The Fate of Felix Brand Part 8

"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 a.s.sured 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 a.s.sented 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 hara.s.sments 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, m.u.f.fled 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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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.