The Fate of Felix Brand. Kelly Florence Finch
her, and that I shall be much disappointed if I have to go back without meeting both of you?”
Penelope soon returned with her mother and both had many questions to ask concerning Felix. Was he well? Was he working harder than he ought? Was his new apartment very beautiful? Had Mr. Gordon seen the plans for the new monument with which he had won in the national competition?
He used to send them photographs, Penelope said, but lately they knew little about his work unless they saw pictures of it in the newspapers.
But, indeed, they didn’t expect so much attention from him now, her mother quickly added, for as his work increased and became of so much importance they understood how necessary it was for him to give it all his time and thought.
“It would really be selfish,” she went on, “as I sometimes tell Penelope, to want him to spend time on us, writing long letters, or coming over here, when we know that his success depends upon his devoting all his energies to his work.”
Penelope, silent and gazing out of the window, was conscious of Gordon’s quick glance at her, and was conscious too of the appeal in her mother’s wistful brown eyes, which she felt were turned upon her. So many years these two had passed in intimate companionship and in loving ministration on one side and utter dependence on the other, that spoken word was scarcely needed between them to make known the mood of each to the other.
In immediate response she turned, with a smile that lighted up her controlled, intellectual face, and said:
“Of course, we quite understand how occupied Felix is all the time, but that doesn’t keep us from liking to know about him. So your visit, Mr. Gordon, is quite a godsend, and you mustn’t be surprised that we ask you so many questions about Felix and want to know all about him and what he is doing.”
Her voice was low, with rich notes in it, and her manner quite without self-consciousness. Notwithstanding her deformity and her secluded life, she betrayed neither shyness nor embarrassment. In both manner and speech was the poise that is usually the result of much association with the world.
“Yes,” Gordon was assenting, “Felix has many irons in the fire, and he is planning to have more. But he thinks of you both, and you would be surprised to learn how much I know of you – through him.” He rose and as he moved across the room to Penelope’s chair he continued: “You, I know, Miss Brand, love the sunshine and the out-of-doors.” He hesitated a moment and then went on, pouring out his words with a sort of abrupt eagerness:
“But I don’t want to call you ‘Miss Brand!’ It doesn’t seem as if I were talking to you. I feel as if I had known you so long that I want to call you ‘Penelope,’ as Felix does. Will you let me? You won’t mind if I do? Oh, thank you! You are very kind to me, for I realize what a stranger I must seem to you, although I feel as if I had known you both such a long time. Well, then, Penelope,” and he smiled and nodded at her, as he crossed the room to the front window and drew back the curtain, “how would you like to have one end of this porch enclosed with glass, so that you could sit out there with your wraps on, all winter, even on days like this, and feel almost as if you were out of doors? It wouldn’t seem quite so shut in as the house, would it?”
She leaned back with a sigh and then smiled. “Yes, it would be pleasant. But it is now some years since I quit wishing for the things I can’t have.”
“Ah, but you’re going to have this,” he exclaimed, his face beaming. “Felix is preparing a little surprise for you, but he gave me permission to tell you about it.”
The expression upon the faces of both women and their little exclamations told Gordon, as he glanced from one to the other, that their surprise was as great as their pleasure.
“Felix is going to have it done for you,” he went on, “as soon as he returns. I forgot to tell you, and perhaps, as he went away rather unexpectedly, he didn’t write you, that he was called out of the city a few days ago on pressing business. I saw him when he was leaving and I know you may expect to hear from him about the porch as soon as he returns. I’ll tell him how pleased you are about it.”
They gave him messages of gratitude and love and the three of them discussed the little improvement with the intimacy of old friends. Several books, one of them still open at the page where Penelope had been reading, were on a table beside the window. Gordon took them up one by one and ran over their titles. “Ah, poetry – and fiction – and biography – how catholic your interests are, Penelope! But I knew that already. Sociology, too. Yes, I knew that is your favorite study. It is mine, too, but I haven’t had as much time yet to read along that line as I would like. What have you lately read on that subject?”
She told him of some of the recent books that had interested her most and mentioned the titles of others that she thought would be worth while.
“After you read them,” he said, in his quick, decisive way, “I’d like very much to know what you think of them.”
“I’d be glad to talk them over with you, but it’s not likely I can have the opportunity of reading them very soon. I take books from the town library, and so many people always want the new ones that sometimes my turn is a long time coming.”
He was making a note of their titles. “I’ll tell Felix you’re interested in them,” he rejoined casually, “and I’m sure he’ll send them to you.”
Wonderment filled the minds of both mother and daughter and showed in their faces.
“You and my brother must be great friends,” Penelope hastened to say, “although you seem to be so different from him. You resemble him a little – yes, a good deal, physically, but in manner, expression and, I should think, in mind and temperament and character, you must be very different. But perhaps that only makes you the better friends. You see,” she went on, smiling frankly, “mother and I are already talking with you as if we knew you as well as Felix does.”
“I hope that you will, and that very soon,” he responded, and his manner reminded her for a fleeting instant of the winning deference, the slightly ceremonious politeness, of her brother’s habitual demeanor.
“That was just a little like Felix,” she thought. “Perhaps he has been with Felix so much that he has unconsciously caught something of his manner. Felix has a very pleasing manner, but – I like this man’s better.”
“I don’t think Mr. Gordon so very unlike Felix,” her mother was saying, “that is, unlike Felix used to be. Naturally, he has changed a good deal of late years. It’s to be expected that a young man will change as he grows up and enters upon his life’s work. But Mr. Gordon looks more as I used to think Felix would when he grew up, and something as my husband did when we were married, but still more – ” she paused, searching his countenance with puzzled eyes. He started a little, as if pulling himself together.
“Now I know,” she exclaimed. “Penelope, Mr. Gordon looks like your Grandfather Brand! If you wore your hair longer, Mr. Gordon, and had no mustache, you’d look very like an old picture I have of him when he was young. He was such a good man and I admired and respected him so much! I used to hope, when Felix was a little boy, that he would grow up to be like his grandfather.”
“He has grown up to be a very able man,” Gordon responded gravely. “He has opened the way toward being a famous one, and he has the capacity to go far in it. He has much more talent than I.”
“Are you an architect, too?” asked Mrs. Brand.
“No, I have not done anything, yet. But it is only now becoming possible for me to do anything of consequence.” His manner and expression grew suddenly even more earnest and serious. “And there is so much that I want to do, that needs to be done, so much that urges one to action, if he feels his responsibility toward others.”
Mrs. Brand was looking at him with startled, swimming eyes. “Oh, you are so like Father Brand!” she exclaimed. “How often have I heard him speak in just that way! He was rather a stern man, because he wanted to hold people to a high standard. But he fairly burned to do good in the world and make it better. I used to hope, when Felix was a little boy, that he’d have the same kind of spirit when he became