Kitabı oku: «The Fate of Felix Brand», sayfa 10
“Tell me,” he demanded, “do you think that a man is to be pardoned for being a source of evil, for leading or forcing others into wrong-doing and misfortune, while he keeps himself prosperous and honored, just because he can create beautiful things in art, or architecture, or music, or literature? Is the world in greater need of being made more beautiful and more pleasurable for the few than it is of being made better for the many? Would you condone a man for deliberately making it worse because he was adding to its beauty?”
Gordon’s intent gaze and the solemn, eager earnestness with which he spoke appalled his listener ever so little. It was as if he were asking these questions from his inmost, deepest heart.
“I – I don’t know just what to say,” she faltered. “I never thought of the matter in that way before. One doesn’t like to answer so serious a question offhand. But – ” she hesitated and felt herself being swept into agreement by his very forcefulness of character and intensity of feeling. “Why, yes – I suppose you are right. If the world were entirely wicked it would be a failure, no matter how beautiful it might be.”
“I was sure you would agree with me,” he responded with a look of pleased satisfaction. “But now I want you to tell me something else,” he pursued in a gentler tone and with a humbler, softer manner. “I want to suppose the case of two possible men and I want you to tell me which of the two you think would be the more deserving of life.”
He moved closer to her and, leaning against the deck rail, was looking into her face with an expression so different from any she had ever seen in his brown eyes before, wistful and beseeching instead of confident, alert and dauntless, that it set her heart a-flutter with a sudden, tantalizing half-memory. Where, when, had she seen brown eyes with that look in them?
She groped after the answer in the back of her mind while she listened to his voice, still with its impetuous tones unsubdued, though he seemed to be trying to state his hypothetical case in cool, bare terms.
“Suppose there were two men,” he was saying, “and suppose that one of them possessed a genius for the creation of noble and beautiful works of art of any sort, which would afford great pleasure to many people and would refine and elevate their tastes. But suppose that at the same time he was living such a private, even secret, life as made him a source of wickedness and corruption, an endless influence for evil. Then would such a man, do you think – ” his voice sank lower and thrilled with solemn earnestness – “deserve to live rather than the other one, who, though he had no genius for the creation of beauty, was using all his powers to make the world a better place for all men to live in? If both men could not have the gift of life, Miss Marne, which do you think ought to have it?”
She looked at him, glanced away, and hesitated, her mind still bent on that teasing memory. “You are putting strange riddles to me this morning, Mr. Gordon,” she demurred.
Had she ever seen a wild creature expecting 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. But in these eyes into which she was looking now there was no fear, only a longing that her answer should be what he wished. She shivered as a half-sensed intuition of impending tragedy shot through her.
“You – you make me feel as if I were a judge and called upon to pronounce sentence upon some one,” she said and tried to pass the situation off with a little laugh as she added, “Really, it isn’t fair!”
But he would not have it so and with even greater earnestness and solemnity pressed his question farther: “Then we’ll put it another way. Suppose a mother about to bear a man-child could choose its soul and the life it was to live. Which of those two men would a good, noble woman wish her son to be? Imagine yourself in such a woman’s place, Miss Marne, and tell me, which would be your choice.”
She felt the compelling force of his earnestness and she was moved by the intense feeling evident in his voice, look and manner. Her face blanched with the sudden conviction that some high consequence hung upon her answer. But she took counsel bravely with herself for a little space as her gaze wandered across the water.
“I think,” she replied slowly, “yes, I’m quite sure, any good woman would wish her son to be good rather than great. I don’t believe any good woman would hesitate at all, if it were possible for her to make such a choice.”
He straightened up and a solemn joy overspread his eyes and face. “I thank you, Miss Marne,” he said, barely resting for an instant one hand upon hers that lay on the rail. “I had little doubt what your answer would be, because you are a good woman. But I wanted to know for a certainty. It is my final warrant that I am right.”
He said no more, and Henrietta, a little awed by the rapt, triumphant look with which, sitting upright with head thrown back, he gazed into the distance, kept silence also. And in a few moments their ship bumped into its berth and they joined silently the crowd that pressed forward.
