The Hand of the Mighty, and Other Stories

by Vaughan Kester

I

THE pen slipped from Philip's fingers and unheeded rolled across the table, while with a sigh of weariness he abandoned himself to idleness. Resting his elbows upon the table, he sunk his chin into the palms of his hands and gazed listlessly out of the window on the street below. The cold gray light of the dull October afternoon was almost at an end; already the street-lamps were beginning to flare forth redly in bold relief against the gathering gloom of the coming night.

To Philip it was a dispiriting and cheerless prospect, heightened by the winter's first chill breath. He had seen it all so often; if he could only see the last of it. Each year brought back those same dull days, with their leaden skies to fit into his worst mood of despair and longing and unfulfillment. He felt himself starved in mind and experience. He was conscious always of a fierce desire for something different—that broader life to which he could not go, and which would not come to him.

*Written at the age of 20.

Slowly his eyes came back to the table and a settled seriousness stole into them as he looked at the manuscript lying upon it.

“I fancy it will be a go this time,” he thought, “but”—a bit sadly—“I have thought that so many times, and somehow I am just where I was in the start. No nearer success, no nearer anything—except perhaps the end of my hope and faith in myself.”

He had risen and now stood looking down at the table with its litter of paper, pens and letters... and rising from the midst of the disorder—a mountain of hope—the pile of manuscript. It had meant days and weeks of labor: days when he had striven with enthusiasm for its completion; days, too, that had been given up to the savage denying of his mistrust and doubt. Through these and his varying moods he had toiled, and at last his task was approaching its end.

Turning, Philip left the room and descended to the narrow hall below. Here it was already quite dark. He fumbled about until he found his hat and overcoat, and after getting into them made his way back through the parlor and sitting-room to the dining-room where his mother was arranging the supper table.

“Oh, it is you, Philip,” she said, glancing up from her work. “I heard you in the hall and thought it must be the girls returning.”

Mrs. Southard was a woman of fifty with a strong placid face that had taken comparatively few lines. Her dress was of the simplest black, and severely plain. It had been black ever since Philip could remember, for his father had died when he was a baby.

While Philip was conscious that his small world had changed much in the years that marked the limits of his memory, his mother was still precisely the same as he recalled her, returning to his first vague impression of people and things. She was not and had never been an intellectual woman perhaps, but to him she stood for that which was most steadfast and purposeful. Nor was she hard with all her splendid strength. Her judgments were infinitely more generous than those of most women.

“You are not going out, Philip?” his mother asked, observing that he was ready for the street. “It's almost supper-time.”

“I won't keep you waiting, mother; I am just going down-town to post some letters.”

“Yes, dear, but do be here for supper.”

“I shall be.”

He turned back into the sitting-room, intending to leave the house by the side door. His mother followed him, and on the threshold he faced her again.

“What is it?” he asked, “anything you want from down-town?”

“No, dear, only I haven't told you, and I wish to now. I expect Anson home to-night. He will remain over Sunday. Do be nice to him.”

She spoke appealingly, for Philip's face darkened at the news.

“Am I not always nice to him? I mean to be for your sake.”

“Yes, but you seem so far apart, and you are brothers.”

“Oh, it's all right, mother, and we get along peaceably enough, considering how we hate each other. There, dear, you can't reconcile the utterly unreconcilable, so don't spend your precious strength in trying to.”

And Philip, closing the door after him, went down the steps and into the street. “So,” he muttered, “Anson will be here to-morrow and I shall have to endure his presence for at least a part of one penitential day.”

The one cordial emotion that the brothers shared in common was hatred one for the other. As children they had eased this rancor by a frequent exchange of blows, but now, unhappily for their peace of mind, they were past that sort of thing.

The street Philip was following took him straight to the center of the town and into the midst of Saturday's crowd. It was such a gathering as one might see in almost any country town on the last day of the week: self-conscious and uncomfortable, in ugly ill-fitting “best clothes”. The business of the day was over, and the crowd paraded up and down the main street, or back and forth across the Square. Philip pushed his way into it with assertive elbows. He crossed the squalid Square with its soldier's monument and its few stunted trees that stubbornly declined to grow and as stubbornly refused to die. From the Square he turned into a side street that led past the post-office. Here he posted his letters and paused in front of the building, undecided where next to go. As he stood there a man who had been leaning against an iron railing that surrounded an area way left his position and slouched up to Philip's side. The latter scanned the shabby figure with some uncertainty, then he said: “Oh, it's you, Lester?”—and held out his hand. His greeting was so lacking in cordiality, however, that Lester ignored the proffered hand.

