The Fate of Felix Brand

“I am much interested in your mother and sister, and I want them to be happy. Unless you do for them more of what it is in your power to do, as I told you before, there will be consequences – I don’t know what, just yet, but I can promise you that you will find them unpleasant. I have an eye on several other people also and if it is possible for you to stop any of the mischief you have set going you must do it. It would take too long to speak of all the people you have started in evil ways with your insidious, damnable philosophy, and would probably be useless, too. But there is young Mark Fenlow, on the down grade already, though out of college less than a year. And it was you who put him there.

“Oh, I know how blameless you consider yourself! I know you say it is the right of every one to taste every pleasure within his reach; that it is necessary for one’s all-round development to know all sides of life; that it adds not only to one’s pleasure, but also to his knowledge of life and so to his personal power to try for himself every possible new experience. You are strong enough to dabble in every filthy pool you encounter, and then to let it alone and go on to another. You live your philosophy and, so far as others can see, although you and I know better, you are none the worse for it. You are a promising young architect, already winning wealth and fame, a charming fellow, a handsome genius, whose friendship is worth having and whose example it is surely all right to follow! But what about those who do follow it and have less will power and perhaps less of that self-control that ambition gives? Are you so hide-bound in your selfishness that you feel no responsibility for them?

“But I know you are. And so I demand that you do something to try to keep Mark Fenlow away from the gaming table and make him understand what will be the outcome of the way he is going now. There’s Robert Moreton, too. He begins to look like a dope fiend. I don’t know whether he is or not, but he looks it. If he is, it is all because you described to him what a wonderful experience you had when you spent a night in an opium joint and told him he’d better try it, just to see what it was like. I want you to look him up, put him into a sanitarium and, if he needs it, help him financially.

“There are many others, but I can not stop to speak of them all now. Your own conscience ought to tell you of them – if, indeed, you have a conscience, except for me – and move you to try to repair the damage you have done. I insist only that you shall do something, and I’ll leave the matter in that shape for the present – until I come again. For I shall come again, Felix Brand, and you can not hinder me. I do not know when, but it will not be long, I promise you.

“I do not know yet just what I shall do. I have been hoping there would be room enough in life for us both. But I begin to doubt that a man so evil as you has the right to live, and big plans are stirring within me. But it will all depend, I think, upon you; upon whether or not you show a desire to overcome your deliberately fostered selfishness and a willingness to recognize your human responsibilities, – upon whether you try to refrain from evil paths yourself and to right the effects of your influence upon others. Yes, I think I can say that the end of all this will depend upon you. And I shall be square with you. I shall do nothing without giving you fair warning and affording you every chance.

“With the money I borrowed of you – willy-nilly, it is true, but still borrowed, for I shall repay it – I intend to go into the real estate business. I have been looking about a little in several cities – New York, Boston, Philadelphia – that was why the reporters could not find me these few days – and have decided where I shall make my beginning and selected the man I shall take into partnership. A week or two when I return, and then it will be plain sailing. I shall repay that compulsory loan with my earliest profits, for I do not choose to be in the least indebted to you.

“As I have what I profoundly feel to be your best interests at heart, and am working for them, I can, with a clear conscience, sign myself,

“Faithfully yours,“Hugh Gordon.”

As Brand read the last lines he sprang to his feet with a sharply indrawn breath and a muttered oath. In his eyes, instead of their habitual soft, affectionate look, was the glitter of a roused animal.

“Impudent devil!” he exclaimed. “Scoundrel! Dictating to me as if he had the right!” He crushed the letter in one fist and, striding across the room, threw it upon the coals with an angry jerk of his arm.

“The fellow used to be amusing,” he said to himself, scowling with anger as he watched the sheets blaze up, “but he’s getting too insolent to put up with any longer.”

His scowl deepened as he watched a word or phrase shine out in the lapping flame, and remembered the context. “Damn you,” he cried aloud, whirling about and shaking his fist at the empty room. “I’ll take no orders from you! I’ll force you back where you belong – and I’ll do it in my own way, too!”

