The Hand of the Mighty, and Other Stories

by Vaughan Kester

VI

Philip had the street to himself as he walked up-town from the Perkins', where he had been spending the evening, but as he came to his own gate, he saw a man lounging beside it.

It was Lester Royal.

Since the night when they had met for the first time in months, Philip had not seen him, and he had ceased to command any portion of his thoughts in the pressure of work and newer interests, but the sight of the boy leaning dejectedly against the fence revived the memory of their former interview.

“Why, Lester, it's you, is it?” he said with a marked display of cordiality for he was not averse to a little human intercourse at that particular moment. “Beastly cold, isn't it?” he added.

“I am frozen,” Lester said, and he shivered. “I have been waiting to see you for an hour or more. Take me indoors, will you, where it's warm?”

Philip took his hand. It was like ice. “I should say you are frozen. Come along with me!”

They turned into the yard and Philip with his night-key unlocked the house door and led the way up to his room where a bright fire burned in the grate—his one luxury. He pushed Lester down into a chair before it and said:

“Now what's up?”

He saw that his visitor was pale and worn, with dark haggard lines about his eyes, and the hands he held out toward the blaze were thin and tremulous.

“Have you been ill?” he questioned.

The younger boy shook his head.

“What's wrong then?”

For answer Lester cried hoarsely in a voice choked with emotion and grief, “I am done for, Philip—done for! I am dying by inches—I!—and a year ago I thought I should live forever.”

He buried his face in his hands, sobbing like a child.

The spectacle of a man in tears was not at all soothing to Philip. Perhaps there might have been times when he would have done the same thing, but that was no excuse for Lester.

He had done and probably would continue to do a great many things that he could not pardon in another.

“Come! come! this won't do. Be a man,” he said coldly.

He was really very sorry for the boy, but Lester had no earthly right to make such a violent assault upon his feelings; besides he had a lurking suspicion that he was harrowing up his sensibilities with the sole object of asking for a loan. Whatever his object, Lester paid no heed to him, and Philip, after taking a turn about the room, halted at his side.

“I say what's the matter, anyhow?”

“You think I am a baby as well as a fool!” came in stifled accents from the sufferer.

“Oh, no!” Philip remarked politely, “only it's rather unconventional, you know. Just a bit surprising—not to say startling. I am hardly prepared for it. If you could manage to slow up a little I should be very grateful.”

Lester raised his head and looked up into his friend's face.

The suffering that Philip saw in the face before him caused him to push a chair close to the boy's and seat himself. Then with one hand half clasping Lester's, half resting on the arm of the chair, he said kindly: “Tell me, old fellow, what it is?”

“I can't! I can't! You will know some day. You will find out for yourself when—” He broke off abruptly, leaving the sentence unfinished.

“Very well, don't say more than you wish,” Philip answered. It was too serious for any display of curiosity on his part he felt. He gazed pityingly at Lester who looked pale and wan. Thus for a time they sat, neither speaking. At last Lester said:

“I've got to talk with some one—my brain swims with it—for the one idea whirls and whirls till I am dizzy and blind. I am wretched, Philip, wretched; and there is no help for it. I've brought it all on myself. Do you think it very hard to die?”

“Easy, but not agreeable. Why do you ask such infernally gruesome questions?”

“I've got to die.”

“I can't see where you are an exception to the rule. It's expected of everybody—the nasty act of termination. What a vulgar thing death is!”

Lester stood erect—the firelight flashing over his worn countenance. “It's different with me. I've got to die now—now!” With a groan of anguish he flung himself back into the chair while Philip looked at him in astonishment.

“See here. What morbid fancy has hold of you?” he asked. “I must admit I don't like this sort of talk.”

But Lester's face was buried in his hands, only his dry hard gaspings were audible. He gained a degree of control over himself and again faced his companion, saying: “Don't you know what I mean?”

“No, I don't, and that's a fact.”

Lester was silent. Some sentiment of reserve stood between him and the confession he was seeking to make.

“Have you been drinking lately?” Philip questioned gravely.

“Yes—but not to-day.”

“You shouldn't do it. It's anything but good for you.”