“If you prefer to be alone,” he growled, “why don't you say so?”

Where they stood the lamplight fell upon his face—the face of a lad of twenty-two or three—stupid and sullen and debased. But Philip saw a look of such abject loneliness in his eyes that he placed his hand on the boy's shoulder: “Come on, Lester,” he said, and together they went down the street and away from the town. “What are you doing?” Philip asked presently.

“What I have always done—nothing.”

“When one hasn't anything else to do it's about the most agreeable of all occupations,” Philip observed. He noticed that his companion's unsteady gait indicated a recent debauch, but this did not prejudice him since he attributed all moral delinquencies to a lack of sense, and so readily condoned them on the grounds of inferior judgment.

A boyish friendship, almost forgotten, was all they had in common. Philip searched his mind for some topic of conversation that might interest his companion, but finally gave it up and they trudged along in silence.

They reached the outskirts of the town in this manner and Philip was about to turn back.

“Let's go on to the end of the road,” said Lester with sudden interest. “It isn't far,” he added, for his companion hesitated.

“Oh, all right, only I hope you don't take this walk often, Lester,” Philip said with a laugh, for the road ended at the graveyard.

Five minutes later and they were standing before the cemetery gates. The pale light of the October moon fell among the naked trees, while the dead leaves rustled in the wind. There was the ghostly white of tombstone and monument and the dismal black of contrasting pine trees. Philip leaned against the fence and surveyed it all critically. He owned that he was grateful to Lester for having brought him there. It gave him a distinct sensation.

“I am rather set against graveyards as a rule, but this is nice and curious and lonely,” he said. Lester did not answer him and Philip continued: “I haven't been out here in years. I guess not since we buried Mr. Benedict. Do you remember when we buried Mr. Benedict, Lester? I recall it as one of the most gratifying events of my childhood. I got a whole day from school in honor of the affair.” Philip raised himself on tiptoe and peered over the fence.

Lester paid no heed to Philip nor to what he was saying. He leaned silent and sullen against a tree that stood by the path, and gazed off into the frosty distance in the direction of the town. Out of this distance there floated a confusion of sounds—harmonized and softened by time and place; while through it all, clinging to the heavy atmosphere, drifted the odor of burning leaves and the musty scent of dying vegetation. There was a touch of sad regret in the night as though something that had been beautiful was ended. The boy felt this in its kinship to the ruin he had wrought in his own life.

“You are no doubt wondering why I spoke to you,” he said at last.

Philip nodded his head: “You know, Lester, we haven't had much to do with each other in some while.”

“I want to talk with you.”

“Well, go ahead, for it has just occurred to me that I promised to be home in time for supper.”

Lester turned a pair of bloodshot eyes full on Philip and asked: “You think I have been a fool, don't you?”

Philip shifted his feet uneasily. He felt that truth played such an insignificant part in the exercise of civility.

“You think I have been a fool?” Lester repeated.

“Before I answer that I'd like to know why you ask. You see the reason that prompts an inquiry is more than apt to determine its answer with me. I always wish to give satisfaction.”

“I ask because I'd like to know what you think of me. I don't suppose you have any sort of use for me. You don't know, Philip, how bad I have wanted some one to talk to for days and days—some one who is not like myself. And when I saw you to-night, I made up my mind that you should hear what I have to say. I can't keep it any longer—my head will burst if I do—can you listen?”

“Go ahead,—I'm listening.”

“For the most part it's nothing but what you know. It's just about my being such a fool. Yes, yes—and it's more than that!”

Philip saw that he was powerfully excited, that there were tears in the eyes of this boy, with a man's heavy burden of sin on his shoulders.

“You know about the money I got when I came of age; the money my father left me when he died. I—you know what a circus I made of myself. How every last cent of it is gone?”

“Yes, it's the gossip—and I hear it.”

Lester paced back and forth in front of Philip for a moment, and then leaned dejectedly against a tree.