CHAPTER VIII

Days of Stress

The little puff of popular interest in Felix Brand’s disappearance and in the charges against him soon disappeared, as some other sensation of a day took its place in the newspaper headlines. People ceased talking about the matter as suddenly as they had begun and Brand congratulated himself that a bank failure, and then a mysterious suicide, and after that an appalling dynamite explosion followed so closely upon his return. He told himself that his own misadventure would speedily be forgotten.

As the weeks went by he became more and more secure in that conclusion. Hugh Gordon did not reappear. And as time passed on and no official action was taken upon the investigating committee’s report the architect felt assured that the whole matter had sunk into an oblivion which held no menace for him, and his spirit rose in exultation.

Nor was this the only matter over whose outcome he had reason to be satisfied. All his investments were doing well and his transactions in stocks, during the weeks after his return, brought him money in one good haul after another. And he secured the commission to design a new capitol building for a western state for which there had been lively competition among the most prominent architects of the country.

In her complete loyalty to her employer Henrietta Marne rejoiced to see the harried look leaving his face and his former ease of manner and good spirits return. Knowing, as she did, that his material and professional affairs were fulfilling their earlier promise, she attributed the improvement in his spirits to the apparent sinking out of sight of the man who, she was convinced, had been responsible for all his trouble.

A curious change in Brand’s demeanor strengthened her in this conjecture. Something of the spirit of triumph became manifest in his air, his smile was self-confident and in his manner was the assuredness of the man who has won some sort of victory.

His secretary, noting all this with observant but discreet eyes, said to herself that undoubtedly it was all on account of Hugh Gordon. Brand had not mentioned the man’s name to her again nor had she learned anything more about his mysterious identity. But she felt sure that he had been trying, from some evil motive, to injure her employer both personally and professionally, and his sudden disappearance, followed by the easing of Brand’s anxiety and the betterment of his spirits, convinced her that Gordon had been at the bottom of all the trouble and made her hope that the architect had stopped his machinations and would be annoyed by him no more.

She felt that this Hugh Gordon must be a despicable creature, who tried to do his malevolent work in mean, underhand ways, and when she thought of him it was always with suspicion and enmity.

The winter days sped on and Felix Brand, feeling confident that his footing was once more entirely firm and safe, opened one morning with no misgiving an envelope that bore the stamp of the mayor’s office. But even with its first lines his heart, lately so buoyant, turned to lead. It began by saying that doubtless Mr. Brand’s duties on the municipal art commission would demand more time and attention than he could bestow upon them in justice to his own exacting private affairs and that therefore whenever he wished to tender his resignation it would receive immediate consideration.

“I shall be sorry,” the mayor added, “to lose from that body one who could contribute to the public service so much exact knowledge and artistic feeling; but I have convinced myself that the conclusions of my investigating committee were correct, notwithstanding your denial and plausible explanation. Consequently, I feel that the interests of good government make this step necessary.”

Brand was a good deal disturbed by this letter. He had coveted the position much and had been deeply gratified when he received the appointment. For the carrying out of certain plans he had in mind would have brought him prominently into the public eye and secured for him much popular esteem and favor, greatly to the benefit, he believed, of his professional reputation and his income. And now suddenly all these hopes withered and died under the touch of this veiled but peremptory demand for him to get down and out; and he feared that if he did not give quick heed he would have to undergo more publicity of the affair and much humiliation. So he sent at once his letter of resignation.

Soon after this episode Henrietta began to notice in his face again the signs of apprehension and to wonder why he sometimes gave a little nervous start and threw a furtive look about the room.

“Aren’t you working too hard, Mr. Brand?” she said to him one day. “You seem to be under such a nervous strain since you began on that capitol building. Don’t you think you ought to take a rest before you really give yourself up to it? I’m afraid you won’t do yourself justice if you go on with the work while you are in this condition.”

