_ CHAPTER XI. PENELOPE HAS A VISITOR
Penelope Brand lay back in her wheel-chair in the glass-enclosed porch and gave herself up to luxurious enjoyment of its sun-filled warmth. The table beside her with its books and its sewing, but just now finished and neatly folded, gave evidence that she had spent a busy morning. Outside there was bright sunshine, too, but there was also a raw March wind that filled the air with dust and stimulated the tear-ducts of the eyes that faced it. The little glass porch had brought a very great pleasure into her life, giving her, during the shut-in winter season, always hard for her to endure, wider views of earth and sky, a flood of the sunshine in which she loved to bask and, on days when it was possible to keep the entrance open, much more fresh air.
She sat there alone, loving the sunny warmth and thinking of the brother who had made her pleasure possible. Her secret mental attitude toward him was marked by a certain aloofness and a quietly judicial estimate which she did her best to conceal from her mother. It had cost her not a little effort, too, to keep this attitude from developing into stern censorious judgment. Just now it added to her pleasure that her feeling toward him, at least for the time being, could be mainly that of gratitude, though gratitude tempered by curiosity.
"Perhaps he'd have done it long ago if I had asked him," she told herself. "And I've longed for something of the sort so much. I do wonder what made him finally think of it himself. It wasn't like him. He might have thought of it and wanted to do it ten or twelve years ago, before he had plenty of money. But it's not like him now."
The click of the gate attracted her attention and she saw a man coming up the walk. "Why, that can't be Felix," she thought in doubting surprise. Then, as she looked at him more attentively, "Oh, no! It's that Mr. Gordon who was here last winter. Felix didn't seem to like very well his calling on us. And mother isn't at home. Well, I'll have to see him. And perhaps it's just as well, for I don't care particularly whether Felix likes it or not."
He held her thin, talon-like hand affectionately as he asked how she was and if she enjoyed her glass cage.
"Enjoy it! Oh, Mr. Gordon! You can't imagine how I delight in it! I sit here most of the time every day in all kinds of weather. It has given me the greatest pleasure, and I think I am better and stronger, too, because of it. I was just thinking how grateful I am to Felix."
His face and eyes, which had been glowing with responsive pleasure, darkened at her last sentence.
"I don't like that word 'grateful' in connection with such a matter," he exclaimed quickly. "It was a little thing for Felix to do, only one out of all the many things that he could do for you if he would, and one that he ought to have done long ago. And it doesn't seem to me, Penelope, that
you would have any reason to be 'grateful' to Felix Brand, no matter how much he might do for you."
The significant tone in which he spoke the last words brought surprise into her face. She turned toward him with astonished inquiry in her dark eyes, but, as she met his assured gaze, that expression quickly changed into one of understanding. It was evident that she knew what he meant. She looked at him steadily for a moment, a moment of inner effort in which she brought her own impulse of responsive feeling under firmer control, before she replied:
"Wouldn't that be a barbarian sort of philosophy to live by?"
"Perhaps it would," he admitted, paused an instant, and then went on with some heat:
"But when I think of all that you have suffered because of him, and how little he has tried to make amends, I am so indignant that merely refraining to be 'grateful' for such a crumb as this seems nothing to what he deserves."
A faint color crept into her thin, pale cheeks as again she stared at him wide-eyed.
"I know all about it," he continued, nodding at her gravely. "I know that you would have been as straight and strong as any girl, and a noble, capable, active woman, if he hadn't pushed you off the limb of that apple-tree in your back yard twenty years ago, because he was determined to have your place."
"Did he tell you about it?" she demanded, her voice trembling with excitement. "But he must have, because nobody else, not even father or mother, ever knew. They thought I fell."
"Yes, I know that was the version he gave of the affair, and everybody accepted it. And you kept the truth to yourself."
"What good would it have done to blame him after it was all over? And he didn't intend to do it."
"Yes, he did! He meant to push you off and get your place and show you that he was boss."
"Perhaps, but he had no intention of hurting me--he didn't think that it would."
"Oh, I know he had no murderous purpose. He just gave up to a selfish, brutal impulse, and afterwards he was too cowardly and too selfish to confess the truth."