“When you talked about how it used to be when we were boys, I could have choked you. I wish I were back to it, with these last years to live over!” He paused, trembling with excitement and sorrow. “When I got hold of my money you shook me off and would have nothing more to do with me.”

“I hadn't the time, Lester. I was busy and you were not. Our tastes had ceased to be the same, that was all. You should not bear me a grudge on that score.”

“I don't—I like you the better for it—you are the only fellow I can talk to. I know if you have any sympathy for me it rests on what I was when we tramped around the country in vacation time. How I wish I might go back to it and be a boy once more—once more!”

With a gesture of anguish he drew his hand across his face. Perhaps he sought to hide some part of the pain that was plainly stamped upon his woebegone visage. He had been so proud of his very misdeeds—and now——

“I have a lot of sympathy for you, Lester; just a lot, and I am sorry for you, too.”

“Thank you, Philip; I suppose I deserve all I get. I have been such a cad!—such a cub! I spent in two years and less what it took my father all his life to save. It will be a long while before I get hold of such a lump again, and if I have to make it, probably never. You know how, when I came of age, I was taken up by fellows much older than myself. My head was completely turned by my popularity—well, it lasted for a while then quite suddenly I found myself with empty pockets and no friends. People discovered all at once that I was shockingly immoral. They might have known it all along if they had cared to. I never made any bones about it. I was no better and no worse than those I went with. Now I am an outcast. The fellows who helped me on to this don't see me any more. I have the road to myself when I go down-town: everybody gets out of my way, but this is nothing—if it were no more than this I should not mind.”

“What else is it that's wrong?” said Philip, beginning to find the boy's confession interesting.

He was feeling a certain solicitude for the harvester of wild oats. They had been close friends once, and at not so very long ago either. Lester's plunge into folly had terminated their intimacy—the friendship had become irksome to both—for months they had scarcely exchanged more than greetings when they chanced to meet, and all in an instant Lester was sweeping him back to the years when they had been inseparable. With a palpable effort Lester continued:

“I've got all sorts of habits that are ruining me, as sure as I stand here—they are—and I can't stop. If I can get the money I am going away. Maybe it will be better then.”

“Come, come—brace up! There is no good in running away. I doubt if it will improve matters.”

“No, I can't stay.”

“I should if I were you. I should wait for a fitting opportunity and get even with all my former acquaintances in some dazzling fashion.”

Philip spoke cheerfully enough, but the tone of his voice was pleasantly suggestive of manslaughter as the method he would recommend.

“What do I care for the damned Judases!” Lester burst out. “All I want is to see the last of them.” Then suddenly he relapsed into sullenness; “I don't know that it's worth the trouble,” he said. “I might just as well finish it off and be done with the whole thing one time as another. I have thrown my money to the dogs and my chances with it. I may as well let the rest follow.”

“Nonsense! You don't mean what you're saying. Stop drinking and behave yourself and you'll discover that you have plenty of friends left. It won't benefit you to whine about it. That you have played the fool concerns you alone. You can't make the town responsible for what you've done yourself.”

Philip being the older, had always in a manner dominated Lester. Even in the days of their youth Lester had required a large amount of encouragement to keep within the wide limits of what Philip had marked off as the straight and narrow path in the field of his moral perceptions. For Philip had never aspired to any close companionship with the sterner virtues and he was consistent in advising no lines of conduct he was not himself willing to follow.

“Damn the town and everybody in it! There is not another such spot on the face of the earth.”

Evidently Lester did not find being an outcast agreeable, and he viewed himself as an injured individual, since his behavior had offended no one, until his riches were gone. Philip passed his hand through Lester's arm and led him down the path.

“You go home and when morning comes, bringing with it a clear head, think it over and arrive at the only sensible conclusion within your reach... to go it straight and steady.”

“Do you think I am soft to unburden myself to you like this?” Lester asked.

“My dear boy, I regard you as the opposite of soft.”

On their entering the town, Lester reverted to his former silence and Philip, commenting on the change, thought: “It was the enlivening associations of the tomb that made him talkative.” Neither spoke until they separated in front of Lester's home. Then Philip said: “Good night, don't worry, it won't help you in the least.”

“Good night.”

“If you should happen to want some one to discuss your affairs with, look me up. I shall always be at your service.”

“Thanks,—I will.”

