The Fate of Felix Brand Part 12

"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 h.e.l.l 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 compa.s.sionate look with a faint smile, "I come to be--not unhappy."

"And now the opportunity is coming," he a.s.sured 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 n.o.ble 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 a.s.sure 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-a.s.sured, 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 a.s.surance, 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 rea.s.sured 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 a.s.surances 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 a.s.surances 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 a.s.surance 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."