He looked at her with his winning, caressing smile of mouth and eyes. “Thank you, Miss Marne. It’s kind of you to be so thoughtful about me. A rest would be pleasant, but I couldn’t leave, just now, I’m afraid. You know Stewart Macfarlane has asked me to design a country house with big grounds on some property he has bought down toward the south end of Staten Island, and I must go over there soon and study the lay of the land and then begin work on that. And I’ve got to have the design for that capitol building ready to submit by a certain date. There are three or four unfinished orders on hand and I’m on the track of another public building that I want to land. So I guess it isn’t rest I need just now, Miss Marne, so much as a straight course of ten-hour working days. If – if I should have to go South again – ”

He straightened up with an impatient jerk, the smile faded from his face and his mouth settled in determined lines. “But I’m not going to take that journey again,” he went on impatiently, and then added with decision, “I’ve settled that.”

A few days after this conversation Brand received a letter from the directors of the National Architectural Society suggesting that he resign as president of that body.

“We do not feel,” they said, “that our society can afford to continue in that office a man against whom such serious charges of misconduct have been made and who has not asked for an investigation. We do not wish to have the matter exploited publicly any more than is absolutely necessary. To call a general meeting of the society for its discussion would be sure to result in newspaper notice that would doubtless be as disagreeable to you as it would be offensive to us and injurious to our organization. Accordingly, we have decided that the better plan would be for you quietly to resign.

“If you prefer, a general meeting can be called to consider the matter and the society can then decide whether or not to ask for your resignation. The decision rests with you.”

Brand immediately replied to the letter, complying with its suggestion in dignified phrases that assured the directors of his loyalty to the best interests of the society, although he was keenly sensitive to the injustice that they were doing him.

“It ought to make them ashamed of themselves,” thought Henrietta as she typed the letter. “I never heard of such injustice! They ought to beg his pardon and ask him to keep the office.”

No such missive of apology and reparation came, although Henrietta more than half expected it. But Felix Brand cherished no such hope. Instead, premonitions of disaster of which these two episodes would be but the beginning, began to dog his thoughts. His heart was sore with disappointment and mortification, and his breast swelled with bitter resentment against the man whose deliberate action had started this series of events. As he dwelt upon the blasting of his immediate hopes, the smirching of his reputation and the sudden sharp check to the sweeping course of his career, his eyes would burn with hate and anger.

The old look of worry returned to his face, but with it was combined one of grim determination that set in hard lines his usually soft and smiling mouth. Sometimes, Henrietta, coming suddenly into his private office, surprised in his countenance signs of fear. But what she oftenest saw there was the look of dogged resolution. She began to be conscious, too, of some sort of struggle going on within him. She could see it in these unaccustomed expressions of his countenance, hear it in the petulant voice in which he sometimes addressed her, so different from his usual suave tones, and feel it in the nervous strain under which he was evidently laboring.

As the days went by the very atmosphere in which they worked seemed to her to grow tense with it, and on days when it was necessary for her to be much in his room she would go home in the evening with her own nerves quivering from its influence.

On a day in early March, a bracing day of brilliant sky, clear air and sharp west wind, Brand said to Henrietta when he left the office for luncheon that probably he would not return in the afternoon. “I think,” he said, “that I shall go across to Staten Island and motor down to Macfarlane’s property and get a general idea of the site and the surroundings.”

“A splendid idea,” she assented with enthusiasm. “It’s such a fine day, the ride will do you good.”

“Do you think,” he said with a smile, “that your sister would bear me company?”

“I’m sure she would be delighted,” Henrietta smiled back, and not until an hour later did she remember, with a little qualm of doubtfulness, Mildred Annister’s evident jealousy of their previous motor ride.

“Dear Mildred!” she thought. “She is so completely wrapped up in her love. I wish Dr. Annister would consent for them to be married soon. It would make Mildred so happy and I’m sure it would be a good thing for Mr. Brand.”

When Henrietta reached home she found her sister only just returned, and in high spirits. At dinner, her eyes sparkling and her cheeks flushed with delicate pink, her droll little stories, and her merry laughter kept them all in a gay humor.