Lester turned from the gate by which he had been standing and went toward the house. Philip followed him with a sympathetic glance.

“Poor boy,” he thought, “he's in hard luck, and though there is no one to blame but himself, it doesn't make it easier to bear.”

Then he called aloud: “Good night. I'll expect to see you soon.”

Lester waved his hand as he paused in the sudden burst of light from the opened door. Then the door closed, and Philip stood alone, staring thoughtfully at the darkness where but a moment before the streaming light had been: “I am sorry for him—but, suppose he avails himself of the proffer of companionship I was rash enough to make and eats up hours and hours of my precious time—what's going to become of my work? This won't do. A wretched creature who has squandered his fortune in riotous living comes along, makes a brutal assault on my feelings, and I weakly succumb—amiable ass that I am!”

There never was a bridge Philip did not cross in advance of his coming to it—never a bridge he did not go back to and recross after he was once safely over. So he stood thinking of the hours he was no doubt destined to waste on the unhappy Lester. At last he went his way reproaching himself with the unwisdom of having displayed a tender and susceptible nature.

He reached home while still engaged in abusing himself; with his hand upon the knob he halted a moment before opening the door. He wished to put his faculties in a state of repose so that he could meet his brother pleasantly and with no outward sign that he desired to kick him. This generally demanded a previous arrangement with himself. Assured that it was accomplished, he pushed open the door. The sitting-room was empty, but the noise coming from the dining-room told him that the family was at supper. His mother, hearing him enter, called: “Is it you, Philip?”

“Yes, mother. I'm late. I really meant to be back long ago.” Then to Anson as he passed from one room to the other: “How are you, old fellow?”

Their mother's eye was upon them and the brothers exchanged greetings in a friendly enough fashion. Anson even declared himself as delighted to see Philip:—a gratuitous bit of lying for which the latter thanked him profusely as he took his seat. About the table was grouped the entire Southard family. Philip, his mother, Anson and the two girls—Katherine and Florence. The “inharmonious whole”—as Philip was wont to call them. Anson was the eldest—his brother's senior by five or six years and verging close on thirty—handsome, too, in his way, by all odds the most prepossessing member of the family. But his original advantages were somewhat marred by his unfortunate mannerisms, the result in part of his occupation—that of confidential clerk in the office of a manufacturing concern. His every act, serious or the reverse, was performed with a petty and aggravating secrecy. It was displayed in everything he did. He even ate in a confidential manner, seeming to tell a business secret to each mouthful he swallowed. Philip, stealing covert glances at him, decided that he had never seen him quite so abominable. Yet, it struck him for the first time that Anson was a disappointed man—the world had not yielded him all that he had been coached to think it would. He had been brought up in the belief that he was a marvel of human perfectibility. As a child, he had been so precocious in pursuit of the virtues, great and small, that much had been predicted of him. Now when the glamour of youthful goodness was changing into the fixity of a shining light, he was held to be a model worthy of prayerful emulation by all right-minded people—and so he was. If he had been stuffed with straw, he could not have been freer from flesh-begotten sin.

Despite this he was a disappointed man. He had been such a remarkable boy that when he reached maturity he was in much the same unhappy plight as a little Alexander with no more worlds to conquer. That which had been so astonishing in the child, that uncanny goodness that caused elderly females to throw up their hands at the mere mention of his name and launch forth in praise of him, excited no especial comment in the man. It never occurred to him that he had been nourished on thin air. His whole education was such a mistake—such an injustice—How could any one thrive beneath the load of useless rectitude he had set out to carry like a fool,—mainly because it placed him in the ranks of other highly proper monstrosities.

Philip, slowly eating his supper, came to a realization of this and something not unlike pity stole into his heart.

It was such a remote chance, so removed from the realm of the possible that Anson would ever succeed in distinguishing himself more than he had done, and what would become of him?

As he speculated on the outcome, the two girls and Anson talked back and forth across the table, and he stopped thinking to listen.

It was the usual discussion of ways and means they carried on. This bill to be met—its fellow to be evaded until the end of the month. The evidences of a not over-lovely existence, but hard and precarious—close to the ragged edge of want. The much spent on the worthless shams—the little on the solid comforts of a good living.