After that she was conscious in his manner toward her of an increased air of guardianship. It gave her a warm sense of comfort and security and she found herself gradually confiding in it more and more. She even sought his advice, finally, upon the intimate personal problems that were troubling her so deeply. Did he think she ought to permit her sister to motor with Mr. Brand? Was it likely that she herself could find another situation that would carry her safely out of her financial difficulties if she should continue to find her work under Mr. Brand so disagreeable?
“I hesitate to say anything to you about these things, because I know how much you dislike him,” she apologized, “but I feel so uncertain and so much worried about them, and there is nobody else to whom I can go who knows him as well as you do. His whole character has changed so much in the last few months that he hardly seems to be the same man. I have an uneasy feeling that it isn’t wise for my sister to go with him, although it does seem the most innocent thing in the world, and the kindest, for him to stop at our house, when he has some business farther down the island, and take Isabella for a spin. She enjoys it so much and she has so few pleasures. And she and mother have such confidence in Mr. Brand that they feel sure he would never ask her to do anything that wasn’t perfectly all right. I felt that way, too, at first, but I don’t now.”
“I am glad you have spoken of it,” he replied with interest, “for I have been thinking I ought to give you some warning before Felix returns. 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. 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. “One of the reasons,” he went on regardless of the abrupt change, “why I like you and feel so sure that you are sound and good and strong clear through is because you have not yielded in the least to the subtle influence he has over most people. You have held to your own ideas of what is right and wrong.”
She blushed under his eyes and his words. “I’m afraid I don’t deserve all that credit. I remember a time when I did have some ugly feelings and some tempestuous desires for pleasures that were out of my reach. But I had too many other things to do and to think about, and so I guess I outgrew them.”
“And I guess, too, that they didn’t find congenial soil in your heart to take root in,” he added. “But you needn’t be much worried about your sister, for I am sure it will not last much longer. At the best – or worst – there will not be many more opportunities – ” again he straightened up and sent that triumphant glance of his alert, confident eyes out across the water – “in which it will be possible for him to work any evil. But he is so thoroughly base that if I were you I would not trust her with him again.”
Henrietta wondered what he meant by that “not many more opportunities,” but forebore to ask him lest she might unintentionally pry into some matter of which he did not wish to speak. Another enigmatical fragment from his secret thought came out when she asked his advice about her own relations with Brand. She told him how repugnant she was beginning to find her work because – and here she skipped lightly and diplomatically over her reasons, so that she might not do violence to her own sense of loyalty to her employer – she did not now feel in harmony with his methods of doing business and his ways of looking at a good many things.
“You don’t need to put it in so roundabout a way,” he told her impulsively. “I know all about that change in the man’s character and how nearly he has lost all sense of truth and honesty. Luckily, he still controls his temper with you and treats you with respect – ”
He stopped and his whole manner suddenly bristled with aggressiveness. In his voice as he spoke the next words there was a significant ring: “And I don’t think he’ll do otherwise. But of course you can’t put up much longer with these developments in him. I would advise you to look for another position at once. In fact, I am sure you’d better, because it won’t be long until Felix will not need you.”
She gazed at him with such question and alarm in her eyes, that he returned her look with surprise. “Oh,” he exclaimed, “I see. You are puzzled by what I said. I forgot for the moment, – perhaps I have before, too – that you do not know all that I do about Felix. But don’t be troubled about it now. Some day you shall know – I shall tell you – the whole story. I dare say it will seem marvelous to you at first. But you will soon see how inevitable it has all been. Felix will return soon, I suppose.”
“Oh, I hope so,” Henrietta broke in. “He has been gone five weeks and his affairs are in an awful condition!”
Gordon nodded. “Yes, they must be. It is quite time for him to come back and put them in order. But I warn you, Miss Marne, that it will be wise for you not to mention my name to him when he does return. He hates me so furiously and he has so little control over that violent temper he has developed, that there is no telling what he will say or do if any one so much as speaks of me in his presence. You remember his outrageous conduct to Mrs. Fenlow?”
