
wonder whether I have been dreaming or whether some one named 'Hugh
Gordon' has really been here saying such bitter things about my
brother. Does he know that you have such a poor opinion of him?"
"Does he know it?" Gordon exclaimed, facing her impulsively and
speaking with emphasis. "Indeed he does! He knows just how much I--but
there! I promised to bridle my tongue. Well, he has had a great deal
more information upon that head than you have!"
"Well, then, I'll have to forgive you the hard things you've said
about him to me, since you've been just as frank with him first!"
"Thank you! But you know they are all true, Penelope!"
She drew back, a little offended that he should insist a second time
upon this point, and there was a touch of scornfulness in her tones as
she rejoined with dignity:
"I do not deny that my brother has faults, but is that any reason why
I should discuss them with a stranger?"
"Don't say that, Penelope!"
His cry came so straightly and so simply from his heart that its
honest feeling and the look of pain upon his face moved her to quick
contrition and to warmer confidence. Surely, she told herself, there
could be no doubting his ardent friendliness toward her mother and
herself, whatever might be his attitude toward Felix.
"I have known about you such a long time," he was hurrying on in
pleading speech, "that you are like an old friend--no, more than that,
like a sister in my thought of you, and I want you to feel that way
toward me. It may seem strange to you, Penelope, but it is true, that
you and your mother are nearer and dearer to me than any one else in
the world. That's why it hurts when you call me a stranger, although I
know I can hardly seem more than that to you, as yet."
He sat down beside her and took one of her hands for a moment in both
of his. "But we are going to change that, if you'll let me," he said,
a smile lighting his serious face. "If you'll let me I'm going to be a
genuine sort of brother to you. I haven't the genius that Felix has,
I'll never create anything beautiful or wonderful, but I have got a
knack for business and I can make money. I don't care anything about
money for itself, but I do care a lot for all the things one can do
with it.
"My head is full of ideas and plans for using the money I shall make
as a lever for helping the world along. I know such things interest
you, Penelope. You like to read and think about them and I'm sure
you'd have done great work in that line if--if Felix--if there had
been no accident. And if you will give me the benefit of your reading
and thinking, it will help me in the working out of my plans."
"I? Could I be of any use? When I am such a prisoner and have so
little strength? I've only read and thought a little--I don't know
anything as people do who come face to face with actual conditions.
But you don't know," and a sharp, indrawn breath and the wistfulness
of her eyes told him how much she was moved by his proposal, "you
don't know what it would mean to me!"
"I can guess, Penelope--sister--you don't mind if I call you that? I
know a little, and your face tells me a good deal more, about how your
spirit has rebelled and how you have battled with it and won the
victory. You haven't found it easy to be a prisoner in a wheel-chair!"
"Indeed, I have not!"
She bent her thin, humped and crooked body forward with fresh energy
and a spark of the spirit she had conquered flashed out again in her
dark eyes and tired face.
"My soul has longed so to do something, to be something, to be able to
use my abilities and my energies as other people do! I have longed so
fiercely to go about and see the beautiful and wonderful things in the
world, to achieve something myself and to meet as an equal other
people who have done things worth while! If there is hell anywhere it
used to be in my heart! I fought it--it was the only thing there was
to do--by myself, for I couldn't add to mother's troubles such a
burden as that would have been. Father knew, a little, of how I felt,
before he died. But afterwards I fought it out myself--it took years
to do it--and at last forced myself into a sort of content, or
resignation.
"I know I am some comfort to mother, although I have cost her so much
care. But for a long time her chief pleasure, after her delight in
Felix, has been in our companionship. So that is something, and I read
a good deal and think all I can, and I try to do through others the
little good in the outside world that is possible to me."
She leaned back again feebly and closed her eyes for a moment in
physical weariness. "And so at last," she went on, meeting his
compassionate look with a faint smile, "I come to be--not unhappy."
"And now the opportunity is coming," he assured her impulsively, "for
you to make some use of your sweet, strong spirit and your capable
brain. But I don't know--Felix--I don't know--" he hesitated, casting
at her a keen, inquiring glance, but continued in a confident tone:
"But you'll understand, you'll see it's for the best! Oh, I know
you'll agree that I'm doing the right thing!"