She turned upon him a steady, wondering gaze and he shrank back a little and went on more humbly:
"I suppose I ought not to speak in that way to you about your brother, and I hope you will pardon me. But when I compare your life with his it makes me too indignant to keep a bridle on my tongue. And, besides, Penelope," and he leaned toward her with his manner again forceful with the strength of his convictions, "you know as well as I do how truthful is every word I have said."
"And even if I do," she rejoined with dignity, "it is possible that I would not choose to admit all that my secret heart might think."
She stopped with a little start and a drawing together of her brows, and then, with alarm dawning in her eyes, she leaned forward eagerly and put a pleading hand upon his arm:
"You won't say anything about this to mother, will you?"
Gordon hesitated, but his eyes, flashing with the intensity of his feeling, softened as they fell upon her anxious face.
"It's hardly fair," he said doggedly, "it certainly isn't just, for her to glorify Felix as she does when he is--what he is. In justice to you she ought to know this."
"That's of no consequence at all beside the pain it would give her to know the truth. You don't know mother--nobody does but me--and you can't appreciate in the least what Felix, or, rather, her ideal of Felix, means to her. Mother is, and always has been, a romantic sort of woman, as you might guess"--and she smiled faintly at him--"by the names she gave her children. Her own life has been hard and monotonous, with little pleasure, little beauty--and she has such a beauty-loving nature--little opportunity. And she is so shy, too, she has so little self-confidence. So, don't you see, all the romance and imagination that have been starved in her have been born over again for her in Felix. Felix is handsome, magnetic--he attracts people and makes everybody his friends, as she would have liked to do--he is a genius, he creates beautiful things, he lives in lovely surroundings, he is winning fame and wealth--life for him is a Grand Adventure, more beautiful and wonderful than anything she ever dared to dream. She knows Felix is selfish, but she can always see so many reasons why it is impossible for him to do any particular generous thing. Oh, Mr. Gordon, it would grieve her so to know how that accident really happened and how he concealed the truth and--and----"
"Ah, you don't like to say it," he broke in as she hesitated and ceased speaking. "But I know what you mean--how he profited by it. For the money that would have been divided upon the education of both of you if you had been well and strong was all spent upon him. And he took it and kept silent."
Again she stared at him in surprise. "How frankly Felix must have talked with you!" she exclaimed. "He never would have confessed all this if he hadn't felt remorseful and repentant!"
"But he isn't!" Gordon blurted out with an irritated start. "He's come to think it a part of his good fortune. If he had been, or, even, if he were now--well, things might have turned out differently--that's all I can say."
"But we're getting away from mother. Don't you see, Mr. Gordon, that it would be cruel? And what good would it do? Felix is what he is, and he'll stay so to the end of the chapter. You can't change him and you would only spoil mother's happiness in him. Promise me, Mr. Gordon, that you won't tell her anything about it, that you won't say anything to her about Felix that would make her unhappy!"
Gordon rose abruptly and walked across the little enclosure and back again, his black brows drawn together, before he replied.
"It is hard to refuse you anything, Penelope," he said finally, standing in front of her chair. "You have had so little, and you deserve so much. I know you are right about this, and I shrink from hurting her as much as you do. But when I think of Felix and the course he has deliberately followed, it angers me so that I forget everything except the retribution he so richly deserves. But you are right and I give you your promise."
He smiled upon her and gently patted the hand that lay, thin and feeble-looking, on the arm of her chair. But the smile quickly faded from his face as he met the mingled wonder and displeasure of her look.
"I thank you for your promise," she said, "but I am surprised to hear you speak so bitterly of my brother, when you seem to be so friendly with him and he has given you such intimate confidence."
Again Gordon walked up and down in the narrow space, his countenance somber with the intentness of his thought.
"The relations between us are peculiar," he said at last, speaking more slowly and deliberately than was usual with him. "I wonder if I could tell you what they are. I wonder if you would believe me, or think me sane, if I should tell you. Sometime I shall tell you, Penelope, for you are a broad-minded, strong-souled woman and you will be able to see that what I am doing has been for the best good of everybody concerned. But I think not now. No, not yet, not till after I have worked out my plan. But I want you to know, Penelope, and I shall never be content until you do understand. For I honor and admire you more than anyone else I know. If I didn't, perhaps my feeling about Felix wouldn't be quite so strong. And I'll try to curb my tongue when I speak about him to you."
