Felix Brand

“ Felix Brand rose and with hands thrust into his pockets moved uncertainly from one chair to another. “Mildred has entire confidence in my explanation,” he said with a touch of defiance in his voice. “She knows I would not deceive her.”
“Mildred is young,” her father replied gently, “and ignorant of the evil of which there is such a plenty in the world. She is very, very much in love with her promised husband and if he told her that black is white the dazzle in her eyes would make her see it white. ”

“ Felix Brand’s brown eyes were fixed in a speculative stare upon the mass of roses that glowed at the center of the table. Miss Marne, glancing at him, knew that, whether or not he was thinking of them, he was conscious of their beauty in every fibre of his being. “I wonder,” he said slowly, and she saw Mildred Annister’s gaze turn quickly upon him as the girl bent forward with parted lips. “I wonder very, very much,” he repeated, “just how much one could do toward making one’s dream-people come alive. ”

“ His mustache is very handsome. I wonder why he doesn’t let it grow longer.”
Toward the end of the week he came [Pg 183] again and renewed his assurances 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 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.” ”

“ Brand would be as attractive to animals as he certainly is to people. And he must be as kind and sweet-natured as he seems, for not one young man in a thousand would have taken the trouble he did to give three forlorn women a little pleasure.”
Henrietta made no reply as she laughed with her mother at the lively scolding Isabella was giving to the dog, but her thoughts were busy with the problem of why Felix Brand had seemed so anxious for them to go with him.
Her loyalty to her employer would not let her throw the least shade upon their enthusiastic appreciation of his courtesy and kindness. ”

“ It was his own death warrant that this masterful force within him was ordering him to write—the death warrant of him, Felix Brand, ardent lover of life and but barely past its beginning, of all of him save only his fair physical envelope, which would still live and be glad, though he had passed into nothingness.
Stronger and stronger, the more he resisted, grew this inner compulsion, until it seemed to have entered into his every nerve and bone and muscle and he feared to remain at his desk lest it force his unwilling hand to write. ”

“ Henrietta Marne looked about her as she walked slowly up the street toward her home with a heart more at ease than she had known for many weeks. For she had that day secured a position at a salary equal to that she was receiving from Felix Brand and was to begin work in it as soon as the time should expire for which she had already given him notice.
“Difficulties always disappear as soon as you tackle them in real earnest,” she was saying to herself as she smiled in pleasure of the green world all about her and of the satisfaction that glowed in her own breast. ”

“ 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.
[Pg 110]
“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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Just now he was considering the possibility that Felix Brand, the famous young architect, his son-in-law to be, might have sunk out of sight intentionally in order to indulge in deeply hidden debauch. Although it had but recently become manifest, that suggestion of sensuality in the young man’s refined and handsome countenance, the physician’s only ground of objection to the early marriage for which his daughter and her lover had pleaded, had grown stronger of late. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Upon Gordon’s exultant countenance there fell a shade of solemnity. “I know not,” he replied in awed tones. “What has become of him is one of the mysteries of the human soul, a mystery whose beginning and whose growth I understand, as you shall too, but whose end no man can explain. The man whom you knew, whom [Pg 352] everyone knew, who knew himself, as Felix Brand, is no more. He will never exist again.
“Deliberately that man chose the worse side of his nature and cherished it and tried to ignore and cast out the other, the better side. ”

“ Felix Brand looked up with sudden interest, but before he could speak a man’s voice called out from the other end of the table, “The doctor doesn’t consider faith in one’s dreams evidence of a pathological state, does he, Mrs. Annister?” ”

“ But it’s evident that Mr. Gordon, who knows him so well, hasn’t a very high opinion of him, except in his art.”
The telephone broke in upon her musing, and as she put the receiver to her ear and said “hello” she was almost as much astonished as delighted to hear in reply the voice of Felix Brand himself. He told her [Pg 203] that he had just got home, after another beastly trip into the back woods of West Virginia, where he had had an accident. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But if one looked a second time and more searchingly one would perceive some clouding and coarsening of that refinement, signs not yet marked enough to tell their story openly and not likely to be noted by the ordinary observer, but able to make the keener student of the human countenance doubt his first impressions.
“It’s queer how much more vivid and real those dreams are nowadays—every time one comes it’s stronger than ever it was before,” Felix Brand’s thought was running as he made ready for the day. ”

