Don Felix

“ Live quietly, sanely, and a clean, moral life. I don’t believe you’ve been doing that, Felix.”
“Oh, I’ve had to keep some excitement going. I’ve motored like the devil all around New York, and when I could have pleasant company with me that helped to hold that damned creature down as much as anything. Some people were better than others. Miss Marne’s sister, a jolly girl, especially if I fed her with champagne while we were out, was very useful and she saved me several times. ”

“ Don Felix looked very blank for a moment or two on hearing this, then his brow cleared, and he remarked:
“Pooh! she cannot mean to attack us; she merely wishes to speak. Hoist the Spanish ensign, sir, she will not interfere with us when she sees that!”
I must say I had my doubts whether the mere exhibition of the Spanish ensign would have the deterrent effect Captain Calderon anticipated; however, I reflected it could not possibly matter to me—unless, of course, the craft were British, which I did not believe—so I went on composedly with my breakfast. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He continued to knock and call "loud enough," as he declared, "to rouse the dead," but no response came to the anxious little group on the landing.
"There's not only no keyhole," said Constable Nightingale, "but there's no handle to take hold of. The door's for all the world like a safe without a knob. Mr. Felix, Mr. Felix, Mr. Felix! Don't you hear us, sir? I've got something particular to say to you."
For all the effect he produced he might have spoken to a stone wall, and he and Constable Wigg and Mrs. Middlemore stood looking helplessly at each other. ”

“ And, really, Philip, I don’t know a handsomer man! His face is so refined, and those brown, caressing eyes of his are enough to turn any girl’s head. I don’t wonder in the least that Mildred is so completely in love with him. What is it you don’t like about his looks, Philip?”
“I don’t quite know, and perhaps it isn’t fair to him to put it into words until I do know. It is less evident tonight, when he is all animation and his thoughts are full of the entertainment of his guests, than I have seen it sometimes lately. You know, Margaret, Felix has an unusually expressive countenance. ”

“ I haven’t the genius that Felix has, I’ll [Pg 171] never create anything beautiful or wonderful, but I have got a knack for business and I can make money. I don’t care anything about money for itself, but I do care a lot for all the things one can do with it.
“My head is full of ideas and plans for using the money I shall make as a lever for helping the world along. I know such things interest you, Penelope. You like to read and think about them and I’m sure you’d have done great work in that line if—if Felix—if there had been no accident. ”

“ Felix thought of his Eddie Silver parties in the past, and all the parties he seemed committed to in the future—and it seemed to him that Rose-Ann’s father was indeed very fortunate.
“I assume,” said the old man, “that you don’t particularly relish the idea of this party, anyway?”
“No, to tell the truth, I don’t,” said Felix.
“Of course not. What sane human being would want to spend an evening talking to forty people without saying anything to any of them? And yet ordinary people are supposed to like that sort of thing.” ”

“ Felix disliked him at once.
“Paul,” the red-haired girl explained, turning back to 32Felix, “is our scenic genius. He makes the most wonderful little sets out of painted cardboard, and then we go and spoil them trying to carry them out in our theatre. He won’t even come and look at them when they’re finished—don’t you think that’s unkind?”
“Oh, please don’t say that, Miss Prentiss!” the young man protested, still in that tone which seemed to Felix unnatural and “prissy.” ”

“ Wait a little! "Felix, however, did not endure this very long; he jumped up, and cried, "Don't bother me with your stupid nonsense, Mr. Ink; I must be off to the woods! Go and get hold of Cousin Pumpbreeks; that's the sort of stuff for him. Come along, Christlieb! The Stranger Child is waiting for us;" with which they started off. But Tutor Ink sprang after them with remarkable agility, and seized hold of them just outside the door. Felix fought like a man, and Tutor Ink was on the point of getting the worst of it, as the faithful Sultan came to Felix's help. ”

