The Fate of Felix Brand

by Florence Finch Kelly

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?”