“Do you think I am fool enough not to know that?” Lester replied with almost savage earnestness.

“Then why in the name of sense don't you keep straight?”

“I resolve to, and then go and get drunk against my will. You don't know what it's like.”

Philip regarded him sadly. There was a heavy melancholy in the boy's whole attitude that distressed him—a spirit as of dumb submission to the inevitable. It was only lifted when he indulged in his wild bursts of grief.

“What's the good!” Lester continued. “I can keep up for a day or two, but I go back to it every time.”

Philip shrugged his shoulders, saying with a poor attempt at lightness: “I suppose one should not resist the flesh. Our most virtuous moments are those which come when we have tired the devil out within us and are basking in the splendor of the good resolutions that tread upon the heels of satiety.” He would have given anything to recall the words once they were spoken, for Lester shrank from him.

“I didn't think you would talk to me so—not now,” he said.

There was the dull glint of anger in his lack-luster eyes, but it faded away almost immediately. Once more he became stupidly quiet.

“Forgive me,” Philip ventured penitently. “I didn't mean to wound you.”

“It's all right,” Lester said indifferently. “It's all right. I presume you are thoroughly sick of me.

“No, I am not. I'd like to help you if I knew how, but you don't tell me what your trouble is. It's blind guessing with me. I don't know how to give you a lift.”

“It's too late, I tell you. I'm done for.”

“Do you mind explaining just what you mean?”

“I've squandered what should have lasted me a lifetime. I am a bankrupt in brain, body and purse. My God!”—with a gesture eloquent of despair and misery—“I've ruined myself! There is nothing left for me but death.”

And Philip, understanding something of the other's need, said: “It's not so bad as that. You can pull yourself around, but if it's as you declare it to be, you can't be too quick about it.”

“The doctors say not. It's all up with me according to them.”

“Damn the doctors! What do they know?”

“They say it's too late.”

“Siuff. They lie! It's never too late.”

“There, Philip, don't—don't let's discuss it. I am not afraid, but it's terrible. I have thought I had years and years before me, and they were all wasted in a day.”

To his horror Philip saw that his friend was in a measure reconciled to death. This to a pagan like Philip, was incomprehensible.

Now that he had talked more freely, Lester was calmer and his dejection was not so pronounced as at first. Silence had fallen on them and they sat looking into the fire, each busy with his own thoughts.

“Let's talk about when we were boys,” Lester finally said. “You do the talking just as you did when I saw you last. Do you know if I can't sleep nights—and I can't most of the time—I like to think about it: the past that stops where my folly began. In all the years since I came of age, there is nothing I want to remember—it's all agony to me. Talk about when we were boys, Philip—about what we did in vacation. You were always such a good old chap!”

He put his hand on Philip's arm and let it rest there affectionately while Philip in a low voice began to speak of the past,—and at the telling much that was hard in his own nature grew soft. A strange gentleness came into the hearts of both, as Philip talked of their boyhood. When the winding country roads knew the marks of their bare feet in the dust; when, stripped of clothing and shame, they lay lazily upon the hot sand by the river's brim, and afterward took the long walk for home through the scented dusk. Back to the days when they were dirty and happy—when respectability knew them not at all—Philip carried them. And Lester saw in the fire, the red of the sunshine; in the smoke, the darkness of night,—the warm summer nights that were filled with peace and sleep.

Surely, it was better then—and as he listened his head fell over on his shoulder, his eyes closed, while still as in a dream he heard the murmur of Philip's voice, saw the pictures he drew, and then he slept.

Philip moved noiselessly to the table where the lamp burned. This he blew out so that only the firelight filled the room, the firelight and the colder brightness the moon sent stealing in through the windows.

As the hours wore on, he kept his watch at the sleeper's side, thinking and wondering what it all meant and what the end would be.

It was almost day when Lester woke.

“Better, Lester?” he asked.

“Yes. I wish I were back to it. I wish I were a boy again. I am sick of the present, and the future has nothing for me. You know I can't keep from the very things that are killing me. I try and try and then I fail.”

“You must keep from them if you are ever to be all you were, all you promised to be.”

