The Colossus | Page 9

he held warm in his heart.
"Hank, while I am able to talk I've got a great favor to ask of you. And you'll grant it, won't you?"
"Yes," DeGolyer Bobbed.
For a few moments the sick man lay in silence. He fumbled about and found DeGolyer's hand. "My father and mother are waiting for me," he said. "They have been raised into a new life. If I never come it will be worse than if I had never been found, for they'll have a new grief to bear, and it may be heavier than the first. They must have a son, Hank."
"My dear boy, what do you mean?"
"I mean that if I die--and I know that I am going to die--you must be their son. You must go there, not as Henry DeGolyer, but as Henry Witherspoon, their own son."
"Merciful God! I can't do that."
"But if you care for me you will. Take all my papers--take everything I've got--and go home. It will be the greatest favor you could do me and the greatest you could do them."
"But, my dear boy, I should be a liar and a hypocrite."
"No, you would be playing my part because I couldn't play it. Once you said that you would give me your life if I wanted it, and now I want it. You can make them happy, and they'll be so proud of you. Won't you try it? I would do anything on earth for you, and now you deny me this--and who knows but my spirit might enter into you and form a part of your own? How can you refuse me when you know that I think more of you than I do of anybody? This is no boy's prank--I'm a man now. Will you?"
"Henry," said DeGolyer, "this is merely a feverish notion that has come out of your derangement. Put it by, and after a while we will laugh at it. Is the cloth hot again?"
"Yes."
"I'll change it." And DeGolyer, removing the cloth and placing his hand on his friend's forehead, added: "Your fever isn't so high as it was yesterday. You are coming out all right."
"No, I tell you that I'm going to die; and you won't do me the only favor I could ask. Don't you remember saying, not long ago, that a man's life is a pretense almost from the beginning to the end?"
"I don't remember saying it, but it agrees with what I have often been compelled to think."
"Well, then, if you think that life is a pretense, why not pretend by request?"
"Well talk about it some other time, my boy."
"But there may not be any other time."
"Oh, yes, there will be. Don't you think you can sleep now?"
"No, I don't think I can sleep and wake up again."
But he did sleep, and he did awake again. Three more days passed wearily away, and the patient was delirious most of the time. DeGolyer's acquaintance with Spanish was but small, and he could comprehend but little of what a pedantic doctor might say, yet he learned that there was not much encouragement to be drawn from the fact that the sick man's mind sometimes returned from its troubled wandering.
DeGolyer was again alone with his friend. It was a hot though a blustery afternoon, and the sea, in sight through the open door, sounded the deeper notes of its endless opera.
"Hank."
"I'm here, my boy."
"Have you thought about what I told you to do?"
"Are you still clinging to that notion?"
"No; it is clinging to me. Have you thought about it?"
"Yes."
"And what did you think?"
"I thought that for you I would take the risk of playing a part that you are unable to perform. But really, Henry, I'm too old."
"You have promised, and my mind is at ease," the sick man said, with a smile. "Now I feel that I have given my life over to you and that I shall not really be dead so long as you are alive. Among my things you will find some letters written by my mother to my uncle, and a small gold chain and a locket that I wore when I was sto--when uncle took me. That's all."
"I will do the best I can, but I'm too old."
"You are only a few years older than I am. They'll never know. They'll be blind. You'll have the proof. Go at once. You are Henry Witherspoon. That's all."
The blustery afternoon settled into a calm as the sun went down, and a change came with the night. The sufferer's mind flitted back for a moment, and in that speck of time he spoke not, but he gave his friend a look of gratitude. All was over. During the night DeGolyer sat alone by the bedside. And a ship came at morning.
A kind-hearted priest offered his services. "The