He saw the fatigue in her countenance and rose to go. "I'm afraid I've
tired you, Penelope, but I hope you'll forgive me when I tell you what
pleasure our talk has given me. Before I go I want to ask you one more
thing--about your mother. Did she--was she much grieved by what I did
about--Felix and that bribery business?"
A look of gratification crossed Penelope's face. "I hoped you wouldn't
go away without saying something about that," she said frankly. "Of
course, it grieved her. She was deeply hurt."
"I knew she would be," he interrupted sorrowfully. "But it was the
best way I could see. I thought it would be a warning to Felix."
"Of course she didn't believe it was true. She thought you were acting
under a conviction of public duty and that you were mistaken in your
understanding of what had happened. You impressed her very much when
you were here and she thought so much about you afterwards that it was
hard for her to reconcile your action with your friendship for Felix.
But she did and finally came to think it really noble in you to hold
what you thought to be the public good above your personal feelings."
"But it was Felix I was thinking of chiefly," he protested. "Still, it
was very sweet of her, and very like her, too, to look at it in that
way. Would she--do you think she would be glad to see me if she were
at home?"
"I am sure she would," replied Penelope cordially. "She was so pleased
with her fancy of your being her dream son and of your coming toward
us out of the snow-storm like some one in a dream--dear mother! It all
pleased her so much! And she talked much and tenderly about you
afterwards. But there was something that disturbed her, and I must
tell you about it, for she will want to know if I explained it to
you."
She stopped a moment and threw an observant glance upon her listener.
Absorbed in what she was saying, he was looking at her with his keen
eyes and serious face all soft and tender with emotion.
Penelope felt her heart yearn toward him with entire trust. "Felix has
never cared for us as much as this man does already," she thought.
"Mother was afraid," she continued, "that you might think, from what
she said about her hopes when Felix was a little boy, that she is
dissatisfied with him now. Of course, you know that isn't true. I've
told you enough for you to see how she delights and glories in him.
She would have liked, I think, to see him become a great preacher or a
great reformer. But his bent wasn't that way, and I don't believe that
if he had been either she could have been prouder of him than she is
now."
"Well, I can never be a great preacher, or a great reformer either,
or, indeed, a great anything. But I hope I shall be able to do some
good in the world, in little spots here and there, and I want very
much to bring more happiness into her life and yours. I would like to
be to her a son. But--I don't know----"
He hesitated again and Penelope saw doubt come into his face and his
eyes grow wistful.
"No, I don't know how it will be. I can do it--" Again he stopped for
a moment and, gazing into the distance as he went on, he seemed to
Penelope to be speaking more to himself than to her. "I can do it only
by giving to you and to her, to her especially, very great sorrow
first. Sometimes, I'm not quite sure----"
Then sudden resolution seemed to seize him. His lips shut and his
figure stiffened with determination. "But it has to be--it has to be,"
he declared abruptly. His air was forceful to the verge of
aggressiveness as he turned to her again.
"Good-bye, Penelope. Give my love to your mother and tell her I was
sorry not to see her. It has been good to see you once more and to
have this talk with you. I shall come again some time if you will let
me. But I shall not believe you unwilling to see me unless you
yourself tell me so."
"You are a strange man," she replied, looking at him with frank
curiosity but entire friendliness, "and you interest me very much.
Whenever you wish to come again you may be sure that no matter what
you may have been doing, I at least shall be glad to see you."
His abrupt, aggressive manner softened, and a pleading note sounded in
his voice as he replied:
"Anyway, you'll try to think, won't you, that I believe, from the
bottom of my heart, that what I am doing and shall do concerning Felix
is for the good of everybody, even for his good, too, extraordinary as
that may seem. That's the most I can say, until the time comes for me
to tell you the whole story. But you shall know it sometime, Penelope.
Good-bye."
CHAPTER XII
DR. ANNISTER HAS DOUBTS
Early in the second week of Brand's absence his secretary had another
call from Hugh Gordon. Henrietta was aware of a little thrill of
pleasure when the office boy brought her his card, and quickly
accounted for it to herself by thinking that perhaps he would have
some news of her employer. But he had nothing to tell her and he made
excuse for coming by asking if Brand had returned or if she had heard
from him.