“ He is simply serving a purpose of his own, an utterly selfish purpose, and he is using her to help him gain his end without the least compunction. [Pg 266] Don’t let her go again, Miss Marne, if you can help it. I know Felix Brand through and through, and he is not to be trusted.”
Henrietta could only look at him speechless, her eyes wide with apprehension.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he hastened to assure her. “I don’t think there is anything for you to be uneasy about, except that his influence is always evil—” he paused on a raised inflection and looked at her admiringly. ”

“ Felix found Geraldine cowering down in her chair, with her hands clasped together over her forehead. She looked up at him, as if startled by his entrance. 'O Felix, how could you?' broke from her.
'My dear, I could not help it. Has it been so very distressing?'
'Oh!' with a great gasp, 'I'm sure to refuse a man is the most horrible thing in the world—except to accept him! And such a man too—so great and good and kind. You shouldn't have let him do it, Felix.'
'Don't scold me, Cherry ”

“ Isabella was thinking. “She works so hard and she doesn’t have many pleasures—neither do I! But I don’t mind—very much!” She cast another glance up the street and caught sight of a smallish man’s figure bending one-sidedly under a burden of other people’s joys and sorrows as he passed in and out of the gateways in the next block. A pleased smile brightened her face and she turned back to watch her sister’s progress.
“There! She was just in time to catch that car! She’s just a brick, Harry is! What a funny notion about Felix Brand! ”

“ I don’t want you to be different, Felix. I’m not that girl back in Iowa. I’m—me. I don’t want to be supported—I don’t need to be; I told you I’ve a tiny but sufficient income of my own now. And I don’t want the kind of home you speak of, Felix—I want to go on living my own life outside the home. And—I think, Felix ... that perhaps there are enough children in the world without—without vagabonds and dreamers like us taking on such—interesting but unnecessary—responsibilities.... I really don’t want us to be married at all, Felix; but I’m not brave enough to dispense with the—rigmarole. ”

“ I could have kept you away longer this time if I had not felt sorry for Miss Annister. It was on her account that I let you return when I did. Don’t make her suffer that way again. If you don’t give her beforehand some sort of plausible preparation for your next absence—for there will be another, and that before long—I shall enable her father to find out some plain truths about you that may complicate matters for you in that quarter.
“My mind is made up, Felix Brand. [Pg 212] There is not room in the world for both you and me. ”

“ Brand again. I’m sure he’s not the kind of man we’ve always thought him.”
“Oh, nonsense!” Bella rejoined, breezily. “Don’t be alarmed for your handsome Felix Brand. It doesn’t do him a bit of harm and I have a lot of fun. Don’t worry about me, Harry. I’m not an infant. And I don’t suppose I’ll be offered any more perquisites of that sort, now that you’re going to leave him. Poor little me!”
Henrietta found her employer in a particularly trying mood the next morning. ”

“ Hugh Gordon is right—you are a wicked man, and if you are the one he meant you don’t deserve to live!”
[Pg 295]
CHAPTER XX “Save Me, Dr. Annister!” Mildred Annister, passing the open door of her father’s waiting room, sent into it a casual glance, came to a sudden stop, and then, with a brightening face, went quickly in, saying softly, “Felix!” Sweeping the room with her eyes she saw that he was its only occupant and ran toward him, holding out her hands and asking, apprehensively:
“Felix! You’re waiting to see father! Are you ill?” ”

“ Annister was gazing at his patient with inscrutable eyes, sitting upright, his fingers tapping. “I can’t say now, Felix. I don’t know enough yet. But this experience was probably due to your sub-conscious self. For we are pretty well assured that there is an existence, perhaps more than one, in every human being subordinate to that of which he is conscious, which is himself. ”

“ Felix didn't call us in, and there's no one else in the house while you've gone for your supper-beer?" Mrs. Middlemore coughed, which caused Constable Nightingale to ask, "What's that for?"
"It ain't for me to say," replied Mrs. Middlemore. "What you want to git at is that there's only two people living regularly in the 'ouse, Mr. Felix and me. If Mr. Felix makes it worth my while to keep my own counsel, I'm going to keep it, and I don't care what happens."
"I wouldn't persuade you otherwise. Gentlemen that's so liberal with their money as him ain't to be met with every day. ”