Lester shook his head.

“It will never be, Philip. It is too late—I am done for.”

“That's absurd, Lester. There! I can tolerate any one except the man who differs from me in his opinions. For him I have the heartiest contempt.”

“It's not all cowardice with me,” Lester said miserably. “Now that the time has gone forever, I want what I have never had. I am desperately sick of myself.”

He looked at Philip wistfully, and the remembrance was torture to Philip long afterward. “Did you ever want to be good? Can you imagine what this desire is in a fellow like me?”

“Why do you stir me up on these lines of sloppy sentiment?” Philip retorted. “No, I never want to be good. My digestion is perfect. Piety does very well for children and invalids.”

Lester made no response to this and his friend added in an injured but more temperate tone: “You talk like a man on his death-bed. I can only give you temporal consolation. I can only tell you what seems to me the wisest course to pursue.”

“Perhaps I am nearer that than you think for—nearer my death-bed,” the boy answered, helplessly, drearily.

“Stuff!” Philip cried hotly.

Lester seemed to take small comfort from his words, but Philip made a last attempt to cheer him up. “As to the doctors,” he said, “you can't depend on them; and that about your dying is rank nonsense. If folly and sin were so fatal, our race would have become extinct long ago. You may be in a very bad way—I don't say you are not, but anything is possible in this world. You are more apt to get well than to die. You made a mistake, though, when you consulted a doctor. As long as a man can remain in ignorance of those operations that are going on inside of him, he is in the enjoyment of a very considerable blessing.”

Lester turned away.

“Well, I shall go home now if you will let me out,” he said drearily.

“Are you going to keep clear of those indulgences that are, as you think, killing you?”

“If I can I shall.”

“If you can—you must!” Lester's glance checked him:—“I'll walk home with you,” he said gently, and as he saw Lester was going to protest, he made haste to add:

“It's no odds to me that it's late.”

And together they left the house.

A week later it occurred to Philip that Lester had not lived up to the assurance he had given him at parting, that he would come around soon and report upon his troubles.

“Now I suppose I should go look him up,” he thought, “and find out why he has dodged the agreement in this fashion. It's just my misfortune to be of an abominably conscientious temperament which causes me to feel morally responsible for his well-being. I really am conscientious,—even stupidity can not be urged in extenuation. In the present instance I know perfectly well what I should do: I should dismiss Lester from my mind. But I am too much of a conscientious ass.”

In support of the truth of this Philip started at once in search of Lester.

First he visited his home, and found that he had not been there in several days, but it occasioned no alarm, as the boy's habits were decidedly those of a vagabond.

This was in the morning. At noon Philip was in such a state of preoccupation that he got through his dinner without an exchange of hostilities with either of his sisters.

In his search that morning he had encountered no one who seemed to remember having seen Lester recently.

He could not free himself from the belief that his disappearance was a serious matter. The recollection of their last meeting oppressed him with an unpleasant distinctness all at once. He roused himself from his abstraction to say to his mother: “Do you know, I am worried about poor Lester Royal.”

Katherine sniffed aloud at this: “Lester Royal, indeed!”

“I've been looking for him all the morning and I can't get track of him,” he continued.

“Perhaps he is too drunk to be seen. It would be no new thing if he were,” said Katherine.

Philip was using such a character as his sister in some work he was doing, and he was interested in examining her capacity for abusive speech when spurred by anger. Here was an opportunity: “Well, if he wants to get drunk it's his privilege.”

“He should be locked up instead of being allowed to disgrace himself and everybody else.”

“Oh, no, Kate—you would be too severe. What you foolishly take to be a religious conviction is simply a woman's prejudice at seeing a man enjoy himself.”

“Of course you call intoxication enjoyment. Your views are so broad.”

“Are they?”

“You think they are, but if I were in your place I should exercise some selection in the choosing of my associates.”

“Would you really? How nice!”

“My friends should be my equals. Neither low Germans nor drunkards.”

“But men are only equal when they are drunk.” From her seat at the head of the table, Mrs. Southard sent him a look of mute entreaty, and it struck him for the thousandth time that the wrangling in which he and Katherine indulged was hard for his mother to bear. He promptly abandoned the attack, finished his dinner in grim silence, and started out again, bent on finding Lester, but grumbling as he went that he should be so weak as to care about the boy.