Henrietta was puzzled by his manner as he made this inquiry. For he
showed no anxiety, and when she replied he received her answer with as
little interest as if he had known beforehand what she would say.
"I hoped you would be able to tell me something about him," she added.
"I do not know where he is," he replied, "but I am positive that you
have no occasion to feel anxious about him. I am quite sure he will
return, perhaps before long. I assure you, if anything should happen
to him, I should know it before any one else."
He spoke with such sincerity that her lingering distrust faded away,
while his abundant physical vigor, manifest alike in his appearance
and his manner, made a strong appeal to her feminine nature. He seemed
so full of energetic purpose, and he looked at her with such a
self-assured, straightforward gaze that she could no longer withhold
the confidence she felt him to be demanding. Nor did the fact that her
woman's instinct, quickly discovering the scarcely concealed
admiration in his eyes and countenance, told her the reason for his
visit lessen her inclination to give him the trust he desired.
"Do you think," she anxiously asked, "that I ought to report Mr.
Brand's disappearance to the police?"
"No," he said with abrupt positiveness, "I do not."
Then he seemed to take second thought and purposely to soften his
manner as he proceeded: "When he returns do you think he would be
pleased to learn that another hullaballoo had been made over his
absence, doubtless on necessary business?"
"Oh, no, I am sure he would not! He didn't like it at all the other
time. It was only--I feel so much responsibility--and I am so
uncertain as to what I ought to do. I am not letting anybody
know"--she hesitated and blushed--"except you, that I don't really
know where he is. I thought it was what he would wish if--if he is on
a business trip--in West Virginia--or anywhere. But if anything has
happened--should happen--to him----"
"Don't feel anxious on that score. I shall be the first one to know if
any harm comes to him, and I give you my word that you shall be
informed as soon as possible. I came in to give you this assurance, as
I feared you would be worried by his long absence."
Henrietta was surprised when her visitor left to find that their
conversation had lasted for half an hour. "It didn't seem so long,"
she thought, smiling in the pleasant glow that still enveloped her
consciousness.
"I hope I didn't say anything I ought not," her thought ran on, with
just a tinge of anxiety. "He is such a compelling sort of man, you
have to trust him, and he's so blunt and direct himself that before
you know it you are being just as frank as he is."
She reviewed their talk and reassured herself, with much
gratification, that nowhere had it touched what the most sensitive
loyalty to her employer could have thought forbidden ground.
"It's very curious," she marvelled, "how he knows about Mr. Brand's
affairs. They must be the very closest friends or he could never know
so much about Mr. Brand's ambitions and how he feels about his art.
And yet there was a flash in his eyes every time Mr. Brand's name was
mentioned, and he looked just as if he were trying to control an angry
feeling. Still, they are surely friends.... His mustache is very
handsome. I wonder why he doesn't let it grow longer."
Toward the end of the week he came again and renewed his assurances
of Brand's safety, and again they talked happily together for a length
of time that startled Henrietta when she looked at her watch after he
left. Her confidence in him increased with each interview and so also
did her puzzlement as to his relations with Felix Brand. For several
days she debated with herself as to what she ought to do and at last,
in her anxiety and doubt, she sought the counsel of Dr. Annister.
She told him the whole story, admitting that she did not herself
believe the architect had taken the southern trip, giving her reasons
for that suspicion, describing the three visits of Hugh Gordon and
recounting the assurances he had made her of Brand's safety and early
return.
"I haven't come to you before, Dr. Annister," she said, "because I
didn't like to worry you about it. I know what a nervous condition
Mildred is in, anyway, because she doesn't hear from him and I thought
that if she guessed the real state of affairs it would be ten times
harder for her."
"I fear Mildred will have a nervous collapse if he does not return
soon," said Dr. Annister gravely, "or we do not get some assurance
that all is well with him. You say that this Hugh Gordon declares he
doesn't know where Felix is?"