Penelope had begun to feel much wearied by the interview, with its demands upon her emotional strength and the strange, tingling excitement with which Gordon's presence wrought upon her nerves, just as it had done at their previous meeting.
His compelling personality, that had burst so unexpectedly and so intimately into her life, inspired in her the wish to believe in him. But his bitterness toward her brother, notwithstanding their evident intimacy, made her hesitate. He seemed so sincere and so straightforward that her impulse was to meet him with equal frankness. But she was still a little doubtful, a little fearful.
She felt that she must know more about the mysterious relation, with its apparent contradictions, between him and Felix before she could give him the confidence he seemed to desire.
"It is all very strange," she said, "and after you are gone I shall wonder whether I have been dreaming or whether some one named 'Hugh Gordon' has really been here saying such bitter things about my brother. Does he know that you have such a poor opinion of him?"
"Does he know it?" Gordon exclaimed, facing her impulsively and speaking with emphasis. "Indeed he does! He knows just how much I--but there! I promised to bridle my tongue. Well, he has had a great deal more information upon that head than you have!"
"Well, then, I'll have to forgive you the hard things you've said about him to me, since you've been just as frank with him first!"
"Thank you! But you know they are all true, Penelope!"
She drew back, a little offended that he should insist a second time upon this point, and there was a touch of scornfulness in her tones as she rejoined with dignity:
"I do not deny that my brother has faults, but is that any reason why I should discuss them with a stranger?"
"Don't say that, Penelope!"
His cry came so straightly and so simply from his heart that its honest feeling and the look of pain upon his face moved her to quick contrition and to warmer confidence. Surely, she told herself, there could be no doubting his ardent friendliness toward her mother and herself, whatever might be his attitude toward Felix.
"I have known about you such a long time," he was hurrying on in pleading speech, "that you are like an old friend--no, more than that, like a sister in my thought of you, and I want you to feel that way toward me. It may seem strange to you, Penelope, but it is true, that you and your mother are nearer and dearer to me than any one else in the world. That's why it hurts when you call me a stranger, although I know I can hardly seem more than that to you, as yet."
He sat down beside her and took one of her hands for a moment in both of his. "But we are going to change that, if you'll let me," he said, a smile lighting his serious face. "If you'll let me I'm going to be a genuine sort of brother to you. I haven't the genius that Felix has, I'll never create anything beautiful or wonderful, but I have got a knack for business and I can make money. I don't care anything about money for itself, but I do care a lot for all the things one can do with it.
"My head is full of ideas and plans for using the money I shall make as a lever for helping the world along. I know such things interest you, Penelope. You like to read and think about them and I'm sure you'd have done great work in that line if--if Felix--if there had been no accident. And if you will give me the benefit of your reading and thinking, it will help me in the working out of my plans."
"I? Could I be of any use? When I am such a prisoner and have so little strength? I've only read and thought a little--I don't know anything as people do who come face to face with actual conditions. But you don't know," and a sharp, indrawn breath and the wistfulness of her eyes told him how much she was moved by his proposal, "you don't know what it would mean to me!"
"I can guess, Penelope--sister--you don't mind if I call you that? I know a little, and your face tells me a good deal more, about how your spirit has rebelled and how you have battled with it and won the victory. You haven't found it easy to be a prisoner in a wheel-chair!"
"Indeed, I have not!"
She bent her thin, humped and crooked body forward with fresh energy and a spark of the spirit she had conquered flashed out again in her dark eyes and tired face.
"My soul has longed so to do something, to be something, to be able to use my abilities and my energies as other people do! I have longed so fiercely to go about and see the beautiful and wonderful things in the world, to achieve something myself and to meet as an equal other people who have done things worth while! If there is hell anywhere it used to be in my heart! I fought it--it was the only thing there was to do--by myself, for I couldn't add to mother's troubles such a burden as that would have been. Father knew, a little, of how I felt, before he died. But afterwards I fought it out myself--it took years to do it--and at last forced myself into a sort of content, or resignation.
"I know I am some comfort to mother, although I have cost her so much care. But for a long time her chief pleasure, after her delight in Felix, has been in our companionship. So that is something, and I read a good deal and think all I can, and I try to do through others the little good in the outside world that is possible to me."
