“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 rememberand 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.”
“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 rememberand 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 wrathhe 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 positionin 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 outof 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 selectedthe 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 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 positionin 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 outof 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 selectedthe 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’sgetting 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!”
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 whichheld 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 becamemanifest 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 FelixBrand, 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.”
“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 whenhe 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 justiceif 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.”
“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 hisface, 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. “Ithink,” 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. Brandwas 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 waslooking 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.”
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 makean 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 seensomewhere 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. Thelight, 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 brandyand 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 apprehensioncrossed 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 doubledinto 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 upshades 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. Fromhis 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.
He Sank Face Downward Upon the BedHe 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 withsweat 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.
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 knewwhether 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 littlewhile 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 onall 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 hedoesn’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 asa 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 normalicious. 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 companyin 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 appearanceand 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 Iwas 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 hismanners——”
“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.”
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 whohad 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 callingon 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, thatyouwould 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 youwould 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, wonderinggaze 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 beautifuland 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 honorand 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.”