"Yes, that is what he says, but at the same time he seems so confident
there can be nothing wrong that when I talk with him I feel it will be
all right. And then afterwards I wonder if I am doing the right thing
in keeping it all so quiet. Do you think, Dr. Annister, that we ought
to put the case into the hands of the detectives? You know, if we did
that and then he should come back in a few days, as he did before, he
would be dreadfully annoyed."
Dr. Annister, in a shabby leather arm-chair, in whose roomy depths his
undersized figure seemed smaller than ever, leaned forward with his
elbows on its arms and thoughtfully struck together the ends of his
fingers.
They were in his private office, where this chair had been for twenty
years his favorite seat. It was his attitude and gesture of deepest
abstraction. Many a time, sitting thus, and gazing with intent eyes
on nothing at all, had he found light on difficult cases. And many a
nervous wreck among his patients had marched back to health and vigor
to the rhythmic tapping of those finger-ends.
Just now he was considering the possibility that Felix Brand, the
famous young architect, his son-in-law to be, might have sunk out of
sight intentionally in order to indulge in deeply hidden debauch.
Although it had but recently become manifest, that suggestion of
sensuality in the young man's refined and handsome countenance, the
physician's only ground of objection to the early marriage for which
his daughter and her lover had pleaded, had grown stronger of late.
But if Brand should be found in some low dive it might get out and the
carrion-loving sensational newspapers would make an ill-smelling
scandal into which Mildred's name would be dragged. No, if that were
the explanation, it would be better to let him return in his own good
time and then have a serious talk with him and try to get at the
truth.
"No," he said at last, taking down his arms and leaning back into the
chair's capacious embrace, "I don't think we'd better take that
extreme measure; at least, not yet. In my judgment you've acted
prudently, my dear, in not letting anybody know his absence is other
than an ordinary business matter. It is now about two weeks since
he--went away?"
"Two weeks and a half."
"Well, I think we'd better wait at least another week before we do
anything. And, meantime, all that you've told me will be a secret
between you and me."
"Thank you, Dr. Annister. You've relieved my anxiety very much,
indeed. And I'm so glad you think as you do, for I dreaded doing
anything about it for fear it might get into the papers and there'd be
all that horrid publicity and the reporters coming and catechizing me
every day."
"Wait a bit," he said as she rose to go. "I want to ask you more about
this Gordon. He seems to you an honest, straightforward sort of man?"
"Oh, entirely, Dr. Annister! He is so frank and sincere and direct
that you can't help believing in him. He seems to know Mr. Brand
very, very intimately, too. And yet such an angry look crosses his
face sometimes when we speak about Mr. Brand that I am very much
puzzled. It doesn't seem as if they could be such good friends as they
would have to be for Mr. Gordon to know all he does."
"I wish I could see him and talk with him myself. Do you know his
address?"
"No, sir. And he's not in either the telephone or the city directory."
"Well, if he comes to your office again ask him to come up here with
you. Explain how anxious we are--doubtless he knows that Felix and
Mildred are engaged--and say that it would be a great relief to us if
we could hear from his own lips that he is still sure of Mr. Brand's
safety. I'll see him first and if he inspires my confidence as he does
yours I'll have Mildred come in and talk with him, too. Won't you go
up and see Mildred and Mrs. Annister?"
"I'd love to, Dr. Annister, but--Mildred will be so anxious for news,
and I can't tell her anything more than I have a dozen times already,
and----"
"I understand," he interrupted. "I know, it's hard not to be able to
tell her what she longs to hear. Ah, Henrietta," and he shook his head
sadly, "there isn't a man on the face of this earth that is worthy of
such a wealth of love! But how are the mother and sister? And how is
the mortgage getting on?"
He was standing in front of her, and, although she was not a tall
woman, their eyes were on a level. His deeply lined, thin face was so
pale, that, with its white mustache, heavy, gray-white eyebrows and
crown of silver-white hair, it was like an artist's study of white
against white.
As Henrietta looked into it a sudden vision came to her of the long
procession of men and women who had passed through that office,
stricken and fearful, their desperate eyes pleading with that one pale
face for help, and a lump came in her throat. She coughed before she
could speak.
"We begin to think mother is getting better," she said, "now that she
is feeling so much at ease about money matters. And the mortgage is
slowly dwindling. If I have no bad luck I expect to clear it all off
by the end of the summer."