He devoted an hour or so to investigating the various resorts Lester was known to frequent, and eventually learned that he had been seen very much the worse for drink on the day following the night they had spent together. Since then no one knew what had become of him. The opinion of the loafer who furnished the information was that he had gone off somewhere to sober up.

“The ass!” thought Philip bitterly. “The brainless ass! Here I get into a pretty state over his woes and this is the extent of his reformation. He goes and gets drunk, which is a good reason for his not going home or caring to see me.”

It was a bright fall afternoon—brisk and bracing—with touches of winter in the air. Philip turned his back on the town. It was just the season for a tramp into the country, and since the greater part of the day had been wasted as far as writing was concerned he proposed to amuse himself.

As he strode along thoughts of Lester would come to him, and in the end pity had replaced his momentary bitterness toward him.

“Poor fellow!” he muttered. “Maybe he can't help it, after all. Unless one has ambition or hope there isn't much to keep one up. I wish I knew where he has hidden himself. If I just knew that, I wouldn't bother.”

He crossed from the road he had followed since leaving the town and kept his way by the river's bank. In the gaunt leafless weeds and bushes choking the narrow path he seemed to see flitting on before him Lester's tragic face.

Soon the town was far in the distance behind him, only the smoke rolling up from the factory chimneys could be seen, and still he tramped on and on, going to the many favorite haunts where he fished or swam as a boy. Each turn in the road marked some event especially prominent in his memory.

In spite of the chilliness in the air he strolled slowly forward for a mile or two, when the yelping of a dog attracted his attention, suggesting possibilities of companionship. He went in the direction from which the sound came. The passing of a bend in the river brought the dog into view, a small yellow creature crouching on its haunches on the bank and howling dismally. When it saw Philip this was changed to short jerky barks and it bounded down the bank and began to tug at a dark object that lay in a thin scum of ice formed about it in the still water near the shore.

From where Philip stood, a little farther down the stream, a curve in the line of its flow placed him almost opposite the object.

“It's a bit of old clothing,” he told himself. And he called aloud: “Bring it out, sir! Fetch it here!”

The dog, stimulated by his voice and presence, barked more furiously than ever, while Philip fell to throwing stones at the thing in the water with the double idea of encouraging the dog and cutting the ice that held it.

All at once the dog, as though frightened, put its tail between its legs and ran up the bank, where it squatted on its haunches and resumed its yelping.

“I wonder,” thought Philip, “if it's my duty to go tear the thing loose, for my esteemed acquaintance, the yellow dog.”

He armed himself with a stick. Thus prepared he made a circuit of the shore. The dog testified to its appreciation of his evident intention in a most unmistakable manner.

“Glad of a little help, are you?” said Philip aloud to the yellow dog as he went toward the object in the water.

“It has a funny look,” he thought, “a very funny look.”

With his stick he poked at it.

The object with a light silly motion bobbed up and down in the water. Philip poked more vigorously. “Come loose!” he insisted. “Come loose!”

Then all in an instant the stick slid from his grasp into the water and glided away 'beyond his reach.

The thing had turned—'turned with a ghastly sickening semblance of life, disclosing a blue discolored hand so poised that it was outstretched straight and stiff. As it swept past it touched Philip.

“It's a man!” he cried, shrinking away. “As I live it's a man!”

The object, turning farther, floated free upon its back and lay so, and he saw the bloated, hideously swollen face of Lester Royal. There was no mistaking it.

Philip uncovered his head and leaned back upon the shelving bank. The dog crept to his side, and he caressed it silently.

There was no sound save that of the river where it fretted against its gravelly bed and the call of crows from the deserted corn-fields.

“It's all up with him now,” unconsciously Philip spoke aloud.

He paused and gazed down upon the body of his friend. The dog crept closer and would have licked his face. This roused Philip from his reverie.

There yet remained for him to summon aid,—men and a wagon, and accompanied by the idle throng that gathers at such times, to go back into the town.