“ Gordon,” she demurred.
Had she ever seen a wild creature expecting [Pg 262] destruction at human hands? No, surely not, she told herself, and yet this wistful pleading expression might be just the look in the eyes of an animal facing death but dumbly begging for life.
Then, in a flash, it all came back—her own little parlor, Billikins whining and hiding in her skirts in mysterious terror, and Felix Brand gazing at her with all the usual soft, caressing look of his brown eyes curtained behind some absorbing anxiety and fear. ”

“ Brand was still trembling and she felt strangely moved. But her usual shyness was all gone and she did not even notice that she was finding it easy to talk with this stranger, easier, indeed, than it had been, of late years, to talk with Felix. Her heart swelled and throbbed with yearning over him.
“I am quite sure,” she said, “that you will not do anything unless you are convinced that it is right and for the best. No matter how it may seem to others, I shall know that you expect good to come of it.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ D. V. and d. p.—God willing and the devil permitting!”
“It will be very different from this,” and Brand smiled slightly, a winning, deprecating smile, as with the least perceptible motion of his head he indicated the company that filled his spacious drawing room. “But a man doesn’t want his relaxations to be all alike, any more than he wants all flowers to be of the same color.”
[Pg 40]
CHAPTER IV Billikins is Frightened It was inevitable that the personality of Felix Brand should loom large in the home of his secretary. Mrs. ”

“ A Felix Brand design, whether for a dwelling, a church, a business building, or a civic monument, was sure to be marked by simplicity of conception, exquisite sense of proportion and rhythmic harmony of line.
[Pg 29]
“What a perfectly charming manner he has!” said Miss Ardeen Andrews to Henrietta Marne, who knew of her as a rising young actress. “And such wonderful eyes! Why, there is a caress in them if he only looks at you!”
“Yes,” replied Henrietta in a matter-of-fact way, “it’s a very pleasant expression, isn’t it? ”

“ Gordon’s manner bristled with aggressiveness. “You can’t do it,” he exclaimed abruptly. “It’s beyond human power, now. ‘All the king’s horses and all the king’s men’ wouldn’t be enough for such a job. Felix Brand is beyond saving. He chose his part and wilfully kept in it. Let him suffer the consequences. I was his conscience—the part of him in which conscience abode. He denied me and [Pg 325] repulsed me over and over again, until he so calloused himself that there was no point left for attack. And so we have become two separate and complete human beings.” ”

“ CHAPTER XXI Hugh Gordon Tells His Story Dr. Annister dismissed his last patient and looked at his watch. It was nine o’clock and Felix Brand, he thought, was probably in the waiting room. His face was even paler than usual and its deep lines told of pain, anxiety and spent strength. He sat down, his head upon his hand and his thoughts upon his daughter.
“Poor child!” he said to himself. “It will go hard with her. But there can be no ‘ifs’ or ‘ands’ about it now. Her mother must take her away where there will be no possibility of her seeing him again. Poor little girl!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hugh Gordon.”
At the sound of that name Brand faced sharply round upon the astonished doctor, anger flaming in his face and eyes.
“That man!” he cried. “Are you taking his word against mine? He is my worst enemy, and he will stop at nothing to injure me. He is a thief, a murderer, or would be if he dared. I demand that you tell me what he has been charging me with!”
Dr. Annister stared in amazement at this flare of hostility and wrath. “You mistake me, Felix,” he said quietly, although inwardly he was wondering much as to the cause of the outburst. ”

“ I am much concerned, however, for Mildred’s sake, with the nature of the thing behind it.”
Brand shot a quick, uneasy glance at him and moved restlessly in his chair. But there was no change in the customary, soft modulations of his voice or the urbanity of his manner as he replied: “Pardon me, Dr. Annister, but you are taking for granted something you have no right to assume. You know that I am an honorable man, accustomed to show at least ordinary regard for the truth. And therefore I say that you have no right to doubt my word on mere suspicion.” ”

“ Brand declared. He got up, holding the brim of his hat against his mouth and staring at Felix through the dusk.
“You have lost an illusion!” said Felix.
“What do you call an illusion?”
“The belief that you really know—that you have ever really known—Gertrude Wentworth. Depend upon that,” pursued Felix. “I don’t know her yet; but I have no illusions; I don’t pretend to.”
Mr. Brand kept gazing, over his hat. “She has always been a lucid, limpid nature,” he said, solemnly.
“She has always been a dormant nature. She was waiting for a touchstone. But now she is beginning to awaken.” ”