"Good! You are a splendid, plucky girl, my dear, and I'm as proud of
you as your father would have been!"
CHAPTER XIII
MILDRED IS MILITANT
The next afternoon Henrietta left her office early, in order to
discharge some commissions for her sister in the shopping district.
Stopping to look at a window display of spring costumes, her eye was
caught by a dress that suited her taste exactly. She inspected it from
both sides and went into the doorway that she might get the back view.
"What a lovely suit and how becoming it would be for me!" she thought.
"I wonder if I could afford to buy it. Oh dear, no! I mustn't even
think of such a thing! It would be just that much off the mortgage
payments."
She turned away with a sigh and found herself face to face with Hugh
Gordon, who glanced with a quizzical smile from her to the window.
"Did you hear one of the commandments cracking?" she laughed. "I've
just been coveting one of those suits as hard as I could."
"Are you going in to buy it now?" he asked with a suggestion of
disappointment in his air, as if, having come upon her so
unexpectedly, he disliked to lose her again at once.
"Oh, dear, no! I'm not going to buy it at all. I can't afford it."
"Well, then, you are wise not to buy it, and the best way is not even
to think about it any more," he said in that abrupt manner to which,
although it had sometimes startled her at their first meetings, she
had already grown accustomed. She had told herself more than once,
indeed, that she liked it in him, it seemed so expressive of his
masculine forcefulness and decision of character.
"How different you are from Mr. Brand," she answered smiling. "He
would say in such case, 'If you want it why don't you buy it at once?
There's no time like the present for doing the things you want to
do.'"
His brows came together in a quick frown and his eyes flashed as he
said: "Yes, I know that is his philosophy of life. But it's not mine
by a long ways. I think it despicable."
His voice sounded harsh and angry and Henrietta looked up in surprise
at the intensity of feeling it betrayed.
Then she remembered Dr. Annister's suggestion and exclaimed, "Oh, by
the way, I've a message for you!"
He listened with interest as she told him of Dr. Annister's desire to
see him and asked if he could either go there with her now or make an
appointment for another day.
"It would be kind of you to go," she added. "You have relieved my mind
so much about Mr. Brand that I am hoping you can make them feel a
little less anxious, too--especially Miss Annister. I suppose you know
she and Mr. Brand are engaged!"
"Yes, I know it," he answered curtly as he looked at his watch. "I
have some leisure time now, a couple of hours, and I can go at once as
well as not. I don't know," he went on doubtfully, "whether or not
Miss Annister will want to see me. She is much prejudiced against me."
Henrietta's mind flew back to the decided opinions Mildred had
advanced to the reporters, which, however, she was glad to remember,
they had modified in their accounts.
"She was, some weeks ago," Henrietta began reassuringly.
"And is yet," he declared. "I happen to know that her feeling toward
me is very hostile. And Felix has encouraged her in it."
"She is so very much in love with Mr. Brand and so wildly anxious it
would be a great kindness to give her even a little comfort,"
Henrietta gently urged.
"I'll do what I can," he replied after a moment's hesitation. He spoke
slowly and his companion, looking up, wondered at the extremely
serious expression that had come into his face.
As they entered the Annister home, Mildred and her mother were
descending the stairs, dressed for the street. Henrietta looked up
from the doorway and saw Mildred's countenance transfigured with
sudden joy.
The girl sprang down the steps with a cry of "Oh, Felix, Felix!"
Gordon stepped in from the vestibule where his features had been
blurred by the brilliant sunlight behind him, and Mildred, stricken
with disappointment, threw up her hands to cover the tears she could
not control, and sobbing, rushed back up the stairs. Gordon looked
grimly on, his face set and scowling, as if he were gripping deep into
his very soul with an iron determination.
"Come up to the drawing-room," said Mrs. Annister, when Henrietta had
presented her companion and explained their errand, "and I'll send for
Dr. Annister."
Thither also she presently brought Mildred. But the stately air with
which the girl entered the room and the haughty inclination of her
head with which she acknowledged Gordon's greeting told how little
trust she expected to feel in anything he might say.