“Oh, did Mrs. Fenlow tell you about that?” Henrietta asked with a quick look of surprise that was reminiscent, too, of the shock the incident had given her. “I thought she mentioned your name. Was that what made him so angry?”
“That was what caused his final brutality. The trouble was about Mark Fenlow. You know how fond and proud of him his mother has been and what high expectations she has always had for him. Felix had got him into the way of gambling and the boy had developed a passion for it which he could not restrain. Ever since Felix has had money he has played a good deal, and for pretty high stakes, because of the pleasure he got out of it. But he knew when to stop, just as he did with all his vicious indulgences.”
Gordon’s eyes were flashing and his voice growing tense with hostile feeling. But Henrietta saw that he was making a strong effort to keep himself under control and to speak calmly about his enemy.
“That is,” he went on, “he used to be able to stop before doing himself injury. He didn’t care what happened to others. But he can’t now. The gambler’s mania has got hold of him in just the same way that he’s lost control of his temper, and he’s likely, if he keeps on, to gamble away everything he’s got. He liked Mark Fenlow and led him into more evil than just the gambling. But it was that that proved the boy’s ruin. It was the old story – playing, losing, borrowing, financial difficulties, the temptation of money in sight, the belief that he could pay it back the next day. His last filchings, which brought about discovery and confession of the whole business to his mother and father, were due to the fact that Felix was ruthlessly pressing him to pay back some borrowed money. That was why Mrs. Fenlow went up to Felix’s office and told him what she thought of him. Weeks ago I went to the boy and tried to reason with him about the way he was going and persuade him to quit, short off. He told his mother about that, too, and that was how she happened to mention my name in their controversy.”
“Poor Mrs. Fenlow!” said Henrietta. “I knew she must be in some great trouble that morning. But what has become of Mark?”
“His father made good his peculations and hushed the matter all up, and then they sent him out west to a cattle ranch.”
CHAPTER XVIII
Isabella Takes One More Ride
Henrietta Marne looked curiously at the envelope bearing the stamp of Hugh Gordon’s business firm. “There is always a letter from Mr. Gordon just before Mr. Brand gets back,” she said to herself, “so I suppose he’ll be here some time today. If he does I’ll have to decide about leaving him. But there’ll be such a lot of work to do it won’t be fair for me to say anything about going till we get things straightened out again.”
On that same June morning Penelope Brand was reading a letter in a similar envelope. She was out of doors, in her wheel-chair, in the shade of that same tree from which she had fallen, years before, to such pitiful maiming of her body and her life. Beside her was a little table holding some books, a pad of paper and a pencil and her work-basket. For here she spent the greater part of every fine day, by turns reading, making notes, writing, sewing, and talking with her mother. The roses that grew along the fence were in bloom and a few steps in the other direction was the little vegetable garden where her mother worked when the sun was not too hot, so near that they could speak to each other now and then.
Penelope was beginning to find a new pleasure in life, the deepest of all pleasures to the woman-heart, the pleasure of service. For Hugh Gordon had been sending her books treating of the sociological questions in which she had long taken an intellectual interest and had asked her to make digests of them for him, to tell him what she thought of them and to write him at length upon such of their contents as seemed to her of particular consequence. She had had a number of letters from him discussing these things and outlining plans upon which he wanted her opinion.
All this was affording her the keenest satisfaction. Her mother, who had never seen her so genuinely happy and contented, beamed with shy delight over the new pleasure that had come into their lives. For her it was sadly darkened by her son’s violent antagonism to their new friend. They had learned that they must not mention Hugh Gordon’s name to him even in letters, and when he last came to see them, on one of his brief and infrequent visits, they had trembled with anxiety during the whole of his stay lest they might inadvertently approach too near the subject that now loomed so large in the narrow round of their lives and had brought such freshening and broadening of their interests.