She leaned back again feebly and closed her eyes for a moment in physical weariness. "And so at last," she went on, meeting his compassionate look with a faint smile, "I come to be--not unhappy."
"And now the opportunity is coming," he assured her impulsively, "for you to make some use of your sweet, strong spirit and your capable brain. But I don't know--Felix--I don't know--" he hesitated, casting at her a keen, inquiring glance, but continued in a confident tone: "But you'll understand, you'll see it's for the best! Oh, I know you'll agree that I'm doing the right thing!"
He saw the fatigue in her countenance and rose to go. "I'm afraid I've tired you, Penelope, but I hope you'll forgive me when I tell you what pleasure our talk has given me. Before I go I want to ask you one more thing--about your mother. Did she--was she much grieved by what I did about--Felix and that bribery business?"
A look of gratification crossed Penelope's face. "I hoped you wouldn't go away without saying something about that," she said frankly. "Of course, it grieved her. She was deeply hurt."
"I knew she would be," he interrupted sorrowfully. "But it was the best way I could see. I thought it would be a warning to Felix."
"Of course she didn't believe it was true. She thought you were acting under a conviction of public duty and that you were mistaken in your understanding of what had happened. You impressed her very much when you were here and she thought so much about you afterwards that it was hard for her to reconcile your action with your friendship for Felix. But she did and finally came to think it really noble in you to hold what you thought to be the public good above your personal feelings."
"But it was Felix I was thinking of chiefly," he protested. "Still, it was very sweet of her, and very like her, too, to look at it in that way. Would she--do you think she would be glad to see me if she were at home?"
"I am sure she would," replied Penelope cordially. "She was so pleased with her fancy of your being her dream son and of your coming toward us out of the snow-storm like some one in a dream--dear mother! It all pleased her so much! And she talked much and tenderly about you afterwards. But there was something that disturbed her, and I must tell you about it, for she will want to know if I explained it to you."
She stopped a moment and threw an observant glance upon her listener. Absorbed in what she was saying, he was looking at her with his keen eyes and serious face all soft and tender with emotion.
Penelope felt her heart yearn toward him with entire trust. "Felix has never cared for us as much as this man does already," she thought.
"Mother was afraid," she continued, "that you might think, from what she said about her hopes when Felix was a little boy, that she is dissatisfied with him now. Of course, you know that isn't true. I've told you enough for you to see how she delights and glories in him. She would have liked, I think, to see him become a great preacher or a great reformer. But his bent wasn't that way, and I don't believe that if he had been either she could have been prouder of him than she is now."
"Well, I can never be a great preacher, or a great reformer either, or, indeed, a great anything. But I hope I shall be able to do some good in the world, in little spots here and there, and I want very much to bring more happiness into her life and yours. I would like to be to her a son. But--I don't know----"
He hesitated again and Penelope saw doubt come into his face and his eyes grow wistful.
"No, I don't know how it will be. I can do it--" Again he stopped for a moment and, gazing into the distance as he went on, he seemed to Penelope to be speaking more to himself than to her. "I can do it only by giving to you and to her, to her especially, very great sorrow first. Sometimes, I'm not quite sure----"
Then sudden resolution seemed to seize him. His lips shut and his figure stiffened with determination. "But it has to be--it has to be," he declared abruptly. His air was forceful to the verge of aggressiveness as he turned to her again.
"Good-bye, Penelope. Give my love to your mother and tell her I was sorry not to see her. It has been good to see you once more and to have this talk with you. I shall come again some time if you will let me. But I shall not believe you unwilling to see me unless you yourself tell me so."
"You are a strange man," she replied, looking at him with frank curiosity but entire friendliness, "and you interest me very much. Whenever you wish to come again you may be sure that no matter what you may have been doing, I at least shall be glad to see you."
His abrupt, aggressive manner softened, and a pleading note sounded in his voice as he replied:
"Anyway, you'll try to think, won't you, that I believe, from the bottom of my heart, that what I am doing and shall do concerning Felix is for the good of everybody, even for his good, too, extraordinary as that may seem. That's the most I can say, until the time comes for me to tell you the whole story. But you shall know it sometime, Penelope. Good-bye." _