“We’ve had such a good time this evening,” said Mrs. Marne when, at her early bedtime, she bade Henrietta goodnight. “Wasn’t Bella charming! And so pretty she looked with her bright eyes and that dainty color in her cheeks! It made me wish Warren was here to see her. I suppose I’m dreadfully old-fashioned, Harry, but it always seems to me that if a woman is looking especially beautiful or charming it’s somehow just wasted if the man who loves her isn’t there to see it. Wasn’t it kind of Mr. Brand to take Bella out this afternoon! And she did enjoy it so much! I can’t be grateful enough that you were so fortunate as to get a position under such a thorough gentleman!”

Billikins was Henrietta’s dog and her particular care. When she went to the kitchen to feed him after dinner she found him licking many gaping wounds in the body and clothing of his cherished plaything, the rag-doll. Delia had an excited story to tell her of his disreputable conduct during the afternoon.

“It was very queer and strange, Miss Harry, the way he acted when Mr. Brand was here. An’ him always such a mild and innocent little dog! Of course he had to run into the hall when the bell rang, like he always does, to see what’s happening, with babykins in his mouth, and as I went upstairs to call Miss Bella, he trotted into the parlor where I’d shown the gentleman. An’ when I come down you just ought to’ve heard the wild an’ awful noises he was making! He’d dropped his doll and was whining an’ howling an’ growling, and he’d run toward Mr. Brand an’ bark an’ growl, and then he’d run back and stand over babykins as if he was afraid something would happen to her, an’ growl an’ whine an’ bark! I called him and he wouldn’t pay no attention to me and I had to go in and pick him up and carry him out, him an’ babykins together, and bring them out here. And he tried to go back and I shut the door and then he crouched down beside it and worried babykins an’ tore holes in her an’ whined an’ growled an’ trembled as if he was most scared to death. Now, wasn’t it queer and strange, Miss Harry?”

Billikins had stopped eating and was looking up into their faces as if he understood what they were talking about. Henrietta bent over him and he crept whining to her feet and looked up at her with dumb appeal in his eyes, as though begging to be saved from some mysterious, menacing, unseen thing. She took him up in her arms and felt his little body trembling with fear and excitement. Vivid recollection came to her of how her own nerves had quivered and jangled in the office that day, as long as her employer was there, until it had taken all her strength to keep them under control.

“Poor little doggie,” she said, stroking and cuddling him. “Come along and we’ll take babykins upstairs and sew her all up as good as new and forget all about it.”

“So that was the man you work for, Miss Harry!” Delia exclaimed as Henrietta turned to leave the room. “I was dusting in the parlor when he come an’ I watched him as he come up the walk, and he’s got a firm and manly tread. He’s fine-legged and handsome, Miss Harry, but if I was you I’d be afraid of a man that a dog’s afraid of, Miss Harry.”

“We had such a jolly time,” said Isabella to her sister as Henrietta came to her room for a confidential chat during bedtime toilette rites. “Felix Brand is just the loveliest ever. But you know I always did think that, even before I met him. Mother was having her afternoon nap when he came and I was doubtful about going. But he said, nonsense, she’d sleep till I’d get back.

“At first I couldn’t help feeling a little uneasy about her and perhaps I was a tiny bit glum and not as entertaining as he thought I’d be. And he seemed sort of glum and grim, too, and, altogether, Harry, on the first lap the ride didn’t promise to be entirely successful.

“But after a while he was afraid I was cold and said we must find something to warm us up. So we stopped at the Wayside Tavern – you remember it, don’t you? You know we went there on the trolley last summer and took a long walk into the woods and had some lemonade on the porch while we waited for the car on our way back. Well, we went in there and this time it was champagne – ”

“Bella! You didn’t, did you?”

“Of course I did! Why not?”

“It doesn’t seem to me quite a – a nice thing for a girl to do, Bella.”