In answer to Dr. Annister's inquiries Gordon told them, in substance,
what he had already said to Henrietta and gave them, in brief, curt
sentences, that seemed to spring spontaneously out of the force and
simplicity of his character, the same assurances that Brand was in no
danger and that he would return, safe and well, in his own good time.
"That," he added, "is all that I can tell you, because it is all I
know. But I do know that."
"Father!" cried Mildred, springing from her chair, her slender figure
militantly erect, her eyes flashing and her voice thrilling with
indignation. "How can you sit there and listen to this man's talk! Why
don't you throttle him and make him tell all he knows? It's plain
enough that if he knows this much he must know where Felix is and why
he doesn't write to me. But I see through it all! He's got Felix
locked up somewhere, perhaps in some mountain cabin in West Virginia,
or perhaps he's killed him. He ought to be arrested! If you don't care
enough for Felix to have it done I'll telephone for the police at once
and he shall not leave this house until they come!"
Her words poured forth in an angry torrent, and then, with a sobbing
cry, she swept from the room. Dr. Annister leaped to his feet as if to
follow her, then turned with a hand outstretched to his wife.
"You'd better go to her," he said anxiously. "She's hysterical and
must be put to bed. I'll be there presently. I hope you will pardon my
daughter's outburst," he added, turning to Gordon with a little bow.
"She is overwrought from having brooded over this matter much more
than it deserves. I don't share her suspicion of you and you seem to
me to show every mark of a man speaking honestly what he believes to
be the truth. But you will pardon me if I say I do not quite
understand how it can all be true."
They had all risen and Gordon was looking straight down into the
little physician's eyes with an expression so serious and solemn that
Henrietta caught her breath, intently listening for what he was about
to say.
"No," he replied, slowly, gravely, "I do not wonder that you do not
understand. Neither do I."
Professional inquiry was in the keen glance with which Dr. Annister
searched for an instant his visitor's face and eyes. Henrietta,
watching him, guessed that he was probing for some sign of mental
aberration. But apparently he was satisfied on that score, for as he
followed them out he gave her a reassuring pat upon the arm.
"Well," he said more cheerfully, "since this is all you can tell us,
we shall have to wait with what patience we can for Mr. Brand's
return. But I will tell you frankly, Mr. Gordon, that I, at least,
have confidence in you and accept your assurances."
He did not tell them, however, by what course of reasoning he had
quickly come to this conclusion. That was something to be kept closely
locked in his own breast until he should see Felix Brand again. For he
had decided that the most probable key to the mystery was that his
daughter's betrothed was indulging in some secret form of debauchery,
perhaps solitary drunkenness, perhaps indulgence in some drug, perhaps
mere beastliness, and that this fact was known to his intimate friend,
Hugh Gordon, who, in single-minded loyalty, was trying to protect him.
A normal man's disgust at such a course of conduct, thought the
doctor, would explain the antipathy which he was often unable to
conceal when Brand's name was mentioned.
Henrietta thought her companion somewhat abstracted on their way down
town, and unusually serious, even for him, who was accustomed to take,
as she had already learned, a serious view of himself and the world.
He crossed the ferry with her, and not until they had ensconced
themselves in a quiet corner of the boat's upper deck did he seem to
settle the question which had been disturbing his mind. But settled
she decided it must be, for he now gave himself up to enjoyment of her
society.
When they landed he walked with her to her trolley car, where they
stood, still talking, until the motorman began making preparations to
start.
"Good-bye," he said unsmilingly, as he held out his hand. "I shall see
you again sometime, but I fear it will not be soon."
CHAPTER XIV
"THERE IS NOT ROOM FOR US BOTH"
"What shall I do?" Henrietta Marne exclaimed aloud as she looked
despairingly at the papers that littered her desk. "Here are half a
dozen letters, this morning, that ought to have his immediate
attention, to say nothing of all the others that I've got stacked away
in this drawer. Well, I'll just have to keep on as I've done before
and answer them in my own name, saying that Mr. Brand is temporarily
out of the city and as soon as he returns, etc. If he doesn't come
back soon," she grumbled on as she seated herself at the typewriter,
"I'll be as hysterical as Mildred is, though I'm not in love with
him."
