The Fate of Felix Brand

by Florence Finch Kelly

The day which was to be the last of her service as Felix Brand’s secretary proved to be the most trying of all that she had endured. As one unpleasant episode succeeded another her eyes sought the clock again and again and she told herself, “It will be only four hours more,” or, “Now it’s only two hours and a half,” and again, “In seventy minutes I shall be through.”

As the hours dragged on it seemed to her that Brand’s temper grew steadily worse. And he went restlessly from one thing to another, unable to concentrate his attention upon anything. He had on hand several pieces of work, all of which Henrietta knew he was anxious to finish as soon as possible. But he would take up first one, then another, only to throw each one down impatiently with a muttered oath after a few minutes of effort.

Henrietta did not know, as Dr. Annister had not known of his inward compulsion the night before, that within him a stern monitor was making its orders felt and trying to force him to write the message which was to set the seal of finality upon his next disappearance.

He was facing the utter annihilation of his soul, his personal being, while his body, dwelt in by his ruthless enemy, should still live on, seeing the sunshine, breathing the sweet air, loving life. He drew back, terrified but wrathful, from the brink of this black void to which his luring desires had led him.

What was it, that gulf of nothingness, into which his soul had plunged so many times already? Down, down, to what unplumbed depths had it gone, those other times? True, it had come back. But it had brought no tidings of that dumb, black vast into which it had sunk. And thinner and thinner had grown the thread that had drawn it back from that unsensed abyss until now he knew that it was ready to break. His soul was numb with the conviction that, let it be thrust once more over the brink, it would drop beyond recall into oblivion.

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. For an hour he loitered about, staying his steps in other parts of the room, wherever he could make pretense of busying himself.

But at last, in the late afternoon, he suddenly found himself moving in the direction of his desk. He stopped, braced himself, took another step, another, and another, with feet that he could not compel to cling to the floor. And, after long minutes of struggle, he sank finally into his desk chair.