MRS. BRAND'S DREAM SON
It was half a week after that spring-like Sunday when Felix Brand
motored to his secretary's home on Staten Island, and a feathery pall,
white as forgiven sins, was sifting down from the heavens upon all the
eastern seaboard. In a town within the suburban radius of Philadelphia
its mantle of purity lay almost undisturbed upon lawns and streets and
vacant lots. Two women were looking out upon the snow-covered earth
and snow-filled sky from the side window of a cottage near the edge of
the town. One, small and gray-haired, perhaps looked older than she
was because of the pathetic droop of her shoulders and the worn,
patient expression of her face. But lined and sad though her
countenance was, it told of a sweet and gentle soul and it was lighted
now with a look of pleasure.
"Just look at it, Penelope!" she exclaimed, a little thrill of
enthusiasm in her voice. "I never saw it snow harder, or look
prettier! Isn't it beautiful!"
She turned a pair of soft brown eyes upon a younger woman sitting
beside her in a wheel chair, who put down the book she had been
reading, and sighed as she answered: "Yes, it is beautiful, mother,
very beautiful. But when I look at it I can't help thinking how long
it will be until spring comes again and I can be out in the yard under
the trees."
The mother put out her hand, small and once of the shape that
chirognomists call "the artistic hand," but now wrinkled, bony and
toil-hardened, and rested it gently for a moment upon the mass of
dark, waving hair, already well-threaded with gray, that crowned the
other's head. Her face filled with sympathy but her voice broke
cheerfully upon the silence:
"Oh, it won't be long now, Penelope, and not a bit longer because of
this beautiful storm!"
The figure in the wheel chair bent forward again and looked out upon
the pearly whiteness of the earth. It was a sad travesty of the human
form, undersized, humped and crooked. But it bore a noble head with a
broad, full brow and a strong, intellectual face that had in it
something of the elder woman's sweetness of expression. But in her
brown eyes the other's softness and wistfulness gave place to a
keener, more flashing look that told of a high and soaring spirit. And
in the lines of her face was a hint of possible storminess, though it
was softened by an expression of self-mastery, eloquent of many an
inner battle waged and won.
The window from which they looked commanded one side of their own wide
yard, a vacant block, and beyond that a cross-street. The snow was
feathering down so fast that it gave to the air a milky translucence
through which bulked dimly an occasional traveler on the other
thoroughfare. Penelope's eyes fixed themselves upon one of these vague
shapes.
"Look, mother!" she exclaimed. "Do you see that man just turning the
corner to come this way? It looks like Felix!"
"So it does!" the other cried.
They were both silent for a moment as they gazed intently at the
dim figure, gaining definiteness now with each step toward them.
"It doesn't walk like him," Penelope commented, her face already
showing that she knew it was not he. But the mother hung a little
longer to her hope. "No, it isn't Felix," she presently acquiesced,
disappointment evident in her gentle tones. "I so hoped it was, at
first."
With a firm, rapid stride the young man was coming eagerly up the
street, his eyes upon their house. "He doesn't walk at all like
Felix," Penelope repeated thoughtfully as his figure became more
plainly visible through the veiling snow, "but it's curious how much
like him he looks, after all."
"See, Penelope!" the mother exclaimed, reaching out to grasp her
daughter's hand in sudden enthusiasm. "See how he comes out of the
snow mist! Isn't it just like a figure in a dream getting plainer and
clearer, and more like life!"
Penelope pressed her mother's hand and smiled up at her fondly. "Just
like you, mother, to make something pretty out of a disappointment!"
They gazed at the advancing figure with renewed interest and saw that
the man, with slightly slackened pace, seemed to be closely observing
their house and yard. What he saw was a one-story red cottage, needing
paint, its green window shutters looking old and somewhat dilapidated,
its yard, of ample size and dotted with trees and shrubbery,
surrounded by a wooden fence in whose palings were occasional breaks
and patches. It was a commonplace object in an ordinary winter scene,
but he seemed to feel in it the deepest interest. There was even a
frown on his brow as his alert glance rested on a broken pane in the
kitchen window.
"It has been a long time since Felix was here--six months, hasn't it,
mother?" said Penelope, leaning back wearily again as the stranger
passed from her range of vision.
"Hardly so long as that, dear. It was last fall. But, of course, he is
very busy. He hasn't the time to travel around now and go visiting,
even over here to see us, that he used to have, before he had begun
to be so successful. We mustn't expect too much." As she spoke, her
gentle tones as full of indulgence and excuse as her words, she moved
to the front window and sought the figure of the stranger, now
striding along the snow-covered sidewalk in front of her own yard.
"Penelope! He's coming here!" she exclaimed, starting back and
dropping the muslin curtain she had pushed aside. "He's turning in at
our gate! He does look like Felix--a little. Who can it be!"
Penelope bent forward to peer through the curtains and saw the man
mounting the steps to their little veranda and stamping the snow from
his feet. Instantly she wheeled her chair about and sped it into the
adjoining room as her mother opened the door to their visitor.
"You are Mrs. Brand, I think? Felix Brand's mother?" he said. "I
am a friend of his--my name is Hugh Gordon--and as I was coming to
Philadelphia I promised him I would run out here and see you."
As they entered the living room his keen, dark eyes swept it alertly,
as they had the exterior of the house. A shade of disappointment
crossed his face.