“Oh, nonsense, Harry! What’s the matter with it? Anyway, there wasn’t anything the matter with the champagne; nor with the rest of our ride either. We went to the Macfarlane place and circled round it and he told me some of the things he is going to do there, and then we did some speeding that was – oh, Harry, we fairly flew! It was just grand! And I guess my tongue went, too, for he talked and laughed and was as gay as could be. I forgot all about poor mother until we sighted home again. But I never had such a good time in all my life.”

CHAPTER IX

Battling with the Invisible

It seemed to his secretary the next day that Felix Brand was in a calmer mood. She had become accustomed to read with ease his tell-tale countenance, through which shone so plainly his states of mind and feeling, and the first anxious glance she cast upon him with her morning greeting relieved her forebodings of another trying day.

The signs of inward struggle were no longer manifest, though the same dogged resolution still sharpened the lines of his face, and it was evident that he was more able to concentrate himself upon his work than he had been for many days. Whatever the trouble was that had barked and snapped so incessantly about him that his combat with it had distracted his attention and engrossed his energies, for the present at least, it seemed to be cast aside. In the late afternoon Henrietta heard him make an engagement over the telephone with Mildred Annister.

Before he left the office, as he was signing the letters she had typed, he stopped over one, after writing his name, and considered it for a moment. It was concerned with an effort he was making to get control of the marble quarry in which he was interested.

“No,” he said, “I’ll leave this matter until tomorrow. Please call my attention to it in the morning, if I should happen not to think of it. And there are some books, here is a list of them, which I should like to have here, ready to consult, the first thing tomorrow. You may send the boy for them now and leave them on my desk. These two he may buy, but the others have him get from the library. If any of these shouldn’t be in have him buy those also, for I particularly want to have them ready for use as soon as I get here. And I shall probably,” he added, looking at her with his pleasant smile as he picked up his hat and gloves, “work you very hard tomorrow looking up references and finding things for me that I remember to have seen somewhere inside the covers of those books.”

Henrietta went home much pleased by the favorable turn affairs had taken. The better prospect for her own personal comfort had its share in her gratification. But it was small beside her relief that her employer seemed to have won through his besetting harassments and, his pleasant, winning self again, was once more earnestly devoting himself to his affairs. For these had suffered during the last few weeks, while his absorption in his hidden troubles not only had kept him from devoting proper attention to them, but even had seemed to dull his capacities. He himself had felt that his artistic perceptions, usually so true and keen, were blunted and blurred. Upon the design for one of his commissions, a country house in the Berkshires, he had made beginning after beginning, only to throw each one aside in disgust and discouragement. Nor had the various other orders in hand advanced much better. He had not even begun the design for the capitol building, although he was under contract to have it finished in three months.

Henrietta knew that he was beginning to feel worried about the unsatisfactory trend of his work and she had been watching the course of affairs with secret anxiety. She knew, too, that recently he had been disappointed and annoyed by several business matters. He prided himself upon his acute business sense, but lately he had blundered more than once in his orders to his stock brokers and had lost some money.

But, puzzled though she was by these developments in Felix Brand’s character and temperament and apprehensive of their results, if she could have witnessed the scene that was taking place in his apartment ten or twelve hours after he bade her that smiling farewell for the day, far greater would have been her alarm and bewilderment.

It was well toward morning, but every light in every room was shining at its brightest. From one room to another, from end to end of the suite and back again, its master was walking rapidly, constantly, as if he feared to stop for an instant or even to check his pace. The light, muffled sound of his hurried tread barely disturbed the silence that hung, close and heavy, over the rooms; that brooding silence of the late hours of the night which seems to have hushed all the sounds that ever were, but out of which almost any sound might be born.

As he rushed through drawing room, chambers, dining room, library, like another Wandering Jew urged pitilessly, incessantly, back and forth in a contracted round, not another living eye did his own encounter in the brilliantly lighted rooms. He was entirely alone. But every now and then his voice rang sharply through the stillness in angry, resentful, resolute tones.