“ Felix—Lance—don't go—there can't be anybody this wet afternoon!'
'Yes,' said Felix, 'this is just the time that all the old gentlemen who get tired of their own fire-sides, and all the professionals that can't take their walk, feel inclined to come and prose at "Froggatt's."—But they won't want you, Lance ”

“ Don’t you know I’m just funning? Warren is the best man in the world, even if he hasn’t got bee-youtiful, caressing brown eyes, and I love him awfully, and we’re going to be married and live happily forever after. But, all the same, Felix Brand is perfectly lovely, and you think so too, now, don’t you, mother dear!”
“We all think alike about Mr. Brand, I’m sure,” she answered.
“Except Billikins,” amended Henrietta, [Pg 58] and then told them of the fox terrier’s disgraceful behavior. ”

“ Felix he ses when he come to me about the rooms when I didn't 'ave a blessed lodger in the 'ouse, 'I'll take 'em,' he ses, 'conditionally. You mustn't let a room in the place to anybody but me.' 'But I make my living out of the rooms, sir,' ses I, 'and I can't afford to let 'em remain empty.' 'You can afford,' ses Mr. Felix, 'if I pay for 'em remaining empty. What rent do you arks for the whole 'ouse with the exception of the basement?' I opened my mouth wide, I don't mind telling you that, Mr. Wigg, when I put a price upon the 'ouse. ”

“ There's only you and Mr. Felix living in the house, and he don't call us in. It's you that does that. Why? You shut the street-door tight when you went out; you find it open when you come back, and at the same time you see a man with a red handkercher round his neck run out of the house. Of course you're alarmed; Wigg happens to be near, and you call him ”

“ And the conversion of the other Don Quixote—he who was converted only to die—was possible because he was mad, and it was his madness, not his death or his conversion, that immortalized him and earned for him the forgiveness of the crime of having been born. Felix culpa! Neither was his madness cured but only transformed. His death was his last knightly adventure—in dying he stormed heaven, which suffereth violence. ”

“ Felix," he answers; "somethink's been found out, and they can't git on without yer. Yer'll have to wait a longish time per'aps, but if yer move away till yer called it'll be worse for yer." "But what am I to do about the 'ouse?" I arks. "Sophy's out, and there's no one to mind it." "I'll mind it," ses the perlice orficer, "and when Sophy comes back I'll let her in. Off yer go, and don't tell nobody at Bow Street what yer've come about. It's a secret, and the Government won't stand it being talked of. Yer'll be paid for yer trouble." ”

“ The sound of the gong terminated the conversation, and Louis hastened to the standing-room to be in readiness to heave the line on board of the ship. But he found that the Guardian-Mother was still at some distance from the little steamer.
"You can heave this line, Flix, when we get alongside," said he. "I have had a talk with Gray, and he don't feel good at all."
"He has no right to feel good, the blackguard! He is not a bit better than a pirate," replied Felix. "I have kept watch of Captain Velazquizzer, and whenever he showed his head, I put a ball into the foremast. ”

“ Felix looked at the fire. It needed rebuilding, and he would have to chop some more kindling. He went down to the woodshed, and energetically chopped up one stick. Then he paused, laid down the hatchet, and commenced to whistle a plaintive, melancholy, tuneless tune. He picked up his hatchet, ran his thumb over the edge, and laid it down again.
He was not thinking about chopping kindling. He was thinking about Rose-Ann, there in the kitchen only a few feet away. What was she doing? He could see her in imagination, ransacking Clive’s cupboards. He wished he could see her in reality. ”

“ And to the first of these little parties, she planned to invite, with what seemed to Felix a reckless defiance of congruity, Clive, Dorothy Sheridan (who had in the meantime been in to see “what they had done to her old studio” and appeared to be satisfied that they had not turned it into what she called “a Christian home”) —and the Howard Morgans!
A more ill-assorted company, Felix felt, had never been invited to sit at the one table—a poet who was also (or at least so Felix considered him) a social lion, a rough-mannered Bohemian girl-artist, a satirical young newspaper writer ”