"Your daughter?" he asked abruptly. "May I not see her, too?"
Mrs. Brand hesitated. The shyness of her girlhood years still lingered
in her manner when in the presence of strangers, and she glanced at
her visitor, then at the floor, and her hands fluttered about her
lap. Gordon's face and eyes softened as he looked at her. There was
something very sweet and appealing in the gentle diffidence of this
little, plain, elderly woman.
"Penelope doesn't often see people--anyone, and she is very unwilling
to meet strangers. Perhaps Felix told you--you know----"
"Yes, I know. I understand how she feels, but I want very much to see
her. I know Felix well, and I know a good deal about her, enough to
make me honor and admire her very much. Won't you tell her, please,
that I came out here particularly to see you and 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 a man."
She stopped and her worn face flushed at the thought that she
had almost spoken slightingly of her son, had at least hinted
disappointment in him. She fidgeted with embarrassment as silence fell
upon them and she felt Gordon's eyes upon her. She could not resist
his steady gaze, and as her eyes met his the look in them stirred her
mother-heart to its depths and set her to trembling. She saw in it
wistfulness and loneliness and felt behind it the persistent
heart-hunger of the grown man for the mother in woman, for maternal
understanding and solicitude and affection.
"I knew right away," she said afterward to Penelope, "that he'd never
known a mother's love and that he was homesick for it and it made my
heart warm toward him more than ever. He looks so young, even younger
than Felix, and that minute he seemed as if he were just a boy."
"I hope you will let me come again," said Gordon as he bade them
good-bye. He took Mrs. Brand's toil-worn hand in both of his and with
gravely earnest face looked down into hers as he went on: "And if you
should hear--if I should do anything that seems--well, not friendly,
toward Felix, I hope you will try to believe that I am not doing it
to injure him, but because it seems to me right and because I truly
think it for his good."
Mrs. Brand was still trembling and she felt strangely moved. But her
usual shyness was all gone and she did not even notice that she was
finding it easy to talk with this stranger, easier, indeed, than it
had been, of late years, to talk with Felix. Her heart swelled and
throbbed with yearning over him.
"I am quite sure," she said, "that you will not do anything unless you
are convinced that it is right and for the best. No matter how it may
seem to others, I shall know that you expect good to come of it."
"Thank you!" His voice was low and it shook a little. He bent over her
hand and raised it to his lips. "If I had a mother I should want her
to be just like you! Will you try to think of me, sometimes, no matter
what I do, as being moved, perhaps, by the same spirit, at least the
same kind of spirit, as that of--of Felix's and Penelope's
grandfather?"
Her patient face and her brown eyes glowed with the emotions that
thrilled and fluttered in her heart. Belief in him, the sudden, sweet
intimacy into which their brief acquaintance had flowered, his seeming
need of her, and her own ardent wish to respond with all her
mother-wealth, filled her breast with new, strange life and stirred
her imagination.
"I shall think of you," she answered with sweet earnestness, "as if
you were the boy--a man--I don't know how to say just what I mean, but
perhaps you'll understand--as if you were the man who had grown up out
of the dreams I used to have about my boy.
"Don't think," she added hastily, "that I'm displeased or dissatisfied
with Felix, because I'm not, though what I've said might give that
impression. He is a good son and I am proud and glad to be his mother.
But a mother has so many dreams about a son when he is little that no
boy could possibly fulfill all of them. He must follow his own bent,
and the other things she has dreamed for him must be left behind. So
I'll just feel as if, in some mysterious way, those dreams had come
alive in you. And--oh, Penelope! Do you remember what I said a little
while ago, when we saw Mr. Gordon coming toward us out of the storm,
that it was just like someone taking form and shape in a dream? I'll
think of you as my dream son, Mr. Gordon--Hugh!"
Impulsively he seized her hand again and held it closely clasped in
both of his. "Will you do that? Will you think of me in that way?"
Penelope, in her wheel chair beside them, fidgeted her weak, misshapen
body. Her nerves were tense with an excitement which she knew was not
all due merely to an unexpected call from a stranger. Unaccustomed
emotions, strong but undefined, were filling her breast and tugging
at her heart. To her sharpened perception it seemed almost as if
something uncanny were hovering in the room. She shivered and leaned
back wearily. What spell was coming over them? Were those two beside
her, strangers until an hour ago, about to sink sobbing into each
other's arms? And was she, Penelope, the calm and self-mastered, about
to shriek hysterically?
"How ghostly you two are becoming," she exclaimed, with an effort at
vivacity, "with your dreams and your spirits! You make me afraid that
Mr. Gordon, substantial as he looks, will melt away into thin air
before our very eyes!"
"We are getting wrought up, aren't we?" Gordon assented as he turned
to her. "And you are pale, Penelope! I hope I haven't tired you too
much. Seeing you both, and your being so kind, have meant a lot to me,
more than you can guess. And if your mother is going to be my dream
mother, Penelope, you'll be my dream sister, won't you?"
He smiled as he said this, then all three laughed a little, more to
lessen the tension which all of them felt than because they were
amused, and presently the two women were alone again. Afterward, as
they talked over all the incidents of the afternoon, they recalled
that it was the only time during his long call that Gordon had
laughed, and they wondered that a young man who seemed so full of
vigor and life should have so serious a demeanor.