They speculated much as to the cause of the animosity between the two men, and it was evident to Mrs. Brand, in all their talk, that her daughter’s sympathies were with Hugh Gordon. For Penelope, deep in her heart, well concealed from her mother, had long harbored a feeling toward her brother that was very near distrust and contempt. Mrs. Brand had found in Hugh Gordon and the affection he plainly longed to give and receive, a young man fashioned so much more after her spirit than was her own son that her mother-heart yearned to enfold him also in its love. It grieved her deeply to know how intense was the bitterness between them.
“If they could only both be my boys, and be good friends,” she said to Penelope, with brimming eyes.
As Penelope opened her letter from Hugh Gordon she gazed with astonishment at the check it contained, a check for a bigger sum than she and her mother had ever possessed.
“Dear Sister Penelope,” she read. “For you didn’t say that I mustn’t call you sister, and so I shall, because you know that is the way I think of you. I am very happy just now thinking how surprised you will be when you see this check. It is some money that I borrowed of Felix last winter when I wanted to start in business. I am now paying it back to you and your mother instead of to him, because I know that he is not taking care of you as he ought, and also because I know that if I pay it to him he will merely make some bad and wasteful use of it. Enclosed you will find a memorandum of the date, the principal, rate, interest and amount. I shall tell him that I have sent it to you.
“I have wanted very much to see you during this last month, for there are many things to talk over with you at more length than is possible by letter. But I knew what a rage it put Felix into when he learned about my being there the last time and how unhappy his anger and violent talk made both of you, and especially your mother, and I didn’t want to subject you to such an experience again.
“But the time is coming soon when I shall be able to visit you as often as you will let me. I am looking forward to that time with such anticipations of happiness as I hardly dare tell you about. If you should decide against me, if you should not feel toward me as I hope you will – but, no, that would not be possible. And so I shall go on thinking of the happy times we shall have when I run over often to see you and when I take both of you upon little trips – to the seashore, to New York, wherever you think you would like to go. For we can make that sort of pleasure possible for you, Penelope, if you want to undertake it.
“It will all be decided and everything explained the next time I see you. But to prepare the way for all that I shall have to tell you, so that you will be ready to listen to it understandingly, I am sending you a book to read in the meantime. You will find in it one of the wonder stories of modern science, and in its light that quick, keen mind of yours will go to the heart of this matter at once. You will see clearly through the essentials of the mystery you have already sensed in the relations between Felix and me. But I hope you will not make up your mind about it until I can explain to you the whole matter, from beginning to end. I think that will be soon, within two or three weeks. In the meantime, you will not hear from me again, for I shall have to go away for a while.”
The rest of the letter was taken up with matters about which they had been conferring for some time. But Penelope was not able to find in them her usual interest, so deep was her absorption in Gordon’s mystifying allusions and promises.
The anxious wonder they aroused in her, however, was hardly greater than the trepidation and the sense of mystery which descended upon Henrietta Marne as she studied, that same morning, the envelope of Gordon’s letter to Felix Brand. Why should such a letter always herald Brand’s return from these unaccountable absences, which grew ever longer and of darker omen? What had Hugh Gordon meant by those two or three curt, unconsidered sentences that seemed to hint at some uncanny fate toward which Brand was hastening? And what would be the architect’s demeanor now? Would it be such that she could not stay longer in his employ? With all the financial risk involved would she yet feel that she must go forth and look for another position?
This last question did not long remain unanswered in her mind. Brand’s manner, it was true, had not lost entirely its habitual suavity and polish. Formerly she had thought these to be the genuine expression of the innate refinement and kindness of his nature. But now, as if some inner corrosion were eating its way outward, she found that they had ceased to be anything more than the thinnest veneer, through which often broke, in words, or manner, or look, peevish irritation or sullen anger.
“It’s as if he were just seething inside,” said Henrietta to herself after he had been back several days, “about something or other that makes him too angry to control himself. Well, that’s no reason why he should take it out on me, as he did today. I wish I could see Mr. Gordon again. Well, anyway, I can’t stand this any longer. I’m sure he’d advise me not to. Mr. Brand is much worse than he was before he went away, and he looks as if he were the bad, base man that Hugh Gordon says he is. I shall tell him at once that he’ll have to find another secretary.”