She did what she could with the morning's mail, looking at one
envelope as she carefully put it away unopened, with more than a
little interest and curiosity, as she saw on its upper corner the firm
name of "Gordon and Rotherley." After she had finished the letter
writing she busied herself for an hour with such duties as it was
possible for her to take up.
The architect's suite of offices was on an upper floor of a high
building and from its windows one's vision soared far over the city
southward and westward. Henrietta paused now and then in the course of
her work to forget her anxieties in the sights and thoughts that
greeted her in that wide view. Down below, at the bottom of the street
canyons, people and vehicles were rushing back and forth.
But her eyes never rested long upon them. Rather, they traveled slowly
out over the mighty plain of roofs, broken by chimneys and spires, by
great, square buttes of buildings, by domes, turrets and towers,
across the bay, gleaming silver-white or glowing copper-red in the
sun, on to where the swelling hills of Staten Island loomed dimly
against the horizon.
In the brilliant sunshine a thousand plumes of cloud-white steam waved
gaily above the castellated plain of roofs and shook out their
tendrils in the breeze. "Peace pipes" Henrietta sometimes called them
to herself, as she thought of all that their fragile beauty, forever
dissolving and forever being renewed, meant to the city beneath them.
She liked to think of them, as she watched them curling and waving
upward toward the blue, as a sign and compact of earth's peace and
good-will.
Her bent of mind was much more practical than imaginative, but she
could never look out over this scene without feeling her nerves thrill
with vague consciousness of the titanic energies ceaselessly grinding,
striving, achieving, beneath that surface of roofs and towers. And
now, as always when she stopped to gaze from her window for a few
moments, she felt her own pulses quicken in response and her own
inward being stir, as if those waving white plumes were trumpet calls
to activity.
She turned from the window, more restless than before, impatient with
the necessity of merely sitting there and waiting. In Brand's private
room the books she had got for him three weeks before still lay ranged
upon his desk, in readiness for his return at any moment. In her spare
hours she had been reading some of them herself and now she went to
get one as the best way in which to put in her time. As she brought it
back to her own room her thoughts, as they did a hundred times a day,
hovered over and around her various speculations concerning the
mystery of her employer's absence.
"I wonder," they presently ran, "if it could be possible that he is
hiding somewhere in the city just to indulge in some sort of orgy."
And this time denial of such a possibility did not, as formerly,
spring up spontaneously in her mind. "I don't like to think he could
be that sort of a man," she temporized with her budding doubt, "for he
always seems so refined and thoroughly nice, and he's always been such
a perfect gentleman to me. But it's evident that Mr. Gordon, who knows
him so well, hasn't a very high opinion of him, except in his art."
The telephone broke in upon her musing, and as she put the receiver to
her ear and said "hello" she was almost as much astonished as
delighted to hear in reply the voice of Felix Brand himself. He told
her that he had just got home, after another beastly trip into the
back woods of West Virginia, where he had had an accident. He had
slipped and sprained his ankle--no, it was nothing serious, and was
all right now, but it had kept him a prisoner for nearly two weeks in
a mountain cabin a thousand miles from anywhere, and he would be at
the office as soon as he had had his luncheon.
Glad as she was that he was there once more to take up the matters
that needed his attention so badly, Henrietta was almost afraid to
face him, when she heard his voice in the outer room, lest there might
be that in his appearance which would give form and force to the
doubts that were stirring in her mind.
But he seemed no different from his usual, affable and well-dressed
self. He wore, in all seasons, very dark or black clothing, which was
always in perfect condition, and fitted his well-proportioned figure
trimly and closely rather than with the looser English cut. His dark
eyes looked down upon her with their usual caressing smile and his
clean-shaven face, with its finely modeled, regular features, was as
handsome, as refined, as ever.
But, no,--his secretary was conscious of something in its expression
she had never noticed there before. What with the rejoicing that
filled her heart and the work that kept her hands and brain busy all
the rest of the day, she had not time to think what it was, or to give
it any definite form in her thoughts, until her homeward trip by
subway, ferry and trolley gave her leisure to scan closely the
happenings of the afternoon.
Even then she merely said to herself that there was something in his
face and eyes that did not seem quite like him, something that was not
so "nice" as he had always seemed to b
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