“As if any one is deceived or thinks us richer than we are,” Philip thought. “We are more or less like our neighbors and they estimate our income to the last penny, just as we do theirs.” There was something so hopeless about the aspect life took on, something so perilously near to the perpetual grind of downright poverty, that it made him revolt and he burst out angrily: “Why, in heaven's name, don't you find some more cheerful subject to discuss! Must it forever be debts and bills, as if there was only the one purpose in living—to squirm through somehow until the end of the month!”

“I guess,” Katherine, the elder of the girls, said, her eyes snapping viciously, “that some one has to think of such matters, though I am sure no one wants to; and Anson is here so seldom and he is the——”

“Katherine!” Her mother spoke sharply, warning her not to finish the sentence.

Philip looked down at his plate and bit his lips. He knew what his sister would have said had their mother not interfered—that Anson was the family's mainstay—but her mother's warning stopped her.

It was by no means a loving family, nor was there any special graciousness in their intercourse. Philip barely tolerated his sisters. Katherine was undeniably mean and spiteful. To her natural tendencies she had added an exceedingly bigoted habit of thought which she referred to as “her faith”.

Its acquirement, if she was to be credited with telling the truth, had cost her many sleepless nights and great self-sacrifice. It was exercised chiefly in a rabid criticism of her species in which she recently delighted.

Florence was rather better in sweetness of temper and disposition, but to hear her talk was maddening torture to him. She had all a woman's misplaced and indiscriminate adjectives. Everything was “grand” to her, from hot pop-corn to a clap of thunder.

The connecting link holding the four together was Mrs. Southard, whose force of will kept them united after love and affection had ceased to exist.

The first strong emotion they had known had been hate, one for the other. They were so different in every quality of soul and body; they saw and were on the opposite side of every conceivable question. But one thing they had in common, an admirable tenacity, which rendered them insensible to either courtesy or reason where their prejudices were at stake.

The home, such as it was, existed only by grace of Mrs. Southard's strength of character. For while their mutual dislike reached a degree of bitterness hard to comprehend, they all loved her, each in his or her own way.

“What detained you, Philip?” his mother asked when Katherine was restored to composure.

“I took a walk with Lester Royal.”

“I don't think him a very good person to be seen with,” Katherine interposed. She felt bound to raise a disturbance on moral grounds.

“Don't you?—why not?” Then as a happy after thought: “There are certain people who should be restrained from thinking.”

Katherine ignored his remark and returned to the charge.

“What sort of a reputation has he, I should like to know! But of course you are superior to a trifle like that.”

“I fancy it's what it should be.”

“You know very well he has no reputation at all. But I suppose you don't mind—you are so liberal.”

“Then I am sure there is nothing wrong with it since it doesn't exist.”

“It does exist and is most unsavory!”

“Well, even an unsavory reputation is a decided improvement on no reputation at all.”

“I don't think——” Katherine began.

“I am glad you don't, Kate; it was never intended you should,” Philip made haste to say.

At this point Florence took up the cudgels against Philip:

“I should think you would have been ashamed to let people see you with him—he's simply horrid!”

“I wasn't seen with him, so don't distress your conscience with the idea that I was.”

“No thanks to you that you weren't,” said Katherine.

“Your penetration does you credit, Kate. I don't happen to possess your inordinate respect for appearances.” He was waiting to make a telling retort. This always stimulated him.

“I suppose you can't select men of good character for your friends,” Katherine snapped.

“Freedom from vice is more a question of ignorance than anything else.” Unconsciously he glanced at Anson as he spoke.

“I should be ashamed to think it,” said Katherine.

“Perhaps my spiritual insight has become blunted by my unfavorable surroundings.”

“I suppose that's a covert slur at me and my religion,” with heat. “The things you say are disgraceful!”

“I don't see how mother can permit it,” Florence said, bent on being in the row.

“For pity's sake, girls, can't you let Philip finish his supper in peace, without going out of your way to complain of what is no affair of yours?” It was Mrs. Southard who spoke.

Philip pushed back his plate. “I am through and will take myself off,” he said. He kissed his mother, and with an indifferent good night to the rest, left the room. A moment later the street door closed with a bang.

“I wish to gracious he was already married to Barbara. I'll bet he'd know pretty quick he wasn't any better off,” said Florence.

“There—there,” Mrs. Southard objected wearily. “Can't you find something else to talk about?”