When she told her mother and sister that she had decided to look for another position, she had to face a chorus of amazed protests and she found it difficult to convince them of the soundness of her reasons.
“He seems to have lost all sense of honor,” she told them. “In all the business that he carries on through me by correspondence and sometimes by my seeing people, too, he lies and cheats even when I can’t see, sometimes, that he expects to gain anything by it. And I don’t want to be a party to that kind of thing any longer, even if I am only a sort of a machine. And he is growing so ill-tempered and irritable and rude that I really can’t endure it.”
“Oh, well, don’t worry about it, Harry,” said Isabella with her usual optimism. “You’ll soon get another position. Please make it part of your bargain next time that your employer must come over here and take me out motoring quite frequently, if not oftener.”
“That reminds me, Bella, that I want to ask you not to go with Mr. 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. He looked tired and worn, as though he had not slept, and his mobile countenance, always so eloquent of his state of mind that every changing emotion shone through it as through a window into his soul, told of secret harassment. So also did his tense nerves, which seemed wrought up almost to the snapping point. They vented themselves in frequent bursts of irritability and snarling anger. His secretary noticed that he started at every sudden sound, and sometimes also when she had heard nothing, and that then he would look round him in an alarmed, furtive way, as if he expected to see some menace take form out of the air. To her relief he did not return to the office after luncheon. If she had known that he was speeding in his automobile toward her home she would have taken less comfort in her quiet afternoon.
“Bella, dear, do you think you’d better go?” said her mother. “Harry seems so anxious about it, and she knows him better than we do. Hadn’t you better tell you have an engagement, and then take me out for a little walk?”
“Oh, just this one more time won’t make any difference, mother! I guess my chatter is good for him, for he always seems blue when we start out, but by the time we come home he’s in as good spirits as I am. So it would really be unkind not to go, wouldn’t it, mother?”
“Well, dear, if you think best. But I shall be anxious about you, so please ask him to bring you back as soon as he can.”
When they returned in the late afternoon Isabella caught a glimpse, as the automobile stopped and she glanced up toward her mother’s room, of a man’s figure standing beside Mrs. Marne’s chair, near the window. Brand helped her out, and then, casting a keen glance at her, with a little laugh he took her by the arm and guided her up the path and across the porch to the door. Fumbling with her key, she scarcely noticed his departure and by the time she stepped inside, his machine was disappearing down the street.
As she entered the hall she saw a man descending the stairs. Looking up uncertainly, she staggered back a little and leaned against the wall.
“Bella!” he cried joyfully, and again, “Bella, darling!” and ran down the steps.
She gave a maudlin giggle. “Warren! Warren! Such s’prise! S’ glad t’ see you!” she muttered thickly and, lurching toward him, would have fallen had he not caught her.
“Bella! What is the matter?” he exclaimed in anxious tones, and then, in a moment, sudden disgust ringing in his voice: “Bella, you’re drunk! My God! And I meant to marry you next month! Motoring with a man and coming home drunk! Good-bye, Miss Marne! It’s lucky I discovered my mistake in time!”
He snatched his hat from the rack and slammed the door behind him; and she, as understanding of what had happened dawned upon her, fell forward upon the banister with a long, agonized cry.
Mrs. Marne, lying down to rest in smiling happiness, with her heart full of pleasure as she thought of her dear one’s surprise and joy, heard that shriek and hurried in alarm to the head of the stairs. “Bella!” she called. “What is the matter? Where is Warren?”
Isabella, suddenly sobered, lifted a white, drawn face: “Oh, mother, he’s gone! He’s left me! Oh, mother, mother! It’s all over!”
She turned with sudden resolution and fled toward the dining room, so absorbed in her own wild misery that she heard and saw nothing as her mother cried out, swayed to and fro, and then toppled to the floor.
